Billionaire Bachelors: Stone

Faith stared at him, apparently sure she hadn’t heard him correctly. He couldn’t blame her. As soon as the words were out, he’d decided he was crazy.

“You need what?”

“A wife.” Stone could hear the impatience in his tone, and he forced himself to take deep, slow breaths. Calming breaths.

She spread her hands in confusion, and her smooth brow wrinkled in bewilderment. “But how can I help you with that? I doubt I know anyone who—”

“Faith.” His deep voice stopped her tumbling words. “I’d like you to be my wife.”

Her eyes widened. Her mouth formed a perfect “O” of surprise. She put a hand up and pointed at herself as if she needed confirmation that she hadn’t lost her mind, and her lips soundlessly formed the word “Me?”

He nodded. “Yes. You.”

Dear Reader,

Celebrate the rites of spring with six new passionate, powerful and provocative love stories from Silhouette Desire!

Reader favorite Anne Marie Winston’s Billionaire Bachelors: Stone, our March MAN OF THE MONTH, is a classic marriage-of-convenience story, in which an overpowering attraction threatens a platonic arrangement. And don’t miss the third title in Desire’s glamorous in-line continuity DYNASTIES: THE CONNELLYS, The Sheikh Takes a Bride by Caroline Cross, as sparks fly between a sexy-as-sin sheikh and a feisty princess.

In Wild About a Texan by Jan Hudson, the heroine falls for a playboy millionaire with a dark secret. Her Lone Star Protector by Peggy Moreland continues the TEXAS CATTLEMAN’S CLUB: THE LAST BACHELOR series, as an unlikely love blossoms between a florist and a jaded private eye.

A night of passion produces major complications for a doctor and the social worker now carrying his child in Dr. Destiny, the final title in Kristi Gold’s miniseries MARRYING AN M.D. And an ex-marine who discovers he’s heir to a royal throne must choose between his kingdom and the woman he loves in Kathryn Jensen’s The Secret Prince.

Kick back, relax and treat yourself to all six of these sexy new Desire romances!

Enjoy!

Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire

Billionaire Bachelors: Stone

Anne Marie Winston

ANNE MARIE WINSTON

RITA Award finalist and bestselling author Anne Marie Winston loves babies she can give back when they cry, animals in all shapes and sizes and just about anything that blooms. When she’s not writing, she’s chauffeuring children to various activities, trying not to eat chocolate or reading anything she can find. She will dance at the slightest provocation and weeds her gardens when she can’t see the sun for the weeds anymore. You can learn more about Anne Marie’s novels by visiting her Web site at www.annemariewinston.com.

To all the nurses at the Waynesboro Hospital who have shared my midnight vigils. My thanks do not begin to express my appreciation for your kindnesses.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Prologue

“Smythe Corp. will be yours…on one condition.” Eliza Smythe’s eyes narrowed as she studied her only son.

Stone Lachlan stood with one arm negligently braced on the mantel above the marble fireplace in his mother’s Park Avenue apartment in New York City. Not even the flicker of an eyelash betrayed any emotion. He wasn’t about to let his mother know what her offer meant to him. Not until it was his and she couldn’t take it away.

“And what might that condition be?” He lifted the crystal highball glass to his lips and drank, keeping the movement slow and lazy. Disinterested.

“You get married—”

“Married!” Stone nearly choked on the fine Scotch malt whiskey.

“And settle down,” his mother added. “I want grandchildren one of these days while I’m still young enough to enjoy them.”

He set his glass on a nearby marble-topped table with a snap. It took him a moment to push away the hurtful memories of a small boy whose mother had been too busy to bother with him. His mouth twisted cynically. “If you plan to devote yourself to grandchildren as totally as you did me, why are you planning to retire? It doesn’t take much time to give a nanny instructions once a week or so.”

