Falling For Her Fake Fiancé. Sarah M. Anderson

snorted. “I’ll be sure to pass such touching sentiments along to my brother—the man you replaced.”

      “By all accounts, he was quite the businessman. I’m sure that he’d agree with me. After all, he made significant changes to the management structure himself after his father passed. But he was constrained by that sense of family you so aptly described. I am not.”

      “All the good it’s doing you.” She took another sip of wine, a slightly larger one than before.

      “You see my problem. If the workers fight me on this, it won’t be only a few people who lose their jobs—the entire company will shut down, and we will all suffer.”

      She tilted her head from side to side, considering. “Perhaps it should. The Beaumont Brewery without a Beaumont isn’t the same thing, no matter what the marketing department says.”

      “Would you really give your blessing to job losses for hundreds of workers, just for the sake of a name?”

      “It’s my name,” she shot at him.

      But he was right. If the company went down in flames, it’d burn the people she cared for. Her brothers would be safe—they’d already ensconced themselves in the Percheron Drafts brewery. But Bob and Delores and all the rest? The ones who’d whispered to her how nervous they were about the way the wind was blowing? Who were afraid for their families? The ones who knew they were too old to start over, who were scared that they’d be forced into early retirement without the generous pension benefits the Beaumont Brewery had always offered its loyal employees?

      “Which brings us back to the heart of the matter. I need you.”

      “No, you don’t. You need my approval.” Her lobster was no doubt getting cold, but she didn’t have much of an appetite at the moment.

      Something that might have been a smile played over his lips. For some reason, she took it as a compliment, as if he was acknowledging her intelligence for real this time, instead of paying lip service to it. “Why didn’t you go into the family business? You’d have made a hell of a negotiator.”

      “I find business, in general, to be beneath me.” She cast a cutting look at him. “Much like many of the people who willingly choose to engage in it.”

      He laughed then, a real thing that she wished grated on her ears and her nerves but didn’t. It was a warm sound, full of humor and honesty. It made her want to smile. She didn’t. “I’m not going to take the job.”

      “I wasn’t going to offer it to you again. You’re right—it is beneath you.”

      Here it came—the trap he was waiting to spring. He leaned forward, his gaze intent on hers and in the space of a second, before he spoke, she realized what he was about to say. All she could think was, Oh, hell.

      “I don’t want to hire you. I want to marry you.”