Page 6 of I Almost Do

Shock? He thinks the news that he’s dying is a shock? It’s not a shock, it’s a devastation. A tsunami of fear and pain and loss and grief, and I’m standing in the window of a high-rise watching the wave crest the shore, knowing the entire damn building is about to be washed into the ocean.

I stare at my own hands for a long time before I finally manage to say something. “How is Clare taking the news?”

“I haven’t told her yet. I wanted to talk to you first.” He rubs his eyes. “She’s so sweet. Just like her mother that way. Soft too. You know her. She’s so innocent. So trusting. She’s not ready to be out there unprotected in this world.”

I nod because I know it’s true. I don’t know how he managed it, but Marcus has successfully sheltered his daughter from the worst of this awful world. He’s loved and protected her the way a parent is supposed to.

After a horrific episode in her childhood, Marcus somehow turned that around for her.

He says she doesn’t even remember that, while her mother was sick with cancer, a temporary nanny and her boyfriend attempted to kidnap her for ransom. She knows it happened as a matter of record, but she was only three and doesn’t remember it or the bloody shoot-out that occurred as a result.

Thank God for that. Because no one needs memories of blood and death.

I’m only nine years older than she is, but it feels more like twenty. “Do you need me to look out for her? I can look in on her for you, manage her finances—”

“I need you to marry her.”

I look at the tumbler in my hand, then knock back the entire glass of bourbon in one go. When I can breathe again, I say, “I don’t look at her like that.” Which is true. But also an outright lie.

“Oh, I know,” Marcus says dryly. “I see how much you don’t look at her. But I think the way youdon’tlook at her now is a little different from the way you used to not look at her.”

He’s right that I don’t look at her. I look anywhere but at her. I avoid her when I can. And when I can’t, I keep my vision squarely focused on her forehead.

I keep a tight rein on my fantasies. I don’t want to know where my mind could wander if I ever let it. Clare Harcourt is a goddamn dream.

Her freckles and wide green eyes give her a girl-next-door look that couldn’t be further from reality. As Marcus Harcourt’s daughter, if we had royalty in this country, she’d be a literal princess.

Marcus knows where I came from. And not because I ever told him or talked about it. It’s because before he ever allowed me in his home, he had me investigated down to my preschool records. He dug into things he had no legal right to stick his nose in. He even knew I’d changed my name when I was fourteen.

And, for some insane reason that I cannot fathom, he decided he didn’t care.

Now here he is, offering me his daughter. As if there was ever a scenario where Clarissa Harcourt could be my wife. Even imagining it feels like flying too close to the sun.

She’s off-limits. Full stop. I owe everything to Marcus. Every bit of my career success, every bit of any sense of family and stability I have, he’s provided those to me. The man has been a mentor, a friend, and a father to me, never mind that I was in my twenties when I met him.

But I don’t come from the kind of life Clare has been raised in. My hands are covered in blood. They have been since I was seven years old. She needs someone gentle and soft and clean. Not someone like me.

“Why marriage? I don’t need to be married to her to manage her money for her or make sure she has what she needs.”

“She’s never lived on her own in her life. She has a gentle heart, and people will take advantage of that. They’llhurther. She’s commuting to college where she’s majoring in library science, of all things. She wants to work as an elementary school librarian. This world is going to eat her alive. The heiress librarian. When she loses me….” He closes his eyes in a long blink. “She will be sad and lonely and rich as fuck. Predators and con artists are going to be coming out of the woodwork and gunning straight for her.”

Marcus isn’t wrong.

“You’re a good man, James,” he continues.

At the unconscious shake of my head, Marcus fixes me with a stern look. “You are a good man. You understand loyalty. You'll be gentle with her and ruthless with anyone who tries to hurt her. You are theonlyperson I trust to protect her.

“I’m leaving the majority of my assets to the two of you. I’d also like to transfer trustee status of her trust fund from me to you until she’s twenty-five. It’s not that far off, really.

“You could keep the vultures away. I’m not asking for more than that right now. Once she has her feet under her, the two of you can come to whatever arrangement you want. But she needs someone she can count on to be there for her.

“Without a spouse, she won’t have a single next of kin. Imagine that. Imagine a health scare, like me or her mother, and not having a single person there to….” He closes his eyes briefly before shaking away the thought. He’s giving in to his fear, and he knows it.

“You don’t think Clare would object to this?” He can “offer” all he wants, but this is the twenty-first century. A man doesn’t just get to decide who his daughter is going to marry. Moreover, heshouldn’t.

Marcus gives me the signature expression he uses when he thinks someone is trying to blow smoke up his ass: one eyebrow raised, head slightly tilted. “My daughter has been in love with you since she was old enough to write ‘James Mellinger’ in a heart on the cover of her notebook. She won’t object.”

Heat curls up the back of my neck. “It was a little crush. She got over that.”

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