A Merger by Marriage by Cat Schield

all the time, but decided not to push her away. Instead, he held out his free hand and pulled her down onto the couch beside him. She landed close and he slung his arm over the back of the couch above her shoulder. Her body fit nicely against his side. He sipped his beer and sighed.
    “How’s your week going?” he asked, resisting the urge to nuzzle his nose into her silky hair. She’d taken it down and it cascaded around her shoulders in soft waves.
    “Until an hour ago, better than yours. You had no luck at all with your family?”
    Her first comment snagged his attention. “What happened an hour ago?”
    She tensed, and didn’t immediately answer. Perplexed, JT glanced down at her. She was staring hard at the beer bottle.
    “Violet?” he prompted, growing uneasy.
    “We have a problem.”
    Keeping a sudden flare of concern from his voice, he asked, “What sort of problem?”
    “Your father knows what we’re doing.”
    JT cursed silently. “How do you know that?”
    “Because he came to see me at Fontaine Chic. He basically told me if he finds out that our marriage isn’t real that he’ll sue us for fraud.”
    Fury held him immobile. How dare his father threaten Violet. This was a battle between businessmen. But JT should have been prepared for this. It wasn’t the first time Preston Rhodes had intimidated someone who tried to take him on.
    “I’ll deal with him.” JT took a healthy swallow of his beer and swallowed his irritation. No need to get Violet any more worked up than she already was. This wasn’t her fight. It was his. That his father chose to confront Violet instead of him let JT know that he was feeling threatened. “It’s just a threat to distract us while he shores up support amongst the other shareholders.”
    “But he said that it would tie up the stock until after the August stockholders’ meeting. And that if he keeps control of the company he’s going to do to you what he did to Tiberius.”
    As threats went, it lacked teeth. “There’s no immediate family to turn against me,” JT reminded her. “As for ejecting me from the company, I was ready to go out on my own before we found out about Tiberius buying stock.” JT liked her fierce defense of him. It gave him an urgent need to pull her into his arms and offer her his ardent thanks. “Besides, if he wanted me gone, he could make that happen at any time. He hasn’t. He doesn’t want to risk losing the support of what shareholders he has at the moment.”
    “I suppose.” She didn’t look convinced. “But why should we risk the lawsuit and your reputation when there’s a simple solution.”
    JT grew apprehensive when he realized she’d concocted a plan in that nimble brain of hers. “And that is?”
    “We appear as if we’re truly married. I’ll move in here. We’ll let ourselves be seen around town looking like lovebirds. Meanwhile you keep talking to your family.”
    A simple solution? Maybe on the surface. Definitely for her. But with Violet living here, JT knew it was only a matter of time before he trampled their bargain and made her his wife for real. And then what? He just let her go in a month? Impossible. Once he made her his, there was no going back.
    “Sounds perfect,” he heard himself say and wondered just how long it would remain so.
    * * *
    Beneath Scarlett’s watchful eye, Violet packed a suitcase full of essentials and ignored most of her sister’s questions.
    “At least tell me this,” Scarlett said. “Are you going to give the man a chance to rock your world?”
    Violet sat down on the bed beside her sister. “I’m afraid that if I do that by the time we get divorced I’ll be madly in love with him.”
    “But wouldn’t it be worth discovering he’s madly in love with you, too?”
    “JT’s right. Your happiness with Logan makes you want everyone else to find love.” Violet shook her head. “It’s not where JT and I are heading.”
    “You’re just afraid. Before Logan, I was