His Black Sheep Bride (Aristocratic Grooms 1)

She stared at him.

He looked uncompromising. “We’re not getting a divorce.”

She turned away. “I’m not sure the law will let you stop me.”

He grasped her arm and swung her back toward him. “I’m not concerned with the letter of the law.”

“Oh?” she asked, bracing herself. “Then with what precisely?”

His expression remained implacable. “Try to walk away, and I pull the plug on this—” he glanced around them “—and fight you all the way on custody. Stay married and all this stays yours, along with the title, position and social standing that comes with being my wife.”

She gasped at his bluntness.

This wasn’t the man who’d made love to her—the man she’d thought she was coming to know. This was the ruthless media baron who’d grown an empire—a man that her father could admire.

She knew Sawyer could very well follow through on his demands. He paid the rent on her SoHo loft. Moreover, he’d invested in her jewelry business, and had commissioned her most expensive order to date. He’d breathed new life into her company.

While the law might ultimately prove to be on her side, she didn’t have many resources to fight him.

“A contested divorce will be long and expensive,” he said, as if reading her mind. “And it’ll be messy. I can tie you up in court on procedural issues alone. And then you’ll still need grounds for a divorce.”

“Oh?” she queried, her tone sarcastic. “You don’t think your behavior qualifies as unreasonable?”

He smiled without humor. “I see you’re familiar with the legal grounds for a divorce.”

“Of course,” she retorted, her eyes snapping. “My father has been divorced three times!”

“If you insist on going through with a divorce, then the score will be three to one.”

She refused to respond to the taunt. She was nothing like her father. True, she’d be a divorcée, but that was a far cry from being a serial groom who let business trump love and family every time.

“The divorce can still happen after the baby is born,” she tried. “With this baby, you can lay claim to having fulfilled the terms of your agreement with my father. Kincaid News will be yours. Why contest a divorce?”

“It’s simple,” he said, his eyes all golden fire. “I want you back in my house. In my bed.”

“We don’t always get what we want.”

Their gazes clashed, the standoff drawing out the tension between them.

Then unexpectedly, he looked down at the necklace he was still holding in his hand.

She’d toiled over it these past weeks, wanting it to be perfect. Thinking about him. What a fool she’d been.

“Here,” he said, holding it out to her. “This was always meant for you.”

Automatically, she stretched out her hand and took the necklace from him.

“Thank you,” she said flippantly, unthinkingly disguising her hurt. “My lawyer will be in touch.”

Sawyer’s face tightened, and then he turned and strode to the front door. Seconds later, the door slammed shut behind him, the noise reverberating through the loft.

Her confrontation with Sawyer over, energy ebbed out of her like a receding wave.

She sat down heavily on the bar-height chair behind her.

Outside, a car honked. The busy city went on with its life.

She focused unseeingly on the necklace in her grasp, her hand pressing against the cool stones.

This was always meant for you.

She couldn’t let herself believe him. She knew better than to trust him.

Fourteen

“Tamara is pregnant.”

Sawyer’s announcement fell into a lull in his conversation with Hawk and Colin.

It wasn’t quite the sudden and unexpected announcement it seemed. They had all been sitting in Colin’s majestic penthouse living room for an hour already.

But after a snifter or two of brandy, even the most tightly buttoned of men couldn’t be faulted for opening up.

It was a Friday evening, and each of them was still dressed in work attire—though ties had already been loosened or shed.

“Surprising,” Hawk finally remarked with a surfeit of understatement.

Colin lifted his tumbler in salute. “Congratulations on your impending fatherhood, Melton.”

“Thank you.”

There was a pause as all three of them took a swallow from their drinks, toasting the impending arrival.

“You’ve bested me, Sawyer,” Colin remarked. “I eloped. You’ve made the wife enceinte.”

Colin’s face was inscrutable despite his levity, and Sawyer wondered again at the basis for his friend’s incomplete annulment. It was unlike Colin to leave any loose ends.

Sawyer leaned back in his leather chair. “Still, you may discover I’ll be following your path to a matrimonial lawyer. If you have a recommendation for a good one, pass it along.”

At his position beside the mantel, Hawk raised his eyebrows in surprise.

Colin—seated nearby on a camel-colored leather couch—as usual didn’t give anything away with so much as the slightest change of expression.

“Surely you don’t mean to divorce Tamara now,” Hawk remarked.

“No, but she may intend to divorce me.”

“You mean to let this go?”

Sawyer grunted. The hell he did. He’d pushed his way back into Tamara’s loft, into her life, and demanded she come back to him, backing up his words with the threat of stripping her business from her and an ugly divorce and custody fight.

He pushed aside any misgivings at his heavy-handedness. She’d meant to leave him, and who knew when she would have seen fit to inform him of his impending fatherhood?

Yes, he’d made a mistake by agreeing to Kincaid’s secret condition, but two wrongs didn’t make a right.

He pushed back the encroaching thought that his actions had smacked of desperation.

“I can suggest an excellent lawyer who will deliver a protracted fight, if necessary,” Colin said. “On the other hand, I can’t guarantee he’ll actually complete the divorce—though, on second thought, isn’t that what you want?”

Hawk’s eyebrows lifted. “Are you admitting, Colin, that you purposely didn’t finalize the annulment of your Vegas wedding?”

“I admit nothing,” Colin replied. “Except, of course, for the end result.”

Hawk laughed shortly. “You’re an enigma, Easterbridge.”