Her rancher boss is looking for the perfect wife...

and she wants the job!

Poppy Sinclair kept her feelings for Isaiah Grayson secret for a decade. When her infuriatingly gorgeous Stetson-wearing boss enlists her help in finding him a convenient wife, she threatens to quit. Until Isaiah counters with an interesting proposal: Why doesn’t she marry him? Can she say yes to sharing his life and his bed, but not his heart?

MAISEY YATES is a New York Times bestselling author of more than thirty romance novels. She has a coffee habit she has no interest in kicking, and a slight Pinterest addiction. She lives with her husband and children in the Pacific Northwest. When Maisey isn’t writing she can be found singing in the grocery store, shopping for shoes online and probably not doing dishes. Check out her website: www.maiseyyates.com.

Also by Maisey Yates

Take Me, Cowboy

Hold Me, Cowboy

Seduce Me, Cowboy

Claim Me, Cowboy

Shoulda Been a Cowboy (prequel novella)

Part Time Cowboy

Brokedown Cowboy

Bad News Cowboy

A Copper Ridge Christmas (ebook novella)

The Cowboy Way

Hometown Heartbreaker (ebook novella)

One Night Charmer

Tough Luck Hero

Last Chance Rebel

Slow Burn Cowboy

Down Home Cowboy

Wild Ride Cowboy

Christmastime Cowboy

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

Want Me, Cowboy

Maisey Yates

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-07688-3

WANT ME, COWBOY

© 2018 Maisey Yates

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Epilogue

Extract

Extract

About the Publisher

One

November 1, 2018

Location: Copper Ridge, Oregon

WIFE WANTED—

Rich rancher, not given to socializing. Wants a wife who will not try to change me. Must be tolerant of moods, reported lack of sensitivity and the tendency to take off for a few days’ time in the mountains. Will expect meals cooked. Also, probably a kid or two. Exact number to be negotiated. Beard is nonnegotiable.

November 5, 2018

Revised draft for approval by 11/6

WIFE WANTED—

Rich rancher, not given to socializing. Successful rancher searching for a wife who enjoys rural living. Wants a wife who will not try to change me. Must be tolerant of moods, reported lack of sensitivity, and the tendency to take off for a few days’ time in the mountains. Though happy with my life, it has begun to feel lonely, and I would like someone to enhance my satisfaction with what I have already. I enjoy extended camping trips and prefer the mountains to a night on the town. Will expect meals cooked. Also, probably a kid or two. Exact number to be negotiated. Beard is nonnegotiable. I I’m looking for a traditional family life, and a wife and children to share it with.

“This is awful.”

Poppy Sinclair looked up from her desk, her eyes colliding with her boss’s angry gray stare. He was holding a printout of the personal ad she’d revised for him and shaking it at her like she was a dog and it was a newspaper.

“The original was awful,” she responded curtly, turning her focus back to her computer.

“But it was all true.”

“Lead with being less of an asshole.”

“I am an asshole,” Isaiah said, clearly unconcerned with that fact.

He was at peace with himself. Which she admired on some level. Isaiah was Isaiah, and he made no apologies for that fact. But his attitude would be a problem if the man wanted to find a wife. Because very few other people were at peace with him just as he was.

“I would never say I want to—” he frowned “‘—enhance my enjoyment.’ What the hell, Poppy?”

Poppy had known Isaiah since she was eighteen years old. She was used to his moods. His complete lack of subtlety. His gruffness.

But somehow, she’d never managed to get used to him. As a man.

This grumpy, rough, bearded man who was like a brick wall. Or like one of those mountains he’d disappear into for days at a time.

Every time she saw him, it felt as if he’d stolen the air right from her lungs. It was more than just being handsome—though he was. A lot of men were handsome. His brother Joshua was handsome, and a whole lot easier to get along with.

Isaiah was... Well, he was her very particular brand of catnip. He made everything in her sit up, purr...and want to be stroked.

Even when he was in full hermit mode.

People—and interacting with them—were decidedly not his thing. It was one reason Poppy had always been an asset to him in his work life. It was her job to sit and take notes during meetings...and report her read on the room to him after. He was a brilliant businessman, and fantastic with numbers. But people...not so much.

As evidenced by the ad. Of course, the very fact that he was placing an ad to find a wife was both contradicting to that point—suddenly, he wanted a wife!—and also, somehow, firmly in affirmation of it. He was placing an ad to find her.

The whole situation was Joshua’s fault. Well, probably Devlin and Joshua combined, in fairness.

Isaiah’s brothers had been happy bachelors until a couple of years ago when Devlin had married their sister Faith’s best friend, Mia.

Then, Joshua had been the next to succumb to matrimony, a victim of their father’s harebrained scheme. The patriarch of the Grayson family had put an ad in a national newspaper looking for a wife for his son. In retaliation, Joshua had placed an ad of his own, looking for an unsuitable wife that would teach his father not to meddle.

It all backfired. Or...front fired. Either way, Joshua had ended up married to Danielle, and was now happily settled with her and her infant half brother who both of them were raising as their son.

It was after their wedding that Isaiah had formed his plan.

The wedding had—he had explained to Poppy at work one morning—clarified a few things for him. He believed in marriage as a valuable institution, one that he wanted to be part of. He wanted stability. He wanted children. But he didn’t have any inclination toward love.

He didn’t have to tell her why.

She knew why.

Rosalind.

But she wouldn’t speak her foster sister’s name out loud, and neither would he. But she remembered. The awful, awful fallout of Rosalind’s betrayal.

His pain. Poppy’s own conflicted feelings.

It was easy to remember her conflicted feelings, since she still had them.

He was staring at her now, those slate eyes hard and glinting with an energy she couldn’t quite pin down. And with coldness, a coldness that hadn’t been there before Rosalind. A coldness that told her and any other woman—loud and clear—that his heart was unavailable.

That didn’t mean her own heart didn’t twist every time he walked into the room. Every time he leaned closer to her—like he was doing now—and she got a hint of the scent of him. Rugged and pine-laden and basically lumberjack porn for her senses.

He was a contradiction, from his cowboy hat down to his boots. A numbers guy who loved the outdoors and was built like he belonged outside doing hard labor.

Dear God, he was problematic.

He made her dizzy. Those broad shoulders, shoulders she wanted to grab on to. Lean waist and hips—hips she wanted to wrap her legs around. And his forearms...all hard muscle. She wanted to lick them.

He turned her into a being made of sensual frustration, and no one else did that. Ever. Sadly, she seemed to have no effect on him at all.

“I’m not trying to mislead anyone,” he said.