His mother flinched. “If it’s any consolation to you, I regret the way you were raised,” she said, and he could hear pain in her voice. “If I had it to do over…”

“If you had it to do over, you’d do exactly the same thing,” Stone interrupted her. The last thing he needed was to have his mother pretending she cared. “You’d immerse yourself in your family’s company until you’d dragged it back from the brink of bankruptcy. And you’d keep on running it because you were the only one left.”

His mother bowed her head, acknowledging the truth of his words. “Perhaps.” Then she squared her shoulders and he could see her shaking off the moment of emotion. Just as she’d shaken him off so many times. “So what’s your decision? Do you accept my offer?”

“I’m thinking,” he said coolly. “You drive a hard bargain. Why the wife?”

“It’s time for you to think about heirs,” his mother said. “You’re nearly thirty years old. You’ll have responsibilities to both Smythe Corp. and Lachlan International and you should have children to follow in your footsteps.”

God, he wished she was kidding but he doubted his mother had ever seen the point of a joke in her entire life. A wife…? He didn’t want to get married. Hadn’t ever really been tempted, even. A shrink would have a field day with that sentiment, would probably pronounce him scarred by his childhood. But the truth, as Stone saw it, was simply that he didn’t want to have to answer to anyone other than himself.

Where in hell was he going to get a wife, anyway? Oh, finding a woman to marry him would be easy. There were dozens of fresh young debutantes around looking for Mr. Rich and Right. The problem would be finding one he could stand for more than five minutes, one that wouldn’t attempt to take him to the cleaners when the marriage ended. When the marriage ended…that was it! He’d make a temporary marriage, pay some willing woman a lump sum for the job of acting as his wife for a few weeks.

“Draw up the papers, Mother.” His voice was clipped. “I’ll find a wife.”

“Which is why it’s conditional.”

That got his attention. “Conditional? What—you want final approval?” Another thought occurred to him. “Or you’re giving me some time limit by which I have to tie the knot?”

Eliza shook her head. “The last thing I want you to do is rush into marriage. I’d rather you wait until you find the right woman. But at least now I know you’ll be thinking about it. The condition is that once you marry, the marriage has to last for one year—with both of you living under the same roof—before the company becomes yours.”

One year… His agile mind immediately saw the fine print. He would find a bride, all right. And the minute the ink was dry on the contract with his mother, there would be a quiet annulment. A twinge of guilt pricked at his conscience but he shrugged it off. He didn’t owe his mother anything. And it would serve her right for thinking she could manipulate his life this way.

He smiled, trying to mask his newfound satisfaction. “All right, Mother. You’ve got a deal. I find a bride, you give me your dearest possession.”

Eliza stood, her motions jerky. “I know I haven’t been much of a mother to you, Stone, but I do care. That’s why I want you to start looking for a wife. Being single might seem appealing for a while, but it gets awfully lonely.”

He shrugged negligently, letting the words hit him and bounce off. No way was he going to let her start tugging at his heartstrings after all this time. She was the one who had chosen to leave. “Whatever.”

Eliza started for the door. “At least give it some thought.” She sighed. “I never thought I’d say it, but I’m actually looking forward to having some free time.”

“I never thought you’d say it, either.” And he hadn’t. His mother lived and breathed the company that had come to her on her father’s death when she was barely twenty-five. She’d loved it far more than she had Stone or his father, as his dad had pointed out.

Smythe Corp. He’d resigned himself to waiting for years to inherit his mother’s corporation. But he’d never stopped dreaming. Now he would be able to implement the plans he’d considered for years. He’d merge Smythe Corp. with Lachlan Enterprises, the company that had been his father’s until his death eight years ago.

As his mother took her leave, he moved into his office, still thinking about finding the right woman to agree to what sounded like an insane idea. A temporary wife. Why not? Marriage, as far as he could tell, was a temporary institution anyway. One he had never planned to enter. But if marriage was what it took, then marriage was what his mother would get.

While he turned the problem over in his head, he thumbed through the day’s mail. His hand slowed as he came to a plain brown envelope. In the envelope was the report he received quarterly, giving him updates on his ward, Faith Harrell.

