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The Bride and the Bargain
Allison Leigh
If the running shoe fits… this Cinderella will wear it! Workaholic Grayson Hunt was married to the job. Until his father issued Gray and his brothers with an ultimatum – find brides, fast, or lose their fortunes. Gray was at his wits’ end until he literally ran into the perfect candidate on his favourite jogging path.But did humble school librarian Amelia White have a hidden agenda? Amelia was going to teach this billionaire-in-training that his actions had consequences – and make him pay for what he had done to her sister.But could she stick to her plan the more she fell for the man?
Find. Wife. Find. Wife. Find. Wife.
Every time the soles of Gray’s running shoes bounced against the narrow tree-lined path, the words seemed to echo in his head.
“Shut. Up. Shut. Up,” he said under his breath.
“Find. Wife. Find. Wife,” his footsteps answered.
He muttered an oath and picked up speed.
Everything that Gray had ever wanted to accomplish in life, he had. He was successful in every endeavour, because that’s who he was.
But in this one…damned…thing…he was – barrelling straight for a runner squatting in his path.
He tried slowing down, but momentum had him in its grip. “On the left,” he barked, hoping the girl – oh, yeah, definitely a girl – would heed his warning and move to the side.
Instead, he got a glimpse of fair skin, wide dark eyes and flying dark hair as she rose and took the impact with a gasping “Oomph!”
ALLISON LEIGH
started early by writing a Halloween play that her primary school class performed. Since then, though her tastes have changed, her love for reading has not. And her writing appetite simply grows more voracious by the day.
She has been a finalist in the RITA
Award and the Holt Medallion contests. But the true highlights of her day as a writer are when she receives word from a reader that they laughed, cried or lost a night’s sleep while reading one of her books.
Born in Southern California, Allison has lived in several different cities in four different states. She has been, at one time or another, a cosmetologist, a computer programmer and a secretary. She began writing full-time after spending nearly a decade as an administrative assistant for a busy neighbourhood church, and she currently makes her home in Arizona with her family. She loves to hear from her readers, who can write to her at PO Box 40772, Mesa, AZ 85274-0772, USA.
The Bride and the Bargain
Allison Leigh
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
For my fellow Cinderella Hunters.
It has been a true pleasure working with you.
Prologue
July
Of all the things he might have foreseen, never in his life could Gray have imagined this.
No, he’d been more annoyed with the command performance his father had requested. In the month since Harry had suffered a heart attack, the man had been increasingly unpredictable. And the last thing Gray had needed was a trip out to the family’s high-tech estate on Lake Washington when he had fifty million things to attend to back at the office in downtown Seattle.
Not that the distraction of his work was any excuse.
He was Grayson Hunt, president of HuntCom.
Whether or not he and his three younger brothers had been summoned to the shack—as they’d wryly dubbed the opulent family compound when they were young—he was supposed to be able to juggle any number of responsibilities. God knew that Harry had never let anything set him off track for any length of time. The only child of a storekeeper and his homemaker wife, Harrison Hunt had invented the computer software that had made HuntCom a household word. He’d turned an offbeat, fledgling company into a multinational, multibillion-dollar juggernaut that had set the computer industry on its ear.
Gray was forty-two, Harry’s firstborn and supposedly just like him. The knowledge was as much a curse as a blessing.
Gray biffed another shot at the antique pool table and shook his head, surrendering the table to his youngest brother, Justin.
“Does anybody know why the old man called this meeting?” Without hesitation, Justin began pocketing balls, easily showing up Gray’s less impressive attempts.
“He left a message with Loretta,” Gray said. “Didn’t give her a reason.” When it vibrated silently, he pulled out his cell phone, glancing at the display. Another text from Loretta, his secretary, keeping him apprised of his ever-evolving schedule. He’d canceled six meetings in order to answer Harry’s summons.
“Harry called you himself? Me, too.” Alex was working his way through a bottle of Black Sheep Ale from his position in one of the leather armchairs arranged around the spacious library. At thirty-six, he headed up the company’s philanthropic arm—the Hunt Foundation—and had probably canceled his own share of meetings, as well. “What about you, J.T.? Did you get the message from his secretary, or from Harry personally?”
A tumbler of bourbon in his hand, J.T. looked beat. An architect by training, he was in charge of all HuntCom properties and construction and was more often on the road than not. “From Harry. I told him I’d have to cancel a week of meetings in New Delhi and spend over half a day on the corporate jet to get home in time, but he insisted I be here.” He peered wearily at Justin, the baby of the brothers at thirty-four. “What about you?”
“I was at the ranch when he called. He told me the same thing he told you. I had to be here. No excuses.” Justin slowly rolled the pool cue between his palms. “He refused to tell me what the meeting was about. Did he tell any of you why he wanted to talk to us?”