“Right. But you are trying to entice someone.” The very thought made her stomach twist into a knot. But jealousy was pointless. If Isaiah wanted her...well, he would have wanted her by now.

He straightened, moving away from her and walking across the office. She nearly sagged with relief. “My money should do that.” As if that solved every potential issue.

She bit back a weary sigh. “Would you like someone who was maybe...interested in who you are as a person?”

She knew that was a stupid question to ask of Isaiah Grayson. But she was his friend, as well as his employee. So it was kind of...her duty to work through this with him. Even if she didn’t want him to do this at all.

And she didn’t want him to find anyone.

Wow. Some friend she was.

But then, having...complex feelings for one’s friend made emotional altruism tricky.

“As you pointed out,” he said, his tone dry, “I’m an asshole.”

“You were actually the one who said that. I said you sounded like one.”

He waved his hand. “Either way, I’m not going to win Miss Congeniality in the pageant, and we both know that. Fine with me if somebody wants to get hitched and spend my money.”

She sighed heavily, ignoring the fact that her heart felt an awful lot like paper that had been crumpled up into a tight, mutilated ball. “Why do you even want a wife, Isaiah?”

“I explained that to you already. Joshua is settled. Devlin is settled.”

“Yes, they are. So why now?”

“I always imagined I would get married,” he said simply. “I never intended to spend my whole life single.”

“Is your biological clock ticking?” she asked drily.

“In a way,” he said. “Again, it all comes back to logic. I’m close to my family, to my brothers. They’ll have children sooner rather than later. Joshua and Danielle already have a son. Cousins should be close in age. It just makes sense.”

She bit the inside of her cheek. “So you...just think you can decide it’s time and then make it happen?”

“Yes. And I think Joshua’s experience proves you can make anything work as long as you have a common goal. It can be like math.”

She graduated from biting her cheek to her tongue. Isaiah was a numbers guy unto his soul. “Uh-huh.”

She refused to offer even a pat agreement because she just thought he was wrong. Not that she knew much of anything about relationships of...any kind really.

She’d been shuffled around so many foster homes as a child, and it wasn’t until she was in high school that she’d had a couple years of stability with one family. Which was where she’d met Rosalind, the one foster sibling Poppy was still in touch with. They’d shared a room and talked about a future where they were more than wards of the state.

In the years since, Poppy felt like she’d carved out a decent life for herself. But still, it wasn’t like she’d ever had any romantic relationships to speak of.

Pining after your boss didn’t count.

“The only aspect of going out and hooking up I like is the hooking up,” he said.

She wanted to punch him for that unnecessary addition to the conversation. She sucked her cheek in and bit the inside of it too. “Great.”

“When you think about it, making a relationship a transaction is smart. Marriage is a legal agreement. But you don’t just get sex. You get the benefit of having your household kept, children...”

“Right. Children.” She’d ignored his first mention of them, but... She pressed her hands to her stomach unconsciously. Then, she dropped them quickly.

She should not be thinking about Isaiah and children or the fact that he intended to have them with another woman.

Confused feelings was a cop-out. And it was hard to deny the truth when she was steeped in this kind of reaction to him, to his presence, to his plan, to his talk about children.

The fact of the matter was, she was tragically in love with him. And he’d never once seen her the way she saw him.

She’d met him through Rosalind. When Poppy had turned eighteen, she’d found herself released from her foster home with nowhere to go. Everything she owned was in an old canvas tote that a foster mom had given her years ago.

Rosalind had been the only person Poppy could think to call. The foster sister she’d bonded with in her last few years in care. She’d always kept in touch with Rosalind, even when Rosalind had moved to Seattle and got work.

Even when she’d started dating a wonderful man she couldn’t say enough good things about.

She was the only lifeline Poppy had, and she’d reached for her. And Rosalind had come through. She’d had Poppy come to Rosalind’s apartment, and then she’d arranged for a job interview with her boyfriend, who needed an assistant for a construction firm he was with.

In one afternoon, Poppy had found a place to live, gotten a job and lost her heart.

Of course, she had lost it, immediately and—in the fullness of time it had become clear—irrevocably, to the one man who was off-limits.

Her boss. Her foster sister’s boyfriend. Isaiah Grayson.

Though his status as her boss had lasted longer than his status as Rosalind’s boyfriend. He’d become her fiancé. And then after, her ex.

Poppy had lived with a divided heart for so long. Even after Isaiah and Rosalind’s split, Poppy was able to care for them both. Though she never, ever spoke to Rosalind in Isaiah’s presence, or even mentioned her.

Rosalind didn’t have the same embargo on mentions of Isaiah. But in fairness, Rosalind was the one who had cheated on him, cost him a major business deal and nearly ruined his start-up company and—by extension—nearly ruined his relationship with his business partner, who was also his brother.

So.

Poppy had loved him while he’d dated another woman. Loved him while he nursed a broken heart because of said other woman. Loved him when he disavowed love completely. And now she would have to love him while she interviewed potential candidates to be his wife.

She was wretched.

He had said the word sex in front of her like it wouldn’t do anything to her body. Had talked about children like it wouldn’t make her...yearn.

Men were idiots. But this one might well be their king.

“Put the unrevised ad in the paper.”

She shook her head. “I’m not doing that.”

“I could fire you.” He leaned in closer and her breath caught. “For insubordination.”

Her heart tumbled around erratically, and she wished she could blame it on anger. Annoyance. But she knew that wasn’t it.

She forced herself to rally. “If you haven’t fired me yet, you’re never going to. And anyway,” she said, narrowing her tone so that the words would hit him with a point, “I’m the one who has to interview your prospective brides. Which makes this my endeavor in many ways. I’m the one who’s going to have to weed through your choices. So I would like the ad to go out that I think has the best chance of giving me less crap to sort through.”

He looked up at her, and much to her surprise seemed to be considering what she said. “That is true. You will be doing the interviews.”

She felt like she’d been stabbed. She was going to be interviewing Isaiah’s potential wife. The man she had been in love with since she was a teenage idiot, and was still in love with now that she was an idiot in her late twenties.

There were a whole host of reasons she’d never, ever let on about her feelings for him, Rosalind and his feelings on love aside.

She loved her job. She loved Isaiah’s family, who she’d gotten to know well over the past decade, and who were the closest thing she had to a family of her own.

Plus, loving him was just...easy to dismiss. She wasn’t the type of girl who could have something like that. Not Poppy Sinclair whose mother had disappeared when she was two years old and left her with a father who forgot to feed her.

Her life was changing though, slowly.

She was living well beyond what she had ever imagined would be possible for her. Gray Bear Construction was thriving; the merger between Jonathan Bear and the Graysons’ company a couple of years ago was more successful than they’d imagined it could be.