Faith. She’d been a gawky twelve-year-old the first time he’d seen her. He’d been fresh out of college, and they both were reeling from the death of their two fathers in a boating accident a month earlier. He’d been absolutely stunned, he recalled, when Faith’s mother had begged him to become her guardian.

A guardian…him? It sounded like something out of the last century. But he hadn’t been able to refuse. Mrs. Harrell had multiple sclerosis. She feared the disease’s advance. And worse, she’d been a quietly well-to-do socialite for her entire married life, pursuing genteel volunteer work and keeping her home a charming, comfortable refuge for her husband. She knew nothing of finances and the world of business. They’d been married for a long, long time before they’d had Faith and their world had revolved around her. His father would have wanted him to make sure Randall Harrell’s family was taken care of.

And so Faith became his ward. He’d taken care of her, and of her mother, in a far more tangible way when he’d discovered the dismal state of Randall’s investments. The man had been on the brink of ruin. Faith and her mother were practically penniless. And so Stone had quietly directed all their bills to him throughout the following years. He’d seen no reason to distress the fragile widow with her situation, and even less to burden a young girl with it. It was what his father would have done, and it certainly wasn’t as if it imposed a financial strain on his own immense resources.

Faith. Her name conjured up an image of a slender schoolgirl in a neat uniform though he knew she hadn’t worn uniforms since leaving her boarding school. It had been more than a year since he’d seen her. She’d become a lovely young thing as she’d grown up and she probably was even prettier now. She would be finishing her junior year at college in a few months. And though he hadn’t seen her in person recently, he looked forward to reading the update on her from the lawyer who had overseen the monetary disbursements to Faith and her mother.

He slit the envelope absently as he returned to the problem of where to find a temporary wife.

Five minutes later, he was rubbing the back of his neck in frustration as he spoke to the man who provided the updates on Faith Harrell. “What do you mean, she withdrew from school two weeks ago?”

One

A huge, hard hand clamped firmly about her wrist as Faith Harrell turned from the Carolina Herrerra display she was creating in the women’s department of Saks Fifth Avenue.

“What in hell are you doing?” a deep, masculine voice growled.

Startled, Faith looked up. A long way up, into the furious face of Stone Lachlan. Her heart leaped, then began to tap-dance in her chest as pleasure rose so swiftly it nearly choked her. She hadn’t seen Stone since he’d taken her out for lunch one day last year—he was the last person she had imagined meeting today! Her pulse had begun to race at the sound of his growling tones and she hoped he didn’t feel it beneath his strong fingers.

“Hello,” she said, smiling. “It’s nice to see you, too.”

He merely stared at her, one dark eyebrow rising. “I’m waiting for an explanation.”

Stone was nearly ten years her senior. His father and hers had been best friends and she’d grown up visiting with Stone and his father occasionally, chasing the big boy who gave her piggyback rides and helped her dance by letting her stand on his feet. He’d been merely a pleasant, distant-relation sort of person until their fathers had died together in a squall off Martha’s Vineyard eight years ago. Since then, Stone had been her guardian, making sure her mother’s multiple sclerosis wasn’t worsened by any sort of stress. Technically she supposed she still was his ward, despite the fact that she’d be twenty-one in November, just eight months away. And despite the additional fact that she was penniless and didn’t need a guardian anyway.

Stone. Her stomach fluttered with nervous delight and she silently admonished herself to settle down and behave like an adult. She’d been terribly infatuated with him by the time she was a young teenager.

He’d teased her, told her jokes and tossed her in the air. And she’d been smitten with the fierce pain of unrequited love. Though she’d told herself it was just a crush and she’d outgrown him, her body’s involuntary reactions to his nearness now called her a liar. Ridiculous, she told herself sternly. You haven’t seen the man in months. You barely know him.

But Stone had kept tabs on her since their fathers’ deaths, though his busy schedule apparently hadn’t permitted him to visit often. He’d remembered her at Christmas and on her birthday, and she’d occasionally gotten postcards from wherever he happened to be in the world, quick pleasantries scrawled in a strong masculine hand. It hadn’t been much, she supposed, but to a young girl at a quiet boarding school, it had been enough.

