His Marriage Bonus. Cathy Gillen Thacker

can’t forgive you for this!”

      Ignoring the hurt look on her father’s face, and the stunned look on Mitch’s, she grabbed her handbag, turned on her heel and stormed out.

      “SHE’S NOT THE ONLY ONE who is shocked by this proposal of yours,” Mitch said in the silence that fell. He was damn near flabbergasted.

      “I want my daughter to marry well,” Payton Heyward said.

      “But to a Deveraux?” Mitch countered, filled with the uneasy feeling that Heyward was withholding every bit as much information from Mitch and Lauren as he was telling. “As you pointed out to me six months ago when I first approached you with the idea of a merger, the Deveraux and the Heywards have a history of duking it out in the marketplace—in ever-inventive ways.” Was this just another one of them? Mitch wondered. And if so, was Payton’s daughter, Lauren, not only one hell of an actress but now an active participant in the competition between the two firms, albeit in an unexpectedly inventive way?

      “Well, I thought it over, and you are right. Our two shipping businesses’ continued battle for market share was unnecessarily sapping the energy and resources from us both. We should stop trying to outsell each other, agree to go after different areas of the marketplace and focus on simply increasing revenue in our own specifically targeted areas.”

      Mitch remembered the meeting—and his own disappointment and disillusionment afterward—well. “Right, and even after I finally managed to convince you that my proposal wasn’t a trick to diminish your various accounts or overall sales, you still didn’t want any part of a formal no-compete agreement, never mind a merger between our two firms.” Nor, unfortunately, had Mitch’s father. Mitch looked Payton straight in the eye. “You said competition was the lifeblood of business and that your ongoing contest with my father and me was what kept you and your sales force on their toes.”

      “And that’s still true,” Payton said matter-of-factly. “But so is what you said. Maybe it’s time we both looked at change. And the best way, the surest way, to do that is through you and Lauren. Don’t you see?” Payton returned to his desk and sat down, albeit a bit stiffly. “If you and Lauren marry and join our families and businesses through that marriage, it gives us an incentive to make the situation work fairly for both families and businesses. It’s sort of like an insurance policy that both sides will do their best to see that you and Lauren are happy.”

      “With one exception,” Mitch corrected, his uneasiness only increasing as he looked Payton Heyward straight in the eye. “I never brought up the idea of either dating your daughter or marrying her. Furthermore, you just saw what Lauren’s answer to your proposition is. She wasn’t the least bit open to the idea.”

      Payton waved a hand and countered confidently, “She’s upset. She’ll calm down once she’s had an opportunity to mull it all over.”

      Mitch wasn’t so sure of that. Lauren had looked pretty certain of her feelings to him. “I’m not interested in having a woman forced to marry me for business reasons,” Mitch said firmly. Being married for what he’d thought were all the right reasons, and having that not work out, had been hard enough. He didn’t think he could weather another unhappy liaison, even if his emotions weren’t involved this time because the marriage was strictly a matter of convenience.

      “She won’t be coerced into this if you play your cards right and convince her to cooperate,” Payton persuaded softly.

      “And why would I want to do that?” Mitch asked.

      Payton smiled magnanimously. “Because of the secret bonus in this for you,” he said.

      Secrets were trouble. Mitch knew that. And yet the more curious side of him couldn’t keep from biting as he rose from his chair and began to pace. “I’m listening,” he said impatiently after a moment.

      “If you can get Lauren to marry you, I will give you fifty-one percent of Heyward Shipping as dowry as well as the position of CEO during the transition period. I will control the other forty-nine percent until my death, and then that percentage will go to Lauren.”

      “Which would leave me in control of the company,” Mitch said. And a huge chunk of the Deveraux-Heyward empire on his own. The idea of that, of having his own shipping company to run even before his father retired and turned over the Deveraux empire to him, appealed to him immensely.

      “Naturally I’d want to give you every incentive to make this arranged courtship and marriage of yours work,” Payton continued, “so if the marriage dissolves, your fifty-one percent of the company will revert to me, and eventually, Lauren’s control.”

      Mitch forced his attention to the problem at hand. “Unfortunately,” Mitch told Payton frankly, “Lauren won’t even go for the idea of us dating for one week. She’ll never agree to the two of us marrying.” Even if he wanted that, Mitch added silently to himself, and he didn’t think that he did.

      Payton eyed Mitch thoughtfully. “That’s why this part of our agreement must remain secret,” Payton explained even more pragmatically. “Lauren doesn’t understand the shipping business and the enormous responsibility of running a huge company. She would not comprehend that I am only doing this to make sure that she and her financial interests are taken care of for the rest of her life. You, on the other hand, have already weathered a messy, ugly divorce. And no doubt know that passion is a poor basis for a marriage meant to last a lifetime.”

      Mitch had already come to the same conclusion, and in fact, had been looking for a wife who would enhance rather than complicate his life. However, he wasn’t sure an overemotional woman like Lauren was what he was looking for. He’d had in mind someone a lot more sedate and willing to follow his directions. On the other hand, a deal like this—with such a lucrative payoff—did not come along all that often. Mitch didn’t want to pass it up. And that went double for the part of it that Payton had dared mention in Lauren’s presence.

      Already beginning to formulate a plan, Mitch checked his watch. “You said I’ve got until six o’clock to decide about the merger?” he asked casually.

      Payton nodded. “The deal requires you date my daughter for one week, starting tonight, every evening from 6:00 p.m. until midnight. I don’t care what you do. Or how you spend your time. As long as you spend it together.”

      Chapter Two

      “I thought I might find you here,” Mitch said as he stepped through the open front door at 10 Gathering Street and confronted Lauren, who was standing in the majestic front hall looking at the chandelier above her head. She had taken off her fitted coral blazer and looped it over the newel post of the sweeping staircase railing.

      Lauren turned to regard him with a sweetly challenging look. “And I thought you might come after me.”

      “Because I found you irresistible?” he asked, mocking her wry tone to a tee.

      “Because you found the business deal my father offered you irresistible,” Lauren corrected, color filling her cheeks.

      If only she knew what had been offered—in exchange for her hand in marriage—after she left.

      “Don’t you think that’s a little like the case of the pot calling the kettle black?” Mitch questioned casually, shutting the heavy oak door behind him. He stepped closer, noting how snugly her sleeveless white silk blouse molded the fullness of her breasts and the slenderness of her torso, while revealing her well-toned arms and the sexy, rounded curves of her shoulders.

      Lauren tilted her face up to his, looking all the more outraged. “What do you mean?” she bit out in a low, clipped tone.

      Mitch shrugged. “You’re interested in the deal your father offered, too. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here looking at the house and wondering just how bad it would be to date me for one week, if at the end of that time you owned this showplace.”

      Lauren shook her head indignantly. “Even if I agreed to that—which, by the way, I have not—I still