behind. Wincing at the coldness of the place, Summer almost turned around right then and there to head for her clinic. This was never going to work.
But she couldn’t bring herself to drive away, not when this might be her only chance to save him from a life in prison. Her heart in her throat, she stepped from her car and slowly started up the walkway to his front door. With every step, the knots in her stomach tightened with trepidation. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that she was doing the right thing, but that didn’t make her task any easier. Because she knew that if Gavin accepted her offer, her life would never be the same and neither would his.
Two
H e wasn’t thrilled to see her. In fact, he was downright rude. Scowling at the sight of Summer Kincaid on his doorstep, Gavin made no move to invite her inside but stood blocking the threshold as if he was going to slam the door in her face at any second. “What do you want?” he growled.
That wasn’t the greeting she’d hoped for, but Summer supposed she couldn’t blame him for being less than hospitable.
“I need to talk to you,” she said quietly. “May I come in?”
He didn’t budge an inch. “No. I’m not in the mood for company.”
That much, at least, was obvious. His chiseled jaw as hard as granite and his brown eyes nearly black with hostility, he was primed for a fight and ready to take on the world. If she’d been smart, Summer would have apologized for disturbing him and waited until another time to approach him with her proposal. But she’d had to psyche herself up just to get this far, and if she didn’t speak her mind now, she was afraid she never would.
So she stubbornly held her ground and looked him right in the eye, silently daring him to throw her off his property. “I’m sorry about that, but I’m not leaving until I’ve had a chance to talk to you. We can do it right here on the doorstep in front of God and everyone or you can invite me inside. The choice is yours.”
Irritated, Gavin arched a dark brow at her. He’d talked to her more in the past two days than he had in the past two years, and he had to admit he was surprised by her obstinacy. She was a quiet little thing and usually didn’t say much. But something had lit a fire under her, and if the glint in her eye was anything to go by, she’d shout whatever she had to say to him to the rooftops if he didn’t give her a chance to speak to him in private.
He shouldn’t have cared. The whole world already knew just about everything there was to know about him—she couldn’t possibly have anything to say that couldn’t be posted across the front page of the Whitehorn Journal. Or at least, he didn’t think she did.
Frowning down at her, he hesitated, then with a muttered curse, he jerked the door open wider. “All right,” he said harshly. “Come in and say what you have to say. But make it quick.”
Then get out.
He didn’t say the words, but Summer heard them nonetheless. Another woman might have been offended, but she refused to take his hostility personally. She’d wanted an opportunity to speak to him and he was giving it to her. Nothing else mattered.
Slipping past him through the door, she stepped into the living room, only to stop short. She supposed she had to give him credit. With inexpensive glass and chrome tables and what appeared to be a few good pieces of secondhand modern furniture, he’d created a surprising sophistication without spending a lot of money. If there were no plants, no warm colors, none of the softness needed to turn a house into a home, she doubted that he cared. After all, he wanted acceptance in the white man’s world, not warmth.
Following her into the room, Gavin said roughly, “Well? What is it you barged in here to say? Spit it out and let’s get it over with.”
Jerked back to her reason for being there, she hesitated, not sure how to begin. Too late, she realized she probably should have given more thought to her proposal, but at the time she’d come up with it, it had seemed like the perfect plan to exonerate him. Now she wasn’t so sure.
Heat singeing her cheeks, she tried not to squirm as he pinned her with a gaze that was as hard as nails. “I’ve been thinking about the trial—”
“You and everyone else in town,” he drawled. “What about it?”
“I think I can help you.”
His eyes narrowed sharply. “How? Have you heard something? What do you know about Christina’s murder?”
“Nothing!”
“Then how the hell do you think you’re going to help me?” he demanded impatiently. “By being my friend and standing up with me in court the way you did at the Hip Hop?” He made “friend” sound like a dirty word. “Thanks for the offer, but I don’t think the jury’s going to give a damn about how many so-called friends I have when the prosecution has evidence placing me at the murder scene. So if that’s all you came for—”
He turned away, dismissing her without even hearing what she’d come there to say, and something in Summer just snapped. She’d meant to lay the groundwork for her offer before she actually made it so she wouldn’t completely shock him, but he’d taken that opportunity away from her.
Left with no choice, she blurted, “The jury might not care about your friends but I bet they’d be impressed by a wife who believed you and stood by you through all this.
“Especially,” she continued when he jerked back around to face her with a scowl, “if that wife was from one of Whitehorn’s leading families and was a well-respected member of the medical community.”
“I don’t have a wife,” he said flatly.
“No, you don’t,” she said simply. “But you could. Think about what that would say to a jury. After you were accused of a horrible murder, a woman with an impeccable reputation pronounced her love for you and married you. No woman in her right mind would do that unless she thought you were truly innocent.”
If he was impressed with her reasoning, he didn’t show it. His brown eyes suspicious, he said, “Just what exactly are you suggesting?”
“That we get married.”
The words just seemed to pop out of their own accord and hang in the air between them like a blinking neon sign. And too late, Summer realized just how forward they sounded. Horrified, she hurriedly said, “Don’t misunderstand—I’m not saying that I’m in love with you! How could I be? We hardly know each other. Any marriage between us would be one strictly of convenience.”
“Of course. I never expected anything else.”
At his dry tone, she blushed to the roots of her hair. “This isn’t about sex,” she said stiffly. “It’s about helping you.”
“Which you seemed determined to do, and I can’t for the life of me understand why.” Frowning, he studied her with puzzled eyes. “What’s in this for you?”
Not surprised that he’d so quickly reduced things to the bottom line, she didn’t insult his intelligence by pretending she was a saint sacrificing herself just for the sake of helping him. “Your help in my clinic on the reservation for one year,” she said bluntly.
“In exchange for marriage?”
She nodded. “Also for one year. You know I’m not the type to flaunt my family connections, but you have to admit that marriage to a Kincaid can’t do anything but bolster your standing in the community. And that just might help clear your name. Once the trial’s over and you’re vindicated, my family connections will help when you go back to court to regain custody of Alyssa.”
She made it all sound so simple. All he had to do was marry a Kincaid, and his life would magically return to normal. His name would be cleared, people would look at him in a different light, and he could go on with his life as if Christina’s death and the subsequent murder charges leveled against him had never happened. And the price of a ticket to this