curt bark. "Not so I've noticed."
"Well, there's your problem. You don't notice." She sounded more sure of herself now. "You walk right by women as if they're hat racks. You don't pick up on signals."
His chuckle was a little more real this time. She looked like an outraged gypsy princess wrapped in that shawl-like thing with the light illuminating her hair. His gaze fastened on her slender, unadorned fingers. Rings. He'd have to buy rings. He looked up and caught her fascinated gaze. Fascinated. By him. That shot another lightning bolt straight to his groin. He'd need a lap robe of his own.
Something in her narrowing gaze warned this wasn't the time to shrug off her observations, and it was definitely not the time to indulge in Playboy fantasies. A challenge, he remembered. Dealing with Maya would be a challenge.
"I don't want to have to pick up on signals," he answered. "I want to know precisely where I stand without interpreting sign language."
She cocked her head like a little bird, studied him, then broke into her beaming gypsy smile. "You're marrying me because I have a mouth and use it?"
His gaze dropped to strawberry-luscious lips and he nodded without thinking. "I sure hope so."
She laughed with clear bell-like chimes that took on a note of wickedness as she understood the direction of his tired mind. Leaning over, she kissed his cheek, then boldly, she licked his ear.
His flagpole shot straight up.
"You don't need marriage, you just need a teacher," she whispered tauntingly.
Before Axell could grab her, she twisted away and stood up, leaving him with a handful of cotton throw.
"I've found the teacher," he threw after her departing sway. "I'm just waiting for the lessons."
She shot him an upraised-eyebrow look over her shoulder before disappearing into the darkness of the hall.
Axell remained lying there against the sofa cushions with the cotton throw over his pleasantly throbbing lap and a smile on his face. Definitely a challenge, he decided.
He could spend the next two months planning her seduction. That should certainly give him an incentive to survive the chaos.
* * *
"I was managing," Maya whispered as Axell grasped her elbow and nearly dragged her out of the church pew after the Sunday service. He'd trapped her into this, damn the man. The instant they'd applied for a marriage license, the whole town heard about it. He'd known she wouldn't fight the whole town.
"So was I," Axell agreed, steering her toward the church office. "But 'managing' isn't the same as living. What are you afraid of?" he demanded. "We're two intelligent adults perfectly capable of rationally talking out any problems. When the kids get older, if it isn't working out, we can get divorced. What do you have to lose?"
He said that so firmly and logically, Maya couldn't help but stare at him with incredulity. She wanted to ask him what the hell kind of household he'd grown up in. He really had no idea of the devastation the emotional tornado of divorce could wreak. To him, it was just a tactical retreat.
His gray gaze heated as she bit back her disbelieving smirk. All right, so under that logical Virgo mind lurked a boiling cauldron of Scorpio testosterone—she'd got his birthdate from the marriage license and drawn his chart. Definitely Scorpio moon. So, maybe dark, brooding, artistic men didn't have a corner on heat. Maybe security was more rational than love. Maybe she'd just gone without sex too long.
Maya dropped her gaze to Axell's amazing chest. His shirt was so freshly laundered, she could smell the starch. He wore a three-piece gray suit elegant enough to be a tuxedo. She brushed an imaginary speck from his lapel and straightened his white carnation and absorbed his intoxicating presence. He might be stiff, but he definitely wasn't cold.
His question, "What do you have to lose?" still hung in the air. She knew the answer—her heart. Her stupid, illogical, breakable heart.
"You wouldn't understand," she sighed. And he really wouldn't. She was just a means to an end for him. Men understood possession and convenience, but they really didn't grasp the frailty of female emotion.
"You really can't fix my life, Axell," she offered in one final protest before he dragged her back to the waiting preacher and made everything final. "It isn't broken."
"Mine is," he whispered.
She shouldn't feel his pain, but she did. He had everything she'd never had, but that broken plea wiped out all argument.
Surrendering, she followed the familiar path of the current rather