Marriage: For Business or Pleasure?

‘Are you out of your mind?’

She leaped to her feet, stood toe to toe with him. ‘What sort of stupid condition is that? Like I’d ever marry you, like I’d agree to—’

‘The idea didn’t seem so distasteful ten years ago. As I recall, you used to love talking about marrying me.’

Heat flooded her cheeks and she clenched her hands to stop from reaching out and strangling him.

‘Come off it, I was young and stupid then.’

‘So you’re old and wise now?’

His mouth twitched and the itch to strangle him intensified tenfold.

‘In that case, you’ll see how much sense this makes.’

‘None of this makes sense!’

Her temper, which she’d learned to control over the years, exploded like a tinder-dry bush touched by a match. ‘You’re insane! You’ve been playing some warped game ever since I saw you this morning and I have no idea why. You pretend you’re still working on the farm, you hide your new job from me, then you come out with this ridiculous proposal.’

She paused, dragged in several breaths and released her hands before her nails sliced into her palms.

‘I came to you in good faith, to try and put a simple deal forward, and what do I get in return? A bunch of patooey!’

‘Patooey?’

This time, his mouth creased into a wide grin and she almost committed murder on the spot.

‘Is that London speak for bullsh—’

‘It sure is and you’re full of it.’

Hands on hips, she leaned into him, shoving her face in his.

‘When did you become such a jerk, Mancini?’

While Nick’s smile didn’t slip, his cool composure cracked a little. The woman he once loved thought he was a jerk and while it shouldn’t matter, it did.

But he wouldn’t dwell on that. The old Britt was still there, under the fancy business suit and blonde-streaked hair; she’d just shown him with that magnificent temper bursting like a tropical thunderstorm.

The old Britt wouldn’t agree to his proposal, while the career-focused woman in sky-high stilettos and a designer suit would if he presented it the right way.

‘Consider this a business transaction, a win-win situation for us both. Nothing more, nothing less.’

He saw a flicker of interest flash across her face at his mention of business before her temper flared again.

‘You’re crazy! Stark raving mad!’

She raked her hands through her immaculately blow-dried hair, sending it into the frizz he remembered. ‘What’s that expression Papa used to say? Sei pazzo, you’re crazy, that’s what you are.’

His heart griped as it always did at the mention of his father.

‘You remember that?’

All the fight drained out of her and she slumped back into the chair, deliciously defeated, and he yearned to sweep her into his arms and show her this deal was the perfect solution for them both.

Raising wide blue eyes to stare at him in capitulation, she nodded.

‘I remember a lot of things.’

He waited, captured by the deepening blue, by the emotions shifting like jacaranda blossoms floating on a spring breeze.

He didn’t want to feel, certainly didn’t want to feel like this, damn it, but when she looked at him with remembrance clouding her eyes and a softening around her lush mouth all he could think about was how incredible she used to feel in his arms.

He didn’t want to rehash the past, to taint this deal with emotion, but he couldn’t resist asking, ‘What do you remember?’

Her tongue darted out to moisten her bottom lip, a simple, unaffected gesture that shot straight to his groin, nothing unaffected about his visceral reaction.

‘Like how we used to lie under that jacaranda tree down by the creek and stare up at the clouds and see who could make the craziest shape.’

Her mouth softened some more and he stiffened, shocked by how much he wanted to ravage those lips.

‘Like the times you took me into Noosa on the back of your Harley and how we’d choose to picnic down in Noosaville rather than mix with the hobknobs on Hasting Street.’

She gave up moistening her bottom lip in favour of worrying it and he clamped down on a groan.

‘Like how you’d look at me with stars in your eyes, as if I was the only woman for you.’

She didn’t glance away as he expected her to, didn’t push him away when he swept her into his arms and crushed his mouth on hers.

She tasted of lime and sugar, tart and sweet, and he knew she’d been guzzling sugar-cane juice as she used to. She’d been addicted to the stuff back then, just as he’d been addicted to her.

He could never get enough of her and it looked as if nothing had changed as his tongue swept into her mouth, taunting, challenging, savouring her passionate response as she clung to him, her fingers tangling in his buttons as he pulled her flush against him.

This deal was supposed to be purely business but as their kiss deepened to the point of no return he knew he was kidding himself.

What he felt around Britt, how his blood fired when she was in his arms, had nothing to do with business and everything to do with earth-shattering pleasure.

The moment Nick eased off the pressure to kiss his way across her cheek, Brittany froze.

This was where taking a trip down memory lane got her: in the arms of the devil himself.

He’d proposed the most ludicrous deal she’d ever heard in her life and what had she done?

Let him kiss her. Again.

Had responded to him. Again.

She didn’t get this, any of it. Business was business but what he’d proposed was…was…well, it was just plain nuts.