“For pity’s sake, Margie, it’s not like makeup would have transformed you into supermodel territory anyway.” She knew exactly what she looked like. Her mouth was too wide, her nose was too small and the freckles spattered across her cheeks defied all known foundations. She was not the kind of woman a man like Hunter Cabot would ever notice. “But then, it doesn’t matter what you look like, now, does it? It’s not as though you’re really married to the man.” Legally, yes. Really, no.

She flopped back onto the bed and stared up at the cool green ceiling. She hadn’t planned to meet her husband for the first time until after his grandfather had explained the whole situation. And it would’ve worked out just like it was supposed to have done if Hunter hadn’t shown up two weeks early, for pity’s sake.

So if you thought about it, this was all his fault.

But as Margie blindly stared at the ceiling, she had to admit that that knowledge didn’t make her feel any better.

Hunter moved through the familiar halls with a long, determined step, but no matter how fast he walked, he couldn’t leave that woman behind him. Her voice kept time with the hard thumps of his boot heels against the floor.

Lonely old man. Almost died. Ashamed.

Muttering curses under his breath, Hunter silenced that voice and hit the bottom of the stairs. Slapping one hand to the newel post, he made a sharp right turn and continued down the carpeted hall toward the last door on the left.

He opened the door without knocking and stepped inside. This room at least remained the same. Unchanged. Dark paneling on the walls, polished to a high gloss, gleamed in the sunlight pouring through the windows. Dark brown leather armchairs and sofas were sprinkled throughout the room, and behind the wide, mahogany desk where his grandfather sat, floor-to-ceiling bookcases displayed everything from the classics to fictional thrillers.

But Hunter’s gaze locked on the smiling old man slowly pushing himself to his feet. “Grandfather.”

“Hunter, boy! Good to see you! You’re early,” he added, coming around the edge of the desk with careful steps. “Didn’t expect you for a couple of weeks yet.”

Hunter walked to meet the man who had always been the one constant in his life. When he was twelve years old, Hunter’s parents died in a car accident and he’d come to live with his paternal grandfather. Simon had stepped into the void in his grandson’s life and had always seemed to Hunter to be larger than life. Strong, sure, confident.

Now, though, Hunter noticed for the first time that the years were finally catching up with his grandfather. Something cold and hard fisted around Hunter’s heart as he hugged the older man and actually felt a new frailty about Simon. He swallowed back the questions crowding his throat and demanding release, and he forced himself to be patient.

Stepping back, the old man waved one hand at a chair and said, “Sit, sit. Are you sure you should be walking around with that wound in your side?”

“I’m fine, Grandfather,” Hunter said, reassuring Simon as he took a seat in the chair opposite him. He could wait for answers about the woman upstairs. For a moment or two, anyway. “Wasn’t more than a scratch, really.”

“They don’t put you in the hospital for four days with a scratch, boy.”

True, but he didn’t want Simon worrying anymore than he could help. Hunter had caught a bullet on his last mission, but it had been more painful than lifethreatening. Now all that remained was an ache if he moved too fast and a scar from the hastily maneuvered field surgery he’d had to perform on himself, since he’d gotten separated from his team members.

Smiling, he said only, “They don’t let you out of the hospital after only four days if it’s serious.”

“That’s good, then. You had me worried, boy.”

“I know. Sorry.”

Simon waved the apology aside. “Nothing to be sorry for, Hunter. It’s your job, I know that.”

He still wasn’t happy about Hunter’s decision to join the military, though. Simon had wanted him to take over the Cabot family dynasty. To sit behind a desk and oversee the many different threads of the empire Simon’s father had started so long ago. But Hunter had never been interested in banking or any other kind of business that would tie him to a nine-to-five lifestyle. He’d wanted adventure. He’d wanted to do something important. Serving his country filled that need.

“Still,” Simon was saying, with a touch of an all-too-familiar scheming note to his voice, “you’re not going to be able to do this job forever, are you?”

Hunter scowled to see a calculating gleam in his grandfather’s eyes. He hated to admit even to himself that he’d been thinking along the same lines lately. Frankly, since he was shot. Five years ago, it wouldn’t have happened and he knew it. He’d have been quicker. Spotted the ambush sooner. Been able to get to cover fast enough to avoid the damn bullet that had nailed him.

But his career choices were not what he wanted to talk about. And since he couldn’t think of an easy introduction into the subject at hand, he simply blurted out, “Forget my job for the moment. Grandfather, that woman upstairs is not my wife.”

Simon crossed his legs, folded his hands together atop his flat abdomen and gave his grandson a smile. “Yes, she is.”

“Okay, clearly this is going to be tougher than I thought,” Hunter murmured and stood up. Rubbing one hand across the back of his neck, he reminded himself that the woman had had a year to worm her way into Simon’s affections. It was going to take more than a minute to make him see the truth. “I’ve never met that woman, Grandfather. Whatever she’s told you is a lie.”

Simon smiled and followed Hunter’s progress as he paced back and forth. “She hasn’t told me anything, Hunter.”

He stopped and shot his grandfather a hard look. “So you just let anybody who claims to be my wife move in and take over my suite?”

Simon chuckled. Probably not a good sign.

“You don’t understand,” the old man said. “She didn’t lie to me about being married to you, because she didn’t have to. I’m the one who arranged the marriage.”

“You did what?” Hunter stared at his grandfather in complete disbelief. He didn’t even know what to say. What the hell could he say? “You arranged-you can’t do that.”

“Can and did,” Simon assured him, looking altogether pleased with himself. “The idea came to me after that heart attack last year.”

