The Marriage Arrangement

  The Marriage Arrangement

  North Moon Bay, Volume 2

  Patricia Ryan

  Published by Hawkley Books, 2016.

  ALSO BY PATRICIA RYAN

  North Moon Bay Romances

  The Black Sheep

  The Marriage Arrangement

  My Best Friend’s Girl

  Hot City Nights Romances

  A Burning Touch

  Deep in the Night

  Arm Candy

  Contemporary Romantic Suspense

  Pure and Simple*

  Good to be Bad

  Lords of Conquest

  Medieval Romantic Suspense

  Falcon’s Fire

  Heaven’s Fire

  Secret Thunder

  Wild Wind

  Silken Threads

  The Sun and the Moon

  The Nell Sweeney Mysteries

  written as P.B. Ryan*

  Still Life with Murder

  Murder in a Mill Town

  Death on Beacon Hill

  Murder on Black Friday

  Murder in the North End

  A Bucket of Ashes

  *Also available as audiobooks

  For a heads-up on new releases, special offers, contests, and great deals by other authors, join Patricia Ryan’s mailing list. You can unsubscribe at any time. And visit her websites for excerpts, reviews, and more:

  Romance and Women’s Fiction by Patricia Ryan

  Historical Mysteries by P.B. Ryan

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  ALSO BY PATRICIA RYAN

  NEXT IN THE SERIES

  COPYRIGHT

  CHAPTER ONE

  LOOK AT HIM,” said Izzy Fabrioni, sifting through the photographs of Clay Granger spread out before her. There was Clay white-water rafting on the Colorado River, Clay cliff-diving in Acapulco, Clay running with the bulls in Pamplona. “He looks more like a Kennedy than ever,” she said.

  Her host, bearish Harry Shaw, grinned from behind his great-room bar as he poured ginger ale over ice and garnished it with a chunk of lime. “He looks more like a Kennedy than the Kennedys.” He handed her the drink. “You seen him lately?”

  Izzy shifted to get comfortable on the leather-cushioned bar stool she’d claimed the instant she’d realized how many people Harry had invited to his New Year’s Eve party. “No,” she said over the music and voices, “but I’ve only been back in New York since Christmas Eve. The last time I saw him was about a year and a half ago, when you two came to San Francisco for that idiotic Golden Gate bungee-jumping thing.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. You had us over to your place beforehand. Only Clay Granger could eat three helpings of stuffed squid and then jump headfirst off a bridge without puking.” He tapped one of the photos. “Check this out.”

  Izzy studied the image of a helmeted, leather-suited Clay flat on his back on something that looked like a steel ironing board with wheels. Bales of hay streaked past as he hurtled along a downgrade. “What’s this?”

  “Street luge.”

  “Street luge?” She squinted and saw double yellow lines on the asphalt beneath him.

  “It’s brutally simple. All you really need is a street, a street luge, and rock-hard abs.” Harry adjusted the Yankees cap he’d worn continuously for the past five years; she suspected it hid a receding hairline. Someone handed him a margarita glass, which he rimmed with lime, dipped in salt, and refilled from a blender.

  Izzy pointed to a dramatic shot of Clay getting ready to jump out of an airplane, his feet secured to a snowboard, or something like it. The photograph captured his devil-may-care but slightly world-weary grin... the hint of bad-boy recklessness in the otherwise coolly intelligent eyes.

  “And this?”

  “Sky-surfing. Not for the faint of heart.”

  “Or anyone with a shred of common sense.” She sipped her drink, breathing in the fragrant lime, as his playlist shifted from Brad Paisley to Keith Urban. Since he was likely the only country and western fan in the Long Island village of North Moon Bay, Harry felt it was his duty to educate the masses. Several guests complained loudly, but Harry just grinned and flipped them the bird. “How’d you get the sky-surfing shot?” she asked him.

  “I had to parachute out of the plane ahead of him.”

