InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Husband Hunters ❯ The vengeful husband 1 ( Chapter 12 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN THIS STORY, OR THE CHARACTERS. The story belong to Lynne Graham, and the characters belong to Rumiko Takashi .I'm not gaining absolutely nothing with this story.

N/A: ok, welcome back to this fic, I’m so glad all of you are here! A couple of point before starts reading this chapter…

First: As I mentioned on the summary, this story is an Inu/ Kag, Kouga/ Ayame ans Shess/ Rin fic. There are 3 different stories. “Married to a mistress” ( Inu/Kag) was one, and it’s already over ( for now), “ The vengeful husband” is the second one, and is based on Kouga and Ayame. There will be mention of the other characters but it will turn around our wolf friends. The last story will be based on Shess/Rin. They all will be united at the end, but please be patient. =)

I hope all of you stick around till the end.

Now, let’s start the chapter! :3



CHAPTER ONE

A slender fragile beauty in a silvery green gown. Translucent skin, a mane of vibrant red hair and spellbinding eyes as green as peridots behind her flirtatious little mask. A hoarse, sexy little voice, sharp enough to strip paint and then sweet enough to make honey taste bitter...

“No names...no pack drill,” she had said. “I don't want to know,” she had said, when he had tried to identify himself. “After tonight, I’ll never see you again. What would be the point?”

No woman had ever said that to Kouga Wolf before. No woman had ever looked on him as a one-night stand. The shock of such treatment had been profound. But her eagerness in his bed had seemed to disprove the dismissive words on her lips...until he'd wakened in the early hours and found his mystery lover gone and the adorata ring gone with her. And then Kouga had simply not been able to credit that some unscrupulous little tart had contrived to rip him off with such insulting ease.

His memory of that disastrous night in Venice almost three years earlier still biting like salt in an open wound, Kouga surveyed the closed file labeled 'Ayame Uno' on his library desk, his chiseled features chillingly cast. With the cool of a self-discipline renowned in the world of international finance, he resisted the temptation to rip open the file like an impatient boy. He had waited a long time for this moment. He could wait a little longer. “It is her this time...you're sure?” he prompted softly.

Even swollen with pride as Kazuo was at finally succeeding in his search, even convinced by the facts that he had to have the right woman, Kazuo still found himself stiffening with uncertainty. Although the woman he had identified matched every slender clue he had started out with, by no stretch of his imagination could he see his famously fastidious and highly sophisticated employer choosing to spend a wild night of passion with the female in that photograph...

“I will only be sure when you have recognized her, sir,” Kazuo admitted tautly.

“You're backtracking, Kazuo.” with a rueful sigh that signified no great hope of satisfaction, Kouga reached out a deceptively indolent brown hand and flipped open the file to study the picture of the woman on the title page.

As Kouga tensed and a frown grew on his strong dark face, setting his pure bone structure to the cold consistency of granite, Kazuo paled, suddenly convinced that he had made a complete ass of himself. That bedraggled female image sported worn jeans, Wellington boots, a battered rain-hat and a muddy jacket with a long rip in one sleeve. More bag lady than gorgeous seductress.

“I've been too hasty—“

“She's cut off her hair...” his employer interrupted in a low-pitched growl.

After a convulsive swallow, Kazuo breathed tautly, “are you saying that...it is the same woman?”

“Was she got up like this for a fancy dress party?”

“signorina Uno was feeding hens when that was taken,” Kazuo supplied apologetically. “It was the best the photographer could manage. She doesn't go out much.”

“Hens...?” bemusement pleating his aristocratic ebony brows, Kouga continued to scan the photo with hard, dark deepset eyes. “Yet it is her. Without a doubt, it is her...the devious little thief who turned me over like a professional!”

