Harlequin Romance March 2021 Box Set Cara Colter (the mitten read aloud TXT) 📖

surprise, no off button. Beside the alarm panel was the electrical box for the office. It might be a better bet. He opened it, found the main power switch.

He glanced at her, and she nodded. He flicked the switch.

They were plunged into instant darkness, but the silence was blessed.

He took a step back and gazed at her in the faint glow of a streetlight coming in the window. He could see the rich shine of her thick chestnut hair, piled up carelessly on top of her head.

He had a shocking sense of wanting to slip those glasses from her face, a shocking desire to know what her hair would feel like beneath his fingers if he freed it to cascade around her shoulders.

Where had that thought come from? Jonas frowned. He was not a man given to that kind of wayward thought, nor was she the kind of woman who inspired them.

In fact, her look leaned toward a comfy Saturday-at-home-with-the-cat.

Still, there was a certain voluptuousness to her, a plumpness to a full bottom lip, a spark in those eyes that hinted at passion for a man patient enough to coax it to the surface.

What she wasn’t, was any kind of a—

“Bimbo,” Madame Cosmos had told him with a sigh, after having just met him, scanning him with shrewd eyes that had felt as if they stripped him to his soul. “You have a long history of dating exactly the wrong kind of woman.”

Despite the fact Jane had come so highly recommended, Jonas should have cut and run right then. It was a measure of his desperation—or maybe his obsession with winning—that he had not.

What the young woman in front of him wasn’t, Jonas reminded himself sternly in an effort to stay on track, was Jane Clark. In fact, she was the antithesis of the highly recommended matchmaker who had the flair and panache of a carnival fortune-teller.

He had a sudden, exceedingly uncomfortable thought. What if he was meeting his match? Right now? What if this was who Madame Cosmos had picked for him? Not just the antithesis of herself, but the antithesis of the kind of women he normally dated?

It seemed like the kind of stunt the old gal might pull. Just throw them together, surprise them with each other and see what happens. See if they sink, or see if they swim.

It made him look at the woman in front of him in a different light. An exceedingly uncomfortable one. She was definitely not the kind he had ever gone for. Something bookish and girl-next-door about her.

“I have an appointment,” he said, “with Madame…er… I mean, Mrs. Clark.”

“Canceled,” she said abruptly. “You’ll be called.” She nodded toward the door, dismissing him.

Jonas absorbed the shock of being addressed like that, but had to admit he was reluctantly intrigued. There was that spunkiness again, that warning not to mistake her for an idiot.

Jonas took a deep breath. Let’s find out, he told himself. “I’m Jonas Boyden.”

“I saw that on the card. What’s your business with Jane?”

“I’m a client.”

He braced himself for her to arrive at the same realization he just had, to say, shocked, But I am, too.

Instead, she said, “A matchmaking client?” She looked very skeptical.

“Indeed.”

“You are not.”

There it was again. A feistiness that belied the more muted bookworm look. She was actually calling him a liar, which should have been insulting. Instead, he was intrigued.

Jonas cocked his head at her. “Excuse me?”

“You’re no Alexandro Helinski.”

“Who?”

“Never mind. What would a man like you need a woman like my aunt for?”

Her aunt. Not his match, then. He was instantly relieved. And maybe, ever so slightly, disappointed.

“A man like me?”

“Don’t women flounder at your feet?”

“Maybe I don’t need that kind of woman.” Bimbos. “The floundering kind. I hired your aunt to find me a match.”

“What kind of a match?” she asked, reluctantly curious, suddenly round-eyed, behind her glasses.

“A match made in heaven,” he said dryly.

“You were going to let my aunt pick a wife for you?”

“Isn’t that what she does?”

* * *

Krissy felt she probably looked like a fish gasping for air. She snapped her mouth, gaping open with astonishment, closed. A man like this would be using her aunt’s services? There was no sense being curious. Her aunt’s services were no longer available.

But curious she was. “You can’t find your own wife?”

“I’m not exactly looking for a wife.”

Of course he wasn’t!

“The circumstances are unusual,” he continued. “Your aunt wouldn’t normally take my kind of request, but I needed a partner—temporarily—and she took pity on me.”

A temporary partner? He was darned right that was the kind of request Jane would not have entertained! But she obviously had, though it was hard to imagine anyone taking pity on this self-possessed man.

“I need a fiancée,” he said, “and I just don’t have the time to sort through profiles, to research backgrounds, to assess suitability, to gauge compatibility. Your aunt promised to do all those things for me. She guaranteed satisfaction.”

“A temporary fiancée.” It sounded perfectly appalling. What had auntie been thinking?

“It’s complicated. I won’t bore you with the details.”

Krissy was pretty sure she wouldn’t be bored.

“But I do need to see your aunt. Urgently.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Boyden, my aunt won’t be helping you.” Krissy struggled to tell him that her aunt had died, but somehow saying the words made it seem all too real all over again. She took a deep breath, needing to get the words out without crying. Why couldn’t he just leave, as she had asked him, and she could call him when she was more composed?

His brow lowered as Krissy’s silence lengthened. Mr. Boyden was not used to people not helping him!

“I have a contract,” he said. “Not to mention having made a small fortune of a down payment.”

“Can you just leave me a business card?” Krissy said, suddenly weary. She was not going to be vulnerable in front of this man, announce to him bluntly her aunt was now deceased. “I’ll call you next week and we’ll arrange a