And every employee on every level had reaped the benefits.

She was also living in the small town of Copper Ridge, Oregon, which was a bit strange for a girl from Seattle, but she did like it. It had a different pace. But that meant there was less opportunity for a social life. There were fewer people to interact with. By default she, and the other folks in town, ended up spending a lot of their free time with the people they worked with every day. There was nothing wrong with that. She loved Faith, and she had begun getting close to Joshua’s wife recently. But it was just... Mostly there wasn’t enough of a break from Isaiah on any given day.

But then, she also didn’t enforce one. Didn’t take one. She supposed she couldn’t really blame the small-town location when the likely culprit of the entire situation was her.

“Place whatever ad you need to,” he said, his tone abrupt. “When you meet the right woman, you’ll know.”

“I’ll know,” she echoed lamely.

“Yes. Nobody knows me better than you do, Poppy. I have faith that you’ll pick the right wife for me.”

With those awful words still ringing in the room, Isaiah left her there, sitting at her desk, feeling numb and ill used.

The fact of the matter was, she probably could pick him a perfect wife. Someone who would facilitate his life, and give him space when he needed it. Someone who was beautiful and fabulous in bed.

Yes, she knew exactly what Isaiah Grayson would think made a woman the perfect wife for him.

The sad thing was, Poppy didn’t possess very many of those qualities herself.

And what she so desperately wanted was for Isaiah’s perfect wife to be her.

But dreams were for other women. They always had been. Which meant some other woman was going to end up with Poppy’s dream.

While she played matchmaker to the whole affair.

Two

“I put an ad in the paper.”

“For?” Isaiah’s brother Joshua looked up from his computer and stared at him like he was waiting to hear the answers to the mystery of the universe.

Joshua, Isaiah and their younger sister, Faith, were sitting in the waiting area of their office, enjoying their early-morning coffee. Or maybe enjoying was overstating it. The three of them were trying to find a state of consciousness.

“A wife.”

Faith spat her coffee back into her cup. “What?”

“I placed an ad in the paper to help me find a wife,” he repeated.

Honestly, he couldn’t understand why she was having such a large reaction to the news. After all, that was how Joshua had found his wife, Danielle.

“You can’t be serious,” Joshua said.

“I expected you of all people to be supportive.”

“Why me?”

“Because that’s how you met Danielle. Or you have you forgotten?”

“I have not forgotten how I met my wife. However, I didn’t put an ad out there seriously thinking I was going to find someone to marry. I was trying to prove to dad that his ad was a stupid idea.”

“But it turned out it wasn’t a stupid idea,” Isaiah said. “I want to get married. I figured this was a hassle-free way of finding a wife.”

Faith stared at him, dumbfounded. “You can’t be serious.”

“I’m serious.”

The door to the office opened, and Poppy walked in wearing a cheerful, polka-dotted dress, her dark hair swept back into a bun, a few curls around her face.

“Please tell me my brother is joking,” Faith said. “And that he didn’t actually put an ad in the paper to find a wife.”

Poppy looked from him back to Faith. “He doesn’t joke, you know that.”

“And you know that he put an ad in the paper for a wife?” Joshua asked.

“Of course I know,” Poppy responded. “Who do you think is doing the interviews?”

That earned him two slack-jawed looks.

“Who else is going to do it?” Isaiah asked.

“You’re not even doing the interview for your own wife?” Faith asked.

“I trust Poppy implicitly. If I didn’t, she wouldn’t be my assistant.”

“Of all the... You are insane.” Faith stormed out of the room. Joshua continued to sit and sip his coffee.

“No comment?” Isaiah asked.

“Oh, I have plenty. But I know you well enough to know that making them won’t change a damn thing. So I’m keeping my thoughts to myself. However,” he said, collecting his computer and his coffee, “I do have to go to work now.”

That left both Isaiah and Poppy standing in the room by themselves. She wasn’t looking at him; she was staring off down the hall, her expression unreadable. She had a delicate profile, dark, sweeping eyelashes and a fascinating curve to her lips. Her neck was long and elegant, and the way her dress shaped around her full breasts was definitely a pleasing sight.

He clenched his teeth. He didn’t make a habit of looking at Poppy that way. But she was pretty. He had always thought so.

Even back when he’d been with Rosalind he’d thought there was something...indefinable about Poppy. Special.

She made him feel... He didn’t know. A little more grounded. Or maybe it was just because she treated him differently than most people did.

Either way, she was irreplaceable to him. In the running of his business, Poppy was his barometer. The way he got the best read on a situation. She did his detail work flawlessly. Handled everything he didn’t like so he could focus on what he was good at.

She was absolutely, 100 percent, the most important asset to him at the company.

He would have to tell her that sometime. Maybe buy her another pearl necklace. Though, last time he’d done that she had gotten angry at him. But she wore it. She was wearing it today, in fact.

“They’re right,” she said finally.

“About?”

“The fact that you’re insane.”

“I think I’m sane enough.”

“Of course you do. Actually—” she let out a long, slow breath “—I don’t think you’re insane. But, I don’t think this is a good idea.”

“Why?”

“This is really how you want to find a wife? In a way that’s this...impersonal?”

“What are my other options? I have to meet someone new, go through the process of dating... She’ll expect a courtship of some kind. We’ll have to figure out what we have in common, what we don’t have in common. This way, it’s all out in the open. That’s more straightforward.”

“Maybe you deserve better than that,” she said, her tone uncharacteristically gentle.

“Maybe this is better for me.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know about that.”

“When it comes to matters of business, there’s no one I trust more than you. But you’re going to have to trust that I know what will work best in my own life.”

“It’s not what I want for you.”

A strange current arced between them when she spoke those words, a spark in her brown eyes catching on something inside him.

“I appreciate your concern.”

“Yes,” she echoed. “My concern.”

“We have work to do. And you have wife applications to sort through.”

“Right,” she said.

“Preference will be given to blondes,” he said.

Poppy blinked and then reached up slowly, touching her own dark hair. “Of course.”

And then she turned and walked out of the room.

* * *

Isaiah hadn’t expected to receive quite so many responses to his ad. Perhaps, in the end, Poppy had been right about her particular tactic with the wording. It had certainly netted what felt to him to be a record number of responses.

Though he didn’t actually know how many women had responded to his brother’s personal ad.

He felt only slightly competitive about it, seeing as it would be almost impossible to do a direct comparison between his and Joshua’s efforts. Their father had placed an ad first, making Joshua sound undoubtedly even nicer than Poppy had made Isaiah sound.

Thereafter, Joshua had placed his own ad, which had offered a fake marriage and hefty compensation.

