I Do (Marriage of Convenience Romance) Read online

  I Do (Marriage of Convenience Romance)

  I Do (Marriage of Convenience Romance)

  Midpoint

  I Do

  Marriage of Convenience Romance

  Amy Faye

  Published by Heartthrob Publishing

  If you want news about new novel releases, you can sign up for my mailing list here: http://eepurl.com/cmQY05

  Smashwords License Statement

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please visit your favorite ebook retailer to purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Here’s a preview of the sexy love story you’re about to read…

  “Tell me you want it,” he said.

  “Oh, fuck, I want it,” Rose whimpered. It didn’t take a great deal of acting to get herself to sound like she was desperate for it. She was.

  He pulled her panties aside and pushed himself inside.

  “Oh, fuck, you’re tight,” he growled. “Twins? You’re kidding.”

  She let out a hum of pleasure at the feeling of his cock stretching her out. Before he’d fucked her the last time, it had never felt so full. And now it seemed even bigger. The venue made her clamp down with every part of her body, some part of her subconscious knowing that she wasn’t supposed to have anything in there while she was surrounded by offices.

  “Oh, Sir. Please fuck me.”

  “You really want this job, don’t you?”

  “I want you to fuck me,” Rose said.

  He started to move, his movements rough. He started at a slow rhythm, making sure to use every inch of his length. After a few thrusts he seemed to get into a groove, and his movements started to speed up until Rose felt as if she was going to lose her mind.

  His hands dug into her hips with every thrust, the force of his hips slamming into hers pulling his fingers a little bit away from the crease of her hips with every thrust. His fingers dug in harder, trying to keep a grip. His thrusts grew even more forceful, then. His movements shortened until he was staying deep the whole time, just moving enough to drive himself the full depth with every thrust. All the way in.

  Rose’s body shuddered under him as an orgasm overtook her. Her memories couldn’t possibly measure up to the reality of what she was experiencing. She wasn’t sure that she could work for this man. Not unless she ‘had to’ start the day with this every day. And then, for a second time in her life, Rose felt him stiffen behind her, felt his cock twitch, and felt him release a load of seed inside her.

  If she was lucky, this time it wasn’t going to signal his running away for a year, and it wasn’t going to be the start of being a single mother of four instead of two.

  Though with Duncan’s daddy’s money, it wasn’t going to be that bad.

  But if she could have Duncan’s daddy’s money and her mystery-boss’s cock buried deep in her, that would be a compromise for the centuries.

  If you want news about new novel releases, you can sign up for my mailing list here: http://eepurl.com/cmQY05

  One

  There were things that Rose Sewell wanted about marriage. There were a lot of them. She’d never made a formal list, but she was pretty sure that once she got started making one, it would fill most of a page.

  She wanted the attention, as embarrassing as it was to admit it. She wanted the rice and the ceremony and she wanted it in a church. She wanted the tax benefits, too. Wanted the stability it would give her and her little twins. That was, perhaps, the most important part of all. She wanted someone who could make sure that she was provided for.

  Of course, that wasn’t all she wanted. Most of a page, remember. She wanted the loving relationship, too. She wanted the government permission to have sex all the time. She wanted to find herself a man and have a hundred of his babies and be a homemaker.

  Well, there were things that she didn’t want, too. Like, for example, to have to decide whether they went with a blue-silver theme, or a purple-gold theme, or… there were, as she was finding out, about ten thousand decisions like that to be made.

  Maybe, in an alternate universe, her mother would have helped with this. She’d have picked colors when Rose stood up in a huff and walked off without picking. But her mother wasn’t around any more. Maybe her father would have stepped in. But he wasn’t around, either. Which was the source of most of her problems.

  And she wasn’t going to get the sex, or the babies, or the love, either.

  Rose was a sensible person. Love and sex were an important part of marriage, but they weren’t the only thing in marriage. They were something that she could get in a perfect situation. She wasn’t in a perfect situation. She needed money, and she needed the tax break, and that meant getting married. It was that simple.

  Duncan’s lips pressed tight together and he looked at her. Rose was vaguely aware of him at the edge of her consciousness. The fact that he was watching her registered and she ignored it. This needed to get done.

  “Rosie, if you don’t want to do this…”

  “It needs to get done,” she said sharply. “And I hate it when you call me that.”

  “Oh, come on. Don’t take that from me.”

  “I took it from you ten years ago, and you ignored that completely. Why would you suddenly start listening now?”

  “Ouch. That’s harsh.”

  “Well? Am I wrong?”

  She studied the colors in front of her as movement flicked at the edge of her vision. His frown twisted into a wide grin. “No.”

  “Now come on. Teal or Navy?”

  “You don’t think Navy is a little dark?”

  “It’s an accent color. Of course it’s dark.”

  “You know who you’re talking to, right? I know about accent colors.”

