SOS: Convenient Husband Required / Winning a Groom in 10 Dates: SOS: Convenient Husband Required / Winning a Groom in 10 Dates
Her skin was so beautiful that he’d wanted to touch it, touch her, kiss her. And her eyes, liquid black in the dim lights of the school gym, had told him that she wanted it too. But not there. Not where anyone could see them, hoot with derision…
They had run home through the park. She’d unlocked the gate, they’d scrambled up to the stables loft and it was hard to say which of them had been trembling the most when he’d kissed her, neither of them doubting what they wanted.
That it was her first kiss was without doubt. It was very nearly his, too. His first real kiss. The taste of her lips, the sweetness, her uncertainty as she’d opened up to him had made him feel like a giant. All powerful. Invincible. And the memory of her melting softness in the darkness jolted through him like an electric charge…
‘You need a husband by the end of the month?’ he said, dragging himself back from the hot, dark thoughts that were raging through him.
‘There’s an entailment on Coleridge House,’ she said. ‘The legatee has to be married by the time he or she is thirty or the house goes to the Crown.’
‘He’s controlling you, even from the grave,’ he said.
She flushed angrily. ‘No one knew,’ she said.
‘No one?’
‘My grandfather lost great chunks of his memory when he had the stroke. And papers were lost when Jennings’ offices were flooded a few years ago…’
‘You’re saying you had no warning?’
She shook her head. ‘My mother was dead long before she was thirty, but she thought marriage was an outdated patriarchal institution…’ The words caught in her throat and she turned abruptly away again so that he shouldn’t see the tears turning her caramel-coloured eyes to liquid gold, just as they had that night when her grandfather had dragged her away from him, his coat thrown around her. ‘She’d have told them all to go to hell rather than compromise her principles.’
He tried to drown out the crowing triumph. That this girl, this woman, who from that day to this had crossed the road rather than pass him in the street, was about to lose everything. That her grandfather, that ‘impressive’ man who thought he was not fit to breathe the same air as his precious granddaughter, had left her at his mercy.
‘But before the stroke? He could have told you then.’
‘Why would he? I was engaged to Michael, the wedding date was set.’
‘Michael Linton.’ He didn’t need to search his memory. He’d seen the announcement and Saffy had been full of it, torn between envy and disgust.
Envy that May would be Lady Linton with some vast country estate and a house in London. Disgust that she was marrying a man nearly old enough to be her father. ‘Her grandfather’s arranged it all, of course,’ she’d insisted. ‘He’s desperate to marry her off to someone safe before she turns into her mother and runs off with some nobody who gets her up the duff.’ She’d been about to say more but had, for once, thought better of it.
Not that he’d had any argument with her conclusion. But then her grandfather had suffered a massive stroke and the wedding had at first been put off. Then Michael Linton had married someone else.
‘What happened? Why didn’t you marry him?’
‘Michael insisted that Grandpa would be better off in a nursing home. I said no, but he kept bringing me brochures, dragging me off to look at places. He wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t hear what I was saying, so in the end I gave him his ring back.’
‘And he took it?’
‘He wanted a wife, a hostess, someone who would fit into his life, run his home. He didn’t want to be burdened with an invalid.’
‘If he’d taken any notice of your lame duck zoo, he’d have known he was on a hiding to nothing.’
She shook her head and when she looked back over her shoulder at him her eyes were sparkling, her cheeks wet, but her lips were twisted into a smile.
‘Michael didn’t climb over the park gate when the gardener was looking the other way, Adam. He was a front door visitor.’
‘You mean you didn’t make him help you muck out the animals?’ he asked and was rewarded with a blush.
‘I didn’t believe he’d appreciate the honour. He’d have been horrified if he’d seen me shin up a tree to save a kitten. Luckily, the situation never arose when he was around.’ A tiny shuddering breath escaped her. ‘You don’t notice creatures in distress from the back seat of a Rolls-Royce.’
‘His loss,’ he said, his own throat thick as the memories of stolen hours rushed back at him.
‘And mine, it would seem.’
‘You’d have been utterly miserable married to him.’
She shook her head.
‘You aren’t going to take this lying down, are you?’ he asked. ‘I can’t believe it would stand up in a court of law and the tabloids would have a field day if the government took your home.’
‘A lot of people are much worse off than me, Adam. I’m not sure that a campaign to save a fifteen-room house for one spoilt woman and her housekeeper would be a popular cause.’
She had a point. She’d been born to privilege and her plight was not going to garner mass sympathy.
‘Is that what Freddie Jennings told you?’ he asked. ‘I assume you have taken legal advice?’
