The Magnate's Marriage Merger

“No. But I also didn’t post my profile on that matchmaking site, as I tried to tell you from the start. My grandfather’s assistant ran the photo and the profile after Grandad twisted my arm about marriage.” Ian unfolded himself from his place on the couch to stand, though he did not approach her. “So my grandfather personally reviewed your suggestions that I date...those women.” His jaw flexed with annoyance.

She’d sent ridiculous dating suggestions to the manager of Ian’s profile. She’d been furious to discover he had an active profile on a popular dating website while she’d been falling in love with him. And his refusal to understand why she was upset, his infuriatingly calm insistence that it meant nothing, had shredded her.

She’d been tired and overly emotional at the time, but she’d credited it to her broken heart and deep feelings for him. Only a week later, she’d discovered she was pregnant.

“I was hurt by your cavalier dismissal of my concerns.” She moved toward the glass half wall, taking comfort from the sight of the ocean and the relentless roll of incoming waves. “It was petty of me.”

“My grandfather was the one who was disappointed.” Ian stalked closer, his broad shoulders blocking her view of the water. “But your temporary anger with me doesn’t explain why you deceived my younger brother into thinking he was meeting a potential bride, only to have the woman turn out to be completely unaware of his existence.” Cool fire flashed in Ian’s eyes as he studied her. “It’s one thing to lash out at me. But my family?” He shook his head slowly. “No.”

“That was an accident.” Her temples throbbed with the start of a tension headache as this meeting quickly spiraled out of control. “A genuine accident. Although it didn’t help that Cameron signed a waiver saying he didn’t care if the matches had been vetted—”

“He clicked a button online to agree to that. Hardly the same as signing something.”

“But my assistant explained to him—”

“An assistant who impersonated you, by the way.”

Which was something Lydia regretted tremendously. But she’d handed off Cameron McNeill as a client because she hadn’t been ready to face Ian’s brother with her emotions still raw where Ian was concerned. By the time she’d realized the error in Cameron’s match, it was too late to fix it. Jumping in to deal with the aftermath would have meant facing Ian in person—and she hadn’t been ready for that at a time when she’d only just started to recover emotionally from the miscarriage.

“I am sorry about that.” She pivoted to face him head-on. “I really weighed the options for getting involved after I realized what had happened. But would you really have wanted me to step in when Quinn and Sofia had already announced an engagement? I didn’t want to undermine whatever was happening between them by drawing even more attention to the mismatch with Cameron.” She’d followed the courtship of Sofia Koslov and Quinn McNeill closely and it had been obvious to her from the photos of them together that they were crazy about each other. “And yes, I was trying to protect my identity. My work had become very important to me by then.”

“Very important or very lucrative?”

“Both.” She refused to be cowed by him. Straightening to her full height she narrowed her gaze. “I put one hundred percent of the profits after expenses from matchmaking toward a very worthy cause.”

“Moms’ Connection.”

His quick reply unsettled her. How much did he know about her life in the past year? Her shoulders tensed even tighter.

“How did you know that?”

He rested an elbow on the railing, relaxing his posture.

“That’s actually one of your less well-guarded secrets. I hired a friend to learn the identity of Mallory West in the hope of sparing Cameron any further embarrassment.” Ian shrugged a shoulder. “And to spare Sophia Koslov further embarrassment, since Cameron’s potential bride turned out to be the love of Quinn’s life.”

“I read about that. I’m glad that some good came out of the situation.” She hesitated a moment before deciding to press on. “You hired someone to find me?”

What else did he know about the last year of her life? Worry knotted her gut, but she had to hope that the confidentiality of her medical records had withstood his investigation.

“I wasn’t expecting to find you, Lydia. I hired someone to track Mallory West.” His words were clipped. “I can’t begin to describe my surprise at discovering you’d had a hand in my affairs ever since you broke things off with me last summer.”

“You gave me no choice,” she reminded him, remembering the sting of seeing his smiling, handsome face on a friend’s page of potential matches on the Mates International dating site. “You not only betrayed me, you did so publicly. If we’d been dating in Manhattan instead of Rangiroa, I can only imagine the fallout.” She needed to leave now. To escape whatever dark plans he had in mind by following her to South Beach and insinuating himself back into her life. “But thankfully, that wasn’t the case and the rumors of our affair died quickly enough.”

Pivoting on her heel, she retrieved her tote bag, prepared to request an Uber.

“I just have one question.” Ian followed her across the private terrace, his arms folded over his broad chest as he walked.

“I’m listening.” She found her phone and clutched it in one hand.

“Why do all the profits go to a charity benefiting single mothers?”

It was on the tip of her tongue to lie. To tell him that it was a way to help women like her mother, who’d allowed being a single parent to turn her into a bitter person.

