The Marriage Maker. Christie Ridgway

side of the small room, where he leaned his shoulders against the wall. “’Why you’?” he echoed.

      Cleo tightened her grip on the edge of her old oak desk. “It’s a hard question?”

      “No. Yes.” He groaned and pushed his hands impatiently through his hair.

      Cleo had never seen the golden locks so disordered, not even the night she’d touched them herself as they’d kissed. She ignored the little hot rush of her blood at the memory. “Talk to me, Ethan,” she said quietly.

      His fingers raked through his hair once again. “My attorney in Houston—the one handling Della’s estate and all the legalities regarding Jonah—he’s very experienced in custody issues.”

      Cleo nodded. Ethan was no fool and money was no object. He’d hire the best.

      “The Coving tons—Jonah’s grandparents—have a lot of influence in Houston. If it comes to a court battle, they have the time and the money. To ensure I keep Jonah the attorney thought I needed something better than fat bank accounts, a trust fund for Jonah, and a top-ranked nanny. He thought I needed—”

      “A wife.” Cleo wasn’t a fool, either.

      “A mother for Jonah,” Ethan corrected quickly.

      Cleo’s blood was running cooler now, but there was still hope in her heart. “That still doesn’t explain why you came to see me, Ethan. Certainly you know plenty of women in other places. Someone from Houston, for example.”

      He shifted uncomfortably. “Cleo…”

      “I never thought you were a man who didn’t appreciate your share of women, Ethan.”

      He shifted again. “Sure, I have ‘appreciated’ women, but it’s not like I have a harem of them all dying to wear my ring.”

      Cleo wanted to disagree, certain there were several—if not dozens—of women who wouldn’t say no to Ethan. Women who’d be thrilled to wear his ring.

      Such as herself.

      Without warning, she remembered again that night on the love seat in the little den. She remembered how needy she’d been for him, how her pulse leaped when he’d touched her with his big hands. How she’d craved to have all of him against all of her.

      No man had ever made her so excited and so hungry. And now she could have it all if she agreed to wear his ring. But still…

      “You’re in Montana, Ethan. Looking for a wife in my office. Please, just say it. Why me?”

      “Because you’re perfect, Cleo.”

      Her heart went crazy again, hopping around like a high school cheerleader. She released her grip on the desk, just about to launch herself into his arms.

      “Because you’re so…capable.”

      Capable? Cleo’s heart tripped, and then fell with a long whoosh. Going cold, hot, cold, she sagged back against the desk, but he didn’t seem to notice.

      Instead Ethan smiled at her and continued. “You see, you’re a child care provider. How ideal is that? You have the education and the experience to be an unbeatable mother. My attorney couldn’t be happier.”

      “Your attorney is happy?”

      Ethan smiled wider and nodded. “’Unbeatable mother material.’ Those were his exact words.”

      “What about a wife?” she said quietly, her words tinged with just a bit of sharpness. “What kind of wife material do you suppose I am?”

      Ethan looked suddenly wary and he tried to step back, but his heel hit the wall with a soft thump. “Cleo, I—”

      “What kind of wife material do you suppose I am, Ethan?” she asked again, her voice steelier this time.

      He looked down at his hands for a moment, as if the answer might be written on them. Then he looked back up, his blue eyes guarded. “You’re a practical, capable, sensible woman, Cleo. I think you make fine wife material or I wouldn’t be here.”

      Capable. Practical. Sensible.

      Maybe it was because she hadn’t slept well the night before—she hadn’t slept well in three months—that the words sounded more like insults instead of flattery.

      Ethan needed a mother for Jonah and she had the right credentials. Ethan was willing to take a wife to get that mother, and she fit the bill because she was practical, capable, sensible.

      Was that really the best thing anyone could say about her? It certainly echoed the sentiments her mother, sister and cousin had expressed this morning. Everyone was so darn certain that Cleo was sensible and practical.

      Or maybe she was really just boring.

      She crossed her arms over her chest, suddenly mad at the world, but especially mad at Ethan, her family, herself. What kind of woman gave a man the impression she’d be swayed by “practical” and “capable” and “sensible”?

      She took a fast breath through her nose. “No,” she said.

      He blinked. “No, what?”

      Cleo stared at him. What an idiot. “No, I won’t marry you.”

      He blinked again. “Cleo—”

      “Go find someone else, Ethan.” She cast a look at Jonah and found herself softening when she saw the baby’s sweet round cheeks and silky eyebrows. So she looked back at the rotten, gorgeous, and unpleasantly surprised Ethan.

      Practical. Sensible. Ugh. “Goodbye,” she said briskly.

      “Goodbye?” he echoed stupidly.

      “Goodbye.”

      He swallowed. “We can’t talk about this some more?” He came toward her and she backed around her desk. “If not now, sometime later?”

      So what that he was so darn good-looking he made her heart flutter? “No. I’m too busy. I have Bean sprouts to run. Children, the staff.” She looked out the window and remembered the most pressing problem. “I have to find a new building. My lease is running out and this one is up for sale.”

      Without waiting for him to answer, she sat in her chair and pulled a list of phone numbers from her desk drawer. “If you’ll excuse me, Ethan.” She put her hand on the phone.

      He could be as belligerent as she. “What if I won’t?”

      She refused to look at him, even for one last time. “Please,” she said.

      A long, tense pause and then there was a flurry of movement and firm footsteps. Her office door opened, closed.

      The room was without Ethan.

      Cleo instantly folded, bending over to rest her flushed cheek on the cool desktop. Hot tears stung her eyes and she was unsure whether she was elated or disappointed that Ethan had given up.

      Three

      It was past 6:00 p.m. and Cleo was still sitting at her desk. The last Beansprouts’s child had been picked up and the last staffer had gone home. She told herself she was taking advantage of the unfamiliar quiet to catch up on her bottomless stack of paperwork, but the only paper she’d put pencil to was a leaf from one of her “list pads”—stacks of tear-off sheets preprinted with lines.

      Cleo had more list pads than most women had shoes. Yellow ones edged with flowers, white ones with a teacher’s apple bulleting each line item; list pads printed on graph paper with thick, no-nonsense lines of military blue.

      A sheet of that pad lay in front of her now, and she would have sworn she was just doodling as she stared out her window at the May twilight, but then she looked down. Her “doodles” were words, and what she’d really created was a list of the many practical, sensible things she’d done with her life.

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