wealth she needed to do that for him, when her mother’s estate was settled. She didn’t dare tell Butch that. He thought she was an ordinary girl with a well-to-do mother, down on her luck. Even with their brief relationship she knew that he wouldn’t react well to being married to a millionaire. It would kill his pride, even in the modern world, to have a rich wife who had more money than he’d ever make.
But she pushed that thought to the back of her mind. It was a problem for another day. On this day, Butch had proposed, and something much better than a pretend engagement to save her reputation and keep people from asking too many questions.
She smiled as she drank in the clean, manly scent of him. “I never want to leave here,” she murmured absently. “I want to take care of you. I’ve never really had anybody, not since my father died. Now I’ll have you.”
His arm tightened. “And I’ll have you, honey girl,” he whispered. “I’ll take care of you all my life.”
She snuggled closer. “When?”
“When what?” he murmured.
“When are we getting married?”
He drew in a breath. “Spring weddings are nice . . .”
She lifted her head and looked up at him with something like horror. “You want to wait?”
That blatant disappointment could have made him strut. “No. I don’t. But I thought you might . . . you know, so that we could save up for a fancy wedding gown and a reception,” he began.
She reached up and kissed him softly. “I don’t want a fancy wedding gown and a reception,” she said. “I just want you.”
“Oh, baby, that’s not something you should say to me right now,” he ground out.
“Don’t you want me, too?”
He was almost shivering with need, and trying to deny it. “We have to drink some coffee,” he told her, moving her aside. “Right now. I’ll make it.”
She sat on the sofa where he’d all but dumped her, staring after him with wide, stunned eyes. It took her a minute to get her breath and realize that he was at it again. Protecting her. From himself. She grinned from ear to ear and walked into the kitchen.
“You’re a sweet man,” she said gently, and went to get the sugar dish and some cream from the refrigerator.
“Just looking out for my own,” he said, and winked at her.
* * *
They sat together on the sofa, but a little apart, going over plans for the wedding.
“I just want the two of us and maybe Parker and his wife and stepdaughter,” she said. “Unless you have somebody you want to invite, too. Do you?”
“Yes. J. L. Denton and his wife,” he replied. “I used to work for J. L. until I lost my arm. He’s been good to me over the years.”
“I’d love to have them there. And I’d really love to have her there, so I could pump her for information about that bad guy in her TV series and see if he’s really going to turn out to be a decent person!”
He just laughed. “She never talks about scripts, so give it up. But she’ll be happy to meet you. She doesn’t look like a famous person, you know. She’s thin and red-headed and shy.”
“Really?!” she exclaimed.
“You lived in Aspen, didn’t you? Don’t all those movie stars come up there, and millionaires and such?” he teased.
She had to fight to control her reaction. “I guess so, but we were mostly on the ski slopes,” she improvised. “Mama loved to ski.”
“Can you?” he asked.
“Oh, yes. I love it. Mama was dating a ski instructor before Darrin,” she said. “We stayed with him until Darrin came along.”
She was clouding the explanation. Butch realized it but he didn’t understand why. “Your mother had money, didn’t she?” he asked.
“Yes, in investments,” she returned. “Not much except that, though,” she lied with a smile. “You know, you can’t just pull money out of an investment brokerage. And Darrin will never get his hands on that, because I’m the beneficiary on all her investments.” She gave him a sly glance. “So we’ll have stocks and bonds and our kids will end up with them, because they’re long-term investments.”
He let out a whistle. “Thank God!”
“Excuse me?”
“I really don’t want to be Mr. Esther Marist,” he said dryly.
She burst out laughing, a little too enthusiastically, because his reply was close to the bone and he didn’t even know it. “So we’ll have rich kids and they can worry about