But she knew that he wouldn’t believe her. He knew her better than that, understood the complex and difficult relationship she had with her mom.

“I met a few women who worked with the group.” That was true. Still, her mouth went dry and the heat was beginning to get to her. This whole day was getting to her.

No. Ian McNeill was getting to her.

Those intensely blue eyes seemed to probe all her secrets, seeing right through her.

“How? Where?” he pressed, even as he gestured her toward a seat on the couch again.

He lowered himself to sit beside her as she wondered how much he already knew. She didn’t want to equivocate if his personal investigation had already revealed the truth.

“At a support group for single mothers.” Her eyes met his. Held. “I attended a few meetings in the weeks after our affair.” She had been so touched by those women. So helped by their unwavering support. She took a deep breath. “That was before I lost the pregnancy and...our child.”

* * *

Ian felt like he’d stepped into the elevator shaft and fallen straight down all forty stories.

“What?” He thought he’d been shocked to discover Lydia was the woman behind Mallory West. Yet the blow he’d felt then was nothing compared to this. “You were pregnant when you ended things between us?”

She’d been so fierce and definite. So unwilling to listen to any explanation even though Ian hadn’t done a damn thing to post that stupid profile. And all the time she’d been carrying his child? A new anger surged—putting all the other frustrations on the back burner.

How could she hide that from him?

“I didn’t realize it at the time. But yes.” Lydia unclenched her hand where she’d been holding her cell phone. Setting it carefully aside on the table beside their untouched lunch, she shifted her tote to the outdoor carpet at her feet. She seemed unsure where to look, her eyes darting around the terrace without landing on any one thing. “I realized later that the pregnancy hormones were probably part of the reason why I reacted so strongly to finding your profile online. But it never crossed my mind that I could be pregnant for another week, and then—”

“We were so careful.” His mind went back to those long, sultry nights with her. Lydia all wrapped around him in that villa with no walls where they could look straight out into the Pacific Ocean, the sea breezes cooling their damp bodies after their lovemaking. “Every time we were careful.”

“There were a couple of nights we went in the water,” she reminded him, nibbling on her lower lip. “The hot tub once. And the ocean...remember?”

Her green eyes brought him right back to one of those moments when he’d been looking into them as a rainfall shower sprayed over them in the outdoor Jacuzzi. Her delicate hands had smoothed over his shoulders, nails biting gently into his skin as he moved deeper inside her.

“Yes.” His voice was hoarse with how damn well he remembered. “I recall.”

She pursed her lips. “Maybe one of those times. I don’t know. But I can tell you that I tested positive when it occurred to me I might be pregnant and then—”

“I had a right to know.” That part was only just beginning to really take hold in his brain, firing him up even more. “When you first found out, you should have told me.”

“Because things had ended so happily between us?” she retorted, her brow furrowed. “Ian, you didn’t even deny that you were going to date other people. You said your family wanted you to find a wife.”

“That could have been you.” He articulated the words clearly, restraining himself when he wanted to roar them for all of South Beach to hear. “And I didn’t deny your ludicrous accusation about dating other people because I had no intention of dating anyone but you.”

Hell, he’d fallen in love with her. He’d been ready to propose, thought they knew everything about each other there could be to know. And it had insulted him in the very fiber of his being that a woman he cared about so much could think so poorly of him that he would advertise himself for dates with other women. Clearly, they hadn’t known each other as well as he thought. He’d been too damn impulsive and mistook intense—very intense—passion for love.

Later, he’d forgotten about his grandfather’s plan, pure and simple, because he’d been caught up in his work and in Lydia. Plus, they’d been a million miles from home and the pressure of the McNeill world.

She went so quiet that he wondered what she was thinking. Instead of asking, he helped himself to a swig of the prosecco they’d left out on the table, trying to settle his own thoughts.

“As I said, I was probably operating under the influence of pregnancy hormones. I’ve spoken to a lot of other mothers since then, and they say it’s a powerful chemical change.” She surprised him with her practical admission, especially after the matchmaking games she’d played last summer.

Maybe time had softened her initial anger with him. Or showed her that he might not be fully to blame for his grandfather’s matchmaking transgression.

“Setting aside the fact that you never informed me about our child—” he took a deep breath as he willed himself to set it aside, too “—can you tell me what happened? Why do the doctors think you miscarried?”

He had a million other questions. How far along had she been? Had she ever considered reaching out to him before she’d lost the baby? What if the pregnancy had gone to full term? Would she have ever contacted him?

That last question, and the possibility that the answer was no, burned right through him.

“The cause was undetermined. My doctor assured me miscarriages happen in ten to twenty-five percent of pregnancies for women in their child-bearing years, so it’s not that unusual.” She laid a hand across her abdomen as she spoke. An unconscious gesture? “The most common cause is a chromosome abnormality, but there’s no reason to believe it would happen to me again.”

