The Hired Husband

‘I’m sorry.’ It was a low, deep sigh. ‘I’m just a bear with a sore head today.’

‘A sore head!’

It was Sienna’s mother who had caught the comment, her laughter-warmed tones lightening the atmosphere dramatically as she echoed his words, leaning forward to smile into Keir’s dark, shuttered face.

‘Would that be the result of rather too exuberant a stag night last night, son-in-law?’ she asked teasingly. ‘I would have thought you and your friends’d have more sense…’

‘Now don’t blame me!’ James, the best man, joined in on a note of amused protest. ‘Whatever Keir got up to last night, he did it on his own! And as for a stag night, all we had was a very sedate meal together at the beginning of the week, so you can’t hold me responsible for the way he’s feeling today. Unless you had some sort of debauched evening that you didn’t invite me along to, you rogue,’ he added, with a none too subtle dig of his elbow into Keir’s ribs.

‘Nothing of the sort,’ his friend returned, switching on a grin that even came close to convincing Sienna, though she was well aware of how very far from genuine it actually was.

Along with the grin went a belated attempt to look affectionate, by turning his hand on the table top until his strong fingers enclosed hers completely, his grip warm and firm. The slow, deliberate movement of his thumb against the sensitivity of her palm dried her throat, the softly sensual circles he was drawing setting her heart thudding and heating her blood.

Keir’s wicked, slanted glance in her direction told her that he knew exactly what he was doing. That he had turned her own weapon of the potent effect they had on each other back on her with devastating results.

‘I’m afraid what was occupying me last night was business, pure and simple,’ he confessed ruefully, his voice revealing nothing of the emotion that Sienna knew would shade hers if she tried to speak. ‘A deal that needed finalising.’

‘The night before your wedding!’ James was obviously disbelieving. ‘Keir, man, couldn’t it have waited?’

‘No way.’

The shake of his dark head that accompanied the flat statement was as firmly emphatic as the words.

‘I wanted this particular matter behind me once and for all, so that I was free to concentrate on my bride. It’s just that negotiations went on much longer than I had expected…’

Lucille had been as difficult as it was possible for her to be, damn her, Keir reflected grimly. She and her lawyer had held out for every penny she could get away with, and then some. There had been times when he had come close to giving up on the whole thing and walking out, but then, just when he had been about to declare that he had enough, that she could forget it, she had finally capitulated and signed on the dotted line.

‘I didn’t get to bed until well after midnight, and then I didn’t sleep too well.’

‘What was the problem?’ Sienna inserted rather tartly, the sensual haze that had enclosed her evaporating with a rapidity that left her shaken and disturbingly on the edge of tears.

It was his comment about being free to concentrate on his bride that had changed her mood. She was only too well aware of the fact that it had been inserted solely for the benefit of their audience. It had no grounding at all in reality. In fact the real truth was that, crazily, she didn’t even have the faintest idea what they were going to do once the wedding was over.

‘Wedding nerves?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Oh, come on! That’s the bride’s prerogative, not the groom’s!’

She couldn’t believe that Keir—strong, independent, determined, cold-blooded, heart-free Keir Alexander—had lain awake worrying about the coming day. Refused to even consider that he might have felt as apprehensive as she had about the marriage ceremony and what they were getting themselves into.

Not Keir. He was the one who had been as cool as the proverbial cucumber all the way through this. Once she had convinced him it was the answer to both their problems, he had taken every single thing in his stride, handled each detail, every small hiccup, with the cool assurance that was so much a part of his nature.

‘Are you saying that a man can’t feel unsure and apprehensive on the night before his wedding—overawed by the prospect of what’s ahead of him—the responsibility he’s about to take on?’

‘N-no…’

The look in his eyes disturbed her. They were darker than ever, shadowed by something she didn’t understand. And now that she looked more closely she could see smudges of weariness underneath them, marks that she had never noticed before. The faint lines that fanned out from the corners of his eyes looked more pronounced too, as if etched there by strain and worry.

‘Or are you claiming that if I’d rung you when I couldn’t sleep I’d have found you wide awake too, sharing the same sort of feelings?’

