He was considering it because as she was neither a steely-eyed socialite nor a woman he had to fool into love, she was safe to bring into his circle.
He didn’t need her to be attractive.
He needed her to be a woman who wouldn’t bring shame to his nation or people while simultaneously posing no threat to his plans, nor any risk of emotional entanglement.
She was a lovely stranger with her own prerogatives, and as he’d encountered thus far, as transparent as a glass window, and, as genius as she was, when you boiled it down, she was a mechanic.
She was perfect.
She would get whatever it was that she wanted to get out of attending his exhibition, and he would gain in popularity without trouble, risk or wasted time.
If she were willing to agree to his terms, she would get what she wanted, he would get his car back, and, as the Lord had apparently coordinated it, get an added boost in public support while at the same time fulfilling the terms of an agreement he’d made with his closest friends when they’d been only hints of the men they were today.
A wicked and decided grin lifted one side of his mouth and then the other.
Opening it to speak, Jag countered her offer. “A car, even one from the world-famous NECTAR’s personal fleet, is nowhere near enough for the kind of inconvenience you’re asking of me. However, there is a condition upon which I would be willing to bring you along.”
She swallowed, but she didn’t look away, and her voice was resolute and earnest when she promised him the world without knowing what it was. “Anything.”
“Marry me.”
CHAPTER TWO
“WH-WHAT?”RITASTAMMERED, the wind knocked out of her as if she had taken a hit to the chest. “Why?”
She had offered him a car, and he had asked for her hand in marriage instead. But this was no open-air market, and they were not a buyer and seller haggling over the price of goods.
This was real life.
The Prince’s wicked smile somehow grew, even as his tone remained even-keeled, as if they discussed the weather rather than marriage. “I need a particular kind of wife, of which you fit the bill, and you want to come with me to Hayat. It will be a business arrangement.”
A business arrangement?
The words rattled around Rita’s mind. Did she want a business arrangement for a marriage?
As if summoned in answer, her mother’s long-ago words rose in Rita’s mind.
Marriage is always an arrangement. It is an arrangement in which two people have to wake up every day and work with each other to make a good life. No matter how it starts, the arrangement is the same, and it’s hard enough that, love or no love, it falls apart almost as much as it doesn’t.
Rita hadn’t thought about that conversation in years, hadn’t even realized she remembered it until now. Once again, she was looking at the prospect of marriage—but this time it was a business arrangement.
And her dad had been wrong after all.
Someonehadasked to marry her.
And not just any someone, but an honest-to-goodness, real-life prince.
If he had not also been a client whom she’d only just met and had spent less than an hour with in her entire life, the situation could have been plucked straight out of a fairy tale.
“What kind of arrangement are we talking about here?” Rita asked, caution tingling in her limbs.
Pressing his lips together, moistening them almost effectively and seductively as if he’d licked his lips, the Prince said, “Strictly business. Nothing physical beyond presenting the image of a happy couple to the public.”
The man who had just asked her to marry him was, without contest, the most compelling man she had ever seen in her life.
His nose was straight and true down the center of his face. His eyebrows were thick and coal black, an exact match to the gorgeous mane on his head and neatly trimmed facial hair that framed his defined face and square jaw.
At the moment, his eyes glowed a glorious amber, his expression captivating her, willing her to hold contact.