“Marriage will fix it all,” he said, looking as if he was already putting together a mental plan to share the news with their families. “We only have to stay together long enough to get a judge to declare you married and, therefore, having met the terms of your father’s will—which doesn’t mention anything about a quick divorce afterward, I’m hoping.”

He grinned bigger when Chelle shook her head no. “Perfect. And for me to win a little bet I’ve got going with my cousins, I just have to date a woman and not fall in love. There’s nothing in the rules saying I can’t date my wife.” He clapped his large hands together and looked up at her. “We can start the divorce proceedings on New Year’s Eve, both of us with everything we wanted. There is no downside to this.”

Nash Beckett was a puppy of a man, the kind who’d always had everything go his way.

Okay, fine. He didn’t look like a puppy.

When he was standing upright, he towered over Chelle’s five feet six inches. He had a jaw that was square enough to make Superman weep with jealousy. Then there was the fact that he had sandy blond hair that waved just enough to make a woman who hadn’t settled into permanent singledom want to run her fingers through it. Add to that, he had these ice-blue eyes that Chelle could easily imagine staring into over gin and tonics at night and mugs of hot tea the next morning. All of it added up to Nash Beckett being not a puppy but a very big dog—perfect for a young, cute, thirty-something woman with a high tolerance for mansplaining and the patience for rearranging her life to make room for another person.

Chelle was not that woman.

Not even close.

She was a no-fucks-left-to-give forty-two-year-old who was not going to adjust her life to fit with another person. She had her pets, her books she wrote and never shared with another soul, and her determination to somehow—anyhow—keep Uncle Buckley’s boney little fingers off of the trigger of the gun he aimed at the foundation. It was almost enough to fill all of her time.

Fine.

She could use another project or five beyond all of that and learning to stilt-walk to fill up the hours, but that didn’t mean she wanted a man. She had batteries, a vivid imagination, and the internet in all of its porny glory. The last thing she wanted was a husband—especially one who liked to tell her her own business.

Ha!

Not in this lifetime, and probably not in the one after it, either.