The Hired Husband

“Keir, please don’t say no! I need this—we both do!”

Just what was going on inside that handsome head of his? For perhaps thirty of the longest seconds of her life Sienna watched and waited. At long last he drew in a deep uneven breath.

“Two conditions…” he said slowly.

“Anything! Anything at all, if you’ll just say yes!”

“Condition one…” Keir marked it off on one long finger of his left hand. “We have a proper wedding. All the trimmings. A church ceremony, flowers, candles, the lot.”

“Whatever you say. And—and condition two?”

“After the proper wedding we have a real marriage. I won’t stand for anything else. For one thing, there’s no way we’ll convince anyone that this is the love match you’re supposed to have by the conditions of your father’s will if we don’t look really together. It’s all or nothing.”

All or nothing.

When Sienna desperately offers Keir Alexander a temporary marriage of convenience, he has a surprise proposition of his own—their marriage must be a real one! Talented Harlequin Presents® author Kate Walker takes you on a breathtaking ride of passion and sensuality, as Keir proves to Sienna he will not be content with just being her “hired husband”!

Legally wed,

Great together in bed,

But he’s never said…

“I love you.”

They’re…

Wedlocked!

The series where marriages are made in haste…and love comes later….

Marriage on Command

by

Lindsay Armstrong

The Hired Husband

Kate Walker

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

‘YOU want what?’

His expression said it all, Sienna reflected unhappily. He didn’t have to speak a single word. Shock, disbelief and sheer antipathy to her suggestion were stamped clearly onto Keir Alexander’s hard features, leaving her in no doubt as to how he felt.

‘You want what?’ he repeated now, the edge in his voice sharpening on every word as his deep brown eyes glared into her anxious blue-green ones.

‘I—I want you to marry me.’

It sounded so much worse the second time around. Starker, more incredible, more impossible. She couldn’t believe she’d ever had the nerve to ask him once, let alone manage to reiterate her request in the face of his reaction.

If she could have taken it back she would have done so at once, but she had no alternative. She’d tried every other approach, considered every possible answer, but none of them would work. It was Keir or no one. He was her last chance; and if he didn’t agree to help her then she was lost. Finished.

‘No way, lady!’ It was hard, inflexible, adamant. ‘No way at all.’

‘But—’

‘I said no!’

‘But, Keir…’

But she was talking to the back of his head, and a moment later to empty air as the door slammed to behind him. Keir had walked out on her, rejecting her and her proposal outright, not even sparing her a backward glance. Closing her eyes in despair, her sigh a deep, helpless sound of defeat, Sienna sank down into the nearest chair.

So what did she do now? she asked herself, shaking her dark head despondently. There was nothing she could do. No answer presented itself. No fairy godmother appeared to wave her magic wand and put everything right. When she opened her eyes everything was the same as before, the future stretching ahead dark, bleak and with no light at the end of the tunnel.

It had been the worst year of her life so far, and it was still only July. First Dean, and then the loss of her job as an aromatherapist when the beauty salon in which she had worked had closed down. That had been followed by the discovery that her mother, who had clearly been unwell for some time, was in fact suffering from multiple sclerosis. And then, to cap it all, the landlord who owned the small flat she and her mother rented had informed them that he was selling the building. The new owners planned to turn it into a set of offices and they would have to move out—soon.

Oh, it wasn’t fair! Sienna slammed one fist into the palm of the other hand in a gesture of frustration and distress. Her mother had to have a home. Somewhere she could live in the comfort and security she needed. The perfect place was available—was hers for the asking. But only if she could meet the conditions laid down. And with Keir’s rejection of her proposal her last chance of doing that had been destroyed. She doubted if she would ever see him again.

She didn’t know how long she sat there, lost in her misery. She had no idea how much time had passed before the sound of the doorbell pealing through her flat jolted her out of her unhappy reverie. At first she was tempted to ignore it, but when it became obvious that whoever was outside had put their finger firmly on the button and intended keeping it there until they got a response, she forced herself to her feet, dashing down the stairs and wrenching open the door.

