CHAPTER ONE
SHE WAS A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN, but not the kind a man should even consider marrying.
Not a man like Bill Thornton.
Liam Malone knew it the minute he saw her.
Bill wasnât her type. He was too good, too gentle, too trusting. He didnât stand a chance at being able to handle a woman like Jessica Warren. She was all quicksilver heat, while Bill was a glowing ember.
Hell, Liam thought as he stared out the window of Billâs study, past the rolling green lawn to Lake Washington glittering in the distance. He wasnât much given to thinking in metaphors, but that was what heâd thought of last night, at the rehearsal dinner. One look at his oldest friendâs fiancée and heâd known Bill was making a big mistake.
Bill, of course, was clueless. Heâd never been able to read women worth a damn. Liam always could. Jet-lagged as heâd been after the flight from Singapore to Seattle, one glance at his old friendâs bride-to-be had told him everything he really didnât want to know.
âWait until you meet Jessica,â Bill had written in the letter that had followed Liam halfway around the world. âThis is like a fairy tale, Liam, with me as the frog the beautiful princess turns into a prince. I still canât believe Jessica is going to be my wife.â
Liam could. Heâd spent enough years on the fringes of what most people called polite society to know that men and women married for lots of reasons, and hardly any had much connection to anything as banal as love.
More than one woman had called him a cynic, but Liam didnât agree. He was simply a realist. He understood that âloveâ was a catchall word people used instead of less poetic terms, especially in the rarefied strata of the very rich. Successful men married beautiful women as a balm to their egos. Beautiful women married successful men for the security of their wealth. Heâd never sat in judgment on such arrangements. The trade-off was fair enough. It could work, assuming both parties to the deal were still willing to settle for those things a year or two into the marriage.
The men usually were. Arm candy was arm candy, after all. But the women often became restless. They wanted both jewels on their fingers and pleasure in their beds, and they went looking for it. One glance at Jessica Warren and Liam had known that Bill wouldnât satisfy her for very long. Sheâd need more than his kindness and money to keep her happy.
It would take more than that to keep her at all.
But the poor bastard didnât know it. He was marrying for love, and in his case, âloveâ really did mean a bucketful of syrupy clichés. One man, one woman. Forever after. Until death do us part. Bill was ready to swallow all of it, hook, line and sinker.
And that was the problem.
Give it a couple of years and Bill would still be crazy about his wife but sheâd be bored to tears and looking for greener pastures. For all Liam knew, she was bored already. The flash in her eyes last night, when sheâd caught him watching her, had said it all. Sheâd managed a nice girlish blush and a quick downward sweep of her lashes, but that hadnât changed anything. Sheâd been interested. His best friendâs bride-to-be, interested in another man, the night before her wedding.
Interested in him.
Liamâs mouth thinned.
It wasnât the first time a woman with a rich man in her life had given him that kind of look. Not all that long ago, heâd been the guy with the looks that turned women on and the empty pockets that turned them off. Heâd lived by a combination of luck and his wits, but even so, heâd refused those invitations. He wasnât into playing games with women who belonged to other men. At best, heâd found that kind of come-on amusing.
Not this time. A single glance from Billâs fiancée, and heâd felt himself respond.
âDamn,â Liam muttered. He swung away from the window, tucked his hands into his pockets and paced the length of Billâs study.