Gwen nodded. She’d more than heard about it. She’d been eagerly awaiting the outcome of the sale tender for the Art Deco hotel in the hope it would be redeveloped in keeping with its distinctive history. Then she could put in a proposal of her own to subcontract to the successful company. With her expertise in the restoration of old furnishings, and her skill in sourcing the materials required to redecorate to suit the period of the properties she’d worked on, she was in high demand. But a contract like the Sellers Hotel—that would launch her into an entirely new sphere altogether.
“I’ve put a bid together to purchase the property, but no thanks to Steve’s creative accounting I’ll have to withdraw from the tender unless I have the funds to continue the development—unless I can get my hands on a hefty sum of money. Now, I have that money at my disposal, but the only way I can access it is to marry. And that’s where you come in.” He dipped his head closer to hers, his dark eyes boring into her own. For all intents and purposes, to the guests whose buzz of conversation filtered in muffled snatches through the glass door to the balcony, they looked like a couple in love. The length of his legs seared through the fabric of her skirt. The outline of his muscled thighs and the weight of his hips pressed against her. Logic demanded she pull back, loose herself from his grasp and denounce his crazy idea for the fraud it was. To get the wild beat of her heart back under control.
“You have to marry? That’s archaic,” Gwen protested.
“It’s the way it is. My mother was a traditionalist and wanted to see all her boys settled before accessing our trust funds.”
A trust fund he’d already have had access to if she hadn’t let Renata talk her into attempting that cliff face when it was way beyond Gwen’s experience. But she couldn’t let her guilt at Renata’s death drive her into making yet another mistake. “And how would this advantage me? All I can see is a win-win for you here. Getting married isn’t just something you do to access a trust fund, for goodness sakes! No, it’s too important. I can’t—I won’t do it.”
“I’ll repay the money Steve stole from you.”
Gwen pulled out of his arms and walked across the balcony until she could go no farther from him. Declan felt the loss of her form against his body as if she’d been carved from him. As much as he denied it, they fit well together. Too well. In the evening darkness he studied her face carefully, watching as emotions chased across its surface until an implacable calm replaced the confusion. “C’mon, Gwen. What do you say?”
“I don’t want to do this.”
“It’s gone beyond what we want to do, Crenshaw’s seen to that. We need to make a decision, Gwen. Tonight.”
“Why do we have to do all this? Why can’t you just take out a business loan?” Light from a streetlamp caressed her white-blond hair and silhouetted her slender shape against the darkness like a sculptor’s loving touch.
“Because I wouldn’t get the loan.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Cavaliere Developments is one of the most successful and fastest-growing companies in the industry. Even I know that.”
Declan clenched his fists at his sides, then released his fingers, one by one. He had to convince Gwen, and the only way out was the truth, no matter how much it hurt. “When Renata died I had to keep busy, keep moving, keep working. I didn’t have the necessary capital then to expand at the rate I wanted to for the company to gain a foothold in the marketplace, nor did I want to spend the time I needed on the business end of things. All I wanted was to be so dog tired by the end of each day that I couldn’t even think any more.” He rubbed a hand across his eyes. The pain of that time still as raw in his memory as the day he’d laid Renata’s broken body to rest. He drew in a ragged breath and pressed on. “The old man stepped in, offered to act as guarantor for me and help run things from the administration side, if I gave him a voting position on the board. It was only supposed to be for a limited time.”
“I don’t understand. Why would that stop your company from getting the contract?” Gwen’s question hung in the air, her confusion evident in her tone.
“Because he’s already made it clear he’ll veto any application for funds for a project this size. He likes to control people. He likes to think he can control me.”
“And if you have the trust fund?” she prompted.
“I can bankroll the whole project myself.” Please don’t let her say no.
“I see. I imagine there are a lot of jobs riding on this, too.”
“Yes, there are.”
Her shoulders sagged as if all the air had been drawn out of her.
“All right.” Her reply was a mere ripple of sound in the night air.
“You’ll do it?” Hope leaped in his chest.
“Yes, but only on certain conditions.”
“What sort of conditions?”
She paced the width of the balcony before coming to a halt in front of him again. “You contract me to work on the Sellers building for the duration of the refit.”
He could live with that. In fact he was more than happy with the agreement. She’d made her mark in domestic restorations but with her skill she could only benefit his operation. Despite how he felt about Gwen, he was enough of a businessman to recognise an advantage when he saw it.
“Done. We’ll sort out the nuts and bolts of your contract with Connor tomorrow and get this tied up legally. Don’t worry about him knowing, he can be trusted to keep our arrangement confidential. Anything else?”
“No sex.”
Declan arched one eyebrow. “Do you mean with anybody else, or just with each other?”
“With anybody. I mean it,” she reiterated fiercely, wrapping her arms about her body like armour. “Absolutely no sex. I won’t be made a fool of. If this marriage is to look real, then you can’t see anyone else.”
Yeah, well, he could live with that, too. In fact, he was more than happy to live with that. The one time…no, it didn’t bear thinking about. It was enough that she had agreed to go along with this crazy scheme. “Fine by me. But we have to look like a married couple when we’re around other people, be comfortable together, you know—physically. Especially around the rest of my family. They might accept this sudden engagement, but they’ll suspect a sham if we don’t behave like a newly wed couple, and if my dad suspects a sham, I can kiss that trust fund goodbye.”
“Won’t they ask questions anyway?”
“Probably. But that’s my problem. I’ll handle it.” He sighed. “Anything else?”
“About the financial terms of the contract…”
Declan had had enough. “It’ll be worth your while—I promise.”
“It had better be.” Her eyes were opaque pools of emptiness. What was going on in that head of hers?
“It’s a deal, then?” He had to be certain she wasn’t going to back out of this.
“One more thing.”
He bit back an expletive. She had him between a rock and a hard place, and he hated it. Hated being beholden to her. “What is it?” Amazingly the words sounded civil.
“The length of our marriage—three months, tops.”
“Three months! That’s ridiculous. Twelve or my father will definitely smell a rat.”
“That’s far too long. Six, then.”
“Six months?” Declan considered it for a moment—that would work, just. He nodded sharply.
Gwen extended her hand to him and he took it, noting this was the first time she’d