She couldn’t believe the sight that met her eyes. Keir Alexander stood on the doorstep, dark head held high, his jaw tight, every muscle in his tall, strong body taut with resistance.

‘All right,’ he said, his voice cold and hard as a sharpened knife. ‘Start talking—convince me.’

Sienna talked as she never had in her life before. She couldn’t believe that she’d been given a second chance, but she was going to grasp it with both hands, do everything she could—anything she could—to ensure it didn’t get away from her.

‘I know this isn’t the way either of us would have done this,’ she began, even as they were still climbing the stairs to the first floor where she and her mother lived. ‘Not in an ideal world, anyway. It’s certainly not the way I ever dreamed of marrying, but beggars can’t be choosers. It’s the only way I can think of for getting out of a very tight corner indeed, and if you don’t agree to help then there’s no one else I can turn to.’

She couldn’t look at him as she led him into the small sitting room that he had stormed out of such a short time before, painfully conscious of the fact that it was only a few short weeks since the first occasion on which he’d visited her home. Just two months or so since the party at which they’d met.

‘You know how ill my mother is—and that it can only get worse. I need to find somewhere for us to live so that I can look after her properly, so…’

‘So naturally you want your father’s house?’ Keir put in harshly.

‘Yes.’

Sienna’s voice was low and shaken, still carrying the echoes of the way she had felt when a solicitor had contacted her out of the blue. She had been stunned to discover that her father, the man who had abandoned her mother before Sienna had even been born, had had a belated attack of conscience and decided to acknowledge her as his daughter. As his wife had died some years before, and he had had no other children, he had left her everything he owned in his will. But there was a catch.

‘If my—if Andrew Nash hadn’t left me all that money, I don’t know what I’d have done. And if he hadn’t put in the condition, then I wouldn’t be forced to involve you in this.’

At last she turned to face Keir, her heart quailing as she saw the heavy lids that hooded his eyes, hiding his thoughts from her. His hands were pushed deep into the pockets of his dark trousers, his shoulders stiff, his very stance declaring hostility and opposition to everything she said.

‘The condition being that you have to be married, I presume?’

‘That’s right. In his letter he said that he’d lived his life wishing he’d chosen differently all those years ago. That he’d realised too late that the love my mother and I could have brought him as a family was more important than the wealth he kept by staying with his wife. And so he made it a prerequisite of my inheritance that I had to be married—happily married—before I could inherit.’

‘Happily married,’ Keir echoed cynically. ‘And who’s to be the judge of that?’

‘My…’

Sienna couldn’t get her tongue round the word ‘uncle’. After twenty-five years of believing she had no family at all, it was too much to accept that she now had an uncle, particularly one who held her future so securely in his hands.

‘His brother, Francis Nash, is to have the final say in seeing that his wishes are carried out. But he knows nothing about me. He’s never even seen me. It shouldn’t be too hard to—to convince him that…that…’

‘That you and I are madly in love and desperate to get married?’ Keir finished for her when she couldn’t complete the sentence.

‘That’s right.’ It was barely more than a whisper and once more her eyes skittered away from the coldly assessing stare that fixed her like a specimen on a laboratory slide, awaiting analysis. ’W-would you like a drink? There’s wine…’

‘I think I’d better keep a clear head for this,’ Keir returned dismissively. ‘I wouldn’t want anything to muddle my thinking.’

Did that mean he was actually considering the idea? Sienna didn’t dare to allow the thought to enter her mind.

‘So you want me to play the devoted groom?’

He made it sound like the most repellent task possible. As if he would rather put a gun to his head—anything other than what she had asked of him.

‘To lie? Don’t you know that lies have a nasty habit of breeding more lies? Before you’ve time to think you’re tangled up in them so tightly that you can’t get free and they’re dragging you down…’

‘But we’re not going to lie! Not really. People already know us as a couple. We’ve been seen out together often enough. It wouldn’t be all that different from what we have now. It wouldn’t!’ she declared vehemently when he expressed his disagreement in a harsh sound of disbelief. ‘You’re here almost every night as it is. What if I’d asked you to move in with me?’

