Her Christmas Gift by Annie Claydon

Author:Annie Claydon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2020-09-15T18:52:43+00:00

* * *

Anders Kent wanted to take the words back the minute they’d left his mouth.

Marry me.

What had he been thinking? He’d just proposed to a complete and total stranger in a sterile room that smelled like soap and puppy chow. A stranger who was dressed as a reindeer. And now she was looking at him as if he was the crazy one.

Oh, the irony.

He wasn’t crazy. Nor was he impulsive, all evidence to the contrary. He was simply desperate. Which was also ironic, considering Anders’s name popped up in the tabloids from time to time as one of New York’s most sought-after bachelors. Anders Kent had an office with a corner window in Wall Street’s premier investment banking firm and a penthouse overlooking Central Park West. If he wanted something, he generally found a way to get it. Romantic entanglements included.

But his current predicament didn’t have anything to do with romance. Far from it. There wasn’t anything remotely romantic about sitting across a desk from your attorney and being told you had thirty days to find a wife.

Anders had been given just such an ultimatum at nine o’clock this morning, and his head had been spinning ever since.

Marriage?

No.

Hell no.

Anders didn’t want to get married—to anyone, least of all the hostile woman beside him who looked as if she was on the verge of prying Lolly’s puppy right out of his arms.

“What did you just say?” She swallowed, and the jingle bells at her throat did a little dance.

“Nothing.” Anders shook his head. He sure as hell wasn’t going to repeat himself. He shouldn’t have opened his mouth to begin with.

You don’t even know this woman’s name.

His gut churned. In the brief span of time since he’d left his lawyer’s office, something strange had happened to Anders. He’d begun to weigh every woman he came across as a potential wife...as if he truly had any intention to go through with the insane requirement.

He wouldn’t. Couldn’t. He’d fight it. He’d throw every dollar he had at fighting it until he won.

But legal battles took time. More often than not, they took years. And Anders didn’t have years. He had a month.

“It didn’t sound like nothing. It definitely sounded like a big fat something.” The woman’s eyes grew wide, panicked.

She’d gotten his message, loud and clear.

He should have phrased it differently, though. He was proposing a business arrangement, not an actual marriage.

Yes, he needed a wife. But not a real one, just a stand-in. A temporary wife. After Lolly’s guardianship was properly settled, everything could go back to normal.

His chest tightened. Normal was a pipe dream. It didn’t exist anymore. His life wouldn’t be normal ever again.

He took a tense inhalation and looked away from the dancing reindeer. “Never mind.”

“Never mind?” She threw her arms in the air. Jingle, jingle, jingle. “You can’t just ask someone to marry you and then take it back. This isn’t the season finale of The Bachelor.”

“I’ve never seen that show,” he said woodenly.

He couldn’t marry this woman.

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