Isaiah imagined that a great many more women would respond to that.

But he didn’t need quantity. He just needed quality.

And he believed that existed.

It had occurred to him at Joshua and Danielle’s wedding that there was no reason a match couldn’t be like math. He believed in marriage; it was romance he had gone off of.

Or rather, the kind of romance he had experience with.

Obviously, he couldn’t dispute the existence of love. His parents were in love, after all. Forty years of marriage hadn’t seemed to do anything to dampen that. But then, he was not like his mother. And he wasn’t like his father. Both of them were warm people. Compassionate. And those things seemed to come easily to them.

Isaiah was a black-and-white man living in a world filled with shades of gray. He didn’t care for those shades, and he didn’t like to acknowledge them.

But he wasn’t an irrational man. Not at all.

Yet he’d been irrational once. Five years with Rosalind and they had been the best of his life. At least, he had thought so at the time.

Then she had betrayed him, and nearly destroyed everything.

Or rather, he had.

Which was all he had needed to learn about what happened to him and his instincts under the influence of love.

He’d been in his twenties then, and it had been easy to ignore the idea that his particular set of practices when it came to relationships meant he would be spending his life without a partner. But now he was in his thirties, and that reality was much more difficult to ignore. When he’d had to think about the future, he hadn’t liked the idea of what he was signing himself up for.

So, he had decided to change it. That was the logical thing to do when you found yourself unhappy with where you were, after all. A change of circumstances was not beyond his reach. And so, he was reaching out to grab it.

Which was why Poppy was currently on interview number three with one of the respondents to his ad. Isaiah had insisted that anyone responding to the ad come directly to Copper Ridge to be interviewed. Anyone who didn’t take the ad seriously enough to put in a personal appearance was not worthy of consideration, in his opinion.

He leaned back in his chair, looking at the neat expanse of desk in front of him. Everything was in its place in his office, as it always was. As it should be. And soon, everything in his personal life would be in place too.

Across the hall, the door to Poppy’s office opened and a tall, willowy blonde walked out. She was definitely his type in the physical sense, and the physical mattered quite a bit. Emotionally, he might be a bit detached, but physically, everything was functioning. Quite well, thank you.

In his marriage-math equation, sex was an important factor.

He intended to be faithful to his wife. There was really no point in making a lifelong commitment without fidelity.

Because of that, it stood to reason that he should make sure he chose in accordance with his typical physical type.

By the time he finished that thought process the woman was gone, and Poppy appeared a moment later. She was glaring down the hall, looking both disheveled and generally irritated. He had learned to recognize her moods with unerring accuracy. Mostly because it was often a matter of survival. Poppy was one of the few people on earth who wasn’t intimidated by him. He should be annoyed by that. She was his employee, and ought to be a bit more deferential than she was.

He didn’t want her to be, though. He liked Poppy. And that was a rarity in his world. He didn’t like very many people. Because most people were idiots.

But not her.

Though, she looked a little bit like she wanted to kill him at the moment. When her stormy, dark eyes connected with his across the space, he had the fleeting thought that a lesser man would jump up and run away, leaving his boots behind.

Isaiah was not that man.

He was happy to meet her. Steel-capped toe to pointy-toed stiletto.

“She was stupid,” Poppy pronounced.

He lifted a brow. “Did you give her an IQ test?”

“I’m not talking about her intelligence,” Poppy said, looking fierce. “Though, the argument could be made that any woman responding to this ad...”

“Are you about to cast aspersions on my desirability?”

“No,” she said. “I cast those last week, if you recall. It would just be tiresome to cast them again.”

“Why is she stupid?” he pressed.

“Because she has no real concept of what you need. You’re a busy man, and you live in a rural...area. You’re not going to be taking her out to galas every night. And I know she thought that because you’re a rich man galas were going to be part of the deal. But I explained to her that you only go to a certain number of business-oriented events a year, and that you do so grudgingly. That anyone hanging on your arm at such a thing would need to be polished, smiling, and, in general, making up for you.”

He spent a moment deciding if he should be offended by that or not. He decided not to be. Because she was right. He knew his strengths and his limitations.

“She didn’t seem very happy about those details. And that is why I’m saying she’s stupid. She wants to take this...job, essentially. A job that is a life sentence. And she wants it to be about her.”

He frowned. “Obviously, this marriage is not going to be completely about me. I am talking about a marriage and not a position at the company.” Though, he supposed he could see why she would be thinking in those terms. He had placed an ad with strict requirements. And he supposed, as a starting point, it was about him.

“Is that true, Isaiah? Because I kind of doubt it. You don’t want a woman who’s going to inconvenience you.”

“I’m not buying a car,” he said.

“Aren’t you?” She narrowed her eyes, her expression mean.

“No. I realize that.”

“You’re basically making an arranged marriage for yourself.”

“Consider it advanced online dating,” he said. “With a more direct goal.”

“You’re having your assistant choose a wife for you.” She enunciated each word as if he didn’t understand what he’d asked of her.

Her delicate brows locked together, and her mouth pulled into a pout. Though, she would undoubtedly punch him if he called it a pout.

In a physical sense, Poppy was not his type at all. She was not tall, or particularly leggy, though she did often wear high heels with her 1950s housewife dresses. She was petite, but still curvy, her hair dark and curly, and usually pulled back in a loose, artfully pinned bun that allowed tendrils to slowly make their escape over the course of the day.

She was pretty, in spite of the fact that she wasn’t the type of woman he would normally gravitate toward.

He wasn’t sure why he was just now noticing that. Perhaps it was the way the light was filtering through the window now. Falling across her delicately curved face. Her mahogany skin with a bit of rose color bleeding across her cheeks. In this instance, he had a feeling the color was because she was angry. But, it was lovely nonetheless.

Her lips were full—pouty or not—and the same rose color as her cheeks.

“I don’t understand your point,” he said, stopping his visual perusal of her.

“I’m just saying you’re taking about as much of a personal interest in finding a wife as someone who was buying a car.”

He did not point out that if he were buying a car, he would take it for a test drive, and that he had not suggested doing anything half so crass with any of the women who’d come to be interviewed.

“How many more women are you seeing today?” he asked, deciding to bypass her little show of indignation.

“Three more,” she said.

There was something in the set of her jaw, in the rather stubborn, mulish look on her face that almost made him want to ask a question about what was bothering her.

But only almost.

“Has my sister sent through cost estimates for her latest design?” he asked.

Poppy blinked. “What?”

“Faith. Has she sent through her cost estimates? I’m going to end up correcting them anyway, but I like to see what she starts with.”

“I’m well aware of the process, Isaiah,” Poppy said. “I’m just surprised that you moved on from wife interviews to your sister’s next design.”

