Read Online The Inconvenient Bride by Anne McAllister - Free Book Online

now, eager to be gone.
    As if she’d been nothing more than a good time, not the woman he married! Well, fine. If that’s the way he wanted it.
    â€œNothing,” she said frostily and gave a toss of her hair. “Goodbye.”
    â€œâ€™Bye.” He went out. The door shut. A second later he was back, staring down at her, something hot and hungry in his eyes.
    â€œWhat?” she demanded.
    â€œI’ll see you tonight,” he said. “My place.” And bang, the door shut after him.
    Just like that.
    She fumed about it while she showered and dressed. She muttered while she fixed her hair. She supposed she shouldn’t have expected anything different from him. It wasn’t exactly a love match they had.
    She wasn’t sure what they did have, besides sex.
    She wasn’t sure what she wanted—besides sex.
    Once upon a time marriage and children were exactly what she wanted. As a teenager she’d had no desperate career plans like her sister, Mariah. She’d never been a whiz kid. No colleges had come banging on her door. And she hadn’t gone banging on theirs.
    She’d thought that getting married and having babies was a great idea. Only she hadn’t really wanted to marry Skip Grimes who was the closest thing she had to a boyfriend atthe time. Skip hadn’t really wanted to marry her, either, so it never became an issue.
    The issue had been what to do after graduation if she wasn’t going to go to college. Her aunt Kathy suggested she learn to cut hair.
    â€œYou can get a job, make money, get your own place. Move to Kansas City, maybe,” her mother’s younger sister suggested.
    For Sierra, who had never felt she fitted in at home, moving to Kansas City sounded like heaven. Besides, learning to cut hair had to be more interesting—not to mention more useful—than knowing the causes of the First World War. And if she really could earn a living and move to Kansas City, there she might meet the man of her dreams—who would look and act nothing like Skip Grimes.
    Everything went exactly the way she’d hoped—except she never met anyone in Kansas City who made Sierra’s heart beat faster than Skip Grimes had. So three years later, when Mariah got a job as a staff writer on a New York City based lifestyle magazine, Sierra went with her.
    She’d got a job in a trendy salon. They’d shared a tiny fifth floor walk-up in the East Village. They’d been awed by the city—its energy, its bustle, its opportunities—and then they’d plunged in.
    The Kelly sisters had thrived in New York. Mariah went from junior staff writer to sought-after freelancer, a well-known writer whose personality pieces and in-depth interviews were snapped up as fast as she could turn them out.
    Sierra, too, found a home for her talents.
    She was very good at cutting hair. She was very good at styling hair, at studying her clients’ bone structure and figuring out how to make them look their best. She wasn’t afraid to be daring, to suggest color changes, to be bold. And the results were spectacular.
    The salon sent her to Paris to study.
    â€œTo take advantage of your talent. So you can learn from the best,” her boss told her.
    Sierra, never given to study before, had been astonished. And eager. She’d pinched herself all the way to Paris, hardly believing her good luck.
    She’d spent a year in Paris, learned everything they could teach her, dated half a dozen charming Frenchmen, but never found one better than Skip.
    Still, it was in France that she met Finn MacCauley. He’d been shooting a high fashion layout on the Riviera, and she’d been one of three stylists doing the models’ hair. Exacting and demanding and scathing in two languages, Finn routinely reduced stylists to tears.
    But not Sierra. She let his tirades blow over her like so much hot air. Then she did what he wanted. They hit it off.
    At the