JACKIE BRAUN is a three-time RITA^® Award finalist, a four-time National Readers’ Choice Awards finalist and the winner of the Rising Star Award for traditional romantic fiction. She can be reached through her website at www.jackiebraun.com

CHAPTER ONE

THOMAS Waverly needed a bride.

Time was of the essence, so he couldn’t afford to be too picky. Even so, as he mentally thumbed through his little black book, he knew that none of the women he’d dated in the past would do. They would read way too much into the situation. They would expect it to be real. But the heirloom diamond engagement ring and all talk of a future wedding would be only for his grandmother’s benefit.

Nana Jo was dying.

At least she claimed to be.

Her physician assured Thomas that Josephine O’Keefe was in good health for a woman who’d had a hip replacement the previous year, a brush with breast cancer two decades prior and was now closing in on eighty-one. Her heartbeat could be a bit irregular at times, but medication had been prescribed to take care of that and, according to the doctor, it was. Nana Jo, however, was of another opinion.

She was dying.

It was the dreams, she told Thomas. For the past year, each night as she slumbered, she’d dreamed of her late husband and daughter—Thomas’s mother. Nana Jo was sure the dreams were an omen of her own impending death, and nothing Thomas said could convince her otherwise. It was downright unnerving.

The previous Christmas, when he’d made the drive to upstate Michigan to spend the holiday with Nana Jo in her small condo in Charlevoix, she’d told him that the only gift she wanted was to see her only grandchild happily settled before she passed on.

The woman had raised him after a car accident claimed his mother, after which his father had fallen into an alcoholic tailspin. Thomas had been eight, and he’d essentially lost both of his parents. Without hesitation, and despite her own grief, Nana Jo had stepped into the huge void. Instead of enjoying her retirement, she’d taken on full-time parenting. And she’d done an incredible job.

How could he deny her wish? How could he indulge it? It was a no-win situation. So, yes, he’d lied.

He wasn’t proud of that. Thomas wasn’t one to bend the truth, whether in personal dealings or professional ones, but he would do anything to erase the worry he saw in her eyes. Anything short of actual marriage, that was.

So, even though he was between relationships, he’d said, “I’ve been seeing someone … special. For several months now, in fact.”

The distinction had buoyed Nana Jo’s spirits considerably. And no wonder. He’d never dated a woman longer than three months. By that point they were usually expecting things, like an exchange of house keys, a toothbrush in his bathroom and maybe even a drawer of their own in the bureau in his bedroom.

By three months, they were getting clingy, needy. The L word, he knew, wouldn’t be far behind.

Love. No thank you.

He’d seen firsthand what that four-letter word had done to his father. It had been twenty-seven years since Thomas’s mother’s death, but Hoyt Waverly still couldn’t face life as a widower without a fifth of whiskey handy. Over the years, the brands had become cheaper as Hoyt’s finances had deteriorated right along with his health. Today, he was a shell of a man, who only turned up occasionally on Thomas’s doorstep and then only because he’d run out of money.

Thomas had no desire to end up like his old man. So, he made a point of ending relationships before three months passed, sometimes before then if the woman started to fall for him a little too hard or too fast.

It wasn’t that Thomas was God’s gift to women. His ego was healthy, but not overblown. He supposed he was good-looking. Enough of his dates had told him so. And he made a decent living. Not exactly a millionaire since he’d poured so much of his own money into starting his business, but he was plenty comfortable thanks to hard work and some sound investments. Still, the real attribute that seemed to clinch it for him with members of the opposite sex wasn’t his looks, his bank account or even, to his chagrin, his skill as a lover. It was his manners.

Apparently, while growing up, he’d paid too close attention to Nana Jo’s instructions. She’d insisted that he be polite, chivalrous, attentive and always act interested in other people’s opinions and pastimes—even when he wasn’t. As a result, over the years a number of women had expressed, covertly at least, their desire to become Mrs. Thomas Waverly. But he wasn’t in the market for marriage. Not now. Not ever.

For the past several months, of course, Nana Jo had thought otherwise. To her, special implied altar-bound. He should have corrected her. But she

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CHAPTER ONE