  She shook her head. “Nothing has changed. Remember the time, in twelfth grade, I think it was, when Clay talked you into taking his picture while he climbed the outside of the Chrysler Building? He made you climb up behind him.”

  “It was the Flatiron Building,” Harry corrected. “And he made me go ahead of him so I could shoot him from above. It was for the yearbook.”

  “My point is, how many years have passed—fifteen, sixteen? Nothing’s changed. You’re still following that lunatic around with a camera, recording his every lamebrained stunt for posterity.”

  “Yeah, but now I’m getting paid for it.”

  “Like you need the money.” Wow, bitchy much? she thought, tossing down half of her drink. It wasn’t Harry’s fault he’d been born into millions.

  He raised an eyebrow. “That time of the month, sweetness?”

  No, she thought, gazing through the French doors at the snow drifting out of the night sky. And that’s just the problem, wise-ass. It hasn’t been “that time of the month” for just a tad too long now. With a little mental shake, she reminded herself that she’d come to this party to forget her miseries, if only for a few hours. A little mindless celebration before her life tailspinned out of control. “It’s just that right now the subject of money...” Don’t whine, for God’s sake! “Forget it. I came here to have a good time, not ruin the party for you.”

  “You couldn’t do that, honey.” He reached across the bar to pat her hand. “Your problems just aren’t that important to me.” She rolled her eyes; he rested his elbows on the bar. “Come on. I know you’ve got troubles. Thirty-something women don’t just walk away from dream jobs in San Francisco and move back in with their parents—in South Ozone Park, Queens, of all damn places—for no reason whatsoever. What is it? Money trouble? Job trouble? Man trouble?”

  “How about all three of the above? And then some.”

  “Yikes.” He indicated her ginger ale with a nod of his head. “Sure you don’t want something stronger?”

  It was tempting, but... “No. Really, I don’t mean to drag things down. And I didn’t mean to snap at you. Clay’s lucky to have an old friend like you working for him. Your pictures make the magazine.”

  He brightened. “Oh, that’s much better. I adore flattery. Have you seen the current issue?” Izzy shook her head. “It’s fuckin’ awesome.” He shuffled through a stack of newspapers and magazines on the end of the bar and produced the January issue of The Rush, importantly subtitled The Magazine of Extreme Recreation. “Check out page sixty-four.”

  It was an instructional article: “Skiing Steep Terrain.” The accompanying photographs were of the magazine’s high-profile publisher, Clay Granger, in ski gear and goggles against blindingly sunlit snow. In the first shot, he’d just dropped off a cornice overhanging a nearly vertical slope; in the second, his skis kissed the slope sideways; in the third, he pivoted; subsequent shots caught him slicing his way down on the edges of his skis, as if he were brea
thtakingly airborne.

  “He calls that ‘controlled free-fall,’” Harry said.

  Controlled free-fall, thought Izzy, absently touching her stomach through her silk pants. Kind of like my life right now. Except I don’t feel much in control.

  “You know that guy?” said a woman in a gold paper crown emblazoned Happy New Year. She nodded toward the scattered photographs while squeezing through the horde around the bar, an empty glass in her outstretched hand. “He’s smoking hot.”

  “Ya think?” Harry grinned as he packed the glass with crushed ice. “Chivas, right?”

  “Yep.” She accepted the drink and turned to weave her way back through the crowded living room. “Hey, isn’t that the same guy?”

  Izzy turned. And smiled.

  That was the same guy, all right, closing the front door behind him as he stomped snow off his boots. Clay Granger, bigger than life and devastatingly handsome in jeans and a worn bomber jacket. He ran a hand through his hair—sun-streaked as usual, even in the dead of winter—which only messed it up more, enhancing his rakish good looks. Someone called to him from across the room. He waved, flashing that killer grin of his.

  Izzy chided herself for a slight weakening of the knees—even though she was sitting down. It never failed; every time she saw Clay after a prolonged separation, she couldn’t believe how sexy he was. It always struck her like a rubber mallet right there in the back of the knees. Of course, it was just an involuntary reaction, and she always got over it, but you’d think after two decades of platonic friendship it would ease up a little.

