Falling For Her Fake Fiancé (The Beaumont Heirs 5) by Sarah M. Anderson Read Free Book Online

you’ve been fending off men for years. But this proposal isn’t based on want.” However, that didn’t stop his gaze from briefly drifting down to her chest. She had
such
an amazing body.
    Her lips tightened, and she fiddled with the button on her jacket. “Then what’s it based on?”
    “I’m proposing a short-term arrangement. A marriage of convenience. Love doesn’t need to play a role.”
    “Love?” she asked, batting her eyelashes. “There’s more to a marriage than that.”
    “Point. Lust also is not a part of my proposal. A one-year marriage. We don’t have to live together. We don’t have to sleep together. We need to occasionally be seen in public together. That’s it.”
    She blinked at him. “You’re serious, aren’t you? What kind of marriage would
that
be?”
    Now it was Ethan’s turn to fidget with his wineglass. He didn’t want to get into the particulars of his parents’ marriage at the moment. “Suffice it to say, I’ve seen long-distance marriages work out quite well for all parties involved.”
    “How delightful,” she responded, disbelief dripping off every word. “Are you gay?”
    “What? No!” He jolted so hard that he almost knocked his glass over. “I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with that. But I’m not.”
    “Pity. I might consider a loveless, sexless marriage to a gay man. Sadly,” she went on in a not-sad voice, “I don’t trust you to hold up your sexless end of the bargain.”
    “I’m not saying we couldn’t have sex.” In fact, given the way she’d pressed her lips to his cheek earlier, the way she’d held his hand—he’d be perfectly fine with sex with her. “I’m merely saying it’s not expected. It’s not a deal breaker.”
    She regarded him with open curiosity. “So let me see if I understand this proposal, such as it is. You’d like me to marry you and lend the weight of the Beaumont name to your destruction of the Beaumont Brewery—”
    “Reconstruction, not destruction,” he interrupted.
    She ignored him. “In a starter marriage that has a built-in sunset at one year, no other strings attached?”
    “That sums it up.”
    “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t stab you in the hand with my knife.”
    He flinched. “Actually, I was waiting for you to give me a good reason.” She looked at him flatly. “I read online that your digital art gallery recently failed.” He said it gently. He could sympathize with a well-thought-out project going sideways—or backward.
    She rested her hand on her knife. But she didn’t say anything. Her eyes—beautiful light eyes that walked the line between blue and green—bore into him.
    “If there was something that I—as an investor—could help you with,” he went on, keeping his voice quiet, “well, that could be part of our negotiation. It’d be venture capital—
not
an attempt to buy you,” he added. She took her hand off her knife and put it in her lap, which Ethan took as a sign that he’d hit the correct nerve. He went on, “I wouldn’t—and couldn’t—cut you a personal check. But as an angel investor, I’m sure we could come to terms you’d find satisfactory.”
    “Interesting use of the word
angel
there,” she said. Her voice was quiet. None of the seduction or coquettishness that she’d wielded like a weapon remained.
    Finally, he was talking to the real Frances Beaumont. No more artifice, no more layers. Just a beautiful, intelligent woman. A woman he’d just proposed to.
    This was for the job, he reminded himself. He was only proposing because he needed to get control of the Beaumont Brewery, and Frances Beaumont was the shortest, straightest line between where he was today and where he needed to be. It had nothing to do with the actual woman.
    “Do you do this often? Propose marriage to women connected with the businesses you’re stripping?”
    “No, actually. This would be a first for me.”
    She picked up her knife, and he unwittingly tensed. One