‘I’d think you were taking a lot for granted, lady.’

‘Keir, it’s only supposition!’ Desperately Sienna tried to make up the ground she realised she’d lost. ‘We both know that our relationship isn’t on that sort of footing—that it will probably never be. But we’re the only ones who know that. And what we do have is good, isn’t it?’

Keir’s stony face gave her no encouragement and it was all that she could do not to give up in despair.

‘If we decided to say, after a year, that we knew it wasn’t working, then we could split—both go our own ways—and it wouldn’t matter. There’d be no frayed ends, no regrets, no complications.’

‘But this arrangement comes weighed down with complications,’ Keir pointed out with cold reason. ‘It can’t not do that. A marriage certificate complicates things, darling.’

‘But it’s only a temporary solution, you must see that!’ she pleaded with him. ‘It won’t mean anything to either of us, so you needn’t worry about getting trapped in something you don’t want! There’ll be no commitment beyond that one year—just a twelve month period and then we’ll go our separate ways.’

‘You make it sound so simple…’

‘It is simple! It couldn’t be anything else. After all, it’s not as if you’re madly in love with me, or vice versa. And…’

Her voice faded into silence as Keir snatched his hand away from her and moved to stare out of the window, affecting an intent interest in the cars going by in the street.

‘It might work,’ he said slowly.

Was it possible that he was going to agree? Sienna was past knowing whether she hoped for his agreement or feared it dreadfully. She was so caught up in her own disturbed thoughts at the prospect that she jumped like a startled cat when he suddenly whirled round to face her.

‘And what, exactly, would I get out of the deal? Because I presume you were going to offer me something—some remuneration for my co-operation, some compensation for the loss of my freedom by entering into this agreement.’

‘Of course.’

Sienna swallowed hard. She had expected this. Had known it must come inevitably. But she hadn’t thought he would be quite so cold-blooded about it.

You fool! her heart reproached her. What had she expected? That he would declare that of course he would do it, that he would do whatever she wanted and not expect anything in return?

Of course not. She had known she would have to offer Keir something in exchange for his agreement to help her out. It was just that she hadn’t been prepared for the way his demand made her feel that it was that compensation that mattered and not her.

‘So?’ Keir prompted harshly when she couldn’t find the voice to answer him.

‘You—you remember what you told me about the shares in Alexander’s?’

She had been frankly surprised that he had opened up about so much of his life to her. Keir was the sort of man who kept things very much to himself, limiting the conversation only to uncomplicated, unemotional topics that didn’t call for much involvement on either part.

But just three nights earlier he had revealed something of the problems he had been having with the haulage and transportation company of which he was part owner and managing director. Problems that had been caused by his stepmother, his late father’s second wife.

Alexander’s was a family firm. Originally owned by Keir’s father, Don, it had been an ailing, small-scale enterprise when, at twenty-one and fresh from university, Keir had taken it by the scruff of the neck and dragged it forcibly into the late twentieth century. In the following twelve years he had turned it into a huge international success. It was now impossible to travel anywhere in Europe or beyond without seeing one of Alexander’s distinctive red and green vehicles somewhere en route.

‘Did you manage to raise the amount you needed to buy your stepmother out?’

Keir’s expression gave her the answer before he spoke, a dark cloud of anger shadowing his face.

‘I raised it, but then she upped the stakes again. She says she has another potential buyer in the offing. If that sale goes through then Alexander’s as a family firm will cease to exist.’

‘And that’s so important to you?’

The look her turned on her scorched her from head to toe with its impatient contempt for the stupidity of her question.

‘Alexander’s is mine, Sienna—mine! I’m not prepared to see it the subject of some hostile take-over and swallowed up, becoming just part of another company. I promised my father that, and I’ll keep my promise if it kills me.’