Ayame Uno had stolen a medieval ring, a museum piece, an irreplaceable heirloom. The Wolf family had been princes since the middle ages. To mark the occasion of the birth of his son, the very first Principe had given his wife, adorata, the magnificent ruby ring. Yet in spite of that rich family heritage, and the considerable value of the jewel, the police had not been informed of the theft. Initially stunned by such an omission, Kazuo had since become less surprised...

According to popular report within the Wolf empire, some very strange things had happened the night of the annual masked ball at the palazzo d'oro. The host had vanished, for one thing. And if it was actually true that giant Kouga Wolf had vanished in order to romance the thief with something as deeply un-cool for a native Venetian as a moonlit gondola tour of the city, Kazuo could perfectly understand why the police had been excluded from the distinctly embarrassing repercussions of that evening. No male would wish to confess to such a cardinal error of judgment.

In spite of the substantial reward which had been dangled like bait in the relevant quarters, the ring had not been seen since. Most probably it had been disposed of in England— secretly acquired by some rich collector content not to question its provenance. Kazuo had been extremely disappointed when the investigator failed to turn up the slightest evidence of Ayame Uno having a previous criminal record.

“Tell me about her...” his employer invited without warning, shutting the file with a decisive snap and thrusting it aside.

Surprised by the instruction, Kazuo breathed in deep. “Ayame Uno lives in a huge old house which has been in her family for many generations. Her financial situation is dire. The house is heavily mortgaged and she is currently behind with the repayments—'

“Who holds the mortgage?” Kouga incised softly.

Kazuo informed him that the mortgage had been taken out a decade earlier with an insurance firm.

“Buy it,” Kouga told him equally quietly. “Continue...”

“Locally, the lady is well-respected. However, when the investigator went further a field, he found her late godmother's housekeeper more than willing to dish the dirt.”

Kouga's brilliant eyes narrowed, his sensual mouth twisting with distaste. In an abrupt movement, he reopened the file at the photograph again. He surveyed it with renewed fascination. What he could see of her hair suggested a brutal shearing rather than the attentions of a salon. She looked a mess, a total mess, but the glow of that perfect skin and the bewitching clarity of those eyes were unmistakable.

Emerging from his uncharacteristic loss of attention, Kouga discovered that he had also lost the thread of Kazuo's report...

“And if the lady pulls it off, she stands to inherit something in the region of one million pounds sterling,” Kazuo concluded impressively.

Kouga studied his most trusted aide. “pull what off?”

“The late signora leeward had three goddaughters... possibly the god-daughters from hell.” Kazuo labeled them with rueful amusement. “When it came to the disposing of her worldly goods, what was there to choose between the three? One living with a married man, one an unmarried mother and the other going the same way—and not a wedding ring or even the prospect of one between the lot of them!'

“You’ve lost me,” Kouga admitted with controlled impatience.

“Ayame Uno's rich godmother left everything to her three godchildren on condition that each of them have to find a husband within the year.”

“And Ayame is one of those women you described” Kouga finally grasped it, bronzed features freezing into charged stillness.“Which?”

“She’s the unmarried mother,” Kazuo volunteered.

Kouga froze. “When was the child born?”

“Seven months after her trip to Venice. The kid's just over two.”

Kouga stared into space, rigidly schooling his dark face to impassivity, but it was a challenge to suppress his sheer outrage at the news. Cristo...she had even been pregnant with another man's child when she slept with him! Well, that was just one more nail in her coffin. Kouga swore in disgust. Whatever was most important to her, he would take from her in punishment. He would teach her what it was like to be deceived and cheated and humiliated. As she, most unforgettably, had taught him...

“As to the identity of the kid's father...” Kazuo continued wryly. “The jury's still out on that one. Apparently the locals believe that the child was fathered by the fiancé, who ditched the lady at the altar. He figures as a rat of the lowest order in their eyes. But the godmother's housekeeper had a very different version of events. She contends that the fiancé was abroad at the time the kid was conceived, and that he took to his heels because he realized that the baby on the way couldn't possibly be his!”

Kouga absorbed that further information in even stonier silence.