  “Oh, right. I forgot that you are what you eat. You’ve fucked enough of those skinny artist boys that you’ve absorbed it by osmosis.”

  “That’s not fair. I went to art school.”

  “For a semester, Duncan. It was never for you.”

  He shrugged and leaned forward. “I don’t recall you ever having a different man every night.”

  “I don’t want a different man every night.”

  Duncan picked up one of the cards. “Right. Your mystery baby-daddy, right?”

  “Isn’t this supposed to be talking for the wedding? Are we supposed to be getting married?”

  Duncan dropped the card back on the table and picked up the other one, sat back in his chair, and studied it. When he spoke, she could hear the distraction thick in his voice.

  “Oh, come on. It’s the twenty-first century. What’s a little marriage going to get in the way of sex?”

  She let out a breath and snatched the card out of his hand. “Alright, this one it is.”

  “Come on. I was looking at that.”

  “You got that look on your face like your brain was melting, Duncan. Let’s just get a cup of coffee or something.”

  “I guess.”

  “I’ve got an appointment next week to meet with the dress people. They’ll love this whole thing, I tell you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well. I wasn’t going to tell them the whole thing. Just the deadline. They’re going to love that.”

  “I’m not sure that you and I have the same ideas of love.”

  “Just like how I love you, Duncan. Love like a punch in the nose.”

  “I aim to please,” he
said. He was practically preening, as if she’d given him the best compliment that he’d ever received.

  She set the color combination card off to the side, picked up the rest, and shuffled them into a pile. On the way out the door, she dropped them into the trash.

  The girls didn’t want to be woken up. But then again, neither did Rose, ten times a night, and that was going to happen regardless. So they were going to wake up to get carried to the car. It was dinner time for grown-up people, and that meant that it was car-ride time for baby girls.

  She hooked her hands together to help carry the weight in each elbow until Duncan offered to take one. She gave Sarah over and kept Violet for herself. That would show him not to just reach for the little sweetie. Then again, maybe he preferred the spitfires. He seemed to like her well enough, after all.

  They were just about buckled into the car-seats when her phone buzzed in her pocket. She kept working and half-felt for more buzzing. Buzzing that didn’t come. A text, then. No problem.

  Which was a mistake to think, she realized later. Because she’d just received a company-wide text from her new boss, and he wanted everyone to come in. Not coming to the first meeting under a new administration was going to form an excellent first impression.

  Two

  The first thing that Rose knew about the transition of power was walking into work the next day. Nobody said anything. That was the first hint. The crew at her work, particularly the people that she worked with, were gossip hounds. If they weren’t gossiping, it was because they were afraid that something was going to get said, and that meant there was something to say.

  Which meant that she’d missed something, because nobody leaned over to her and said ‘do you know what’s up with Craig and Linda?’

  The implication was clear. She’d missed something, and apparently it had something to do with the meeting she’d been texted about. From a mystery number, no less. So she sat down at her workstation, hit the power button, and leaned back into her chair and hoped to heaven that Sarah and Violet were behaving at day-care for once.

  A voice behind her cleared his throat. It was clearly a man’s deep voice. It was hard to recognize who someone was from the way they cleared their throat, but she could tell the condescending attitude of Marcus anywhere. It was like a feeling that descended over the room when he decided to sink himself in, rather than any one specific thing.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Was there some kind of problem yesterday?”

  “Yeah,” Rose said, turning and standing up. The tone in his voice pissed her off, and her head hurt more than it should have. So she was overreacting. But that was also the only way that you could react to Marcus when he got a bug up his ass. “There was. I was knee deep in wedding plans, so maybe I was busy. Thanks for asking Marcus.”

  “Well, the boss wants to see you.”

  “Bob’s here?” That was a change of pace.

  “The new boss,” Marcus said. His voice was crisp. “Which you’d know about if you bothered to come in yesterday.”

  Rose didn’t manage to stop her eyebrows from shooting up. “New boss, huh?”

  Craig nodded at the edge of her vision. She gave him a tight-fisted thumbs-up. He nodded again.

  “This way.”

  He took her into the break room, which Rose noticed immediately wasn’t the straightest way to any part of the office other than the refrigerator.

  “You need to make up major brownie points here, Rose. Major.”

  “I’m going to be fine,” she said. “I’ll be very polite and apologetic.”

  “You had better be. This guy’s not screwing around. He’s one of those corporate types, and I’m pretty sure everyone’s ass is on the line here.”

  “Well, thanks for the warning.”

  “I don’t want you getting fired without even knowing in advance. You may be lazy and disrespectful, but you’re a good girl deep down.”

  “That might be the nicest mean thing anyone’s ever said to me,” Rose said, and winked. Marcus’s lips tightened in an expression that might have been amusement if I’d ever seen him smile.

  “Alright, come on. He’s waiting.”