“Why would you be surprised by that? The designs are important. They are, in fact, why I am a billionaire.”

“Yes. I know,” Poppy said. “Faith’s talent is a big reason why we’re all doing well. Believe me, I respect the work. However, the subject change seems a bit abrupt.”

“It is a workday.”

Deep brown eyes narrowed in his direction. “You’re really something else, do you know that?”

He did. He always had. The fact that she felt the need to question him on it didn’t make much sense to him.

“Yes,” he responded.

Poppy stamped.

She stamped her high-heel-clad foot like they were in a black-and-white movie.

“No, she hasn’t sent it through,” Poppy said.

“You just stomped your foot at me.”

She flung her arms wide. “Because you were just being an idiot at me.”

“I don’t understand you,” he said.

“I don’t need you to understand me.” Her brow furrowed.

“But you do need me to sign your paychecks,” he pointed out. “I’m your boss.”

Then, all the color drained from her cheeks. “Right. Of course. I do need that. Because you’re my boss.”

“I am.”

“Just my boss.”

“I’ve been your boss for the past decade,” he pointed out, not quite sure why she was being so spiky.

“Yes,” she said. “You have been my boss for the past decade.”

Then, she turned on her heel and walked back into her office, shutting the door firmly behind her.

And Isaiah went back to his desk.

He had work to do. Which was why he had given Poppy the task of picking him a wife. But before he chased Faith down for those estimates, he was going to need some caffeine. He sent a quick text to that effect to Poppy.

There was a quick flash of three dots at the bottom of the message box, then they disappeared.

It popped up again, and disappeared again. Then finally there was a simple: of course.

He could only hope that when he got his coffee it wasn’t poisoned.

* * *

Three hours and three women later, Poppy was wishing she had gone with her original instinct and sent the middle finger emoji to Isaiah in response to his request for coffee.

This was too much. It would be crazy for anyone to have their assistant pick their wife—a harebrained scheme that no self-respecting personal assistant should have to cope with. But for her especially, it was a strange kind of emotional torture. She had to ask each woman questions about their compatibility with Isaiah. And then, she had to talk to them about Isaiah. Who she knew better than she knew any other man on the face of the earth. Who she knew possibly better than she knew anyone else. And all the while his words rang in her ears.

I’m your boss.

She was his employee.

And that was how he saw her. It shouldn’t surprise her that no-nonsense, rigid Isaiah thought of her primarily as his employee. She thought of him as her friend.

Her best friend. Practically family.

Except for the part of her that was in love with him and had sex dreams about him sometimes.

Though, were she to take an afternoon nap today, her only dreams about Isaiah would involve her sticking a pen through his chest.

Well, maybe not his chest. That would be fatal. Maybe his arm. But then, that would get ink and blood on his shirt. She would have to unbutton it and take it off him...

Okay. Maybe she was capable of having both dreams at the same time.

“Kittens are my hard line,” the sixth blonde of the day was saying to her. All the blondes were starting to run together like boxes of dye in the hair care aisle.

“I...” Poppy blinked, trying to get a handle on what that meant. “Like... Sexually... Or?”

The woman wrinkled her nose. “I mean, I need to be able to have a kitten. That’s nonnegotiable.”

Poppy was trying to imagine Isaiah Grayson with a kitten living in his house. He had barn cats. And he had myriad horses and animals at his ranch, but he did not have a kitten. Though, because he already had so many animals, it was likely that he would be okay with one more.

“I will... Make a note of that.”

“Oh,” the woman continued. “I can also tie a cherry stem into a knot with my tongue.”

Poppy closed her eyes and prayed for the strength to not run out of the room and hit Isaiah over the head with a wastebasket. “I assume I should mark that down under special skills.”

“Men like that,” the woman said.

Well, maybe that was why Poppy had such bad luck with men. She couldn’t do party tricks with her tongue. In fairness, she’d never tried.

“Good to know,” Poppy continued.

Poppy curled her hands into fists and tried to keep herself from... She didn’t even know what. Screaming. Running from the room.

One of these women who she interviewed today might very well be the woman Isaiah Grayson slept with for the rest of his life. The last woman he ever slept with. The one who made him completely and totally unavailable to Poppy forever.

The one who finally killed her fantasy stone-cold.

She had known that going in. She had. But suddenly it hit her with more vivid force.

I am your boss.

Her boss. Her boss. He was her boss. Not her friend. Not her lover. Never her lover.

Maybe he didn’t see his future wife as a new car he was buying. But he basically saw Poppy as a stapler. Efficient and useful only when needed.

“Well, I will be in touch,” Poppy stated crisply.

“Why are you interviewing all the women? Is this like a sister wives thing?”

Poppy almost choked. “No. I am Mr. Grayson’s assistant. Not his wife.”

“I wouldn’t mind that,” Lola continued. “It’s always seemed efficient to me. Somebody to share the workload of kids and housework. Well, and sex.”

“Not. His. Wife.” Poppy said that through clenched teeth.

“He should consider that.”

She tightened her hold on her pen, and was surprised she didn’t end up snapping it in half. “Me as his wife?”

“Sister wives.”

“I’ll make a note,” Poppy said drily.

Her breath exited her body in a rush when Lola finally left, and Poppy’s head was swimming with rage.

She had thought she could do this. She had been wrong. She had been an idiot.

I am your boss.

He was her boss. Because she worked for him. Because she had worked for him for ten years. Ten years.

Why had she kept this job for so long? She had job experience. She also had a nest egg. The money was good, she couldn’t argue that, but she could also go get comparable pay at a large company in a city, and she now had the experience to do that. She didn’t have to stay isolated here in Copper Ridge. She didn’t have to stay with a man who didn’t appreciate her.

She didn’t have to stay trapped in this endless hell of wanting something she was never going to have.

No one was keeping her here. Nothing was keeping her here.

Nothing except the ridiculous idea that Isaiah had feelings for her that went beyond that of his assistant.

Friends could be friends in different cities. They didn’t have to live in each other’s pockets. Even if he had misspoken and he did see them as friends—and really, now that she was taking some breaths, she imagined that was closer to the truth—it was no excuse to continue to expose herself to him for twelve hours a day.

He was her business life. He was her social life. He was her fantasy life. That was too much for one man. Too much.

She walked into his office, breathing hard, and he looked up from his computer screen, his gray eyes assessing. He made her blood run hotter. Made her hands shake and her stomach turn over. She wanted him. Even now. She wanted to launch herself across the empty space and fling herself into his arms.

No. It had to stop.

“I quit,” she said, the words tumbling out of her mouth in a glorious triumph.