And she knew from comments he’d made in his infrequent letters that he had checked on her progress at boarding school and at college, which she’d attended for two and a half years.

Until she’d learned the truth.

The truth. Her pleasure in his appearance faded.

“I work here,” she said quietly, gathering her dignity around her. She should be furious with Stone for what he’d done, but she couldn’t stop herself from drinking in the sight of his large, dark-haired form, so enormous and out of place among the delicate, feminine clothing displays.

“You quit school,” he said, his strong, tanned features dark with displeasure.

“I temporarily stopped taking classes,” she corrected. “I hope to return part-time eventually.” Then she remembered her shock and humiliation on the day she’d learned that Stone had paid for her education and every other single thing in her life since her father’s death. “And in any case, I couldn’t have stayed. I needed a job.”

Stone went still, his fingers relaxing on her wrist although he didn’t release her, and she sensed his sudden wariness. “Why do you say that?”

She shook the index finger of her free hand at him. “You know very well why, so don’t pretend innocence.” She surveyed him for a moment, unable to prevent the wry smile that tugged at her lips. “You’d never pull it off.”

He didn’t smile back. “Have lunch with me. I want to talk to you.”

She thought for a moment. “About what?”

“Things,” he said repressively. His blue eyes were dark and stormy and he took a moment to look at their surroundings. “You can’t keep this up.”

She smiled at his ill temper. “Of course I can. I’m not a millionaire, it helps to pay the rent.” Then she remembered the money. “Actually, I want to talk to you, too.”

“Good. Let’s go.” Stone started to tow her toward the escalator, but Faith stiffened her legs and resisted.

“Stone! I’m working. I can’t just leave.” She waved a hand toward the rear of the department. “Let me check with my supervisor and see what time I can take my lunch break.”

He still held her wrist and she wondered if he could feel her pulse scramble beneath his fingers. He searched her face for a long moment before he nodded once, short and sharp. “All right. Hurry.”

Faith turned and walked to the back of the store at a ladylike pace. She refused to let Stone see how much his presence unsettled her. Memories ran through her head in a steady stream.

When he’d come to visit a few months after the funeral to help her mother tell her what they had decided, he’d been grieving, but even set in unsmiling severe lines, his face had been handsome. She’d been drawn even more than ever to his steady strength and charismatic presence. He talked about the friendship their fathers had shared since their days as fraternity brothers in college but she’d known even before he started to talk that he’d feel responsible for her. He was just that kind of man.

He intended to continue to send her to a nearby private school in Massachusetts, he told her, and to make sure that her mother’s care was uninterrupted and her days free of worry. And though she hadn’t known it at the time, Stone had taken over the burden of those debts. At the time of his death, her father had been nearly insolvent.

“Faith!” One of the other saleswomen whispered at her as she rushed by. “Who is that gorgeous, gorgeous man standing over there? I saw you talking to him.”

Faith threaded her way through the salespeople gathering in the aisle. “A family friend,” she replied. Then she saw Doro, her manager. “What time will I have my break today?”

Doro’s eyes were alive with the same avid curiosity dancing in the other womens’ faces. “Does he want you to have lunch with him?”

Wordlessly Faith nodded.

“That’s Stone Lachlan!” One of the other clerks rushed up, dramatically patting her chest. “Of the steel fortune Lachlans. And his mother is the CEO of Smythe Corp. Do you know how much he’s worth?”

“Who cares?” asked another. “He could be penniless and I’d still follow him anywhere. What a total babe!”

“Sh-h-h.” Doro hustled the others back to work. Then she turned back to Faith. “Go right now!” The manager all but took her by the shoulders and shoved her back in Stone’s direction.

Faith was amused, but she understood Stone’s potent appeal. Even if he hadn’t been so good-looking, he exuded an aura of power that drew women irresistibly.