“No.” Gray was plenty irritated about it, too. Harry knew they were all busy. So what the hell was he calling family get-togethers for? And then to leave them cooling their heels in the library?
He looked at his vibrating phone again. Dammit. Another hiccup with their latest buyout. He started for the door. If he had to call and ream out somebody, he wanted some privacy. But before he could make it to the hall door, it flew open and their father entered.
“Ah, you’re all here. Excellent.” Harry waved his hand toward his massive mahogany desk at the far end of the room that faced the French doors overlooking their private beach. “Join me, boys,” he invited, as if he did so every day.
Which he didn’t. One thing Gray could not say about Harry was that he’d been a doting, hands-on kind of dad.
He faced Harry across the desk, ignoring the chairs situated in front of it. His brothers took no interest in the chairs, either.
Harry eyed the empty seats through his horn-rimmed bifocals. Despite hitting seventy on his last birthday, his dark hair was barely marked by gray. And his blue eyes were definitely looking peeved.
Gray could relate.
Harry shrugged impatiently. “Very well. Stand or sit. It makes no difference.” He did sit, however, which was good because Gray would have told him to if he hadn’t.
His father drove him around the bend, but that didn’t mean Gray had no concerns for the old man’s health.
“Since my heart attack last month,” Harry began, proving yet again that Gray’s mind often tracked along his father’s, “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this family. I’ve never thought a lot about my legacy—”
At that, Gray’s lips did twist, but he remained silent when Harry glanced at him.
“—nor about having grandchildren to carry on the Hunt name,” the old man continued. “But the heart attack made me face some hard truths I’d ignored up until then. I could have died. I could die tomorrow.”
Gray still had a hard time imagining that. Harry seemed too vital. Too stubborn. Still, though Harry was a machine in many ways, he was an aging one.
His father rose, pressing his fists against the desktop. “I finally realized that left to your own devices, you four never will get married, which means I’ll never have grandchildren. I don’t intend to leave the future of this family to chance any longer. You have a year. One year. By the end of that year, each of you will not only be married, you will either already have a child or your wife will be expecting one.”
Gray stared, uncharacteristically nonplussed.
“Right.” J.T. finally broke the stunned silence.
Harry ignored their general lack of response. “If any one of you refuses to do so, you’ll all lose your positions in HuntCom and the perks you love so much.”
“You can’t be serious,” Gray finally said, focusing on the bottom line. Harry held controlling interest in HuntCom. Not even if everyone else on the board—Gray and his brothers, Harry’s oldest friend Cornelia and Corny’s four daughters—voted in accord against Harry could they outweigh his votes. He could do pretty much whatever he wanted, but that didn’t mean Gray believed the old man would actually follow through with unseating them.
They were all too good at what they did for HuntCom and the family interests, and Harry—affected by his heart attack or not—knew it.
“I’m deadly serious.” Harry’s eyes didn’t waver.
“With all due respect, Harry, how will you run the company if we refuse to do this?” J.T. asked. As often as Gray thought like Harry, J.T.’s thoughts were on the same wavelength as Gray’s. “I don’t know what Gray, Alex or Justin have going on right now, but I’m in the middle of expansions here in Seattle, in Jansen and at our New Delhi facility. If another architect has to take over my position, it’ll be months before he’s up to speed. Construction delays alone would cost HuntCom a fortune.”
“It wouldn’t matter because if the four of you refuse to agree, I’ll sell off HuntCom in pieces.”
Gray went still, ignoring his vibrating phone. Sell HuntCom? Where the hell did that idea come from?
“The New Delhi facility will be history and I’ll sell Hurricane Island,” Harry warned, his voice edged with steel. The isle was J.T.’s treasured escape and the idea of losing it probably hit J.T. harder than the idea of losing the company.
Then Harry turned his painfully serious gaze on Justin. “I’ll sell HuntCom’s interest in the Idaho ranch if you don’t marry and have a child.” Without waiting for a response, he looked at Alex. “I’ll shut down the foundation if you refuse to cooperate.”
The weight of the brothers’ fury filled the room.
Then Harry finally looked at Gray, delivering the only possible remaining blow. “HuntCom won’t need a president because there will no longer be a company for you to run.”
He was Harry’s second in command. Harry had started HuntCom, but Gray was HuntCom.
Selling the company itself—the very root of everything they had—was a fine threat. One that Gray wasn’t about to let himself believe. He had only to look at Harry’s behavior since the heart attack. He’d scaled back only some of his workload since then. To Gray, that looked like plenty of proof that even Harry couldn’t part ways all that easily with the company he’d built. He’d never sell.
“But that’s insane,” Alex said, clearly trying to sound reasonable and not quite making the mark. “What do you hope to accomplish by doing this, Harry?”
