A Convenient Proposal

br /> 'It wouldn't work. You must know that,' she said with deliberate casualness. He mustn't guess what this conversation was doing to her; the way her pulse was racing and her heart was pounding.

'On the contrary, I think it would work very well.' His dark eyes ran over her face and the mass of silky red hair. 'Marriages of convenience have happened from the beginning of time, and it's on record that they are more successful than so-called love matches.'

'So that's what this is, a convenient proposal?' Candy said flatly.

'I guess.' His eyes narrowed and he drew her closer. 'But I would satisfy you, Candy, in every way. Have no doubts about that.'

She didn't! Her tongue touched her lower lip and the pounding of her heart increased. He was offering her marriage! Quinn! He didn't love her—he would probably run a mile if he guessed her true feelings for him—but the impossible, the unthinkable had happened and he had asked her to marry him. She would never have a chance like this again.

If she said no she would be committing herself to a life of aloneness; she knew that She would never find another man like Quinn—he was unique. True, she would have her work and friends, but did she really want to grow old with just the cats for company? There were some career women who flitted from one affair to another without letting anything affect them too deeply, but she wasn't like that.

And if she said yes? The thumping of her heart made her feel faint Then she would be at Quinn's side, close to him, sharing all the small, intimate things that no one else would have the right to share. Maybe he would grow to love her? With time? But if he didn't would she be able to stand remaining on the perimeter of his heart?

And then the decision was made for her when Quinn bent his head and kissed her hungrily, his thighs hard against hers and his mouth sensuous.

He took his time, his mouth exploring hers with exquisite finesse until she was liquid heat in his arms, but still his lovemaking was controlled and restrained as he slowly fed her desire.

She knew what he was doing, knew he was using his considerable sexual experience to persuade and manipulate her to his will, but it didn't make any difference. She was just like all the others, she admitted painfully. She couldn't resist him. He was all-male, enigmatic and fascinating and so, so sensual, and she would never meet another man who could make her feel like this with such little effort.

She drew on all her resources and tried one last time to remain above water. 'Don't!' She wrenched her mouth away from his as she spoke, her voice trembling. 'Quinn, you have to see that this is crazy. What if either of us fall in love with someone else, what then? And this is so coldblooded—'

'I'm not cold, Candy.' He took one of her hands and deliberately carried it to a certain part of his anatomy which was rock-hard. 'Does that feel as though I'm cold?' he asked brusquely into her shocked eyes. 'I want you and I can make you want me, but, like I said, you can take all the time you need on the physical side of things.'

She would need about two seconds flat, she thought with dark ruefulness. He only had to touch her and she was his, if he did but know it.

'And what if either of us meet someone else?' she persisted as she looked up into his handsome face. 'What then?'

'That won't happen so it isn't a relevant possibility,' Quinn said with magnificent arrogance. 'I shall make sure you have everything you need from me.'

Everything but love. For an awful moment she thought she had said it out loud, but the sound filling her ears was the thud thud of her racing heart. 'But you might fall in love,' she said shakily. 'There would be two in this marriage, remember.'

'No, I won't, Candy,' He drew her against him again, nuzzling the silk of her hair as he said over the top of her head, 'I have enough antibodies from the disease to guarantee that.'

'Laura?' she asked faintly against the hard wall of his chest.

'Laura,' he agreed after a moment's tense silence. And then he began to talk. 'From the first day I met Laura we were inseparable,' he said quietly, 'but it wasn't until later, much, much later, that I realised she had done all the running. She was a terribly jealous woman. No—' he shook his head abruptly '—it was more than that. She was obsessional, unbalanced about me, but I didn't understand how it was at first. I cared about her, very much, and she was beautiful and vivacious and alive—so alive. By the time I began to question the rows that would result if I so much as glanced or smiled at another female Laura was pregnant.'

'Quinn, you don't have to tell me this.'

'Shush.' He drew her close again as she tried to lean back and look up into his face, and only when she relaxed against his chest did he continue. 'We were married within the month and on our honeymoon she admitted she'd done it on purpose because she was scared of losing me. I didn't know how I felt—angry, I guess, guilty because I made her feel so insecure and unhappy, trapped. But I still loved her and I was determined the marriage would work.'

He sighed, a deep shudder that came from some dark place within. 'It got so I was careful never to touch or even look at another woman, not even friends I'd known for donkey's years. We stopped going out to dinner because of the scenes that would inevitably result when we got home again, but I kept telling myself when the baby was born she'd feel better. More confident again, reassured of her beauty and figure. She hated being pregnant, loathed every minute of it, although I kept telling her she was more beautiful than ever and I meant it.'

'And when the baby was born?' Candy asked softly, and this time he allowed her to move back in his arms. 'What then?' she pressed gently as she looked into his tortured face.

'It was a difficult birth, and at first everyone blamed that on her inability to bond with our son.' The words were being torn out of him now, wrenched up and ground out through clenched teeth. 'I wouldn't let myself believe she was jealous of him and my feeling for my own son, but as weeks and months went by she made all our lives into a living hell. I insisted she went to a doctor, a psychiatrist, but it didn't help, and it got so I was frightened to leave her alone with him when I was at work. I hired a nanny— a woman old enough to be my mother who looked like the back of a bus—but she left after a few weeks when Laura accused her of sleeping with me. We were on our third nanny when I got a phone call one day. Laura had attacked the woman, who was fifty-five and very happily married with a brood of children and grandchildren, because of our 'affair'.'

'Oh, Quinn.' She didn't know what to say to erase the agony on his face.

'The nanny had tried to stop Laura leaving with my son after she'd fended her off, but by the time I got home it was too late. According to the police Laura must have taken a bend too quickly, which caused her to go off the road into the river, but…I've always wondered.' He shut his eyes briefly, then opened them as he said, 'Anyway, she went through the wall of the bridge and into the water and drowned them both. Joe wasn't even twelve months old.'

She wanted to take his face in her hands and smother him with kisses. She wanted to tell him she would make it all right, that she would love him enough for both of them, that she would heal all the pain and misery if it took her the rest of her life. But instead she stood quietly looking up at him and took a deep breath. She was on the edge of a precipice and she was going to jump off. She might be borne up on the breath of the future and learn to soar and fly, or she might be dashed to pieces on the rocks of the past She had no way of knowing, because the end result rested with the tall, devastatingly handsome man in front of her.

But what she did know was that there had never really been any question as to the nature of her reply. She loved him. It was as simple as that. And she was scared to death.

'So…' Quinn looked down at her with midnight-black eyes in which there wasn't a trace of the usual cynicism and hardness. 'If you marry me it will be the traditional 'till death us do part'. Is that a problem?'

She took another deep breath and leapt into space. 'No, that's not a problem,' she said in a surprisingly steady voice, and lifted her face for his kiss.