We stood in an uncomfortable silence for a long time, just looking at one another.
“Why do you need to marry?” she asked, her words only slightly slurred. “And why me?”
I sipped again, owing her as much of the truth as I dared give her. “In my home country,” I said slowly, “I have an inheritance waiting. I can’t gain it unless I’m thirty-two years old, which I now am. And wed. That’s written into my father’s will.”
“Oh.”
“The reason I asked you,” I continued, “is because Willow said you are the best candidate. That I’m – underestimating you.”
Hayley swallowed the last of her vodka in an impressive gulp. She half choked, coughing, and tears ran down her cheeks again. Gasping, she asked, her voice hoarse, “What’s she got to do with this?”
“Well, she has a certain authority,” I replied. “As well as being my aunt.”
“Oh.”
Turning, Hayley poured another knock of booze into her glass. I stepped forward and took the bottle from her. “I need you sober enough to realize what you’re doing if you agree.”
She waggled her glass. “Oh, sure. Marry my boss, sleep in his bed, help him inherit his father’s empire.”
“It is just a temporary solution,” I admitted, pouring alcohol into my glass. “When I inherit, we can go our separate ways.”
“And what do I get out of all this?”
Once again, Hayley shocked me with a sharp intelligence I never saw in her before. A cunning light gleamed in her green eyes as she watched me over the rim of her glass. “Kids I have to raise by myself? Once you get what you want, I’m kicked to the curb? No child support or alimony?”
“We can draw up a financial agreement,” I replied. “A contract. Including support for any children if we happen to have any.”
“I don’t want your kid,” Hayley snapped, her tone flat. “You get me preggers, you raise it.”
“Where did this spine come from?” I inquired politely. “I thought you didn’t have enough guts to say boo.”
“Nunya.” Hayley drank again, but rather than exacerbate her drunkenness, she seemed to be sobering up. “Are you rich?”
I laughed. “Very.”
“Then we’ll negotiate a price.” Hayley grinned. “Call it a bride price.”
With every passing moment she amazed me more and more. “Why aren’t you like this at the office?”
“Nunya.”
“I guess it takes you drinking too much for your true self to come forward. I like this side of you.”
“But I don’t like you. You’re an arrogant ass.”
I smiled. “So Willow informs me often enough. Do we have a deal? You’ll marry me?”
Not speaking, Hayley studied my face for a long time, her drink in her hand. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. For the first time since I’d met her, she made me uncomfortable. As though I’d become the bug under the glass and she the scientist.
“What are you like?” she asked at last.
“What do you mean?”
She waved her hand, impatient. “Are you abusive? Do you hit your women? Are you kind in bed? What are you like?”
At first, her questions angered me. Then I counted slowly to five, and pondered her reasons for asking them. Hayley hardly knew me at all. Would she enter into this fake marriage only for me to hurt her? I recalled Willow’s notion that Hayley had been beaten down by life.
“No,” I replied softly. “I’m not abusive. And I promise I’ll be kind in bed.”
