Free Hired Bride by Jackie Merritt Page B

bathroom?”
    Gwen hesitated. Compared to his home, hers was a hovel. And it was never completely clean and picked up. She simply did not have the time to keep an immaculate house. Were there even clean towels in the bathroom? She couldn’t remember.
    But how could she refuse Zane a drink of water and the use of her bathroom? “All right,” she agreed, albeit uneasily. “I’ll get my key ring from the van.”
    While Gwen strode to her van, Zane realized that talking her into going to Vanessa’s dinner party would be a mistake. He wanted to know Gwen better, and at this early stage of what he honestly wanted to be a budding relationship, he shouldn’t be pressuring her into more socializing with his family. He should be furthering his own interests—and, hopefully, hers—by convincing her to change her attitude toward dating. In truth, he had never known a young, beautiful woman who didn’t date at all, and he couldn’t understand why Gwen would live that way.
    She returned with her key ring and walked past himto her front door. He followed, she unlocked the door and they both went in. There was no foyer, Zane noticed. The front door opened directly into a small living room that contained a sofa, two chairs, a couple of end tables with lamps and a television set. There was not enough space in the room for anything else, and he realized that Gwen’s living room wasn’t as big as his personal closet. He also saw evidence of her children scattered around—some stuffed animals, a doll and some tiny toy cars.
    â€œThe bathroom is down that hall,” Gwen said. She spoke rather stiffly, because she’d seen Zane looking around. If he was shocked by her plain little house and mismatched furniture, he had better not say so, she thought with a prideful squaring of her shoulders. She herself might wish for a larger, nicer house and all that went with it, but this was the best she could afford, and Zane Fortune could like it or lump it. She would never apologize for having so little, especially to him, a man who had everything.
    â€œThanks.” Zane sauntered down the hall.
    Gwen’s hands weren’t quite steady as she prepared two glasses of ice water in her minuscule kitchen. Having Zane in her house was unnerving, and she actually prayed that she had picked up all the damp towels in her one and only bathroom, and had set out clean towels that morning.
    She thought of the kids’ bath toys in the tub and the shower curtain that she’d been intending to replace, the threadbare bath mat draped over the edge of the tub and the worn little rag rug that was always askew in front of the sink. She sighed heavily, almost despondently. Zane Fortune was definitely getting a firsthand look at how the other half lived.
    But she was letting his presence in her home get her down, and she didn’t like that underdog feeling one little bit. She was staring out the window over the kitchen sink wondering why some people were so lucky with money and others struggled all their lives to scrape by when she felt Zane’s hands on each side of her waist. Obviously she’d been so deep in thought that she hadn’t heard him come up behind her. Either that or he had deliberately snuck up.
    She closed her eyes and savored the moment. He exuded the cleanest, most marvelous scent, and if it wasn’t such a foolish fantasy, she would have liked to stand there for the rest of the day and just breathe.
    But he had a lot more in mind than mere breathing, she realized when she felt his mouth nuzzling the side of her neck.
    Slipping away from both his hands and mouth, she turned and faced him. “Is that the real reason you wanted to come in?” she asked, and was startled by the breathless quality she heard in her own voice. Something inside her groaned. Why did he have to be the most gorgeous human being on the face of the earth?
    But gorgeous or not, she