But then they hit.

Hit him, hit her. And she knew she could take them back. Maybe she should.

No. She shouldn’t.

“You quit?”

“It should not be in my job description to find you a wife. This is ludicrous. I just spent the last twenty minutes talking to a woman who was trying to get me to add the fact that she could tie a cherry stem into a knot with her tongue onto that ridiculous, awful form of yours underneath her ‘skills.’”

He frowned. “Well, that is a skill that might have interesting applications...”

“I know that,” she said. “But why am I sitting around having a discussion with a woman that is obviously about your penis?”

Her cheeks heated, and her hands shook. She could not believe she had just... Talked about his penis. In front of him.

“I didn’t realize that would be a problem.”

“Of course you didn’t. Because you don’t realize anything. You don’t care about anything except the bottom line. That’s all you ever see. You want a wife to help run your home. To help organize your life. By those standards I have been your damned wife for the past ten years, Isaiah Grayson. Isn’t that what you’re after? A personal assistant for your house. A me clone who can cook your dinner and...and...do wife things.”

He frowned, leaning back in his chair.

He didn’t speak, so she just kept going. “I quit,” she repeated. “And you have to find your own wife. I’m not working with you anymore. I’m not dealing with you anymore. You said you were my boss. Well, you’re not now. Not anymore.”

“Poppy,” he said, his large, masculine hands pressing flat on his desk as he pushed himself into a standing position. She looked away from his hands. They were as problematic as the rest of him. “Be reasonable.”

“No! I’m not going to be reasonable. This situation is so unreasonable it isn’t remotely fair of you to ask me to be reasonable within it.”

They just stayed there for a moment, regarding each other, and then she slowly turned away, her breath coming in slow, harsh bursts.

“Wait,” he said.

She stopped, but she didn’t turn. She could feel his stare, resting right between her shoulder blades, digging in between them. “You’re right. What I am looking for is a personal version of you. I hadn’t thought about it that way until just now. But I am looking for a PA. In all areas of my life.”

An odd sensation crept up the back of her neck, goose bumps breaking out over her arms. Still, she fought the urge to turn.

“Poppy,” he said slowly. “I think you should marry me.”

Three

When Poppy turned around to face him, her expression was still. Placid. He wasn’t good at reading most people, but he knew Poppy. She was expressive. She had a bright smile and a stormy frown, and the absence of either was...concerning.

“Excuse me?”

“You said yourself that what I need is someone like you. I agree. I’ve never been a man who aims for second best. So why would I aim for second best in this instance? You’re the best personal assistant I’ve ever had.”

“I doubt you had a personal assistant before you had me,” she said.

“That’s irrelevant,” he said, waving a hand. “I like the way we work together. I don’t see why we couldn’t make it something more. We’re good partners, Poppy.”

Finally, her face moved. But only just the slightest bit. “We’re good partners,” she echoed, the words hollow.

“Yes,” he confirmed. “We are. We always have been. You’ve managed to make seamless transitions at every turn. From when we worked at a larger construction firm, to when we were starting our own. When we expanded, to when we merged with Jonathan Bear. You’ve followed me every step of the way, and I’ve been successful in part because of the confidence I have that you’re handling all the details that I need you to.”

“And you think I could just... Do that at your house too?”

“Yes,” he said simply.

“There’s one little problem,” Poppy said, her cheeks suddenly turning a dark pink. She stood there just staring for a moment, and the color in her face deepened. It took her a long while to speak. “The problem being that a wife doesn’t just manage your kitchen. That is a housekeeper.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“A wife is supposed to...” She looked down, a pink blush continuing to bleed over her dark skin. “You don’t feel that way about me.”

“Feel what way? You know my desire to get married has nothing to do with love and romance.”

“Sex.” The word was like a mini explosion in the room. “Being a wife does have something to do with sex.”

She was right about that, and when he had made his impromptu proposal a moment earlier, he hadn’t been thinking of that. But now that he was...

He took a leisurely visual tour of her, similar to the one he had taken earlier. But this time, he didn’t just appreciate her beauty in an abstract sense. This time, he allowed it to be a slightly more heated exploration.

Her skin looked smooth. He had noticed how lovely it was earlier. But there was more than that. Her breasts looked about the right size to fit neatly into his hands, and she had an extremely enticing curve to her hips. Her skirts were never short enough to show very much of her leg, but she had nice ankles.

He could easily imagine getting down on his knees and taking those high heels off her feet. And biting one of her ankles.

That worked for him.

“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” he said.

Poppy’s mouth dropped open and then snapped shut. “We’ve never even... We’ve never even kissed, Isaiah. We’ve never even almost kissed.”

“Yes. Because you’re my assistant.”

“Your assistant. And you’re my foster sister’s ex-fiancé.”

Isaiah gritted his teeth, an involuntary spike of anger elevating his blood pressure. Poppy knew better than to talk about Rosalind. And hell, she had nothing to do with Poppy. Not in his mind, not anymore.

Yes, she was the reason Poppy had come to work for him in the first place, but Poppy had been with him for so long her presence wasn’t connected with the other woman in any way.

He wasn’t heartbroken. He never had been, not really. He was angry. She’d made a fool of him. She’d caused him to take his focus off his business. She’d nearly destroyed not only his work, but his brother’s. And what would eventually be their sister’s too.

All of it, all the success they had now had nearly been taken out by his own idiocy. By the single time he’d allowed his heart to control him.

He would never do that again.

“Rosalind doesn’t have anything to do with this,” he said.

“She’s in my life,” Poppy pointed out.

“That’s a detail we can discuss later.” Or not at all. He didn’t see why they were coming close to discussing it now.

“You don’t want to marry me,” Poppy said.

“Are you questioning my decision-making, Poppy? How long have you known me? If there’s one thing I’m not, it’s an indecisive man. And I think you know that.”

“You’re a dick,” Poppy said in exasperation. “How dare you... Have me interviewing these women all day... And then... Is this some kind of sick test?”

“You threatened to quit. I don’t want you to quit. I would rather have you in all of my life than in none of my life.”

“I didn’t threaten to quit our friendship.”

“I mostly see you at work,” he said.

“And you value what I do at work more than what you get out of our friendship, is that it?”

That was another question he didn’t know how to answer. Because he had a feeling the honest answer would earn him a spiked heel to the forehead. “I’m not sure how the two are separate,” he said, thinking he was being quite diplomatic. “Considering we spend most of our time together at work, and my enjoyment of your company often dovetails with the fact that you’re so efficient.”

Poppy let out a howl that would not have been out of place coming from an enraged chipmunk. “You are... You are...”

