Synopsis

Dave Currick was everything Matty Brennan wanted for as along as she could remember. Right up until he broke her heart six years ago. Now that she's returned to Wyoming for good, what she wants more than anything is to save her family's ranch. Even if that means swallowing her pride and asking Dave to marry her.

Matty's up to something - Dave knows that much. Just as he knows that Matty needs help, so of course he'll provide it, just as he has all her life. Doing what's best for Matty is second nature, and part of the cowboy code. Even when it comes to marrying her in name only. Although he can't resist one hot-blooded kiss after the I-dos.

Maybe - just maybe - his Matty will become more to him than Almost a Bride.

Excerpt

She took a breath and leaped.

"I want to marry you."

For a second, she could almost believe she'd really jumped into the swimming hole. She felt the same shock of cold surround her and the same sensation that all sound in the world was muffled and distant. The only thing she could hear clearly was the beating of her own heart.

Then a single word from Dave brought her back.

"Pardon?"

He hadn't moved an inch and his expression hadn't changed. He sounded as if he was certain–as only Dave could be certain–that he'd heard wrong.

"I want to marry you. In fact, I have to marry you."

He seemed to come out of a trance. He pushed his cowboy hat back off his forehead, and leaned against the pole that held up the roof over the sidewalk, crossing one leg over the other.

"Have to? You sure it's me you're thinking of?" The amusement was back in his voice. At least she thought it was amusement. It had an edge to it and the look he was giving her didn't strike her as a laughing matter, but maybe that's how he showed amusement these days. "Darlin', either I missed something in the past few weeks that I'd truly hate to think I'd missed or you're setting to make medical history. Unless there's someone else more, let's say, recent?"

"Don't be an idiot, Dave. I'm not pregnant."

"That's a relief. I'd hate to have you be the subject of all those tabloid newspapers for bearing a child six years after the fact. As for the more usual time frame, well a gentleman doesn't like to think he's forgotten things like that. And if someone else–"

"Oh, shut up, Dave. It's nothing like that."

"Nothing to do with oh, say, an affair of the heart?"

"Why would it have to do with an affair of the heart?"

"Well," he drawled, "marriage sometimes does."

"Not this time. I told you, it's business."

"Business?"

"This is all beside the point." She barely gritted her teeth at all; she was proud of that.

"And what is the point, Matty?" His mouth twitched.

"The point–" She figured she couldn't be blamed for a little teeth-gritting now. "–is that I want us to get married. Right away. But only temporarily."

"Temporarily?"

"Of course,