‘Well—no, I wasn’t.’

The truth was that, worn out by rushing around here there and everywhere for the past five weeks, she had fallen asleep as soon as her head had touched the pillow. Even the last minute butterflies in her stomach at the prospect of the day ahead had been overcome by the thought that tomorrow, finally, all her worries would be over.

‘I didn’t think so.’

Suddenly the thought that had crossed Sienna’s mind a moment before came rushing back with a new and worrying force.

Once she had convinced him. Keir hadn’t wanted this marriage. When she had first proposed the idea he had rejected it outright. It had only been when he’d made it a condition that they had a proper marriage, complete in every way, that he had been persuaded to agree to her proposal.

‘Sienna!’

Her name in Keir’s voice held a note of warning that dragged her back to the present. The best man was getting to his feet, ready to make his speech. Somehow Sienna found the self-control to appear to be listening. She turned her head in James’s direction, focused her eyes on his face, and even, forewarned by the ripples of laughter from other parts of the room, managed to smile at the jokes he made.

But the truth was that she heard little of the witty address, and registered even less. Deep inside, her stomach was just a twisting mass of nerves, a knot of fear that made her stomach heave nauseatingly.

What had she done? She had actually asked this man to be her husband. To live with her, share her home, her life, her bed. For the next year, at least, she would have to make it appear that she and Keir were deeply in love. That they were no longer two individuals but that indefinable thing known as ‘a couple’.

What had seemed so simple just a few days before now seemed impossible, unendurable, fraught with pitfalls and traps to catch the unwary. The twelve months that had once appeared such a short space of time now stretched endlessly ahead, three hundred and sixty five days of it, and she had no idea how she was going to live through it.

Fear pounded inside her head, beating at her temples, so that she had to fight against the impulse to push her chair back and run from the room. She had chosen this path, knowing she had no alternative. Married to Keir she would inherit her father’s money, and with it all the security and comfort it could bring. Without him she would be once more alone and desperate, with her mother totally dependent on her.

The speeches were over, the toasts completed. At last she was free from the obligation to stay in her seat. The feeling caused a rush of relief that brought her swiftly to her feet, unable to keep still any longer. She had no idea where she was going, thinking vaguely of heading for the huge French windows, now flung open in the late summer heat, of getting some much needed fresh air. Perhaps some deep, cooling breaths would calm her racing pulse, ease the pressure inside her head. But…

‘Sienna…’ Keir said abruptly, reaching for her. ‘Wait…’

His grip on her arm felt like a steel manacle, imprisoning her. Panic flared afresh and, reacting purely instinctively, she tensed, pulling back, away from him, earning herself a dark, disapproving glare.

‘What the…? Sienna, just what’s got into you? People are looking!’

The savage undertone was somehow more disturbing than if he had actually raised his voice to express the anger he was clearly barely holding in check. The blaze in his eyes terrified her, and suddenly the ground no longer seemed steady beneath her, the thick red carpet shifting unnervingly under the soles of her white satin slippers.

‘I won’t go with you!’ It was a desperate whisper. ‘I can’t!’

‘Sienna, have you taken leave of your senses? Might I remind you that this is our wedding day?’

Remind her! As if she could forget!

‘We have guests…people we should speak to.’

Speak! Sienna’s tongue felt as if it was glued to the roof of her mouth, preventing her from forming a word. But with Keir’s strong hand still clamped on her wrist, the other pressed firmly against the small of her back, she had no option but to follow him out into the room, somehow managing to acknowledge the greetings of the people they passed.

Her face seemed frozen into an expression of feigned happiness, the muscles around her mouth aching from smiling too many false smiles. All she wanted was to get away, be by herself, find peace and quiet in which to try to come to terms with what she’d done. But Keir was unrelenting in his determination that they should greet everyone. Ignoring her murmurs of protest, her obvious reluctance, he steered her from group to group, covering her awkwardness with the smooth ease of his own conversation.

‘For God’s sake!’ he hissed in her ear. ‘Now you’re the one who looks like the condemned man! Smile, damn you! No one will believe you’re madly in love with me if you look at me as if I was some deadly poisonous snake about to strike.’