‘But if your stepmother keeps asking for more?’

Keir’s scowl was blacker than ever.

‘She knows how much I’ve invested in modernising things—buying new vehicles, computers, everything over the past year. Given time, that investment will pay off, several hundredfold, but right now it’s stretched me to my limit. And Lucille knows that, damn her!’

‘How much time would you need?’

‘Twelve months, maybe less…’

Sienna knew almost to the exact second the moment that realisation dawned. She saw the subtle changes in his expression, and those dark, knowing eyes slid to her own face, fixing on it in intent appraisal.

‘That’s what you’re offering.’

It was a statement, not a question, absolute conviction ringing in his tone, and she could almost hear his astute brain working, weighing up pros and cons, subjecting the idea to shrewd and careful analysis.

‘Keir, my inheritance will make me wealthy beyond my wildest dreams. I’ll have more than enough to keep myself and my mother in comfort. And I’ll be able to help you out too. Oh, don’t say no!’

He was going to. She knew it just by looking at him. And now that what she hoped for, what she’d prayed might happen, was actually within reach, she couldn’t believe that fate would be unkind enough to snatch it away again, right at the last minute.

‘Keir, please don’t say no! You can pay me back if you like. But I can give you the money you need, and you can help me. I need this—we both do!’

Just what was going on inside that handsome head of his? What was that keen, calculating brain thinking? She felt like the accused in some terrible trial. As if she was standing in the dock with Keir acting as both judge and jury, very definitely counsel for the prosecution, about to attack her verbally.

For perhaps thirty of the longest seconds of her life she watched and waited. Watched him consider, debate with himself, accept certain ideas, then just as swiftly reject them. At long last he drew in a deep, uneven breath.

‘Two conditions…’ he said slowly.

‘Anything! Anything at all, if you’ll just say yes!’

‘Condition one…’ Keir marked it off on one long finger of his left hand. ‘We have a proper wedding. All the trimmings. A church ceremony, flowers, candles, the lot.’

‘Whatever you say.’

It was almost impossible to get the words out. Her pulse was racing so fast that her heart seemed to pound against her ribcage, leaving her unable to breathe properly or keep her voice in any way steady.

‘And—and condition two?’

‘After the proper wedding we have a real marriage. I won’t stand for anything else. For one thing, there’s no way we’ll convince anyone that this is the love-match you’re supposed to have by the conditions of your father’s will if we don’t look really together. It’s all or nothing.’

All or nothing. Almost from the moment that they had met she had known that Keir wanted their relationship to be a physical one. He had made no secret of the desire he felt for her, and she had been the one trying to apply the brakes. ‘Trying’ being the operative word, she acknowledged uncomfortably.

Because she couldn’t deny the effect he had on her. From the first moment that he had kissed her, an irresistible, potently sensual chemistry such as she had never known before had sparked between them. It had swept her off her feet, turned her world upside down, taking with it every long-held belief she had ever had about who she was and how she behaved.

It was all the more difficult to cope with because she had never felt like this with Dean. Dean whom she had loved, believed in, trusted. Dean to whom she had given her heart, but even then had never felt the same dangerous, wild excitement that Keir could inspire with simply a look, a touch, a brief caress. She had never understood how she could feel that attraction for a man she barely knew, let alone cared for in the deepest sort of sense.

But perhaps that same excitement would be the saving of her now. Perhaps the unnerving response she felt towards Keir would be enough to turn the fiction of a marriage she was proposing into something that would convince all observers it was actually fact.

But that still didn’t make it easy to answer. Her throat closed over a knot of powerful emotions so that all she could do was nod silently, unable to speak a word.

‘You agree?’ Keir demanded, still in Grand Inquisitor mode.

‘I—I agree.’

It was only as she forced it out that comprehension dawned, bright and vivid, blinding her with its brilliance.

She couldn’t believe it. Could it possibly be true?

