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pleated beneath her feathery blonde fringe. “And yet you’re asking me to marry you.”
    He’d almost forgotten what he was here for. Her intimate proximity, her scent, the reality of her unique beauty… It was difficult to stay on message this close to her.
    “No.” Starkly, he dragged himself back to his purpose. “What I’m asking you is that you become engaged to me. Just that, and for a strictly limited period. If Carlo thinks he’s got his wish, it will give him just the boost he needs to start fighting back to health.”
    Momentarily, he saw the dull exhaustion in his father’s eyes. And then, the older man’s entire face aglow on hearing that all his hints and urgings with respect to the girl he most wanted as a daughter-in-law were finally set to be fulfilled. For the first time in days, there’d been real strength and vigor when Carlo had embraced him.
    “So it’d all be an empty façade?”
    She was frowning again. Always frowning. He wanted to kiss the porcelain-pale skin of her forehead and smooth away her suspicion.
    “A fiction. For a good cause.”
    There was a long silence. The scheme had made perfect sense when he’d formulated it in a flash of inspiration at his father’s bedside. But confronted with Anna, on whom it all hinged, it sounded as if he’d lost his mind, not to mention all sense of the judgment and savvy he prided himself on.
    The moments stretched on, and finally, Nick lost patience, with himself as much as with Anna.
    “Well? Will you do it?” he demanded, “Aren’t you going to answer?”
     
    What could she answer? The whirl of a million conflicting feelings contrasted starkly with the slow, steady tick of the antique grandfather clock in the corner of the room.
    Focus, woman! Think. Breathe. Don’t let him see that you’re in a flat spin and don’t know what to think or do.
    But it was a tough task, especially with Nick so close and looking and smelling and sounding so good. He’d always been as handsome as a fallen angel and he just seemed to get more attractive and sexually irresistible with every year that passed. She should have distance and self-control and a resistance to him after all this time, but it just seemed more impossible than ever. Especially as she sensed there was even more to his preposterous suggestion than the dramatic performance of the fake engagement.
    “You don’t expect me to answer right now, do you?” She met those blue, blue eyes as coolly as she could. “It needs at least a bit of mulling over. You must at least allow me that.”
    “Carlo isn’t getting any better, Anna.”
    Oh, so cold all of a sudden. It was like a rabbit punch, but he was right, of course. She saw Carlo’s craggy face for a moment—always smiling, always kind and always generous. She’d been planning to fly to Italy as soon as he came off the critical list and could see visitors.
    “Yes, I know that. Do you think I don’t care?” she flung out, “I’m certainly a lot more concerned about his welfare than I am about yours.”
    Idiot. Don’t antagonize him. Things are sticky enough already.
    “Then say yes for him, not me.” There was no getting around him. He was determined. And when Nick set his mind on something he’d always got his way. His will was as steely and unyielding as his superbly muscled body.
    No, don’t think about his body!
    “I need a little time, Nick. I won’t be coerced.” In an attempt to distract him, she shot to her feet again. “But I won’t keep you waiting long.” She fixed her eyes on the door and her path of escape, back to the party.
    In what seemed only the blink of an eye, he was on his feet too, blocking that path.
    “Very well, Anna,” he murmured. He was average tall, but not massive, and yet he seemed to loom over her in a way that was completely and unequivocally male. “But not too long, eh?” He tilted his head, and the light from the chandelier above seemed to turn his blond hair to some fabulous