“I shouldn't think the lady will remain a single parent for long,” Kazuo advanced with conviction. “Not with a million pounds up for grabs. And on page six of the file you will see what I believe she is doing to acquire that money...”

Kouga leafed through the file. “What is this?' he demanded, studying the tiny print of the enclosed newspaper advertisement and its accompanying box number. “I suspect that Ayame Uno is discreetly advertising for a husband to fulfill the terms of that will.”

“Advertising?” Kouga echoed in raw disbelief.

“Country woman seeks quiet, well-behaved and domesticated single male without close ties, 25-50, for short-term live-in employment. Absolute confidentiality guaranteed. No time-wasters, please.”

"That's not an advertisement for a husband...it's an ad for an emasculated household pet!” Kouga launched with incredulous bite.

“I’m going to have to advertise again,” Ayame divulged grimly to Dai as she mucked out the stall of the single elderly occupant in the vast and otherwise horse-free stable yard. she wielded the shovel like an aggressive weapon. Back to square one. She could hardly believe it—and that wretched advertisement had cost an arm and a leg!

Standing by and willing to help, but knowing better than to offer, Dai looked in surprise at her friend. “But what happened to your shortlist of two possibilities? The gardener and the home handyman?”

Ayame slung the attractive thirty-year-old brunette a weary grimace. “Yesterday I phoned one and then the other in an attempt to set up an interview—“

“In which you planned to finally spill the confidential beans that matrimony was the real employment on offer.” Dai sighed. “Boy, would I like to have been a fly on the wall when you broke that news!”

“Yes, well...as it turns out, I shan't need to embarrass myself just yet. One had already found a job elsewhere and the other has moved on without leaving a forwarding address. I shouldn't have wasted so much time agonizing over my choice.”

"What choice? You only got five replies. Two were obscene and one was weird! The ad was too vague in one way and far too specific in the other. What on earth possessed you to put in "well-behaved and domesticated"? I mean, talk about picky, why don't you? Still, I can't really say I’m sorry that you've drawn a blank,” Dai admitted, with the bluntness that made the two women such firm friends.

“Dai...” Ayame groaned.

'”Look, the thought of you being alone in this house with some stranger gives me the shivers!” the brunette confided anxiously. “In any case, since you didn't want to risk admitting in the ad that you were actually looking for a temporary husband, what are the chances that either of those men would have been agreeable to the arrangement you were about to offer?”

Ayame straightened in frustration. “If i'd offered enough money, I bet one of them would have agreed. I need my inheritance, Dai. I don't care what I have to do to get it. I don't care if I have to marry the hunchback of Notre Dame to meet the conditions of Kagura's will!” Ayame admitted with driven honesty. “This house has been in my family for four hundred years—“

“But it's crumbling round your ears and eating you up alive, Ayame. Your father had no right to lay such a burden on you. If he hadn't let Uno's folly get in such a state while he was responsible for it, you wouldn't be facing the half of what you're facing right now!”

Ayame tilted her chin; green eyes alight with stubborn determination. “Dai...as long as I have breath in my body and two hands to work with, the folly will survive so that I can pass it on to Shiori.' pausing to catch her breath from her arduous labor, Ayame glanced at her two-year-old daughter. Seated in a grassy sunlit corner, Shiori was grooming one of her dolls with immense care. Her watching mother's gaze was awash with wondering pride and pleasure.

Shiori had been blessed at birth, Ayame conceded gratefully. Mercifully, she hadn't inherited her mother's ginger hair, myopic eyesight or her nose. Shiori had lustrous black curls and dainty, even features. There was nothing undersized or over-thin about her either. She was a strikingly pretty and feminine little girl. In short, she was already showing all the promise of becoming everything her mother had once so painfully and pointlessly longed to be...

