Page 41 of Tail, Dark and Handsome: Celestial Mates
“Kit,” he corrected.
“Sweet suffering nebulas, really?” Mari stepped back, breaking contact. She needed to think, and she just couldn’t string two words together when he kept touching her. It was unfair and a dirty trick. Zero said his father needed a friend, and Mari could see why. Winter had no people skills. He either held himself back with haughty aloofness or he was all intensity with no middle ground.
“Are those reasons inadequate? My first mate was chosen on a less sincere basis,” he said.
She breathed out, not realizing she had been holding her breath. “Explain that, please.”
“It is not relevant.”
“Oh, I highly doubt that. Now, explain.”
“I will try to be succinct. Rebel is—was—the daughter of a business partner. When the troubles on Talmar began, my father moved our holdings to Corra. He had existing property there, ostensibly because land and production would be cheaper there, but I suspect it was originally meant to be a tax shelter.” His ears twitched, and he sighed. “That does not matter. We were on Corra, and Rebel’s family was desperate to get her off Talmar, but the borders had been closed. However, Corra grants citizenship to a spouse.”
“So Rebel married you for a passport?” Mari tried to recall what she knew of Talmar’s civil war. It happened when she was a preteen, or thereabouts, and at an age when she ignored newsworthy interstellar events. Winter couldn’t be much older than her then. Zero said forty-one, right? “How old were you? You had to be a baby.”
“Little more than a kit, but of legal age.”
So his first marriage was not a love match, not that he was proposing a love match now. He had offered a “you’re tolerable, attractive enough, and my son likes you” match. It was insulting when it came down to those terms. She may have been jilted and left at the altar, but she wasn’t so desperate to accept the first guy who came along, even if the way those shorts hung off his hips was scandalous.
Oddly, she found herself not rebuking him and throwing his lukewarm proposal back at him. Instead, she said, “Thank you for sharing that with me. I appreciate that you’re protective of your first wife.”
His ears flicked, but he waited for her to continue.
“I don’t understand why you think you need a wife. Why now?”
He glanced away, then back to her, his gaze hot and intense. How had she ever thought his eyes were cold?
“Zero requires a mother. You are suitable for the task,” he said.
Wow, the romance and poetry of those words.
Mari laughed, the absurdity of the situation overcoming her. “Sorry, sorry. I’m nervous. Ignore me.”
“Impossible.” He had her in his arms again, folding her to him like they had years of practice. “Tell me yes, Marigold.”
Sweet tea and peaches.
“This is too much,” she said. She didn’t know him, but she thought she knew Tomas and look how that turned out. Tomas was out of her heart, yes, but it still hurt. Rushing into the next relationship seemed like inviting more heartache.
But she wanted a change, and this is what the universe put in her path.
“I’ll take the job. Just the job,” she said. “We’ll need to route through Olympus Station. I need to pack some things and take care of personal business.”
His hold tightened at her words. If he was disappointed, he kept it to himself. “As you say.”
She tilted her head back, admiring the way the moonlight softened his hard features. They were back to that sweetness that made time pliable, stretching between them. The impossible seemed a little more possible, that two strangers could have an instant connection and decide to make a life together.
He was tolerable—she mentally grinned at the word—and growing more so every day. Attraction? Check. And she liked his son.
Tolerability, attraction, and like. It was more than most had. Love could follow in its own time.
He lowered his face to hers.
Her breath fluttered. This was too soon after Tomas, some distant part of her mind protested, and Winter wanted so much, so soon. The rest of her was on board with what was about to happen. Anticipation zipped through her, tingling in a way that no one had ever made her.
“Dad? Did you ask Merry-gold?”
Winter pushed Mari away. The back of her legs bumped into the lounger, and she crashed down with a thump, the wood groaning under her weight. She stared up at him.
