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It was an old, stately home, located on the river. He had a housekeeper that came in every day to take care of the incidentals that he neither had the time or desire to do himself. Mrs. Hudson cleaned for him, cooked his meals and disappeared before he got home from work. He had more or less inherited her with the house when he had bought it five years before. She had worked for the previous owners for years, and knew the house front to back. She had also learned exactly what he expected from a daily housekeeper. They got along fine.
Jenna was still fighting shock at their location when he led her in through the front door. She stood in awe and admired the cathedral ceiling. She had never been in a private home that even remotely compared to this. It was beautiful, every inch of it decorated in the traditional style, and Jenna didn’t know what shocked her more, the way he lived every day of his life, or the fact he had brought her back here when she thought they were going out to eat in a public setting.
She looked around as he led her to the French doors overlooking the river. The water was beautiful, black and inky, except for where the lights glistened and then you could see for a long distance, everything glowing and shimmering in the night.
“You—you live here?” The serenity she had experienced earlier was gone. She tried to maintain her fragile control as she desperately tried to make conversation. She was entirely out of her element. She had never met a man like him before, and her emotions were conflicted, in turmoil.
“Yeah.” His answer was short, succinct.
“Alone?” She couldn’t hide the dismay in her voice that all of this was for one person.
He chuckled. “Yeah.”
Jenna turned to him and blinked. He was watching her intently.
“It’s beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
She sucked in a breath. “And you want me to marry you and live here with you?”
“Yeah, I do.”
She studied the inflexible way he held himself. “But it’s so wrong. What you’re considering is wrong. I should say yes just to teach you a lesson.”
“I don’t need you to be my conscience, or my moral compass, or worry about my soul. I just need you to agree to the deal and help me present a façade of marriage to the world for awhile.”
“Sort of like a marriage of convenience, right?
His eyes ran slowly down her length and back up again. His reply was slow in coming. “Sort of.”
Jenna felt both a flare of excitement and a quiver of fear at the all-consuming, territorial look he was giving her.
Before she agreed or disagreed to anything, she needed to get to the bottom of why he wanted this, and what exactly it meant. To her person, and for her future. But she didn’t feel capable of dealing with it just yet, and besides, she was hungry.
“You have a lovely home. Can we go to the restaurant now?”
“I didn’t say we were going to a restaurant.”
Jenna began seeing red from being manipulated and anger came to the fore as belligerence took over. “Listen, Mr. Bennett, the only reason I came tonight was for the food. If you’re not feeding me, you can take me home now.”
David watched the bristling inferno in front of him. Her breath was coming quickly in agitation, lifting her breasts up and down as she dragged in oxygen. The red sweater was stretched tightly over her chest, and David began to swell and harden in his jeans. He had been semi-erect all through the drive here. And now, the sight of her raging in front of him, had his cock rigid and his control close to splintering. He forced himself to check the testosterone fueling his blood.
“Calm down, sweetheart. I’m going to feed you. My housekeeper made us a meal before she left. Come on.” He took her hand and pulled her behind him into the kitchen.
The kitchen was huge, yet cozy at the same time. Jenna glanced around, seeing the warmth and vibrancy the room generated. A wall of windows was the focal point, and the river glistening in the distance was stunning to the eye. Granite countertops wrapped around the kitchen, complimenting the pedestal style cabinets underneath. She sat at a huge island in the middle of the room on a wrought-iron barstool, and swiveled it a bit so she could watch him as he quickly warmed two plates in the microwave, and opened a bottle of wine.
Within minutes, he was sitting across from her, lightly touching his wine glass to hers before putting it to his chiseled lips and taking a drink. Jenna felt the scorch from his eyes as his gaze held hers. She lifted the glass to her lips and took a small sip.
The wine was good, but she needed to be careful. Wine went to her head from zero to sixty, and she was already in a predicament she didn’t know how to handle.
He picked up his fork and dug into the flaky salmon and wild rice. Jenna followed suit. The food was perfect, and she tried with all her might to enjoy the sensations on her taste buds. Tomorrow, she would be back to eating ramen noodles and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
They didn’t speak while they ate, and after one aborted attempt at conversation, Jenna quit trying and concentrated on the ambrosia hitting her palate.
Supper was over too soon.
David tossed the plates and silverware into the dishwasher, grabbed his glass and the bottle of wine and walked over to the door and waited for her to follow him.
Slowly and with great hesitation, Jenna slid off the barstool, retrieved her glass, and moved to the doorway. They had come to the part of the night she had been dreading. It was time to pay for her meal by listening to his spiel.
They sat in the living room, the wine on the coffee table in front of them, and Jenna scrunched herself in the corner of the couch and prepared herself for the inevitable.
David swirled the wine in his glass and studied her for a moment. “You need to know something.” He took a quick sip, and deposited his glass on the coffee table. “No matter how this turns out, even if you don’t accept my proposition, your job is safe. You don’t need to worry about that. I’m warning you up front, I’m about to turn on the screws and try to get you to agree, but if you don’t, in the end, everything will be the same for you. I’ll find someone else for the deal, and you go back to accounting. Got that?”
Feelings were banging around inside Jenna. Turn on the screws was panicking her and she was shocked to feel an arrow of disappointment when he said he would find someone else, but she managed to nod her head, her eyes fastened to his as he continued.
“This is the way I see it playing out. We get married immediately in a civil ceremony with only the required witnesses. There will be a lot of questions at the speed of things, and we’re going to pass it off as a secret love affair that’s been going on for months that we hushed up because of our different positions in the company.”
Jenna held herself in a stiffened, rebellious position in the corner of the couch. Denial pulsed from her body. “Nobody will buy that.”
His eyes ran over her length, scanning her eyes, her lips, then dropping to the full curve of her breasts. He was jolted by another shaft of arousal as his gaze fastened on her lips again. His mouth hardened and his voice hissed out. “Everybody will buy that.”