‘I am smiling,’ Sienna retorted through clenched teeth. ‘And as to looking as if I love you—I’d manage that much better if you didn’t frogmarch me round the room as if I was either drunk or insane. I can manage to stand on my own two feet, you know. If you’d just let me go…’

‘Be my guest!’

She was released so abruptly that she staggered awkwardly, afraid she might actually fall. Instinctively her hand went out to steady herself, and to her total surprise she found it taken by someone new. Soft fingers closed round hers, supporting her.

‘Steady!’ a female voice cautioned. ‘You nearly took a tumble there.’

‘Th-thank you.’ With her balance restored, Sienna managed to turn to her rescuer with a smile more genuine than anything she had managed before.

‘Not to worry,’ she was assured. ‘Those long skirts can be so very difficult to walk in when you’re not used to them.’

‘That’s true!’ The woman’s perfume was rather cloying and overpowering, but Sienna struggled not to reveal her response to it. At last she felt something of her earlier panic receding, evaporating in the warmth of this new companion’s smile. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t think…’

She didn’t recognise the face. This must be someone Keir had invited. Someone she hadn’t yet met.

‘Keir, won’t you introduce me…?’

But Keir stood at her side, stiff and withdrawn, his face appearing to have been carved out of the cold, immobile marble that formed the statues out on the terrace. Even his eyes were blanked off, revealing no emotion.

Why had this had to happen now? Keir asked himself furiously. If he had tried to think of the worst possible moment for Lucille to finally meet up with the woman he had married, then it would have been hard to imagine one that beat this. Sienna had already been behaving like a nervous thoroughbred, fearful of being handled for the first time, so he could just imagine how she was going to deal with this additional development.

The problem was that his new wife couldn’t lie to save her life. She had come up with this ridiculous scheme of their pretend marriage, presenting it as the answer to all his problems as well as hers, but the truth was that she didn’t know the half of it. She didn’t know how appallingly Lucille had behaved—the sort of damage she was still capable of wreaking if given half a chance. And if his stepmother so much as suspected the true reasons behind this hastily arranged wedding, then she was more than likely to pounce on the information like some ecstatic predator. She would use it quite cold-bloodedly to her own advantage, especially if she could work on his own destruction at the same time.

‘Keir…’

Just one word from the other woman’s lips, but it had a dramatic effect on him. His head jerked round swiftly, his eyes narrowing to mere slits above his high, strong cheekbones.

‘You want to be introduced? Well, fine. It had to be done some time, so I suppose now is as good an occasion as any. Sienna, darling, this is Lucille, my stepmother…’ He spat the word out as if it left a foul taste in his mouth. ‘Lucille, obviously this is Sienna, my wife.’

Lucille. Sienna couldn’t believe what she was hearing. This was Lucille, the stepmother Keir so detested that he had finally agreed to their marriage solely because it offered him a way of getting rid of her, expelling her from his life once and for all? This was the monster who, like Medusa, had turned his heart to stone in the moment he had first seen her, and had never let a single redeeming chink of light into it since then.

But this woman was nothing like the one she had imagined. In her thoughts, influenced by Keir’s own feelings, she had created a vicious harpy, cold-faced and cold-eyed, not this smiling, bright-eyed creature. And Lucille Alexander was so much smaller than she had anticipated, smaller and lovelier, with her peachy skin, green eyes and red-gold hair. But what rocked her back on her feet, threatening her balance again for a moment, was just how young Keir’s stepmother was. She had anticipated some woman in her late forties, early fifties. This Lucille looked barely five or so years older than Keir himself.

‘Sienna…’ Lucille was holding out her hand. ‘It’s wonderful to meet you at last. I was beginning to wonder if I would ever get to see you at all. But now that I have I can quite understand why Keir wanted to keep you all to himself.’

‘I doubt if you understand anything at all,’ Keir put in with biting cynicism. ‘And if I’d had my way you would never have been invited to the wedding. But Sienna wanted all my family here and, much as I hate to acknowledge it, you are family, if only by marriage…’

‘Keir…!’ Sienna put in reproachfully.

But Keir ignored her, his attention still fixed on Lucille.