  A sleek blonde in boho chic came up to Clay and kissed him on the lips; an elegant black model whom Izzy recognized from the cover of a recent Vogue followed suit. Both women were tall—in their heels, they matched Clay’s six feet—and both could have used, to quote Izzy’s mother, “a good dose of lasagna alforno.”

  Willowy, that was the word for them. Izzy had always wanted to be willowy. Or maybe coltish. Instead she’d turned out, again in her mother’s words, “petite,” with a “womanly” figure and a “distinctive” nose.

  Clay whipped his jacket off, revealing a fisherman-knit sweater beneath. The pretty young waitress Harry had hired to serve hors d’oeuvres reached for the jacket. He met her gaze and smiled; she smiled back, a pink stain suffusing her face. As Izzy watched, half the women at the party gravitated into the foyer and gathered around him.

  Izzy shook her head ruefully.

  “Oh—what?” Harry challenged. “I suppose you, alone among all the women in the world, are immune to the manly charisma of the legendary Clay Granger.”

  “The world?” She turned to face him, lifting her glass. “Isn’t that overstating it a bit?”

  “Not according to this week’s People.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You haven’t seen it?” Chuckling, he reached toward the stack of periodicals and brought forth a copy of the magazine. On the front cover were pictures of ten men—including Clay—under a banner announcing them to be The World’s Most Sought-After Billionaire Bachelors.

  Izzy felt a little jolt of incredulity whenever she was reminded of the extent of Clay’s wealth. He didn’t fit the popular stereotype of a billionaire, that was for sure.

  She snorted dismissively as she thumbed through the article. “Who’d want to end up with any of these guys?”

  “Besides me?” He grinned wryly. “Only about half the population of the universe.”

  Izzy drained her ginger ale. “Problem is, rich, handsome, successful men usually turn out to be arrogant, womanizing assholes.” She wished she’d had that figured out a few months ago. “Clay Granger is sadly typical of the breed, as you’re well aware—except for the ‘asshole’ part. I mean, he’s a great guy and all, but a total player, and cocky as hell. Definitely not my type. Besides, Clay and I have too much history. If anything, he’s like a brother to me.”

  Harry burst out laughing.

  She swatted him on the shoulder. “He is. He’s the one who took me under his wing back when I first started at Phelps Academy and the rest of you wouldn’t give me the time of day. Here I was, this poor little fourteen-year-old scholarship student from Queens, surrounded by all you rich snots—”

  “You were so quiet, that’s all. We figured you didn’t speak English.”

  “I know.” She smiled at the memory of a lanky young Clay Granger approaching her in the cafeteria to ask—in surprisingly good Italian—if he could join her.

  “You looked so exotic,” Harry said, “so... Mediterranean. We figured your father was a diplomat or something.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Try a baggage supervisor at JFK.”

  Harry chuckled and gathered up the photographs and magazines, stowing them under the bar. “Clay hates it when I bring this stuff out. The living-legend thing seems to be wearing a bit thin on him.”

  “Seems to me he brings it on himself. He doesn’t have to keep getting his picture taken doing all these off-the-wall stunts.”

  “Actually, he does. His fans have come to expect it of him. Do you know how many followers he has on Instagram and Twitter? And plenty of those followers end up subscribing to The Rush. Oh, check it out. As of this morning, there are over seven million views of that latest video of him cliff riding on his mountain bike. You know, the one where he backflips over the canyon?”

  “He what now?”

  “He’s become kind of like Hugh Hefner—the personification of a fantasy life-style. Only Clay’s has more to do with high-risk activities than sex.”

  “That’s arguable.” She raised her glass. “I’ll have another one of these.”

  Two big hands gripped her shoulders from behind, strong fingers kneading gently. She felt their heat and roughness through the thin silk of her blouse, and something flittered around crazily in her chest.

  A wonderfully deep, masculine voice—the voice of Clay Granger—said, “Make that two.”