“What idea?” Hunter walked back to his chair and sat down, his gaze pinned on the older man grinning at him.

Simon’s white eyebrows lifted. “Why, the answer to my problem, of course. There I was, in the hospital. There you were, off only God knew where, and there was Margie.”

“Margie.”

“My assistant.”

“Your-right. She told me that.” Assistant turned granddaughter-in-law, apparently.

“Very organized soul, Margie,” Simon mused thoughtfully. “Always on top of things. Knows how to get things done.”

“I’ll bet.”

Simon frowned at him. “None of this was Margie’s doing, boy. This was my idea. You remember that.”

Hunter took a tight grip on his rising temper and forced himself to speak slowly and calmly. It wasn’t easy. “What exactly was your idea?”

“I needed family here!” Shifting in his chair, Simon lifted one arm to the chair arm, and his fingers began to tap on the soft leather. “Blast it, decisions had to be made, and though I’d told Margie what I wanted, she didn’t have the authority to make the doctors do a damn thing. Could have been bad for me, but I was lucky.”

Instantly, Hunter’s mind filled with images of Simon lying in a hospital bed, hooked up to machines that monitored his heart, his breathing, while doctors bustled and a short, curvy redhead tried to issue orders. He hated like hell that he hadn’t been there for the old man when he’d needed Hunter most. But feeling guilt didn’t mean he understood how he’d ended up with a wife!

“So, you could have given her power of attorney,” Hunter said.

“Might have,” his grandfather allowed, and his tapping fingers slowed a bit. “But I didn’t. Instead, I convinced Margie to marry you.”

“You-”

“It was the easiest way I could see. I want family around me, boy, and you’re not here.”

More guilt came slamming down on Hunter until he was half surprised he could breathe under the weight of it. Still…“You just can’t marry me off without even mentioning it.”

“I’ve got two words for you, Hunter,” his grandfather said, “-proxy marriage.”

“Proxy? How can you even do that without my signature?”

“I got your signature,” Simon told him with a sly smile. “And if you’d bother to read the Cabot financial papers I send to you for your signature, you’d have noticed the proxy marriage certificate.”

Damn it. Simon had him there. Whenever the packets of papers arrived for him, Hunter merely signed where indicated and sent them back. The family business wasn’t his life. The Navy, was. And he kept his two worlds completely separate. No doubt his slippery grandfather had realized that and exploited it. Admiration warred with irritation.

“Ah, good. You realize I’m right.” Simon’s fingers quickened, and the tapping on the old leather came fast and furious, belying the old man’s attempt at a casual pose. “I stood in for you in the marriage ceremony. I knew that since you couldn’t get home for my heart attack, you wouldn’t have been able to get home for your own wedding-”

“-not that I was invited…”

“-my friend Judge Harris did the deed, and we kept it quiet. I sent Margie off on a week’s vacation once I got better, and we put out that you and she eloped.”

“Eloped.”

“Worked out fine. Figured there was no rush in telling you.”

“Especially since I didn’t want a wedding.”

Simon frowned at him and Hunter remembered being thirteen years old and standing in this very study, trying to explain why he’d hit a baseball through the study window. The same sense of shame and discomfort he’d felt then washed over him now. The only difference was he was no longer a kid to be put in his place.

“How’d she talk you into this, Simon?”

In answer, his grandfather pushed himself out of the chair, drew himself up to his full height and gave Hunter a look that used to chill him to his bones. “You think I’m some old fool taken in by a pretty face and a gold-digging nature? You seriously believe I’m that far gone, boy?”

“What else am I supposed to believe?” Hunter stood up too and met Simon’s hard stare with one of his own. “I come home for a visit-”

“After two years,” Simon threw in.

“-and you tell me you arranged to marry me off to someone I’ve never met just so you can have family close by?”

“You can watch your tone with me, boy. I’m not senile yet, you know.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“You were thinking it.” Simon turned, walked to his desk and sat down behind his personal power center. From that very chair, Simon had run the Cabot family fortunes for more than five decades. “And I’ll tell you something else. Margie didn’t want any part of this. It was all my idea.”

“And she went along out of the goodness of her heart.” Sarcasm was so thick in Hunter’s tone that even he heard it.

“’Course not. This was business, pure and simple. I’m paying her five million dollars.”

“Five-” Hunter sucked in a gulp of air. “So she is in it for the money. And you said she’s not a gold digger?”

“She damn well isn’t, and you’ll figure that out for yourself after you spend some time with her.” Simon picked up a pen from the desk and twirled it absentmindedly between his fingers. “Had to browbeat her into taking the money and doing this for me. She’s a good girl and she works hard. She’s done a lot of good for this town, too, and she’s done real well by your name.”

“How nice for me.” Hunter shook his head at the sensation of a velvet-lined trap snapping shut around him.

“You should be grateful. I picked you out a wife who’s a hard worker, and she’s got a big heart as well.”

“Grateful.” Hunter moved in, leaned both hands on his grandfather’s desk and ground out tightly, “What I’ll be grateful for is a damn annulment, Simon. Or even a divorce. As soon as possible.”

Disgusted, his grandfather muttered, “I should have known you wouldn’t appreciate this.”

“Yeah, you should’ve.”

“If you’d open your eyes and see her as I do, you’d change your tune.” Simon looked so damn smug, so self-satisfied that Hunter felt a surge of temper rise up and grab the base of his throat. For his whole damn life, Simon had been the one he could count on. The man who had taught him what duty and honor meant. The one who’d instilled in Hunter a sense of right and wrong. Now, he was blithely explaining how he’d set Hunter up with a marriage he didn’t want all for Simon’s own convenience.