Wildest Hearts by Jayne Ann Krentz Page A

He's not going to assault me in order to claim his marital rights, or whatever they call them these days.”
     
    “How do you know that?” Joanna demanded.
     
    “Wait until you meet him. You'll understand.” Annie slashed open the last side of the lid and peered into the carton. A large object shrouded in bubble wrap loomed inside. An emerald eye winked at her through the plastic. “Great. It's the leopard. I wasn't sure what I'd get when I ordered it. The guy who does these cloisonné animals is a little unpredictable. I'm still trying to move the elephant.”
     
    “Annie, stop fussing with the new merchandise,” Joanna said, exasperated. “This is your wedding day and I have a ghastly feeling we're all headed for disaster.”
     
    “Don't be silly.” Annie reached into the box, took a grip on the bubble-wrapped leopard, and started to haul him out. “You're letting your imagination run away with you, Joanna. It's the stress, I suppose.”
     
    “It's not the stress,” Joanna wailed, “it's my common sense finally kicking in. This marriage of convenience idea is totally crazy. I should never have let you go through with it. I don't know what got into me. I must have been out of my mind to let you talk me into it.”
     
    “It's a brilliant idea and it's going to work just fine.” Annie heaved the leopard halfway out of the box. “It's already working. I've had phone calls all morning from Daniel's investors and creditors asking if it's true that Oliver Rain will own half of Lyncroft Unlimited by tomorrow morning. When I told them it was true and that he was taking control of the entire operation, they all sounded incredibly relieved.”
     
    “It's you I'm worried about, Annie, not the company. Listen, it's not too late to call this whole thing off. Tell Rain you changed your mind.”
     
    “But I haven't changed my mind. We had blood tests and everything. You'll be glad to know we're both extremely healthy, by the way.”
     
    “I wasn't worried about your health.”
     
    “Well, there isn't anything else to worry about.” Annie adjusted her grip on the bubble wrap and hauled the leopard a few more inches out of the carton. “Oliver and I are going to be roommates for a while. That's all.”
     
    “Annie, he's one of the most powerful men in the Northwest, and no one seems to know much about him. He might be, well, you know, strange or something.”
     
    “He is.”
     
    “Strange?”
     
    “Uh-huh.”
     
    “Oh, my God.”
     
    “But in an interesting way, if you know what I mean.” Annie had the plastic-bound leopard almost out of the box.
     
    “No, I do not know what you mean,” Joanna snapped. “This sounds worse by the minute. You've got to call off the wedding.”
     
    “I'm not going to call it off. This marriage is our best chance to hold things together until Daniel returns and you know it.”
     
    “At least wait until Barry Cork gets back from his trip to California.”
     
    “This isn't Barry's decision. I'm in charge of the company and I have to take the responsibility for deciding how to save it.”
     
    “Please,” Joanna said desperately. “I know you're doing this at least partially for me and the baby. But I don't want you to take that kind of risk for us.”
     
    “I'm doing it for Daniel, too.”
     
    “Daniel wouldn't want you to do anything this drastic, either.”
     
    “It's not drastic. Not really. It's a simple, sensible way to deal with the situation. For the last time, Joanna, stop worrying. Oliver Rain is not going to be a problem.”
     
    “You keep saying that, but how do you know it? What makes you think you'll be safe in his penthouse? What if he turns out to be a sex maniac?”
     
    “A sex maniac? Oliver Rain?” Annie started to grin. She couldn't help herself. She stood there clutching the bulky package containing the leopard and let herself get swept away with a vision of Oliver Rain as a sex maniac. Her grin turned into a laugh. It was the