‘But, seeing as you are here, perhaps it’s just as well. There’s a small matter of business we can get out of the way. If you’ll just follow me.’

Once again he clamped his hand over Sienna’s arm, forcing her to go with him as he turned and marched towards the door. It was either that or be dragged inelegantly and embarrassingly in his wake. He didn’t pause to look back and see if Lucille had followed them, apparently totally confident that she would do just that.

And it appeared that his confidence was not misplaced. When he finally came to a halt in the small private room the hotel had put aside for the bride and groom’s use, Lucille was only seconds behind them. She was barely through the door before Keir kicked it shut, blocking off the noise and bustle of the reception.

‘Now…’

Releasing Sienna abruptly, he reached into his inner jacket pocket, pulling out a long white envelope that he dropped onto the highly polished surface of a nearby table.

‘This is what you’re really interested in, dear stepmother. Oh, it’s all right…’ he added, seeing Lucille’s curious glance in Sienna’s direction. ‘My wife and I have no secrets from each other. Quite the contrary. As a matter of fact, it’s Sienna, not me, who’s buying you out, at the price we agreed last night. Darling…’

It took Sienna the space of a couple of uneven heartbeats to realise that Keir was now speaking to her. And even when she had registered that fact she found herself staring at the fine silver pen he held out to her, unable to comprehend just what he had in mind.

‘Sienna,’ Keir urged softly. ‘I need your signature. The document’s all prepared. All you have to do is sign.’

And then it finally dawned on her just what he meant. Of course. This was what she had promised him in return for his agreement to go through with the wedding, his name on the marriage certificate.

But she hadn’t expected him to hold her to her promise quite so soon. The ring was barely on her finger, the ink on that certificate barely dry, and already he was pushing her to complete her half of the bargain. She was quite unprepared for how much that hurt.

‘Sienna,’ Keir urged again, more forcefully this time. ‘Sign it please.’

For a second or two Sienna was tempted to rebel. Let him wait for his money! He hadn’t done anything to earn it!

But then Lucille spoke, and suddenly Sienna found that her mood had changed dramatically.

‘So the little bride is bailing you out, is she Keir, darling? What a generous wedding present—I only hope she thinks you’re worth it. But I’m sure you will be—in one important area of marriage at least.’

Her lascivious tone, the way her eyes gleamed, her pink tongue positively licking her lips, made it only too plain exactly what area she meant. Sienna could only stare, transfixed, unable to believe her eyes. It seemed as if the Lucille she had first met had vanished and another woman entirely had taken her place. This was the real stepmother, then, and she was beginning to understand just why Keir detested her so.

‘You always did give great value there, didn’t you, dearest? But I did wonder what had persuaded you to sign your freedom away like this…’

‘I’m not signing anything away.’

Belatedly, it appeared that Keir had remembered the part he was supposed to be playing. Moving behind Sienna, he looped his arms around her waist, fastening his hands together under her breasts and pulling her back against him.

‘On the contrary, I’m gaining everything I ever wanted. A beautiful wife, a new life with her, the prospect of a wonderful future…’

The sensual magic of his touch was working its spell all over again. Already Sienna could feel her body respond to the warmth of his, to the strength of his arms around her, the faint crisp scent of his cologne, so subtle and clean in contrast to the overwhelming reek of Lucille’s perfume.

Instinctively she laid her head back against his shoulder, feeling his lips brush against her cheek as she did so. In this moment she could almost believe Keir had meant what he’d said. Could almost imagine that this was a real marriage, not the cold-blooded business deal Keir had just proved it to be.

‘And naturally you’re besotted with him.’ Lucille turned a look of scorn on her. ‘Well, I just hope you think you’ve got a good deal on this—that he’s worth what you’re paying him.’

Behind her, Sienna felt Keir’s hard body stiffen in swift rejection. But his face showed no sign of what he was feeling and his hands continued their warm caresses over her arms and tracing the delicate lines of her neck.

‘I’m not paying him,’ she managed, her voice rather breathless as a result of the heightened, erratic beat of her heart. ‘Nor am I bailing him out. What I’m doing is making our partnership a financial one as well as a personal one. An investment for our future.’