  Rose followed. She practiced having an apologetic expression. It was hard to do when she thought about the fact that Marcus thought she was a good girl, deep down. It was like being told that Josef Stalin approved of your behavior.

  “Go on inside. He’s expecting you.”

  Marcus turned and walked away, leaving Rose standing at the door. Whoever was waiting inside, he must have heard them. Which meant that she couldn’t take more than an instant to gather herself. So she did what she did best: went in blind and unprepared and hoping things would work out.

  Which, to her very great surprise, they did. Not the way she expected, of course. She expected and hoped for him to like her and for the two of them to have a great working relationship. What she had instead was a sudden sense of deja-vu which took only an instant to clarify into a memory of a wild night with a stranger out at a business convention.

  A night that had turned into two baby girls, forty weeks later.

  “It’s you.” The words just fell out of her mouth before she’d even considered it.

  “I’m sorry?”

  Rose fought to get herself back under control. “I’m sorry. I was, uh. I was dealing with wedding details.”

  “You’re getting married?”

  “It’s complicated, sir.”

  “Well, congratulations anyways, then.”

  “Thank you anyways, sir.”

  “Is that why you couldn’t make it to the mandatory meeting last night? You were at your wedding ceremony? I wasn’t informed of anything like that.”

  “No, sir. Planning. I had my phone off.”

  He frowned and nodded. “Short notice wreaks havoc on everyone. Myself included, but I needed to know what needed restructuring. And I figured, you know, anyone who can’t make the time for work, maybe work can’t make the time for them.”

  “I didn’t mean anything by it, sir.”

  “I’m not finished.”

  “Sorry.”

  “But,” he continued, putting extra emphasis on the word But. “I could be convinced of your absolutely sincere commitment to this company.”

  “I’m a hundred percent committed. Sir.” He didn’t seem to recognize her. Rose didn’t know how she was supposed to feel about it. But it had been a year, and she hadn’t known his name. He only stood out in her memory after the fact, once she’d found out that she was pregnant.

  “Do you really even know what a hundred percent commitment looks like, Miss Sewell?”

  “I have twin baby girls, sir. I absolutely know what a hundred percent commitment looks like.” Rose hoped she didn’t sound cocky. But then, it seemed as if her mystery-man boss was a man who didn’t disapprove of a certain amount of cockiness.

  “Two girls, and you’re getting married? Shotgun wedding?” The question was surprisingly blunt.

  “It’s quite a bit more complicated than that, sir,” she said. “I can explain but it’s an involved story. I don’t want to bore you.”

  “Well, you’re obviously committed to those girls. So the question is, where else do your commitments lie? To keeping your job? Or to your husband?”

  Three

  “You don’t understand what I’m asking, do you?”

  Rose’s throat felt dry. She couldn’t count on her hands how many times that night had played out in her mind. Which made everything he said sound dangerously like a proposition. And this was getting harder and harder to brush off as anything else.

  “No, I’m not sure.”

  “I’m asking how far you’re willing to go to keep your job.”

  Rose tried to swallow. Her throat was too tight to get anything, and her mouth seemed parched.

  “You mean—”

  “I’m speaking in hypotheticals.”

  “And if I said that I was willing to do any
thing?”

  “Then we wouldn’t be talking about hypotheticals for very long,” he said.

  “You mean…”

  “I don’t mean anything,” he said. His handsome face was split by a handsome grin that made her knees a little weak. The implication of what he was saying already had them weak, and now it felt like she was going to lose her mind. “That would be extortion, and I’m not interested in extorting a pretty woman like yourself. I just want to know that I can trust everyone in my company.”

  “You wanted to know…”

  “How far you would go.”

  “However far it took,” Rose breathed.

  “That’s what I like to hear, Rose. That’s the kind of commitment that I want in my employees. Everything. Anything. And your husband? Which one gives first?”

  “I don’t give a shit about my husband.”

  “Then why are you marrying him?”

  “I told you. It’s complicated.”

  “Two girls, and he’s not the father?”

  “No, he isn’t.”

  “Well, there you go. You weren’t kidding. Complicated. I like that. You seem to be using your head here.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Now, I’d like you to use that head a little more.”

  “Sir?”

  “Do I have to spell it out for you?”

  He didn’t make any gesture, but the way that he said the words, and something about his posture drew her eyes to his crotch. When her eyes shot back up to meet his, he raised his eyebrows expectantly. “Come on, we haven’t got all day, Miss Sewell.”

  An instant later she was on her knees, working the clasp on his slacks and pulling at the zipper. His cock was exactly how she remembered it. Not freakishly large. But big enough that it made her eyebrows raise in slightly surprise. Even half-hard, it seemed big. She took it in her hand and started working the shaft, pumping up and down.

  The feeling of his manhood twitching in her hand was encouragement enough.

  “I like you, Rose. You’re smart, driven, and you do what you have to in order to survive. With a body like yours, you could have gone a long way.”