Shiori wouldn't be a wallflower at parties, too blunt-spoken to be flirtatious or appealing, too physically plain to attract attention any other way. Nor would Shiori ever be so full of self-pity that she threw herself into the bed of a complete stranger just to prove that she could attract a man. Pierced to the heart by that painful memory, Ayame paled and guiltily looked away from her child, wondering how the heck she would eventually explain that shameful reality in terms that wouldn't hurt and alienate her daughter.

Some day Shiori would ask her father's name, quite reasonably, perfectly understandably. And what did Ayame have to tell her? Oh, I never got his name because I told him I didn't want it. Even worse, I could well walk past him on the street without recognizing him, because I wasn't wearing my contacts and I’m a little vague as to his actual features. But he had dark eyes, even darker hair, and a wonderful, wonderful voice...

Beneath Dai's frowning gaze, Ayame had turned a beetroot color and had begun studiously studying her booted feet. “what's up?”

“Indigestion,” Ayame muttered flatly, and it wasn't a lie. Memories of that nature made her feel queasy and crushed her self-respect flat. She had been a push-over for the first sweet talking playboy she had ever met.

“so it's back to the drawing board as far as the search for a temporary hubby goes, I gather...” releasing her breath in a rueful hiss, Dai studied the younger woman and reluctantly dug an envelope from the pocket of her jeans and extended it. “Here, take it. A late applicant, I assume. It came this morning. The postmark's a London one.” To protect Ayame's anonymity, Dai had agreed to put her own name behind the advertisement's box number. All the replies had been sent to the gate lodge which Dai had recently bought from the estate. Ayame was well aware that she was running a risk in advertising to find a husband, but no other prospect had offered. If she was found out, she could be accused of trying to circumvent the conditions of her godmother's will and excluded from inheriting. But what else was she supposed to do? Ayame asked herself in guilty desperation. it was her duty and her responsibility alone to secure Uno's folly for future generations. She could not fail the trust her father had imposed on her at the last.

She had faithfully promised that no matter what the cost she would hold on to the folly. How could she allow four hundred years of family history to slip through her careless fingers? and, even more importantly, only when she contrived to marry would she be in a position to re-employ the estate staff forced to seek work elsewhere after her father's death. In the months since, few had found new jobs. The knowledge that such loyal and committed people were still suffering from her father's financial incompetence weighed even more heavily on her conscience. Tearing the envelope open, Ayame eagerly scanned the brief letter and her bowed shoulders lifted even as she read. “He’s not of British birth...and he has experience as a financial advisor—“

“Probably once worked as a bank clerk,” Dai slotted in, cynically unimpressed by the claim. A childless divorcee, Dai was comfortably off but had little faith in the reliability of the male sex.

“He’s offering references upfront, which is more than anyone else did.” Ayame 's state of desperation was betrayed by the optimistic look already blossoming in her expressive eyes. “and he's only thirty-one.”

“What nationality?”

In the act of frowning down at the totally illegible signature, Ayame raised her head again. “He doesn't say. He just states that he is healthy and single and that a temporary position with accommodation included would suit him right now—“

“So he's unemployed and broke.”

“If he wasn't unemployed and willing to move in, he wouldn't be applying, Dai,” Ayame pointed out gently. “It’s a reasonable letter. Since he didn't know what the job was, he's sensibly confined himself to giving basic information only.”

As she paced the confines of Dai's tiny front room in the gate lodge five days later, Ayame pushed her thick-lenses spectacles up the bridge of her nose, smoothed her hands down over her pleated skirt and twitched at the roll collar of her cotton sweater as if it was choking her.

He would be here in five minutes. And she hadn't even managed to speak to the guy yet! Since he hadn't given her a phone number to contact him, she had had to write back to his London address and, nervous of giving out her own phone number at this stage, she had simply set up an interview and asked him to let her know if the date didn't suit. He had sent a brief note of confirmation, from which she had finally divined that his Christian name appeared to be Kouga, but as for his surname, she would defy a handwriting expert to read that swirling scrawl!

