“Yes,” she echoed. “My concern.”
“We have work to do. And you have wife applications to sort through.”
“Right,” she said.
“Preference will be given to blondes,” he said.
Poppy blinked and then reached up slowly, touching her own dark hair. “Of course.”
And then she turned and walked out of the room.
* * *
Isaiah hadn’t expected to receive quite so many responses to his ad. Perhaps, in the end, Poppy had been right about her particular tactic with the wording. It had certainly netted what felt to him to be a record number of responses.
Though he didn’t actually know how many women had responded to his brother’s personal ad.
He felt only slightly competitive about it, seeing as it would be almost impossible to do a direct comparison between his and Joshua’s efforts. Their father had placed an ad first, making Joshua sound undoubtedly even nicer than Poppy had made Isaiah sound.
Thereafter, Joshua had placed his own ad, which had offered a fake marriage and hefty compensation.
Isaiah imagined that a great many more women would respond to that.
But he didn’t need quantity. He just needed quality.
And he believed that existed.
It had occurred to him at Joshua and Danielle’s wedding that there was no reason a match couldn’t be like math. He believed in marriage; it was romance he had gone off of.
Or rather, the kind of romance he had experience with.
Obviously, he couldn’t dispute the existence of love. His parents were in love, after all. Forty years of marriage hadn’t seemed to do anything to dampen that. But then, he was not like his mother. And he wasn’t like his father. Both of them were warm people. Compassionate. And those things seemed to come easily to them.
Isaiah was a black-and-white man living in a world filled with shades of gray. He didn’t care for those shades, and he didn’t like to acknowledge them.
But he wasn’t an irrational man. Not at all.
Yet he’d been irrational once. Five years with Rosalind and they had been the best of his life. At least, he had thought so at the time.
Then she had betrayed him, and nearly destroyed everything.
Or rather, he had.
Which was all he had needed to learn about what happened to him and his instincts under the influence of love.
He’d been in his twenties then, and it had been easy to ignore the idea that his particular set of practices when it came to relationships meant he would be spending his life without a partner. But now he was in his thirties, and that reality was much more difficult to ignore. When he’d had to think about the future, he hadn’t liked the idea of what he was signing himself up for.
So, he had decided to change it. That was the logical thing to do when you found yourself unhappy with where you were, after all. A change of circumstances was not beyond his reach. And so, he was reaching out to grab it.
Which was why Poppy was currently on interview number three with one of the respondents to his ad. Isaiah had insisted that anyone responding to the ad come directly to Copper Ridge to be interviewed. Anyone who didn’t take the ad seriously enough to put in a personal appearance was not worthy of consideration, in his opinion.
He leaned back in his chair, looking at the neat expanse of desk in front of him. Everything was in its place in his office, as it always was. As it should be. And soon, everything in his personal life would be in place too.
Across the hall, the door to Poppy’s office opened and a tall, willowy blonde walked out. She was definitely his type in the physical sense, and the physical mattered quite a bit. Emotionally, he might be a bit detached, but physically, everything was functioning. Quite well, thank you.
In his marriage-math equation, sex was an important factor.
He intended to be faithful to his wife. There was really no point in making a lifelong commitment without fidelity.
Because of that, it stood to reason that he should make sure he chose in accordance with his typical physical type.
By the time he finished that thought process the woman was gone, and Poppy appeared a moment later. She was glaring down the hall, looking both disheveled and generally irritated. He had learned to recognize her moods with unerring accuracy. Mostly because it was often a matter of survival. Poppy was one of the few people on earth who wasn’t intimidated by him. He should be annoyed by that. She was his employee, and ought to be a bit more deferential than she was.
He didn’t want her to be, though. He liked Poppy. And that was a rarity in his world. He didn’t like very many people. Because most people were idiots.
But not her.
Though, she looked a little bit like she wanted to kill him at the moment. When her stormy, dark eyes connected with his across the space, he had the fleeting thought that a lesser man would jump up and run away, leaving his boots behind.
Isaiah was not that man.
He was happy to meet her. Steel-capped toe to pointy-toed stiletto.
“She was stupid,” Poppy pronounced.
He lifted a brow. “Did you give her an IQ test?”
“I’m not talking about her intelligence,” Poppy said, looking fierce. “Though, the argument could be made that any woman responding to this ad...”
“Are you about to cast aspersions on my desirability?”
“No,” she said. “I cast those last week, if you recall. It would just be tiresome to cast them again.”
“Why is she stupid?” he pressed.
“Because she has no real concept of what you need. You’re a busy man, and you live in a rural...area. You’re not going to be taking her out to galas every night. And I know she thought that because you’re a rich man galas were going to be part of the deal. But I explained to her that you only go to a certain number of business-oriented events a year, and that you do so grudgingly. That anyone hanging on your arm at such a thing would need to be polished, smiling, and, in general, making up for you.”
He spent a moment deciding if he should be offended by that or not. He decided not to be. Because she was right. He knew his strengths and his limitations.
“She didn’t seem very happy about those details. And that is why I’m saying she’s stupid. She wants to take this...job, essentially. A job that is a life sentence. And she wants it to be about her.”
He frowned. “Obviously, this marriage is not going to be completely about me. I am talking about a marriage and not a position at the company.” Though, he supposed he could see why she would be thinking in those terms. He had placed an ad with strict requirements. And he supposed, as a starting point, it was about him.
“Is that true, Isaiah? Because I kind of doubt it. You don’t want a woman who’s going to inconvenience you.”
“I’m not buying a car,” he said.
“Aren’t you?” She narrowed her eyes, her expression mean.
“No. I realize that.”
“You’re basically making an arranged marriage for yourself.”
“Consider it advanced online dating,” he said. “With a more direct goal.”
“You’re having your assistant choose a wife for you.” She enunciated each word as if he didn’t understand what he’d asked of her.
Her