His Black Sheep Bride (Aristocratic Grooms 1)

No, she wouldn’t let herself go there.

And with any luck, Sawyer didn’t have a clue as to just how dire her current financial situation was. He hadn’t seemed as if he did. In fact, his words to her that night indicated he thought she was looking to expand her business, not merely survive.

She hoped her appearance had also served to throw him off the scent. She’d dressed to project an image of success. She’d worn expensive earrings of her own design to the fashion party—as much for advertising as for anything else, though the earrings were worth much more than the typical Pink Teddy piece of semiprecious jewelry.

Yes, she dreamed of expanding her business and having her name added to the roster of top celebrity jewelry designers. But she’d also had to start small, given her financing, or rather lack thereof. And now she was nearly broke.

People assumed she had money—or at least connections—as the daughter of a millionaire Scottish viscount. In fact, she was entitled to be addressed as the Honourable Tamara Kincaid and not much else. After her parents’ divorce when she was seven, she’d gone to reside in the United States with her mother, who had been able to maintain a respectable, but not settled, lifestyle. Instead, thanks to child-support payments, Tamara had been entrusted to the care of a series of babysitters, schools and summer camps while her peripatetic mother had continued to travel and move them within the United States.

Her mother resided in Houston now with husband number three, the owner of a trio of car dealerships, having finally achieved a measure of stability.

Tamara sighed. Partly because of the physical distance, she and her mother weren’t very close, but a fringe benefit was that her mother didn’t interfere much in her life.

Of course, she could hardly claim the same benefit with respect to her father, who owned an apartment in New York City.

But unlike her mother, she’d thumbed her nose at her father’s money. Because the strings attached had been more than she’d been able to accept. As she’d grown older, her father had made his opinions known, and her artsy tendencies, her penchant for the bohemian and her taste for the unconventional had not gone over well.

Her father’s attempts to meddle had, of course, reached their zenith in his crazy plan to marry her off to Sawyer.

Really, that scheme was beyond ridiculous.

Sure, her parents’ marriage had been an ill-advised union between an American and a British aristocrat—a still-naive girl from Houston on the one hand, and the young and ambitious heir to a viscountcy on the other. But her starry-eyed mother, who’d imagined herself in love, had been thrilled by the prospect of residing in a British manor house.

In contrast, Tamara prided herself on being a worldly-wise New Yorker. And much as she hated to admit it, she had her father’s skeptical nature. She’d inherited her mother’s coloring and features, but that’s where similarities ended.

She liked her life just fine. She was bohemian with an edge.

A marriage between her and Sawyer Langsford was laughable. They barely spoke the same language, though she had been known to read his paper, The New York Intelligencer, and occasionally watch the Mercury News channel.

To Sawyer’s credit, Tamara acknowledged, his media outlets didn’t stoop to petty sensationalism. And she had to admit he’d built an international media empire from the two British radio stations and the regional newspaper he’d inherited from his father. At thirty-eight, he’d stuffed a lifetime’s worth of career accomplishments into a mere fifteen years or so.

At twenty-eight, she was a decade behind Sawyer in experience and worlds away in outlook. Yes, she wanted her design business to float instead of sinking into the great abyss, and yes, she dreamed of becoming successful. But she didn’t aspire to the same lofty heights of empire building that her father and Sawyer did.

She’d effectively been abandoned twice by her father—once, in a transatlantic divorce, and then again by Viscount Kincaid’s devotion to his media company. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—risk acquiring a husband who was from the same mold.

It would be beyond foolhardy, notwithstanding the kiss the other night.

Still, the kiss had repeatedly sneaked into her thoughts over the past few days. Sawyer had made her toes curl. And embarrassingly, she’d clearly responded to him.

But she knew why Sawyer had kissed her. He’d been trying to convince her to agree to a marriage of convenience.

If Sawyer thought she was a pushover for his seduction techniques, however, he had another thing coming. So she’d had a brief and primitive response to his air of raw power and sexuality. She was still well past the age of gullibility—of being swayed by a momentary attraction into a relationship with someone who was so very wrong for her.

In contrast, she and Tom were alike. They enjoyed prowling SoHo at night, appreciated the city, and were both artistic. They were friends, first and foremost.

They weren’t two people from very different backgrounds united by lust. In other words, to her relief, they were definitely not her parents.

As if on cue, her cell phone rang, and it was Tom.

“You’ll never guess what’s fallen in my lap,” Tom said.

“Okay, I give up. What?” she replied.

“I’m flying out to L.A. to meet with a big music producer. He heard one of our demos and is interested in signing the band.”

“Tom, that’s wonderful!” Tamara exclaimed. “I didn’t even know you were in touch with a producer out in L.A.”

Tom laughed. “I wasn’t. The guy got his hands on the demo from a friend of a friend.”

“See, networking works.”

Tom gave an exaggerated sigh. “Here’s the thing, babe. I’ll be gone. Physically, existentially and in every other way.”

She picked up on his meaning.

“What?” she said with mock offense. “You’ll no longer be available to be my standby date?”

It was easy for her to adopt a lighthearted tone, she realized. Tom had never been more than a casual, occasional date for her—a reliable escort when she had to attend one social function or another. He was nothing more, despite their Tom-and-Tam epithet, and that was the reason she could be happy for him without rancor.

“Afraid not,” Tom responded now. “Will you ever forgive me?”

“If I don’t, you could always write a song about it,” she teased.

Tom laughed. “You’re a pal, Tam.”

Tom’s words summed up their relationship, Tamara acknowledged. It had always been easy and casual. Such a contrast, she thought darkly, from her fraught interactions with—