secure that account, I’ll be ousted for sure. I’ve been trying to set up meetings with the other company, but their CEO hasn’t responded to my calls. From what I’ve been told, he has concerns about my reputation, too.”
“And you think having a wife will help?”
“It’s the only solution I can think of that will improve my image in a quick and noticeable way.” His expression grew even stormier. “You know what makes it worse? My father was always telling me that I was too much of a party animal to be taken seriously, that someday my behavior would come back to bite me in the butt. He criticized me every chance he got, even when I was a kid.”
Allison considered how much information Rand was sharing. Rich used to confide in her, too. But all of his confessions were lies. She hoped Rand wasn’t embellishing his tales to create a false sense of intimacy. Although she didn’t doubt that he needed a wife, just how far would he go to get one?
“Where is your father now?” she asked.
“He died last year, but I’ve been feeling the brunt of his words more than ever now. I swear I can just hear him saying, ‘I told you so,’ along with everyone else who’s convinced I’m not worthy of my job.”
She couldn’t hear anything but the frustration in his voice. “Are you sure that people will even believe that we’re a true couple?”
“Granted, we’ll be an unlikely match, but you know what they say about opposites attracting.” He winked at her. “Especially if we show everyone how desperate we are for each other.”
Allison’s thoughts scrambled. Was their desperate union supposed to include sharing the same bed? Was that part of the plan of them seeming like a genuinely married couple? Just thinking about it was sending her into a tailspin.
She wanted to remain in the States, to defy the odds, to get her green card. But could she marry Rand? A man she didn’t even know if she could trust?
“Are you interested?” Rand asked. “Will you consider marrying me?”
Allison fidgeted in her seat. A Texas heartthrob, a man she’d been crushing on, was offering to make her his wife and help her get the green card she so urgently wanted. To some women, this would be a no-brainer. But it wasn’t that simple. Not to her, anyway. And especially not if he tried to lure her into bed.
She said, “If I agree to do this, there isn’t going to be any intimacy. We can’t...”
He turned more fully toward her, one of his legs nearly bumping hers. “Sleep together?”
Her pulse jumped. “Yes.”
He roamed his gaze over her. “I didn’t think it would be an option.”
“You didn’t?” This was the most uncomfortable conversation she’d ever had. And the way he was checking her out with those wild green eyes was only making it worse. “I assumed that maybe you would...”
“I would what? Try to seduce you? I’m used to having affairs, so, yeah, it crossed my mind. But you’re different from anyone else I’ve ever been with. You just seem so—” he brought his hand to her face, skimming his knuckles along her cheek “—innocent, somehow.”
My goodness, my Guinness. For someone who wasn’t supposed to be seducing her, he was doing a dandy job of it now. She couldn’t think clearly, with the way he was touching her.
She forced herself to say, “You shouldn’t be doing that.”
He lowered his hand. “I shouldn’t?”
“No.” She didn’t want her attraction to him distorting her common sense. “I still need to decide if I’m going to marry you.”
“Well, are you?”
“It scares me, doing something so fraudulent.” Trusting him scared her, too. But was she making too much of that? He wasn’t a sociopath like Rich. He was just a man who needed to reform his image. His womanizing image, she reminded herself. He wasn’t exactly an angel.
She didn’t know what to do. If she married him for her green card, she would be committing a crime. If she didn’t, she would be dragging her sorry arse back to Kenmare.
“I’d rather have an answer sooner than later,” he said, “but you can sleep on it, if you think that’ll help.”
“It won’t.” She didn’t want to think about sleeping on anything—or with anyone, for that matter.
“Then what’s your decision?”
She considered her choices. Stay and regain her confidence? Or retreat and return to Ireland? Given her plight thus far, marrying him was beginning to seem like her only option. And at this point, she would rather take her chances with Rand than go home, lost and bleating, like the poor little lamb she kept comparing herself to.
She squeezed her eyes closed. A second later, she reopened them, just to say that she’d gone into this with her eyes wide-open. “I’ll do it.”
“You will?” He doubled-checked. “For sure?”
“Yes.” She was going to take the plunge and become his newly minted bride, fulfilling her dream of living in the States, of working toward her independent future, of being her own woman. Starting now, she thought. Determined to show him that she wasn’t a pushover, she reiterated, “I meant what I said before. The no-sex clause still applies.”
“I understand. But we’re still going to have to be affectionate with each other. We can’t behave like strangers out there.”
“Don’t worry...” She paused, giving herself a moment to breathe a little deeper. “I’ll play my part to the best of my ability.” She would do what she had to do, short of tumbling into bed with him.
He smiled a bit too sexily. “At least there’s no denying that we have chemistry.”
In lieu of a response, she fought the warm, slippery feeling that came over her. But who wouldn’t be magnetically drawn to Rand? Forbidden as he was, she could only imagine what climbing under the covers with him would be like. Hot and thrilling nights, she surmised, where she could let her inner sex kitten out.
Oh, sure. As if she actually had one of those. Even with as deeply as she’d fallen for Rich and his fake persona, she’d been a bit too restrained in his bed. She’d never thoroughly let loose with anyone, and this wasn’t the time to start. She was absolutely, positively not sleeping with Rand.
“Allison?”
She started at the sound of his voice. “Yes?”
“We need to come up with a cover story about how we fell in love so quickly. But I have an idea about that.”
“You do?” She cleared the erotic thoughts from her mind. “What is it?”
He waited until a passerby was out of earshot before he replied, “I thought we could say that we’ve been seeing each other behind closed doors. That I approached you privately after Will’s funeral and we started to get to know each other then. With everything that’s been going on this past month, I’ve been trying to keep a low profile and stay out of the limelight, so it’s actually the perfect time for me to say that I’ve been in a secret relationship.”
“That should work.” Clearly Rand had a gift for storytelling. So did Allison, of course. Fiction was her forte. “But for the people who know that Will is still alive and that Rich swindled me, we’ll have to tell a more detailed tale. We can still use the secret-dating ruse, but we’ll also have to say that you helped me overcome the pain of what he did to me. Only that I didn’t want to tell anyone that we were together for fear that they would judge me.”
“That sounds believable