Hearing the roar of a motorbike out on the road, Ayame suppressed her impatience. Kouga was late. Maybe he wasn't going to show. But a minute later the door burst open. Dai poked her head in, her face filled with excitement. “A monster motorbike just drew up...and this absolutely edible hunk of male perfection took off his helmet! It has to be Kouga ...and Ayame, he is gorgeous—“

“He’s come on a motorbike?” Ayame interrupted with a look of astonishment.

“You are so stuffy sometimes,” Dai censured. “And I bet you a fiver you can't work up the nerve to ask this particular bloke if he'd be prepared to marry you for a fee!”


Ayame was already painfully aware that she had no choice whatsoever on that count. She had to ask. She was praying that Kouga, whoever he was and whatever he was like, would agree. She didn't have the time to re-advertise. Her back was up against the wall. Yesterday she had received a letter from the company that held the mortgage on Uno's folly. They were threatening to repossess the house and, since she already had a big overdraft, the bank would not help without a guarantee that she would in the near future have the funds to settle her obligations.

Ayame winced as the doorbell shrilled. Dai bolted to answer it. Bolted—-yes, that was the only possible word for her friend's indecent eagerness to reach the front door. Face wooden and set, Ayame positioned herself by the fireplace. So he was attractive. Attractive men had huge egos. She grimaced. All she wanted was someone ordinary and unobtrusive, but what she wanted she wouldn't necessarily get.

“signorina Ayame?” she heard an accented drawl question in a tone of what sounded like polite surprise. “No...She’s, er, through here, waiting for you,” Dai stammered with a dismayingly girlish giggle, and the lounge door was thrust wide.

Blinking rapidly, Ayame was already glued to the spot, a deep frown-line bisecting her brow. That beautiful voice had struck such an eerie chord of familiarity she was transfixed, heart beating so fast she was convinced it might burst. And then mercifully she understood the source of that strange familiarity and shivered, thoroughly spooked. Dear heaven, he was Italian! It was that lyrical accent she had recognized, not the voice. A very tall, dark male, sporting sunglasses and sheathed in motorbike leathers, strode into the small room. I

Involuntarily Ayame simply gaped at him, her every expectation shattered. Black leather accentuated impossibly wide shoulders, narrow hips and long, lean powerful thighs. Indeed the fidelity of fit left little of that overpoweringly masculine physique to the imagination. And the sunglasses lent his dark features an intimidating lack of expression. And yet... and yet as Ayame surveyed him with startled eyes she realized that he shared more than an accent with Shiori 's father. He had also been very tall and well-built. so what? An irritated voice screeched through her blitzed brain. So you're meeting another tall, dark Italian...big deal! The silver-tongued sophisticate who had got her pregnant wouldn't have been caught dead in such clothing. And if she hadn't had such a guilt complex about her wanton behavior in Venice, she wouldn't be feeling this incredibly foolish sense of threatening familiarity, she told herself in complete exasperation. “Please excuse me for continuing to wear my sunglasses. I have been suffering from eye strain...the light, it hurts my eyes,” he informed her in a deep, dark drawl that was both well-modulated and unexpectedly quiet.

“Won’t you sit down?” Ayame invited, with an uncharacteristically weak motion of one hand as she forced herself almost clumsily down into a seat. But then Ayame was in shock. She had hoped he would be either sensible and serious or weak and biddable. Instead she had been presented with a rampantly macho male who roared up on a motorbike and wore trousers so tight she marveled that he could stand in them, never mind sit down. With what she believed was termed designer stubble on his aggressive jaw line, he looked about as domesticated and well-behaved as a sable-toothed tiger.

“If you will forgive me for saying so...you look at me rather strangely,” he remarked, further disconcerting her as he lowered himself down with indolent grace onto the small sofa opposite her.

“Do I remind you of someone, signorina”

Ayame stiffened even more with nervous tension, and she was already sitting rigid-backed in the seat. “Not at all,” she asserted with deflating conviction. “Now, since I’m afraid I couldn't read your signature...what is your full name?”