Well, if her objection to the marriage was that they had never kissed, and never almost kissed, and he didn’t want to hear her talk anymore—and all those things were true—he could only see one solution to the entire situation.

He made his way over to where Poppy was standing like a brittle rose and wrapped his arms around her waist. He dragged her to him, holding her in place as he stared down at her.

“Consider this your almost-kiss,” he said.

Her brown eyes went wide, and she stared up at him, her soft lips falling open.

And then his heart was suddenly beating faster, the unsettled feeling in his gut transforming into something else. Heat. Desire. He had never looked at Poppy this way, ever.

And now he wondered if that had been deliberate. Now he wondered if he had been purposefully ignoring how beautiful she was because of all the reasons she had just mentioned for why they shouldn’t get married.

The fact she was his assistant. The fact that she was Rosalind’s foster sister.

“Isaiah...”

He moved one hand up to cup her cheek and brought his face down closer to hers. She smelled delicate, like flowers and uncertainty. And he found himself drawn to her even more.

“And this will be your kiss.”

He brought his lips down onto hers, expecting... He didn’t know what.

Usually, sexual attraction was a straightforward thing for him. That was one of the many things he liked about sex. There was no guesswork. It was honest. There was never anything shocking about it. If he saw a woman he thought was beautiful, he approached her. He never wondered if he would enjoy kissing her. Because he always wanted to kiss her before he did. But Poppy...

In the split second before their mouths touched, he wondered. Wondered what it would be like to kiss this woman he had known for so long. Who he had seen as essential to his life, but never as a sexual person.

And then, all his thoughts burned away. Because she tasted better than anything he could remember and her lips just felt right.

It felt equally right to slide his fingertips along the edge of her soft jawline and tilt her face up farther so he could angle his head in deep and gain access. It felt equally right to wrap both arms around her waist and press her body as tightly to his as he possibly could. To feel the soft swell of her breasts against his chest.

And he waited, for a moment, to see if she was going to stick her claws into him. To see if she was going to pull away or resist.

She did neither. Instead, she sighed, slowly, softly. Sweetly. She opened her mouth to his.

He took advantage of that, sliding his tongue between her lips and taking a taste.

He felt it, straight down to his cock, a lightning bolt of pleasure he’d had no idea was coming.

Suddenly, he was in the middle of a violent storm when only a moment ago the sky had been clear.

He had never experienced anything like it. The idea that Poppy—this woman who had been a constant in his world—was a hidden temptress rocked him down to his soul. He had no idea such a thing was possible.

In his world, chemistry had always been both straightforward and instant. That it could simply exist beneath the surface like this seemed impossible.

And yet, it appeared there was chemistry between himself and Poppy that had been dormant all this time.

Her soft hands were suddenly pressed against his face, holding on to him as she returned his kiss with surprising enthusiasm.

Her enthusiasm might be surprising, but he was damn well going to take advantage of it.

Because if chemistry was her concern, then he was more than happy to demolish her worry here and now.

He reversed their positions, turning so her back was to his desk, and then he walked her backward before sliding one arm beneath her ass and picking her up, depositing her on top of the desk. He bent down to continue kissing her, taking advantage of her shock to step between her legs.

Or maybe he wasn’t taking advantage of anything. Maybe none of this was calculated as he would like to pretend that it was. Maybe it was just necessary. Maybe now that their lips had touched there was just no going back.

And hell, why should they? If she couldn’t deny the chemistry between them... If it went to its natural conclusion...she had no reason to refuse his proposal.

He slid one hand down her thigh, toward her knee, and then lifted that leg, hooking it over his hip as he drew her forward and pressed himself against her.

Thank God for the fullness of her skirt, because it was easy to make a space for himself right there between her legs. He was so hard it hurt.

He was a thirty-six-year-old man who had a hell of a lot more self-control now than he’d ever had, and yet, he felt more out of control than he could ever remember being before.

That did not add up. It was bad math.

And right now, he didn’t care.

Slowly, he slid his other hand up and cupped her breast. He had been right. It was exactly the right size to fill his palm. He squeezed her gently, and Poppy let out a hoarse groan, then wrenched her mouth away from his.

Her eyes were full of hurt. Full of tears.

“Don’t,” she said, wiggling away from him.

“What?” he asked, drawing a deep breath and trying to gain control over himself.

Stopping was the last thing he wanted to do. He wanted to strip that dress off her, marvel at every inch of uncovered skin. Kiss every inch of it. He wanted her twisting and begging underneath him. He wanted to sink into her and lose himself. Wanted to make her lose herself too.

Poppy.

His friend. His assistant.

“How dare you?” she asked. “How dare you try to manipulate me with... wth sex. You’re my friend, Isaiah. I trusted you. You’re just...trying to control me the way you control everything in your life.”

“That isn’t true,” he said. It wasn’t. It might have started out as...not a manipulation, but an attempt to prove something to both of them.

But eventually, he had just been swept up in all this. In her. In the heat between them.

“I think it is. You... I quit.”

And then she turned and walked out of the room, leaving him standing there, rejected for the first time in a good long while.

And it bothered him more than he would have ever imagined.

* * *

Poppy was steeped in misery by the time she crawled onto the couch in her pajamas that evening.

Her little house down by the ocean was usually a great comfort to her. A representation of security that she had never imagined someone like her could possess.

Now, nothing felt like a refuge. Nothing at all. This whole town felt like a prison.

Her bars were Isaiah Grayson.

That had to stop.

She really was going to quit.

She swallowed, feeling sick to her stomach. She was going to quit and sell this house and move away. She would talk to him sometimes, but mostly she had to let the connection go.

She didn’t mean to him what he did to her. Not just in a romantic way. Isaiah didn’t... He didn’t understand. He didn’t feel for people the way that other people felt.

And he had used the attraction she felt for him against her. Her deepest, darkest secret.

There was no way a woman without a strong, preexisting attraction would have ever responded to him the way she had.

It had been revealing. Though, now she wondered if it had actually been revealing at all, or if he had just always known.

Had he known—all this time—how much she wanted him? And had he been...laughing at her?

No. Not laughing. He wouldn’t do that. He wasn’t cruel, not at all. But had he been waiting until it was of some use to him? Maybe.

She wailed and dragged a blanket down from the back of the couch, pulling it over herself and curling into a ball.

She had kissed Isaiah Grayson today.

More than kissed. He had... He had touched her.

He had proposed to her.

And, whether it was a manipulation or not, she had felt...

He had been hard. Right there between her legs, he had been turned on.

But then, he was a man, and there were a great many men who could get hard for blowup dolls. So. It wasn’t like it was that amazing.

Except, something about it felt kind of amazing.

