Claim Me, Cowboy

Broad shouldered, muscular, with stubble on his square jaw adding a roughness to features that might have otherwise been considered pretty.

“Please don’t tell me you’re Danielle Kelly,” he said, crossing his arms over that previously noted broad chest.

“I am. Were you expecting someone else? Of course, I suppose you could be. I bet I’m not the only person who responded to your ad, strange though it was. The mention of compensation was pretty tempting. Although, I might point out that in the future maybe you should space your appointments further apart.”

“You have a baby,” he said, stating the obvious.

Danielle looked down at the bundle in her arms. “Yes.”

“You didn’t mention that in our email correspondence.”

“Of course not. I thought it would make it too easy for you to turn me away.”

He laughed, somewhat reluctantly, a muscle in his jaw twitching. “Well, you’re right about that.”

“But now I’m here. And I don’t have the gas money to get back home. Also, you said you wanted unsuitable.” She spread one arm wide, keeping Riley clutched firmly in her other arm. “I would say that I’m pretty unsuitable.”

She could imagine the picture she made. Her hideous, patchwork car parked in the background. Maroon with lighter patches of red and a door that was green, since it had been replaced after some accident that had happened before the car had come into her possession. Then there was her. In all her faded glory. She was hungry, and she knew she’d lost a lot of weight over the past few weeks, which had taken her frame from slim to downright pointy. The circles under her eyes were so dark she almost looked like she’d been punched.

She considered the baby a perfect accessory. She had that new baby sallowness they never told you about when they talked about the miracle of life.

She curled her toes inside her boots, one of them going through a hole at the end of her sock. She frowned. “Anyway, I figured I presented a pretty poor picture of a fiancée for a businessman such as yourself. Don’t you agree?”

The corners of his lips tightened further. “The baby.”

“Yes?”

“You expect it to live here?”

She made an exasperated noise. “No. I expect him to live in the car while I party it up in your fancy-pants house.”

“A baby wasn’t part of the deal.”

“What do you care? Your email said it’s only through Christmas. Can you imagine telling your father that you’ve elected to marry Portland hipster trash and she comes with a baby? I mean, it’s going to be incredibly awkward, but ultimately kind of funny.”

“Come in,” he said, his expression no less taciturn as he stood to the side and allowed her entry into his magnificent home.

She clutched Riley even more tightly to her chest as she wandered inside, looking up at the high ceiling, the incredible floor-to-ceiling windows that offered an unparalleled mountain view. As cities went, Portland was all right. The air was pretty clean, and once you got away from the high-rise buildings, you could see past the iron and steel to the nature beyond.

But this view... This was something else entirely.

She looked down at the floor, taking a surprised step to the side when she realized she was standing on glass. And that underneath the glass was a small, slow-moving stream. Startlingly clear, rocks visible beneath the surface of the water. Also, fish.

She looked up to see him staring at her. “My sister’s work,” he said. “She’s the hottest new architect on the scene. Incredible, considering she’s only in her early twenties. And a woman, breaking serious barriers in the industry.”

“That sounds like an excerpt from a magazine article.”

He laughed. “It might be. Since I write the press releases about Faith. That’s what I do. PR for our firm, which has expanded recently. Not just design, but construction. And as you can see, Faith’s work is highly specialized, and it’s extremely coveted.”

A small prickle of...something worked its way under her skin. She couldn’t imagine being so successful at such a young age. Of course, Joshua and his sister must have come from money. You couldn’t build something like this if you hadn’t.

Danielle was in her early twenties and didn’t even have a checking account, much less a successful business.

All of that had to change. It had to change for Riley.

He was why she was here, after all.

Truly, nothing else could have spurred her to answer the ad. She had lived in poverty all of her life. But Riley deserved better. He deserved stability. And he certainly didn’t deserve to wind up in foster care just because she couldn’t get herself together.

“So,” she said, cautiously stepping off the glass tile. “Tell me more about this situation. And exactly what you expect.”

She wanted him to lay it all out. Wanted to hear the terms and conditions he hadn’t shared over email. She was prepared to walk away if it was something she couldn’t handle. And if he wasn’t willing to take no for an answer? Well, she had a knife in her boot.

“My father placed an ad in a national paper saying I was looking for a wife. You can imagine my surprise when I began getting responses before I had ever seen the ad. My father is well-meaning, Ms. Kelly, and he’s willing to do anything to make his children’s lives better. However, what he perceives as perfection can only come one way. He doesn’t think all of this can possibly make me happy.” Joshua looked up, seeming to indicate the beautiful house and view around them. “He’s wrong. However, he won’t take no for an answer, and I want to teach him a lesson.”

“By making him think he won?”

“Kind of. That’s where you come in. As I said, he can only see things from his perspective. From his point of view, a wife will stay at home and massage my feet while I work to bring in income. He wants someone traditional. Someone soft and biddable.” He looked her over. “I imagine you are none of those things.”

“Yeah. Not so much.” The life she had lived didn’t leave room for that kind of softness.

“And you are right. He isn’t going to love that you come with a baby. In fact, he’ll probably think you’re a gold digger.”

“I am a gold digger,” she said. “If you weren’t offering money, I wouldn’t be here. I need money, Mr. Grayson, not a fiancé.”

“Call me Joshua,” he said. “Come with me.”

She followed him as he walked through the entryway, through the living area—which looked like something out of a magazine that she had flipped through at the doctor’s office once—and into the kitchen.

The kitchen made her jaw drop. Everything was so shiny. Stainless steel surrounded by touches of wood. A strange clash of modern and rustic that seemed to work.

Danielle had never been in a place where so much work had gone into the details. Before Riley, when she had still been living with her mother, the home decor had included plastic flowers shoved into some kind of strange green Styrofoam and a rug in the kitchen that was actually a towel laid across a spot in the linoleum that had been worn through.

“You will live here for the duration of our arrangement. You will attend family gatherings and work events with me.”

“Aren’t you worried about me being unsuitable for your work arrangements too?”

“Not really. People who do business with us are fascinated by the nontraditional. As I mentioned earlier, my sister, Faith, is something of a pioneer in her field.”

“Great,” Danielle said, giving him a thumbs-up. “I’m glad to be a nontraditional asset to you.”

“Whether or not you’re happy with it isn’t really my concern. I mean, I’m paying you, so you don’t need to be happy.”

She frowned. “Well, I don’t want to be unhappy. That’s the other thing. We have to discuss...terms and stuff. I don’t know what all you think you’re going to get out of me, but I’m not here to have sex with you. I’m just here to pose as your fiancée. Like the ad said.”

The expression on his face was so disdainful it was almost funny. Almost. It didn’t quite ascend to funny because it punched her in the ego. “I think I can control myself, Ms. Kelly.”

“If I can call you Joshua, then you can call me Danielle,” she said.