“Let us leave it at Kouga for now. The wording of your ad suggested that the employment on offer could be of a somewhat unusual nature,” he drawled softly. “I would like some details before we go any further.”

Ayame bristled like a cat stroked the wrong way. She was supposed to be interviewing him, not the other way round!

“After all, you have not given me your real name either,” he pointed out in offensively smooth continuance. Ayame 's eyes opened to their fullest extent. “I beg your pardon?”

“Before i came down here, I checked you out. Your surname is Uno, not Ayame, and you do not live here in this cottage; you live in the huge mansion at the top of the driveway,” he enumerated with unabashed cool. “You have gone to some trouble to conceal your own identity. Naturally that is a source of concern to me.”

Stunned by that little speech, Ayame sprang upright and stared down at him in shaken disbelief, her angry bewilderment unconcealed. “You checked me out?” he lifted a casual brown hand and slowly removed the sunglasses. “The light is dim enough in here...”

He studied her with a curiously expectant quality of intensity. And without warning Ayame found herself staring down into lustrous dark eyes fringed by glossy, spiky black lashes. He had the sort of eyes that packed a powerful punch.

Gorgeous, she thought in helpless reaction, brilliant and dark as night, impenetrably deep and unreadable. With the sunglasses on he had looked as if he might be pretty good-looking, without them he zoomed up the scale to stunningly handsome, in spite of the fact that he badly needed a shave. And she now quite understood that hint of expectancy he betrayed.

This was a guy accustomed to basking in female double takes, appreciative stares and inviting smiles. But Ayame tensed and took an instantaneous step back, her retreat only halted by the armchair she had vacated. Yet the tiny twisting sensation of sudden excitement she had experienced still curled up deep in the pit of her taut stomach, and then pierced her like a knife with sudden shame. Her color heightening, Ayame plotted her path out of the way of the armchair behind her, controlled solely by a need to put as much distance as possible between them.

Throughout that un-choreographed backing away process of hers, she was tracked by narrowed unflinchingly steady dark eyes.

“signorina Uno—“

“Look, you had no right to check me out...” Ayame folded her arms in a defensive movement. “I guaranteed your privacy. Couldn’t you have respected mine?”

“Not without some idea of what I might be getting into. It’s standard business practice to make enquiries in advance of an interview.”

Ayame tore her frustrated gaze from his. Antipathy darted through her in a blinding wave. with difficulty, she held onto her ready temper. Possibly the reminder had been a timely one. It was, after all, a business proposition she intended to make. And this Kouga might think he was clever, but she already knew he had to be as thick as two short planks, didn't she? Only a complete idiot would turn up for an interview with a woman unshaven and dressed like a hell's angel. Financial advisor? In his dreams! Conservative apparel went with such employment.

Bolstered by the belief that he could be no Einstein, and rebuking herself for having been intimidated by something as superficial and unimportant as his physical appearance, Ayame sat down again and linked her small hands tightly together on her lap. “Right, let's get down to business, then...”

The waiting silence lay thick and heavy like a blanket. Settling back into the sofa in a relaxed sprawl of long, seemingly endless limbs, Kouga surveyed her with unutterable tranquility.

Her teeth gritted. Wondering just how long that laid-back attitude would last, Ayame lifted her chin to a challenging angle. "There was a good reason behind the offbeat ad I placed. but before I explain what that reason is, I should mention certain facts in advance. Should you agree to take the position on offer, you would be well paid even though there is no work involved—“

“no work involved?”

Ayame was soothed at receiving the exact response she had anticipated in that interruption. “No work whatsoever,” she confirmed. “while you were living in my home, your time would be your own, and at the end of your employment—assuming that you fulfill the terms to my satisfaction—I would also give you a generous bonus.”

“So what's the catch?” Kouga prompted very softly. “In return you ask me to do something illegal?”

