Tyler Fortune hated to lose a battle, but he'd just lost one, and a big one. He'd have to pay for it, and the price was... marriage.
His only consolation was that he had lost his freedom in his own way. Even if he was dead, he wouldn't allow his parents to corner him, forcing him to marry a conceited debutante from Tucson, or the daughter of one of their rich friends.

He put another tape in the video recorder in his office, located on the fifth floor of the Fortune Building. He started it with the remote control and leaned back in his chair to look at the screen.

An overly made-up woman smiled at the camera and introduced herself in an irritatingly high-pitched voice. Tyler groaned. Wife-hunting was hard, stressful, and probably a waste of time. It made him so angry to waste precious minutes that turned into hours. Hours he desperately needed to invest in the family business. Why didn't his father understand? Hell, he could have already gone to Dallas on that trip they'd talked about and closed another multimillion-dollar deal.

With the occasional exception, Tyler rarely took time off from the work he loved. A short, intense workout at the Saguaro Springs Health Club. Dinner with a beautiful woman at the magnificent Janos in Tucson followed by a night with others, because, after all, he was a healthy, virile man. Occasionally, his college roommate, Dave Johnson, would convince him to go with him on adventure sports trips: paragliding in the Grand Canyon, whitewater rafting in Montana, mountaineering in Colorado.

Extreme sports doubled the thrill and risk of swinging from a steel beam 100 meters above the unforgiving ground, or closing a deal after a tough negotiation. Tyler's life was the business. That
It was the way he liked it. And hell! If he had his way, that was how it would stay.

But her parents' persistent attempts to marry them off had grown dramatically in recent months. And Grandma Kate had arrived from Minneapolis, the equivalent of heavy artillery. What Jasmine and Devlin were plotting to get him married would have seemed old-fashioned and ridiculous if it hadn't been serious and directed at him. That same day, her father had given her an ultimatum:

"You'll get married and have a family before you're thirty, otherwise you won't inherit your share of the company. It's for your own good, Tyler. And for the good of this family."

He tensed again at the thought of the complications a wife and family would inflict on his organized bachelor life and angrily pressed the "eject" button on the video recorder. He popped in another tape and sat back, resting the boots that capped his long, jean-clad legs on the edge of the blueprint-covered table while muttering to himself. He tried to focus on the screen so he could defend his position as heir apparent to the vice presidency of Fortune Construction Company.

Tyler focused his gray eyes on the woman being interviewed. There was an overly anxious gleam in her eyes. Her lips were full and crimson, and a wave of platinum hair fell seductively over one eye. Okay, this one was pretty. With a little effort, even beautiful. She was young, energetic, quick with her answers, and ready to have children someday.

An alarm bell rang in her subconscious. "After a while," meant "I don't want to ruin my figure until I'm old enough to not care." She let out a stifled laugh. Dear Kate would have a serious problem with this one. Her feisty octogenarian grandmother made no attempt to hide the fact that she wanted great-grandchildren galore immediately. She smiled and shook her head, taking the video tape back out.

"Last one left. You better be good, honey," Tyler...