A Family Circle 1 - A Very Convenient Marriage Read Online Free

running, she told herself as she pulled open her car door and slid onto the genuine imitation sheepskin-covered seat. Sam Walker might be a bit larger than life, and some women—susceptible women—might even find him wildly attractive, but she herself hardly noticed such things, and they certainly wouldn't send her fleeing from her lawyer's office.
    She had an appointment with her mother, that was all. The fact that she wasn't meeting Marilee for three hours and that Marilee would probably not arrive for another forty-five minutes after that was irrelevant. She'd concluded her business here and she was leaving. Nothing odd about that.
    Nikki's hands weren't quite steady as she put the car into gear and pulled away from the curb. She'd done it. She'd actually agreed to marry a man she'd just met. A man she didn't know and wouldn't like if she did. Her mind reeled at the thought.
    When Max had suggested the idea as a way to get her inheritance, he'd made it sound so simple, so businesslike that she'd had no hesitation in agreeing to meet with his friend. But she hadn't been expecting Sam Walker and she hadn't been prepared for the jolt of awareness she'd felt when they shook hands. What had sounded like a simple business arrangement suddenly seemed much more complex.
    Nikki turned the car onto the Glendale Freeway and headed north. She'd planned to do some shopping before meeting her mother for lunch, but that was before she'd met Sam Walker, before she'd agreed to marry him. Right now, she needed to talk to someone she could trust, someone who had no ax to grind.
    Twenty minutes later, she parked the scruffy ten-year-old Chevy in front of a neat little house on a street lined with other neat little houses. The front door opened as she walked up the driveway and a short, thin man of about thirty came out. Bill Davis had married Nikki's best friend four years ago, right after Liz graduated from UC Santa Barbara. They had little money, a house made chaotic by a toddler and all the attendant problems of raising a family, but they loved each other deeply. Nikki was unabashedly envious of their happiness.
    "Hello, Bill."
    "Nikki." His plain face creased in a smile when he saw her. "Isn't it a little early for the idle rich to be out slumming?" he asked as he hugged her.
    "I like to get started early. Slumming, properly done, takes more time than most people realize. Is Liz around?"
    "In the kitchen, feeding the holy terror."
    "Don't call my godchild a terror. He's adorable."
    "You don't have to live with him," he said darkly. "When I left, Michael had just tried to put the goldfish in his oatmeal and Liz was trying to convince him that Oscar didn't need a hot breakfast."
    ''And you fled in the midst of that?"
    "Like a coward," he admitted cheerfully. "I've got cars stacked up like cordwood, waiting for work."
    "Nice to be busy." Bill was manager and chief mechanic at an auto repair shop in Montrose. He and Liz were saving money in hopes of buying the business when the current owner retired in a couple of years.
    "Bring that junk heap by and I'll take a look at it," he said, nodding toward her car. "I still think you ought to sell it for scrap and buy a real car."
    "Barney is a real car," she protested. "It had been Bill's four-year-old son who'd named Nikki's car, thinking the faded purple paint job was reminiscent of the dinosaur he watched every day on television.
    They spoke a moment longer before Bill left for work. Nikki let herself in the house with the familiarity of an old friend. She called out Liz's name and received a frazzled-sounding response from the kitchen. Picking her way across the mine field of toys strewn across the living room floor, she could hear Liz telling Michael firmly that Oscar did not want his fishbowl filled with milk, any more than he wanted to swim in Michael's oatmeal.
    "Aunt Nikki!" Michael's greeting was enthusiastic as only a four-year-old's could be. He scrambled off his chair and hurled