The Wealthy Frenchman's Proposition by Katherine Garbera Page B

control.
    “Tristan?”
    “Hmm?”
    “I…Why don’t you want to really marry me?” she asked, her voice so soft it was hardly a whisper.
    He closed his own eyes. “I told you I had my once-in-a-lifetime love, remember?”
    “Yes, of course I do. But what has that got to do with marriage?”
    Tristan turned her in his arms and tucked her up close to his body, trying not to remember how perfectly they’d fit together when making love despite the differences in their heights. Once he’d been buried hilt-deep in her body, he’d felt the perfection of it.
    He drew her back into his arms, lowering his head once more, wanting to take her mouth and stop her questions.
    But she pulled away. “No more. I want you, but I want answers, too. I don’t understand why you won’t really marry me.”
    “It is not you,” he said, the words spilling out. “I will never marry again.”
    “Then why pretend to be engaged?”
    He pushed his hands through his hair and turned his back on her. He couldn’t look at her and lie. When she’d said she couldn’t lie to him, in the office a few short weeks ago, he’d had no idea what she felt like. Now he did.
    And he wasn’t giving her up. He hadn’t gotten Sheri Donnelly out of his system yet and he wasn’t going to let her go until he did.
    “It’s the only way I can protect you the way I want to, ma petite. ”
    “Why do I need protecting?”
    “Because this is my world and I seduced you without thinking of the consequences.”
    “You didn’t force me to sleep with you,” she said, cheeky tone in place.
    “I know that, Sheri. But you weren’t aware of what it is like to be hounded by the press and I should have taken steps to protect you and your identity from them.”

    Even if she’d known how things would turn out this morning, Sheri doubted that she would have not gone with Tristan last night. Even now, sitting in a well-appointed formal living room surrounded by the entire Sabina family, she didn’t regret her decision.
    Tristan sat next to her, his arm resting casually over her shoulders. He toyed with her hair, something he did a lot. Sitting there she felt a sense of rightness all the way to her soul and she knew she’d said yes to his outrageous proposal for one reason and one reason alone. She was going to find a way to make Tristan Sabina fall in love with her.
    She was going to do everything in her power to keep this man who’d stayed. And she was coming to realize that Tristan gave her clues all the time about what it was that he enjoyed about her.
    If she paid attention, she could be what he needed her to be for him to fall in love with her. It didn’t have to be the all-encompassing love that he’d had with his late wife. She’d be satisfied with just some kind of deep caring from him.
    She settled into the curve of his body as Rene lifted his champagne flute and said something in French that she couldn’t understand. Tristan squeezed her shoulder and lifted his own flute. So she did the same, taking a delicate sip of the delicious French sparkling wine.
    Tristan leaned closer to Sheri and whispered directly in her ear. “Rene said that he wishes us happiness and laughter all the days of our lives.”
    She smiled up at him. “Well, I want that, too.”
    Tristan’s eyes narrowed a bit but he dropped a quick kiss on her nose. She realized that he was going to fight her the entire time. Try to keep her in the role of pretend fiancée. And the only way she was going to get him to think of her as anything else was to make him need her.
    He needed her body, but was sex enough? Could she hold him with sex when she’d never really tried to keep any of her previous lovers…? Okay, there hadn’t been that many, but she had to look at it from a historical perspective.
    Blanche stood up next. Tristan’s sister made Lucille look like a country bumpkin. She was simply elegant and sophisticated. She spoke in a sweet tone, smiling indulgently toward