"And you expect your marriage to last?"

Sean nodded. "Yes."

"All right." Sinclair held up his hand and Alistair placed a check in it. Laurel tried to contain her excitement. Her dream was so close, she could almost feel it. But instead of being overjoyed, she felt a certain measure of dread. Her future was about to begin, and her present-with Sean-would be left behind.

"With all the pressures of modern life," Sinclair intoned, "I feel that I need to make some accommodations for the possibility that this marriage might not be… oh, what is the word I'm searching for… permanent. To that end, I've decided to give you your trust fund over time. You'll get two hundred and fifty thousand today, five hundred thousand on your first wedding anniversary, a million on your second, two million on your third and the balance on your fourth anniversary. If you stay married, you'll have your fortune by the time you're thirty-one. I think this is a reasonable plan."

Laurel stood. "This was not the agreement," she said. "You can't do this. You can't change the rules in the middle of the game."

"I can do whatever I want," Sinclair said, straightening in his chair. "Oh, and one more condition. You and your husband have to continue to live here in the mansion. This is the Rand family home and any Rand family heirs should be brought up here."

"Why would you do this?" Laurel demanded. "Do you want me to hate you?"

"I want you to be happy," Sinclair said, as if the answer were obvious to everyone but her.

"Well, this is a crappy way to prove that." Unable to contain her emotions any longer, Laurel crumpled up the check, threw it at his head and stalked out of the room. Her body trembled uncontrollably and she wasn't sure whether to cry or to scream. She was twenty-six years old and an eighty-year-old man was pulling all the strings! If it continued like this, she'd be an old woman and still be waiting for Sinclair to throw her a few crumbs.

She took the stairs two at a time and ran into her bedroom, slamming the door behind her. Sean's duffel was stuffed under the bed and she found her suitcases on the top shelf of the closet. "I'm through. I've had enough. Uncle Sinclair can just take his millions and shove them up his-" Laurel finished with a curse, then yanked open her dresser and started pulling out clothes at random. "I am out of here." A soft knock sounded on the door. "Go away!" she shouted.

The door opened and Sean stepped inside. He crossed to the bed and stared down at her open suitcase. "What are you doing?"

"I'm finished. I don't care about the money, I don't care about the community center. It was all just a stupid, silly dream. I thought I could do something that my parents would have been proud of, but it's impossible. I'm going to find an apartment and see if the school district will let me substitute teach. I'm going to get on with my life."

Sean held out the crumpled check. "I thought you might want this."

"No. I don't want any of Sinclair's money."

"It's your money, Laurel. And this is enough to get started on the renovations. Once Amy comes through, there will be more. You can still make this work. I know you can."

Tears pressed at the corners of her eyes and she fought them back. She wouldn't cry, she couldn't give Sinclair that last little bit of her dignity. But when Sean reached up and cupped her cheek in his palm, one of the tears slipped out.

"I can't do this anymore," she murmured. "I can't fight him any longer." He pulled her into his arms, enveloping her in his embrace. Laurel pressed her face into his chest and sobbed. "I want my life to start and that can't happen here."

"Just give it a little more time," Sean said. "Stay here with me tonight and see how you feel in the morning."

"Why do you care?" she asked.

He tipped her face up until her gaze met his. "I want you to be happy."

"But we can't continue this," she said, throwing up her arms in frustration.

"And why not? Sinclair hasn't asked for any proof that we're married. He'll go back to Maine, we'll live together here at the house when he's around, and go on with our lives when he isn't. Hell, I could live here full-time. It would save on rent."

"You… you'd do that for me?"

"I don't have anything better to do."

"If Sinclair finds out we're not married, he'll hold everything until I'm thirty-one. He might even decide to wait until I'm fifty. That's his choice."

"How is he going to find out? We've fooled him so far."

"If I could afford to pay you for a year, I would. But I can't. At five hundred a day that would be-"

"About a hundred and eighty thousand," Sean said. "And you don't have to pay me."

"You'd stay for no reason?"

"I have my reasons. I want to see you make the community center work. That's reason enough."