Quietly she gathered her purse and her long black wool coat, still a necessity in New York City in March. Then she walked back to the front of the women’s department where Stone waited. He put a hand beneath her elbow as he escorted her from the store and she shivered at the touch of his hard, warm fingers on the tender bare flesh of her neck as he helped her into her coat and gently drew her hair from beneath the collar.

He had a taxi waiting at the curb and after he’d handed her into the car, he took a seat at her side. “The Rainbow Room,” he said to the driver.

Faith sat quietly, absorbing as much of the moment as she could. This could very well be the last time she ever shared a meal with him. Indeed, this could be the last time she ever saw him, she realized. He had taken her out to eat from time to time when she was younger and he’d come to visit her at school. She’d never known when he was going to show up and whisk her off for the afternoon—Lord, she’d lived for those visits. But she and Stone lived in different worlds now and it was unlikely their paths would cross.

At the restaurant, they were seated immediately. She sat quietly until Stone had ordered their meals. Then he squared his big shoulders, spearing her with an intense look. “You can’t work as a shop girl.”

“Why not? Millions of women do and it hasn’t seemed to harm them.” Faith toyed with her water glass, meeting his gaze. “Besides, I don’t have a choice. You know as well as I do that I have no money.”

He had the grace to look away. “You’d have been taken care of,” he said gruffly.

“I know, and I appreciate that.” She folded her hands in her lap. “But I can’t accept your charity. I’d like to know how much I owe you for everything you did in the past eight years—”

“I didn’t ask you to pay me back.” He leaned forward and she actually found herself shrinking back from the fierce scowl on his face.

“Nonetheless,” she said as firmly as she could manage, given the way her stomach was quivering, “I intend to. It will take me some time, but if we draw up a schedule—”

“No.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said no, you may not pay me back.” His voice rose. “Dammit, Faith, your father would have done the same if I’d been in your shoes. I promised your mother I’d take care of you. She trusts me. Besides, it’s an honor thing. I’m only doing what I know my father would have done.”

“Ah, but your father didn’t make risky investments that destroyed his fortune,” she said, unable to prevent a hot wash of humiliation from warming her cheeks.

“He could have.” Stone’s chin jutted forward in a movement she recognized from the time he’d descended on the school to talk to her math teacher about giving her a failing grade on a test she’d been unable to take because she’d had pneumonia. “Besides,” he said, “it’s not as if it’s made a big dent in my pocketbook. Last time I checked, there were a few million left.”

She shook her head. “I still don’t feel right about taking your money. Do you have any idea how I felt when I learned that you’d been paying my way for years?”

“How did you find out, anyway?” He ignored her question.

“In February I went to the bank to talk about my father’s investments—I thought it would be good for me to start getting a handle on them since you’d no longer be responsible for me after my twenty-first birthday, which is coming up later this year. I assumed I’d take on responsibility for my mother’s finances then, as well. That’s when I learned that every item in my family’s budget for eight years had been paid for by you.” Despite her vow to remain calm, tears welled in her eyes. “I was appalled. Someone should have told me.”

“And what good would that have done, other than to distress you needlessly?”

“I could have gotten a job right out of high school, begun to support myself.”

“Faith,” he said with ill-concealed impatience. “You were not quite thirteen years old when your father died. Do you really think I would have left you and your mother to struggle alone?”

“It wasn’t your decision to make,” she insisted with stubborn pride, swallowing the tears.

“It was,” he said in a tone that brooked no opposition. “It is. Your mother appointed me your guardian. Besides, if you finish your education you’ll be able to get a heck of a lot better job than working as a salesclerk at Saks.”

“Does my mother know the truth?”

Stone shook his head. “She believes I oversee your investments and take care of the bills out of the income. Her doctors tell me stress is bad for MS patients. Why distress her needlessly?”

It made sense. And in an objective way, she admired his compassion. But it still horrified her to think of the money he’d spent.

The waiter returned then with their meal and the conversation paused until he’d set their entrées before them. They both were quiet for the next few moments.