Sweet Temptation by Cora Reilly

Cassio gritted his teeth as he led me up the stairs. “No. It’s got that cat box in
the room.”
“It needs to be walked. It’s not a cat.”
Cassio sent me a look that made it clear he expected me to shut up right this
moment.
“I’ll walk it, then. You have a leash, right?”
He stopped on the second-floor landing, a vein in his temple throbbing. “You
don’t have time to walk the dog. You’ve got my kids to take care of.”
His kids. He made it sound like I was his nanny—with the added bonus of
sleeping with him.
“Kids need fresh air too.”
He gave me a condescending look as if I was a delusional child in need of
reprimand. He didn’t think I’d be able to handle his children, much less a dog on
top of it.
Maybe he was right, but one of us had to try. I had a feeling that no matter
how in control of his soldiers, his city, and his life Cassio seemed, his own home
and his family had slipped out of his hands. He was incapable of fixing it; maybe
he’d even given up hope that it could be fixed. And now here I was, without the
hint of knowledge about dogs or kids that went beyond what I’d read in books,
supposed to deal with all this.
In the months since our engagement, I’d dreaded our wedding night. Now it
seemed naïve that the simple act of sex had held so much trepidation for me.
Sharing a bed with Cassio was the least of my battles. Fixing this family, making
it somehow into my family, that was the most daunting challenge I could
imagine.
Looking up into Cassio’s exhausted and wary eyes, I promised myself to
master it.