"I can't ask you to do that," Laurel said, shaking her head. "You want to get your business off the ground and-"

"I can still do that," Sean said.

She hesitated. "And how would things be?"

"I'd go to work every morning and so would you. We'd come home and have dinner."

"I mean, how would it be between us?" she interrupted. "What would we be to each other?"

Sean considered her question for a long moment. "I don't know. We'd have to figure that out as we went along."

She blinked, then stared down at her hands. She wanted to be his love and his life. She wanted him to promise that he'd stay forever. But he obviously wasn't ready to do that-and maybe he never would be. She'd grown to love the vulnerability in him. But that vulnerability was what kept him from returning her love.

"I-I really appreciate the offer. And I will think about it." Laurel turned and crawled onto the bed, pulling the covers up around her. She felt the bed shift as he lay behind her. He wrapped his arms around her waist, drawing her back against his body.

"We'll figure this out," he reassured her. "We just need to give it a little more time."

A sigh slipped from her throat. Maybe he was right. Laurel was sometimes too impatient for her own good. But how long was she willing to wait for her dream to come true? And how long would it be before Sean Quinn finally admitted that he loved her? Would either come to pass or would she spend her lifetime waiting?


* * *

Laurel steered her car into the circular drive of the Rand mansion and pulled it up to the front door. After a restless night's sleep, she'd awakened in Sean's arms, both of them still dressed from the night before. They'd talked quietly and Sean had convinced her to stick to her plan, to leave all her options open for now and not make any rash decisions.

Alistair had prepared a quick breakfast for them both, hovering over them, worried that she was still angry over the argument with her uncle. Laurel wondered why the butler had even bothered to tell her about Sinclair and her mother. If her uncle loved her, then he had a real problem when it came to showing it.

She turned off the ignition and grabbed her purse from the passenger seat, slipping the deposit slip from the bank inside. Sean had been right. A quarter of a million dollars was nothing to sniff at She could buy a lot of nails and boards and duct work with that kind of money. Once the check cleared the bank, the money was all hers and Sinclair couldn't take it back. Laurel smiled. For once, she'd pulled Sinclair's strings! But she wasn't trying to delude herself. This might be the one and only string she ever got to pull.

If she and Sean made it through a year of their pretend marriage, it would be a major miracle. So many things could go wrong. Sinclair could get suspicious… she might slip up and call Sean by his real name… or- Laurel groaned. Sean might meet another woman and decide he didn't want to be "married" to her anymore.

"This will never work." Every time he left the house, she'd be holding her breath, waiting for the day that he decided not to return. After all, he'd offered to stay out of the goodness of his heart. But what if that heart found another woman to be good to?

Laurel pressed her fingers to her temples and cursed softly. "One day at a time," she muttered. The next step was to make sure her presentation to the Aldrich-Sloane Family Foundation went well. After that, she'd worry about her marriage-or lack of one.

She stepped out of the car and hurried to the front door. She'd dropped Sean off at his apartment so he could pick up his car and his messages and he'd promised to return before lunch. A nervous knot twisted in her stomach.

Now that she'd decided to carry on with the marriage, it was time to get a few things straight between them. Laurel was not about to spend the next year guessing at his feelings. Either he told her exactly how he felt about her or the deal was off. She'd confront him over chicken salad sandwiches and iced tea.

It was a risk, she mused. But better to know the truth than to spend another minute fantasizing about a man who might never love her. She'd certainly made her feelings crystal clear-or had she? Though she'd never said the words out loud, they'd been implied more than once. And surely her actions revealed what she felt in her heart.

But like Sean, she'd been holding a piece of her heart in reserve. She'd never wanted to fall in love, never wanted to risk losing someone she cared about. Yet that's what love was one big gamble, one throw of the dice, one chance at the lottery. She sighed. If she didn't get in the game, she'd never win. But if she did, she risked losing it all.

Laurel punched in the code for the front door and reached for the knob. But the door swung open in front of her. She froze, the figure that emerged catching her by complete surprise. "Edward?"