Married To A Stranger. Allison Leigh

      Prologue

      All he’d wanted was a kiss. A simple kiss.

      So how on God’s green earth had his life gotten so out of control in just one week over something so simple?

      Tris rolled his head against the cushioned seat and looked across the aisle of the custom-fitted jet. Hope was still asleep. She certainly had no head for alcohol.

      His jaw was so tight it ached. He had earned himself a doozy of a headache, too. But he knew it wasn’t from champagne, or whiskey or anything even remotely alcoholic. He’d barely choked down the few toasts they’d had at the reception—half a glass of champagne wasn’t anywhere near enough to set this pain in his head to throbbing.

      No, his headache had begun a little over a week ago, he knew. Brought on strictly by himself.

      He shoved his fingers through his hair and closed his eyes. But the sight of the woman stretched out on the long seat across from him was firmly burned into his brain.

      Hope’s toffee-colored hair had fallen loose at some point on the drive to the airport. When he’d carried her onto the private jet, the long, thick waves had clung to his shirt, flowed over his arm and streamed behind them in the night breeze. Now, they lay tangled and gleaming over her shoulders, off the couch, nearly touching the carpeted floor.

      He’d slipped off her narrow-heeled shoes and set them on the floor beside her. Her dress—so obviously an antique that he knew women who’d have given their eyeteeth for the ankle-length garment—had worked its way up her shapely calves. With one knee drawn upward, the fabric pulled in a taut stretch of beige-tinted lace over the back of her thighs and her derriere.

      She was a total innocent, and lying there, so soundly asleep, she was temptation personified.

      Temptation. That’s what had gotten them into this mess in the first place. Tris should have known better than to flirt with temptation. God knows she didn’t have enough experience to fight the blistering sparks between them.

      But he was experienced. And older. And he should have known better. His heart might not be programmed for love and happily-ever-after, but he was on a first-name basis with the desires of the flesh.

      Tris could feel the plane banking. There was no point in looking out the little oval windows. It was pitch-dark out there. Dark above, dark below, dark all around.

      Even this luxurious main cabin of the plane was dark, except for one small lamp burning near him. It cast enough glow to highlight the lace dress and glossy hair of the woman across from him.

      He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, legs sprawled out before him, his chin resting on his steepled fingers. It could have been one hour or three. But finally, Hope sighed deeply and shifted. Her hand tumbled off the cushion and grazed the carpet. The light glinted on the platinum rings—one plain and one studded with a trio of excruciatingly perfect diamonds—circling her ring finger.

      The rings he had put there.

      She turned her head and pushed her thick hair out of her eyes. She blinked drowsily and he figured her vision was probably blurry, because her eyeglasses were sitting on the round side table beside his seat.

      Comprehension slowly dawned in her eyes. He waited, knowing just when that memory clicked into place, because she breathed in sharply and yanked her feet off the cushion to sit up.

      “Where are we?” Hope pressed a trembling hand to her head.

      “More than halfway to Paris.”

      Her shoulders seemed to sag. “I drank too much,” she murmured. “I’ve never—Oh, God. What have we done?”

      Tris would have been amused at the panic rounding her violet eyes if he hadn’t been wondering the same thing. He rarely acted impulsively. And even his actions over the last few days had been fairly deliberate. He trusted his instincts, listened to his gut because it rarely failed him.

      But now, sitting here in this private jet equipped with every comfort known to man, from a whirlpool tub and a down-covered bed, to a fully equipped kitchen, to an array of computerized equipment that could run a small country if need be, his instincts had fully deserted him.

      All because of this violet-eyed temptress.

      “What have we done?” he repeated. He’d taken the easiest path of solving her problem. “We’ve stopped the gossip about us, effectively removing any reason for you to lose your teaching job.”

      That’s all they’d done.

      The irony burned. He’d started out thinking he’d like to taste her soft-looking lips. That was all.

      He still hadn’t kissed her. Not really. That quick, off-centered glancing of lips earlier that day didn’t count.

      He hadn’t gotten a kiss. He hadn’t “gotten” anything that everybody in town and beyond seemed to think he’d been “getting.” It was almost laughable.

      Tris picked up her eyeglasses and leaned forward, handing them to her. But in the end, nothing about this situation was laughable.

      Particularly the fact that the young woman slipping the gold-rimmed glasses on her nose had—less than twelve hours ago, stood where he’d long ago vowed never to stand—in front of a minister, promising to “love, honor and cherish.”

      He hadn’t gotten a kiss.

      He’d gotten a wife.