My Darling Melissa Read Online Free PDF Page B

to do his damnedest to persuade a total stranger to become his wife.
    “Look at it this way,” he said smoothly. “You won’t get a chance to prove anything to anybody if your brothers come to Port Riley and drag you back home.”
    Those fantastically blue eyes of hers widened, then dodged away. “That’s true enough,” she admitted in a small voice.
    Quinn ventured to reach across the tabletop and take her hand in his. In that instant of their touching, innocent as it was, he knew why he was willing to marry Melissa Corbin.
    He wanted her. Desperately.
    He spoke huskily when he went on. “If you married me, you would become my—ward, so to speak.”
    “I would become your wife,” Melissa said flatly, pulling her hand from his. “And you would have rights that I don’t wish to grant you, Mr. Rafferty.”
    Quinn knew that having this delectable little chit for a wife and not being able to bed her would be an early consignment to hell, but he was confident of his ability to win her over. No woman had ever found him wanting when it came to the art of lovemaking.
    He spread his hands, the personification of nonchalance. “I haven’t thrown you down and had my way with you so far, have I?”
    A rich blush glowed in her cheeks; she lowered her eyes and bit her lip.
    “It should be obvious to you,” Quinn proceeded to say when she remained silent, “that I’m a man of honor.”
    She met his gaze squarely. “I’ll grant you that,” she said.
    “And it’s true that I won’t be able to accomplish anything at all if my brothers find out where I am—even though they’d be outside the law if they forced me to go back home, no one would think of stopping them. Marriage would be my only real protection. But what do you stand to gain from this union, Mr. Rafferty? Money?”
    Quinn sighed. “Not exactly. I’m a wealthy man in my own right. What I need is—collateral.”
    “Collateral?”
    “I’m planning to—er—expand my holdings. Frankly, a connection with your family would give me unlimited borrowing power. I could accomplish my purposes without ever touching a cent of your money.”
    She was tapping her chin thoughtfully with one finger. “Unless, of course, your ventures were to fail.”
    Quinn set his jaw. “That is out of the question,” he said. It was damned fortunate, in his view, that he wasn’t some unscrupulous rounder. Melissa Corbin would be all too easy to dupe.
    In the next moment she searched his face in a way that made Quinn wonder if he’d made a mistake in adding herup. Although Melissa was naïve, she was also formidably intelligent. “I will never love anyone but Ajax as long as I live,” she announced, “but we both know that I can’t have him for a husband. Therefore, it doesn’t make much difference whom I marry, does it?”
    Quinn was unaccountably wounded by this reasoning. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say that,” he began, but Melissa immediately cut him off.
    “Provided you’re willing to agree to a few basic terms, Mr. Rafferty, I see no reason why you and I shouldn’t make an—arrangement.”
    Rafferty’s sense of injury had turned to pure, patent irritation. “What terms?” he practically snarled, snatching the check from the waitress’s hand when she dared approach the table.
    Melissa waited primly until they were alone again. “I will not share your bed until such time as I’m ready to have a child,” she said, “and I certainly won’t be the conventional wife, waiting by your chair to stuff a pipe in your teeth at night and all that rubbish. I still want to make my own way in the world.”
    Quinn arched an eyebrow. “If it’s not too much to ask,” he said dryly, “will you at least live under my roof?”
    “Of course I will,” she replied. “If I didn’t, my brothers would never believe that we were really married.”
    Quinn swallowed, thinking of how Gillian was going to react to this news. Worse, he’d be the laughingstock of Port