A mortified flush stained Ayame 's perfect skin. “Of course not,” she rebutted tautly. “The "catch", if you choose to call it that, is that you would have to agree to marry me for six months!”

“To...marry you?” Kouga stressed the word with a frown of wondering incredulity as he sat forward on the sofa. “The employment you offer is...marriage?”

“Yes. It’s really quite simple. I need a man to go through a wedding ceremony with me and behave like a husband for a minimum of six months,” Ayame extended, with the frozen aspect of a woman forcing her to refer to an indecent act.

“Why?”

“Why? That’s my business. I don't think you require that information to make a decision,” Ayame responded uncomfortably.

Lush black lashes semi-screened his dark eyes. “I don't understand... could you explain it again, signorina,” he urged, in a rather dazed undertone.

You certainly couldn't call him mentally agile, Ayame thought ruefully. Having got over the worst, however, she felt stronger, and all embarrassment had left her. He was still sitting there, and why shouldn't he be? If he was as single as he had said he was, he stood to earn a great deal for doing nothing. She repeated what she had already said and, convinced that the financial aspect would be the greatest persuader of all, she mentioned the monthly salary she was prepared to offer and then the sizeable bonus she would advance in return for his continuing discretion about their arrangement after they had parted.

He nodded, and then nodded again more slowly, still focusing with a slight frown on the worn carpet at his feet. Maybe the light was annoying his eyes, Ayame decided, struggling to hold onto her irritation at his torpid reactions. Maybe he was just gob smacked by the concept of being paid to be bone idle. Or maybe he was so shattered by what she had suggested that he hadn't yet worked out how to respond.

“I would, of course, require references,” Ayame continued.

“I could not supply references as a husband...”

Ayame drew in a deep breath of restraint. “I’m referring to character references,” she said dryly.

“If you wanted a husband, why didn't you place an ad in the personal column?”

“I would have received replies from men interested in a genuine and lasting marriage.” Ayame sighed. “It was wiser just to advertise my requirements as a form of employment—“

“Quiet... domesticated... well-behaved.”

“I don't want someone who's going to get under my feet or expect me to wait on him hand and foot. Would you say you were self-sufficient?”

“Si...”

“well, then, what do you think?” Ayame demanded impulsively.

“I don't yet know what I think. I wasn't expecting this kind of proposal,” he returned gently. “No woman has ever asked me to marry her before.”

“I’m not talking about a proper marriage. Obviously we'd separate after the six months was up and get a divorce. By the way, you would also have to sign a pre-nuptial contract,” Ayame added, because she needed to safeguard the estate from any claim an estranged husband might legitimately attempt to make. “That isn't negotiable.” Kouga rose gracefully upright. “I believe I would need a greater cash inducement to give up my freedom—“

“That’s not a problem,” Ayame broke in, her tone one of eager reassurance on that point. If he was prepared to consider her proposition, she was keen to accommodate him. “I’m prepared to negotiate. If you agree, I’ll double the original bonus I offered.”

Disconcertingly, he didn't react to that impulsive offer. Ayame flushed then, feeling more than a little foolish.

Veiled dark eyes surveyed her. “I’ll think it over. I’ll be in touch.”

“The references?”

“I will present them if I decide to accept the...the position.” As Kouga framed the last two words a flash of shimmering gold illuminated his dark eyes. Amusement at the sheer desperation she had revealed in her desire to reach agreement with him? Ayame squirmed at the suspicion.

“I need an answer very soon. I have no time to waste.”

“I’ll give you an answer tomorrow...” he strode to the door and then he hesitated, throwing her a questioning look over one broad masculine shoulder. “It surprises me that you could not persuade a friend to agree to so temporary an arrangement.”

Ayame stiffened and colored. “In these particular circumstances, I prefer a stranger.”

“A stranger...I can understand that,” Kouga completed in a honey-soft and smooth drawl.