“I mean to see you all settled, with a family started before I die. With a decent woman who’ll make a good wife and mother.”
Gray swallowed an oath. That was rich. In the four marriages that had resulted in the four Hunt brothers, Harry had never managed to make one with a decent woman.
“The women you marry have to win Cornelia’s approval,” their father concluded.
“Does Aunt Cornelia know about this?” Justin demanded. Cornelia Fairchild was the widow of Harry’s best friend. Like Gray, Justin obviously found it hard to believe that she was a willing accomplice to Harry’s fit of madness.
“Not yet,” Harry allowed.
Justin looked relieved. Gray understood why, but he couldn’t say that he was as confident that their honorary aunt would have any sway in derailing Harry from his plan. She was more a mother figure to them than their own mothers had been, but that didn’t mean her allegiance wouldn’t stick with the old man. Cornelia and Harry went way back. She, along with her husband, George, and Harry had been friends since childhood.
Harry lifted his hand. “She’s a shrewd woman. She’ll know if any of the women aren’t good wife material.”
Too bad she hadn’t chosen Harry’s wives, Gray thought. Their lives would have been considerably different.
Unaware of Gray’s dark thoughts, Harry went on, making the situation even more surreal. “You can’t tell the women you’re rich, nor that you’re my sons. I don’t want any fortune hunters in the family. God knows I married enough of them myself. I don’t want any of my sons making the mistakes I made.”
Then none of them should be courting real disaster by walking down an aisle, Gray thought. Much less trying to procreate.
Justin was still trying to pin down Harry. “So Aunt Cornelia has to approve our prospective brides and they can’t know who we are. Is that all?”
Harry hesitated long enough to make every nerve at the back of Gray’s neck stand at suspicious attention. “That’s all. I’ll give you some time to think about this,” he added into the thick silence.
Not likely, Gray thought, reading his brothers’ faces.
“You have until 8:00 p.m., Pacific daylight time, three days from now,” Harry continued with an infuriating confidence. “If I don’t hear from you to the contrary before then, I’ll tell my lawyer to start looking for a buyer for HuntCom.”
And with that, he left the library.
J.T.’s lips twisted derisively. “I don’t see it happening. He’ll never sell HuntCom.”
“He can’t possibly be serious,” Justin concluded.
Gray shrugged into his jacket. Enough time had been wasted at the shack. He hadn’t known what to expect when Harry’d called him, but he damn sure hadn’t expected this. “We’re in the middle of a buyout. There’s no way he’d consider selling the company until it’s finished and that might be months away. He’s bluffing.”
“How can you be sure?” Alex asked. He freely eschewed the wealth and privilege that came with being a Hunt, but Gray knew that he tolerated the Hunt duty because it allowed him to satisfy his mile-deep humanitarian streak. He would be happy never to have a Hunt dime—only that would mean he couldn’t give it away to someone who did need it. “What if you’re wrong? Do you want to take that chance? Lose everything you’ve worked for over the past eighteen years? I know I sure as hell don’t want to see the foundation shut down…or run by someone else.”
“The only baby Harry’s ever cared about is HuntCom,” Gray said. “There’s no way he won’t do what’s ultimately best for the company. He always does.”
“I sure as hell hope you’re right,” Justin muttered. “Where did he get the idea it was time we all went hunting for brides?”
J.T. made a face, shaking his head. “Just so we’re all agreed. None of us are caving in to his crazy ultimatum?”
“Not in this lifetime,” Gray muttered.
For him, it was the end of the discussion.
Chapter One
Ten months later
Find. Wife. Find. Wife. Find. Wife.
Every time the soles of Gray’s running shoes bounced against the narrow tree-lined path, the words seemed to echo in his head.
He picked up speed, pushing harder as the path rose sharply beneath his feet.
“Shut. Up. Shut. Up,” he muttered under his breath.
Find. Wife. Find. Wife. His footsteps answered.
He made it to the peak of the hillside and looked out over the horizon that would have been nearly obscured if not for the footpath cut through the trees. He propped his hands on his hips, hauling in long breaths, feeling his heartbeat charging in his chest. The sweat soaking his shirt felt cold.
He spent precious time driving most mornings to this particular park because it was far enough away from his digs near the waterfront that he’d never once run into someone he knew.
The park wasn’t a fancy place. It didn’t have paved paths. It didn’t have riding stables, or formal picnic areas or art displays. And often, he seemed to have the hilly tree-congested expanse to himself, but even when he didn’t, it was rare to encounter more than one or two other runners.
Pretty much the way he liked it since his time was generally used up dealing with others. That was just one of the prices he paid for being president of a major corporation. A price he’d gladly pay many times over since—according to those who knew him—he’d been aiming for the helm of HuntCom since he was in the womb.