Hearing the vulnerability in her voice, seeing it for himself in her eyes, made some of the resentment ease away.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there with you.” He reached to take her hand resting beside him on the couch.

Her skin felt cool to the touch despite the heat. She stared down at his fingers clasping hers, but didn’t move away from the connection.

“I didn’t handle it well.” She retrieved her bottle of water and took a long drink. “It might have been hormones, but the sadness was overwhelming. But I spent a lot of time with the mothers’ group I told you about. Being with them helped me to heal.”

A row of misters clicked on nearby to provide water to the exotic flowers tucked in a planter by the doors to his suite. The cool spray glanced over their skin before the water evaporated in the Miami sun glinting off white stone walls all around the rooftop terrace.

“That’s why you support this group now—Moms’ Connection.” He tried to fit the pieces together in his mind to figure out what she’d been through in the past year.

“Yes. I met some incredibly strong women who inspired me. Seeing their efforts to help other single mothers made me realize how petty it was for me to meddle in the matches that were being sent to you.” She hesitated. “I started to put more effort into really matching up people and I discovered I was good at it.”

Sliding her hand from his grip, she smoothed it along the hem of her dress, straightening the fabric.

“So you kept at it and used the funds to help the group that helped you.” His vision of her shifted slightly, coming into sharper focus. “And what happened with Sofia Koslov and my brother was, as you say, a genuine accident.”

“Yes. I shouldn’t have taken your brother on as a client, but by that time, Kinley was filling in for me often. I was away for several weeks last winter doing a job for a singer who moved to Las Vegas for an extended contract and wanted me to design her new home.” Lydia picked one red strawberry from a plate on the table. “But the profits from the matchmaking work were doing a lot of good for the mothers’ organization by then. I didn’t want to let my support of a good cause lapse. I still don’t.”

She bit into the strawberry, her lips molding to the red fruit in a way that made his mouth go dry.

“You must be aware that Sofia Koslov’s father is an extremely wealthy and powerful man. He allowed my family to investigate the matter of Mallory West’s identity since she’s now engaged to Quinn, but when he finds out who you are, he has every intention of suing.” Ian hadn’t told a soul about discovering that Lydia was behind the debacle.

He hadn’t even told his two brothers, which didn’t sit particularly well with him. But he’d been handed an opportunity to bargain with this woman and he wasn’t about to lose it.

Initially, he’d entertained fantasies about leveraging his position for revenge. But now he knew that his relationship with Lydia was far more complex than that. There was still an undeniable spark between them—and a connection that went deeper than just the attraction. Otherwise, the news of her losing a pregnancy wouldn’t have affected him like a sledgehammer to his chest.

Which meant he was going to be bargaining for something more than sensual revenge.

“I had hoped now that Sofia is marrying your brother later this month, her father wouldn’t want to draw public attention to the matchmaking mishap.” The worry in Lydia’s eyes was unmistakable as the ocean breeze tousled her dark hair where it rested on her shoulders.

Ian buried any concern he might have had about her feelings. She certainly hadn’t taken his into account when she hid the news of his child from him.

“Vitaly Koslov strikes me as a man who does not forget a slight to his family.” Ian respected that. He wasn’t inclined to let a slight to his go unchecked either. “But I have a suggestion that might help you avoid a civil suit and restore your matchmaking business.”

“You do?” The hope that sparked in her gaze ignited a response in him.

This was a good plan. And it was going to solve problems for them both.

“You are aware that, due to familial pressure, I am in the market for a wife?” The terms of his grandfather’s will had caused him no end of grief in his relationship with Lydia, after all. “Last summer, my grandfather had already started to apply pressure to wed, but this winter, he created legally binding terms in a rewritten will. In order to retain family control of my grandfather’s legacy, my brothers and I each need to marry for at least twelve months.”

“But you already have your own successful business—”

“Keeping McNeill Resorts in the family is about legacy, not finances.” He wouldn’t allow his third of the company to go to strangers. Cameron and Quinn felt the same about the family empire.

“I can help you find someone, if you’d like a private consultation.” Her words were stiff and formal.

Did she honestly not guess his intent? Or was she bracing for the inevitable?

“That’s kind of you. But I’m perfectly capable of choosing a temporary wife for myself.”

“You’re taking over that task from your grandfather?” She arched an eyebrow at him, challenging.

With just one fiery look, she reminded him how good it was going to be when he touched her again.

And he would touch her again. Soon.

“Definitely. My search just ended, Lydia.” He allowed himself the pleasure of skimming a knuckle down her bare arm. “You will solve both our problems if you agree to be my wife for the next twelve months.”

Four

“He proposed to you?” Lydia’s assistant, Kinley, squealed in Lydia’s ear late that night during a conference call to catch up on business back in New York.

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