She must have sounded more convincing than she had hoped, because against her back she felt Keir’s chest move in a silent, secret laugh of triumph.

For the first time Sienna felt a sense of unity with him. A feeling that they were both in this together, united against a common enemy. The sensation sent her spirits soaring, and impulsively she twisted in his grasp so that she could brush a kiss against the softness of his mouth.

‘Give me the pen, darling, and show me where to sign. I want the business side of things over with so that we can concentrate on more personal matters.’

In a haze of euphoria she signed her name with a flourish, folded up the document and thrust it back at Lucille, feeling a sense of exhilaration as the other woman took it and deposited it in her smart cream handbag.

‘Well, I’ll wish you every happiness together.’ Lucille’s tone implied exactly the opposite. ‘You’re obviously made for each other.’

It was as the door swung to behind her that Keir moved suddenly and unexpectedly. Sienna found herself gathered up into his arms and enclosed in a bear hug that drove all the breath from her body.

‘Brilliant! You were quite perfect! You even had me convinced that you were crazy about me.’

‘I did, didn’t I?’

The warmth of his approval was doing strange things to her. The light in his eyes, the smile that curved the wide sensual mouth were as intoxicating as the fine champagne she had drunk earlier. She felt as if she was bathed in the warmth of the August sun outside, her skin glowing, her blood heating in response. It was a heady, thrilling sensation and she wanted more of it.

‘And believe me, sweetheart, if you can convince my dear stepmother you can convince anyone. We might actually get away with this charade after all.’

Charade. Just one single word but it had an effect like the dash of icy water in her face. Sobering immediately, she felt herself come back down to earth with a sudden and very painful thud. His approval hadn’t been for her, but for the performance he believed she had delivered.

Charade. Just for a second she had allowed herself to believe there was something else between them, some unity other than the one that linked them as partners in a scam to enable her to collect her inheritance. Something that would make the coming twelve months easier to live through. But she had only been fooling herself. Keir obviously wanted no such thing.

‘So, now that’s out of the way we can move on to the next stage…’

‘The next stage?’ Sienna’s uncertainty showed in her voice. ’What next stage is that?’

‘Really, Sienna, isn’t it obvious?’

The look he turned on her was one of sardonic mockery, mixed with a strong dose of frank disbelief.

‘We’re married, darling. The wedding’s over, the reception’s coming to an end. What’s the logical next move?’

‘You don’t mean…?’ Sienna could only shake her head in disbelief. He couldn’t mean what she thought.

‘We do what everyone else does, sweetheart. We go on honeymoon.’

CHAPTER FOUR

HONEYMOON.

The word swung round and round inside Sienna’s head as she lingered over a glass of wine on the terrace of the villa, enjoying the cool of the evening after the warmth of the day. Above her head, swallows swooped through the air in pursuit of midges, the swish of their wings the only sound in the silence that surrounded her.

‘We do what everyone else does, sweetheart. We go on honeymoon.’

She had been frankly stunned by her own reaction to Keir’s declaration. It had been the last thing she had expected. The nature of their arrangement was so businesslike and unemotional that she had never even dreamed there would be any place in it for of the conventional pleasures that were supposed to follow immediately after the celebration of a wedding.

So the realisation that they were actually to have a honeymoon had left her quite breathless and surprisingly excited. Somehow the thought of such a holiday had made her feel like a bride.

A real bride, she corrected when hard common sense had reminded her that she was actually Keir’s bride, even if it was only a pretence at a love match.

‘On honeymoon!’ she exclaimed, looking up into Keir’s dark face in wide-eyed surprise. ‘But where…? What…?’

A strong finger laid across her lips silenced her effectively.

‘That’s my secret,’ Keir told her with a grin. ‘Isn’t that what the groom’s supposed to do? Organise everything and keep the destination a mystery until the last minute?’

It was more usual that the bride and groom chose the honeymoon together, poring over brochures and travel articles before deciding on some place they both wanted to visit, Sienna reflected, something of the euphoria that had lifted her spirits fading slightly. Of course there would be nothing like that for herself and Keir.