“Look,” Lucas said, reaching across the table to take her hand. She couldn’t suppress a shiver of reaction. “I need a wife, you need money. Agree to marry me and we both get what we want.”

His large hand covered hers, his warm palm nestling against her fingers. The warmth, the power of him seemed to sap her strength, to dissolve her will. Like her autocratic father, this man could swallow her up, diminish her.

Her own mother, a sweet and loving woman, had always seemed to shrink in stature when she was with her husband. French Dickenson barked out an order and Elizabeth complied, even if it turned her own plans upside down. Allie’s mother gave every ounce of her soul to the man she adored, tucking her own needs away time and again. When the cancer took hold, Elizabeth’s physical pain was nothing compared to the agony she had felt in defying French by dying.

Allie was not her mother. She couldn’t live like that.

“No.” She tugged her hand free. “I can’t marry you.”

His jaw tightened and she recognized the hard light in his gray eyes. “Then I can’t loan you the money.”

Allie sat there, stunned. Not that he would turn her down, but that he would coerce her this way. To back her into a corner went beyond arrogance, bordered on cruelty.

“You can’t mean that.”

“I can. It’s my money, Allie.”

She looked around her at the half-full restaurant, at the waiter hovering nearby, out the window at the American River below them. She couldn’t say yes, couldn’t let herself be sucked into Lucas’s control. She faced him again. “Then I’ll get the money somewhere else.”

A faint smile curved his lips. “If you could have borrowed it elsewhere, you wouldn’t have asked me. I’m your last resort.”

Of course he was right, damn him. And he surely knew how desperately she needed the money. Still, the words were impossible to drag out. “If I agreed, how long would we have to stay married?”

The tension in his face eased at her apparent capitulation. “One year, possibly two. However long it takes to finalize the adoption. I’ll have to consult my attorney.”

She nodded, her head suddenly pounding. She felt as if she perched on the lip of a chasm, readying herself to leap it. Would she safely reach the other side? Or fall to be crushed on the rocks below? “Then yes,” she said, barely above a whisper. “I’ll marry you.”

Triumph lit his eyes—triumph and something else. Relief? “Good then. Fine.” He picked up his water glass to sip; she could swear his hand trembled slightly. “A month enough time for you? To pack up your apartment and move to my estate?”

The enormity of what she’d agreed to swamped her. “Move? Why can’t I keep my own place?”

“Social services performs home visitations for prospective parents. They’ll expect husband and wife to be living together.”

She imagined herself standing in the river below, the swift currents below the surface taking her feet out from under her, sweeping her away. She tried to grasp for some measure of self-control. “When can you give me the money?”

He gestured peremptorily to the waiter. “After we’re married.”

“No,” she said, grateful for the opportunity to take a stand, no matter how weak. “I need the money now.”

“That’s acceptable.” He opened the menu, effectively dismissing her now that he had her concession. “I’ll wire the money to your account tomorrow.”

He ordered for them both, scarcely pausing to ask her approval of his choice. Shaken by what had transpired in the past several minutes, she realized she would have to strengthen her resolve if she hoped to survive this…this…agreement with Lucas with her self-esteem intact.

When her salad arrived, she dove into it, suddenly ravenous. She’d been so anxious about her upcoming discussion with Lucas, she’d eaten almost nothing at lunch. Now, with a little food in her stomach, she could wrest some control back from Lucas.

“Where shall we have the ceremony?” she asked.

He seemed surprised by her question. “The county courthouse. Or Tahoe. It doesn’t matter.”

She tipped her chin up stubbornly. “It does to me. I want my family there. They’d never forgive me if I didn’t invite them.”

“It isn’t a real wedding, Allie. We don’t need your family there.”

He was right, of course. There was no real commitment between them other than expediency. But she felt a compulsion to include her family. “I need them.”

“No.” He shook his head. “I don’t want this turning into a circus.”

“Not a circus, Lucas. Just my sister, brother and their spouses.”

His gaze narrowed on her and she got the sense he was only now realizing he may have underestimated her. She felt a brief flare of satisfaction. Then he dipped his head in acquiescence. “Fine. We’ll include your family.”

She ought to be content with that victory, but she pushed on. “And I want the ceremony in a church, not the courthouse.”

She expected exasperation. Instead she got cold, tightly leashed anger. “Not a church. The courthouse or my own backyard. I won’t say the vows in a church.”

The bitterness in his tone, the bleak rage in his eyes shocked her. “The courthouse, then,” she said softly.

Even as he retreated behind his habitual arrogant mask, Allie wondered about the true self hidden beneath the layers of control, wondered if there was anything more to Lucas Taylor than the overbearing persona he showed the world.

Maybe not. Maybe some men, like Lucas, like her own father, only knew one way—power, control, dominance. Give and take, compromise didn’t exist in their universe. In all the years and all the battles with her father, Allie would have given anything for a truce. But in her father’s eyes, truce meant surrender and surrender meant defeat.

In the end, his own body had defeated him. As his lucent moments became scarcer, her father might never realize the way his daughter had sacrificed her own freedom on his behalf.

Leaning back as the waiter came to take away their salad plates, Allie felt the significance of her agreement with Lucas settle on her, a nearly unbearable weight. The delectable broiled salmon the waiter set before her a few moments later could have been sawdust for all the appeal it held for her roiling stomach. As she made a show of cutting a bite of the succulent fish, she glanced over at Lucas.

He sat motionless, looking out the window, his expression distant, his face emotionless. While she struggled to come to terms with the prospect of marriage, Lucas seemed to have already compartmentalized it as another finalized business decision. It meant no more to him than that.

Her gaze dropped to the table and saw a different story in Lucas’s hands. Resting on either side of his plate of swordfish, they gripped his fork and knife so fiercely she wondered if he would bend them in his agitation. Tension popped the tendons out in the backs of his hands, set his shoulders into a stiff, rigid line.

“Lucas.” She reached out, lightly touched his hand.

He jerked back from her, dropping the silverware. “Excuse me.” Tossing his napkin on the table, he rose and strode off toward the men’s room.

Allie watched him go, a thousand questions whirling in her mind. She ate a few bites of her salmon, a little of the fresh broccoli beside it on the plate, all the while forcing herself to sit still and wait for Lucas.

When he returned, he’d gathered his businesslike shroud around him again. “We can have the ceremony at a church, if you like.” He said it as if it mattered little to him, as if his vehement objection earlier had never happened. “I’ll leave it to you to pick the church.”

He dug into his swordfish then, finishing it off methodically. No explanation of why he’d left the table, no further discussion of the wedding. Allie could scarcely take another bite, he had her so off-balance.

Later, when he escorted her to her car, he opened the door for her and waited until she’d climbed inside. “Last Saturday in September,” he said. “The afternoon is fine.”