Page 16 of Magnus
Not even when she realized her in-laws intended to take Angel from her.
She was more deeply shocked at this moment than she had been by any of those things, becauseMagnus Wynter, a man she barely knew, and who had just kissed her for the first time, was now proposing marriage to her!
CHAPTER FIVE
“Don’t refusebefore you’ve thought it through thoroughly.” Magnus spoke quickly, before Sapphie had a chance to voice the refusal the shock in her eyes told him was about to be her knee-jerk response to his proposal. “It will put a huge question mark in the Carluccis’ attempt to legally take custody of Angel if you’re remarried and Angel is in the process of being adopted by your new husband.”
Magnus knew it sounded like a drastic answer to the problem, but once the thought had occurred to him on the flight up to Edinburgh, he hadn’t been able to get it out of his mind.
It wouldn’t solve the whole problem, because the Carluccis could still continue with their legal battle to take Angel from Sapphie. But with Magnus on Sapphie’s side as her husband, along with the rest of his family and their combined wealth in the billions, it was going to be much harder for the older couple to prove they were in a better position or had more resources to ensure Angel had a better life than she would with her mother and stepfather.
Marriage also meant Magnus would have Sapphie as his wife and Angel as his daughter.
Incredible as that still seemed, to Magnus, that was a definite win-win.
Sapphie didn’t look quite so enamored of the idea of marrying him. In fact, she looked horrified.
He straightened. “I’m going to help you, whatever you decide,” he assured her. “But if we were married and we immediately started the process of me adopting Angel, we would have more leverage to tell the Carluccis to politely go away.”
“What you’re suggesting isinsane!” Sapphie finally managed to burst out vehemently.
“Maybe a little,” he conceded ruefully. “But you have to admit it would solve the problem in one fell swoop.”
“It’smyproblem,” she insisted. “One you have no reason to ever involve yourself in.”
He held her gaze with his. “Don’t I?”
Sapphie’s eyessearched Magnus’s handsome face for clues as to why he was even considering the idea of marrying a virtual stranger. Moreover, one who had a young daughter whose custody was being contended by her in-laws.
There was a gentleness to the steady green gaze that stared back at her.
The hardness of Magnus’s cheeks still had color.
Nor did the slight smile curving his sculpted lips look manic or as if he were in the middle of a psychotic episode.
If anything, Magnus looked both calm and resolute.
Meaning he was serious about wanting to marry her?
Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Maybe this is all just a ploy on your part to get me to go along with you quietly because you’re working for the Carluccis after all.”
“It isn’t, and I’m not.”
She stared at him for several long minutes before shaking her head. “Then I can’t think of a single reason why you would even pretend to want to marry a woman you’ve only just met and don’t really know.”
“I’m not pretending,” he grated.
She snorted. “I find that hard to believe.”
“Because you’ve been so busy running these past two years, you’ve lost perspective and the ability to trust.”
“So?”
“So, in time, you’ll learn to trust me.”
“I still won’t marry you.”
His eyes glittered darkly. “We’ll see.”