  Izzy drew in a deep breath and willed the flittering to stop.

  Clay greeted Harry, then leaned back against the bar and smiled at her as he pushed up the sleeves of his sweater. His eyes seemed to have gotten bluer in the past year and a half; his teeth were preternaturally white against his tan. “Hey, Izz.”

  “Nice to see you, Clay.”

  “Just nice? And here I’ve been thinking how great it is to see you. How absolutely incredible.”

  She cocked a sardonic eyebrow.

  “No, really,” he chuckled. “Don’t do that.” He reached out and stroked the offending eyebrow into submission with a calloused fingertip. Her gaze focused naturally on the sharply delineated muscles of his forearm, the little veins coursing beneath the lightly furred skin. “Don’t make that all-knowing, here-Clay-goes-again face. It cuts me to the quick. It is great to see you, and you look fucking wonderful. You glow.”

  I glow? Oh, God, I might as well be wearing a sign!

  Harry handed them their drinks. Clay sipped his and grimaced. “What is this?”

  “Ginger ale,” Izzy said.

  “Ginger ale and what?”

  She held the glass up to the light, as if inspecting it. “Ice.”

  “Since when have you started taking your ginger ale straight?” Without waiting for a reply he turned and asked Harry for a beer, which was good, because she didn’t feel like giving a reply. Not tonight. Tonight she wanted to pretend everything was okay. Tomorrow she’d start dealing with the fact that it wasn’t... if she could just figure out how to do that. She slugged down her ginger ale as if that would help.

  Harry produced a Bass Ale from the fridge and cracked it open; Clay drank it from the bottle. Izzy watched his throat work as he swallowed. He had the neck of an athlete, strong and corded.

  Harry cleared his throat. “Clay, there’s someone I want you to meet.”

  Clay groaned. “Forget it, pal.”

  Harry winked at Izzy and affected a winsome tone. “I love it when he calls me ‘
pal.’ Makes me feel just like one of the guys.”

  Izzy frowned at Harry. “You can’t still be trying to marry Clay off.”

  “Oh, yes, he can,” Clay growled. He sucked his bottle empty and slammed it on the bar. “But not tonight, buddy.”

  “Ooh.” Harry pretended to shiver with delight as he opened another beer for Clay. “‘Buddy,’ too?”

  Clay’s fist tightened around the bottle. He struck Izzy as sincerely pissed off. “Harry, I’ve told you to stop doing this. I’ve told everyone to stop. I’m sick of not being able to leave my house without a prospective Mrs. Granger being shoved in my face.”

  “Clay, before you write this one off, just listen to—”

  “No, you listen to me,” Clay ground out. “I came here to relax and enjoy myself tonight. I don’t want to have to spend the whole party trying to detach myself from one of your ‘finds.’”

  Harry leaned across the bar and said conspiratorially, “You’ll like this one. I guarantee it. She’s just your type. Runway model slash ski bunny. Awesomely realistic silver-blond hair down to where her hips would be if she had any. Not a lump or bump anywhere except for these absolutely majestic implants. Her name’s Barbie.” He drew a cross on his broad chest and held his hand up. “Barbie, swear to God.”

  “This is supposed to be marriage material?” Izzy asked.

  “This is what he likes,” Harry explained, as if Clay weren’t even there. “I’ve spent eons introducing him to women with depth and character, but he never bit. So maybe all he really wants is... There! There she is.” He reached across the bar to nudge his friend, who grudgingly turned to look.

  Izzy looked, too. Ski Bunny Barbie stood in the corner, towering over a clutch of male admirers, her expression bored and a little vacant. She was just as Harry had described her, a vision in platinum and silicone.

  “Looks like she’s been polyurethaned,” Izzy observed.

  “Nice try, Harry,” Clay said. Izzy saw his gaze sweep down and then up Barbie’s statuesque frame, encased in strapless silver lame. “Very nice try,” he added, facing the bar and lifting the bottle to his mouth. “But I’d rather pick my own playmates, if you don’t mind.”