‘A proper wedding!’ she gasped, struggling to collect what remained of her scattered thoughts. ‘A real marriage after a proper wedding! Keir—do you mean—are you agreeing to my proposal?’

The look he turned on her had such a scorching intensity that it seemed to sizzle through the air, sending electrical impulses along every nerve in her body. It spoke of hunger and conquest and passion. But most of all it was redolent with a desire so carnal it seemed positively indecent in the cold light of day.

‘Yes, Sienna.’

Hearing his voice, Sienna blinked in disbelief. Suddenly that blazing sensuality was gone, wiped from his face as if it had never been. His tone was emotionless, totally controlled, as blank and indifferent as his eyes, which could have been carved from dark marble they were so cold and lifeless.

‘Yes, I’m agreeing to your proposal. Under those conditions, then, yes, I will marry you.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘WELL, we did it!’

Sienna’s voice was breathless with a mixture of triumph, relief and something coming very close to panic that she prayed the man beside her wouldn’t be able to detect. The same emotions were mirrored in the sea-coloured brilliance of her eyes as she turned on him a smile edged with a tension that, try as she might, she was unable to erase completely.

‘We did it,’ Keir echoed gravely, no answering smile lighting the darkness of his own gaze as it locked with hers. ‘But did we get away with it? That’s the real question.’

‘Oh, don’t be silly!’

Sienna made the reproof as careless as was possible when her heartbeat and breathing refused to settle down into anything like their normal rhythm.

‘Of course we got away with it! Why wouldn’t we? And don’t say that—you make it sound as if we’ve done something wrong.’

‘And we haven’t?’

At his tone, the precarious euphoria that had buoyed her up evaporated in a rush, leaving her feeling disturbingly limp and deflated, like a pricked balloon.

‘No, we haven’t!’ Infuriatingly, she couldn’t give the words the conviction she wanted; a quaver she couldn’t suppress took all the certainty from her declaration.

‘Are you so sure of that? There are those who might label what we’ve done as fraud, or at the very least an attempt to swindle money from the Nash estate.’

‘I’m not swindling anyone! I am a Nash, remember? By blood, at least, if not by name. And the only person who might feel defrauded of anything is my father, or rather he might if he was still alive. But, seeing as he never took any interest in my existence from the day I was born, I very much doubt that anything I do now is going to trouble him in the least.’

Moving impulsively, she laid a hand on Keir’s arm, her fingers white against the deep colour of his superbly tailored suit as she looked up into the hard-boned strength of his face.

‘Don’t tell me you’re having second thoughts at this late stage?’

‘Not second thoughts, no.’ Keir pushed one strong hand through his hair, ruffling its gleaming darkness. ‘But if we’re strictly honest we are pulling a fast one on all those people in there.’

A slight inclination of his head indicated the door at the far side of the room through which the buzz of a hundred conversations could easily be heard.

‘Especially your mother.’

‘It’s because of my mother that I’m doing this,’ Sienna reminded him in a vehement undertone made necessary by the need to avoid being heard as the door swung open, revealing the crowded room beyond. ‘And you—’

But there was no chance to finish the sentence, because at that moment a loud, stentorian voice broke through the noise, silencing it immediately.

‘Ladies and gentlemen—pray silence for the bride and groom!’

‘Oh, Lord!’

Taken by surprise, Sienna lurched into a nervous flurry of activity. A hasty glance in the huge, ornately framed mirror over the fireplace reassured her that her veil was still securely anchored, the delicate silver headdress holding it firmly in place in the brown curls of her hair, a couple of shades darker than Keir’s.

Her make-up, carefully applied some four hours before, was still almost perfect: a soft wash of beige shadow emphasising the almond shape of her eyes, the long, thick lashes enhanced by a single coat of black mascara. Perhaps the warm pink on the full softness of her mouth had faded just a little, and there seemed to be a surprising lack of colour across the high, slanting cheekbones, but there was nothing she could do about that now. She could only hope that their guests would put her pallor down to excitement or belated wedding nerves.