She closed her eyes. Isaiah. He was... He was absolutely everything to her.

She could marry him. She could keep another woman from marrying him.

Great. And then you can be married to somebody who doesn’t love you at all. Who sees you as a convenience.

She laughed aloud at that thought. Yes. Some of that sounded terrible. But... She had spent most of her life in foster care. She had lived with a whole lot of people who didn’t love her. And some of them had found her to be inconvenient. So that would put marrying Isaiah several steps above some of the living situations she’d had as a kid.

Then there was Rosalind. Tall, blond Rosalind who was very clearly Isaiah’s type. While Poppy was...not.

How would she ever...cope with that? With the inevitable comparisons?

He hates her. He doesn’t hate you.

Well. That was true. Rosalind had always gone after what she wanted. She had devastated Isaiah in the process. So much so that it had even hurt Poppy at the time. Because as much as she wanted to be with Isaiah, she didn’t want him to be hurt.

And then, Rosalind had gone on to her billionaire. The man she was still with. She traveled around the world and hosted dinner parties and did all these things that had been beyond their wildest fantasies when they were growing up.

Rosalind wasn’t afraid of taking something just for herself. And she didn’t worry at all about someone else’s feelings.

Sometimes, that was a negative. But right about now... Poppy was tempted—more than a little bit tempted—to be like Rosalind.

To go after her fantasy and damn the feelings and the consequences. She could have him. As her husband. She could have him...kissing her. She could have him naked.

She could be his.

She had been his friend and his assistant for ten years. But she’d never been his in the way she wanted to be.

He’d been her friend and her boss.

He’d never been hers.

Had anyone ever been hers?

Rosalind certainly cared about Poppy, in her own way. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t have bailed Poppy out when she was in need. But Rosalind’s life was very much about her. She and Poppy kept in touch, but that communication was largely driven by Poppy.

That was...it for her as far as family went. Except for the Graysons.

And if she married Isaiah...they really would be her family.

There was a firm, steady knock on her door. Three times. She knew exactly who it was.

It was like thinking about him had conjured him up.

She wasn’t sure she was ready to face him.

She looked down. She was wearing a T-shirt and no bra. She was definitely not ready to face him. Still, she got up off the couch and padded over to the door. Because she couldn’t not...

She couldn’t not see him. Not right now. Not when all her thoughts and feelings were jumbled up like this. Maybe she would look at him and get a clear answer. Maybe she would look at him and think, No, I still need to quit.

Or maybe...

She knew she was tempting herself. Tempting him.

She hoped she was tempting him.

She scowled and grabbed hold of her blanket, wrapping it tightly around her shoulders before she made her way to the door. She wrenched it open. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to talk sense into you.”

“You can’t,” she said, knowing she sounded like a bratty kid and not caring at all.

“Why not?”

“Because I am an insensible female.” She whirled around and walked back into her small kitchen, and Isaiah followed her, closing the front door behind him.

She turned to face him again, and her heart caught in her throat. He was gorgeous. Those cold, clear gray eyes, his sculpted cheekbones, the beard that made him more approachable. Because without it, she had a feeling he would be too pretty. And his lips...

She had kissed those lips.

He was just staring at her.

“I’m emotional.”

He said nothing to that.

“I might actually throw myself onto the ground at any moment in a serious display of said emotion, and you won’t like it at all. So you should probably leave.”

Those gray eyes were level with hers, sparking heat within her, stoking a deep ache of desire inside her stomach.

“Reconsider.” His voice was low and enticing, and made her want to agree to whatever commandment he issued.

“Quitting or marrying you?” She took a step back from him. She couldn’t be trusted to be too close to him. Couldn’t be trusted to keep her hands to herself. To keep from flinging herself at him—either to beat him or kiss him she didn’t know.

“Both. Either.”

Just when she thought he couldn’t make it worse.

“That’s not exactly the world’s most compelling proposal.”

“I already know that my proposal wasn’t all that compelling. You made it clear.”

“I mean, I’ve heard of bosses offering to give a raise to keep an employee from leaving. But offering marriage...”

“That’s not the only reason I asked you to marry me,” he said.

She made a scoffing sound. “You could’ve fooled me.”

“I’m not trying to fool you,” he said.

Her heart twisted. This was one of the things she liked about Isaiah. It was tempting to focus on his rather grumpy exterior, and when she did that, the question of why she loved him became a lot more muddled. Because he was hot? A lot of men were hot. That wasn’t it. There was something incredibly endearing about the fact that he said what he meant. He didn’t play games. It simply wasn’t in him. He was a man who didn’t manipulate. And that made her accusation from earlier feel...wrong.

Manipulation wasn’t really the right way to look at it. But he was used to being in charge. Unquestioned.

And he would do whatever he needed to do to get his way, that much she knew.

“Did you take the kiss as far as you did because you wanted to prove something to me?”

“No,” he said. “I kissed you to try and prove something to me. Because you’re right. If we were going to get married, then an attraction would have to be there.”

“Yes,” she said, her throat dry.

“I can honestly say that I never thought about you that way.”

She felt like she’d just been stabbed through the chest with a kitchen knife. “Right,” she said, instead of letting out the groan of pain that she was tempted to issue.

“We definitely have chemistry,” he said. “I was genuinely caught off guard by it. I assume it was the same for you.”

She blinked. He really had no idea? Did he really not know that her response to him wasn’t sudden or random?

No. She could see that he didn’t.

Isaiah often seemed insensitive because he simply didn’t bother to blunt his statements to make them palatable for other people. Because he either didn’t understand or care what people found offensive. Which meant, if backed into a corner about whether or not he had been using the kiss against her, he would have told her.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

Now he looked genuinely confused. “You’re apologizing to me. Why?”

“I’m apologizing to you because I assumed the worst about you. And that wasn’t fair. You’re not underhanded. You’re not always sweet or cuddly or sensitive. But you’re not underhanded.”

“You like me,” he pointed out.

He looked smug about that.

“Obviously. I wouldn’t have put up with you for the past ten years. Good paying job or not. But then, I assume you like me too. At least to a degree.”

“We’re a smart match,” he said. “I don’t think you can deny that.”

“Just a few hours ago you were thinking that one of those bottle blondes was your smart match. You can see why I’m not exactly thrilled by your sudden proposal to me.”

“Are you in love with someone else?”

The idea was laughable. She hadn’t even been on a date in...

She wasn’t counting. It was too depressing.

“No,” she said, her throat tightening. “But is it so wrong to want the possibility of love?”

“I think love is good for the right kind of people. Though my observation is that people mostly settle into a partnership anyway. The healthiest marriage is a partnership.”

“Love is also kind of a thing.”

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