‘Freddie offered to take Counsel’s opinion but, since Grandpa had several opportunities to remove the Codicil but chose not to, I don’t have much of a case.’ She lifted her shoulders in a gesture of utter helplessness. ‘It makes no difference. The truth is that there’s no cash to spare for legal fees. As it is, I’m going to have to sell a load of stuff to meet the inheritance tax bill. Even if I won, the costs would be so high that I’d have to sell the house to pay them. And if I lost…’
If she lost it would mean financial ruin.
Well, that would offer a certain amount of satisfaction. But nowhere near as much as the alternative that gave him everything he wanted.
‘So you’re telling me that the only reason you can’t take care of Nancie is because you’re about to lose the house? If you were married, there would be no problem,’ he said. He didn’t wait for her answer—it hadn’t been a question. ‘And your birthday is on the second of December. Well, it’s tight, but it’s do-able.’
‘Do-able?’ she repeated, her forehead buckled in a frown. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘A quick trip to the register office, a simple “I do”, you get to keep your house and I’ll have somewhere safe for Nancie. As her aunt-in-law, I don’t imagine there would be any objection to you taking care of her?’
And he would be able to finally scratch the itch that was May Coleridge while dancing on the grave of the man who’d shamed and humiliated him.
But if he’d imagined that she’d fling her arms around him, proclaim him her saviour, well, nothing had changed there, either.
Her eyes went from blank to blazing, like lightning out of a clear blue sky.
‘That’s not even remotely funny, Adam. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got a house full of guests who’ll be expecting lunch in a couple of hours.’
She was wearing shabby sweats but swept by him, head high, shoulders back. Despite her lack of inches, the fact that her puppy fat hadn’t melted away but had instead evolved into soft curves, she was every inch the lady.
‘Mouse…’ he protested, shaken out of his triumph by the fact that, even in extremis, she’d turn him down flat. As if he was still a nobody from the wrong side of the tracks. ‘May!’
She was at the door before she stopped, looked back at him.
‘I’m serious,’ he said, a touch more sharply than he’d intended.
She shook her head. ‘It’s impossible.’
In other words, he might wear hand stitched suits these days instead of the cheapest market jeans, live in an apartment that had cost telephone numbers, be able to buy and sell the Coleridge estate ten times over, but he could never wash off the stink of where he’d come from. That his sister had been a druggie, his mother was no better than she ought to be and his father had a record as long as his arm.
But times had changed. He wasn’t that kid any more. What he wanted, he took. And he wanted this.
‘It would be a purely temporary arrangement,’ he said. ‘A marriage of convenience.’
‘Are you saying that you wouldn’t expect…?’
She swallowed, colour flooding into her cheeks, and it occurred to him that if Michael Linton’s courtship had been choreographed by her grandfather it would have been a formal affair rather than a lust-fuelled romance. The thought sent the blood rushing to a very different part of his anatomy and he was grateful for the full stiff folds of the dressing gown he was wearing.
She cleared her throat. ‘Are you saying that you wouldn’t expect the full range of wifely duties?’
Not the full range. He wouldn’t expect her to cook or clean or keep house for him.
‘Just a twenty-four seven nanny,’ she continued, regaining her composure, assuming his silence was assent. ‘Only with more paperwork, a longer notice period and a serious crimp in your social life?’
‘I don’t have much time for a social life these days,’ he assured her before she could gather herself. ‘But there are formal business occasions where I would normally take a guest. Civic functions. But you usually attend those, anyway.’
Nancie, as if aware of the sudden tension, let out a wail and, using the distraction to escape the unexpected heat of May’s eyes, he picked her up, put her against his shoulder, turned to look at her.
‘Well? What do you say?’
She shook her head, clearly speechless, and the band holding her hair slipped, allowing wisps to escape.
Backlit by the sun, they shone around her face like a butterscotch halo.
‘What have you got to lose?’ he persisted, determined to impose his will on her. Overwrite the Coleridge name with his own.
‘Marriage is a lot easier to get into than it is to get out of,’ she protested. Still, despite every advantage, resisting him. ‘There has to be an easier solution to baby care than marrying the first woman to cross your path.’
‘Not the first,’ he replied. ‘I passed several women in the park and I can assure you that it never crossed my mind to marry any of them.’
‘No?’
He’d managed to coax the suggestion of a smile from her.
‘Divorce is easy enough if both parties are in agreement,’ he assured her. ‘You’ll be giving up a year of your freedom in return for your ancestral home. It looks like a good deal to me.’
The smile did not materialise. ‘I can see the advantage from my point of view,’ she said. ‘But what’s in it for you? You can’t really be that desperate to offload Nancie.’
‘Who said anything about “offloading” Nancie?’ He allowed himself to sound just a little bit offended by her suggestion that he was doing that. ‘On the contrary, I’m doing my best to do what her mother asked. It’s not as if I intend to leave you to manage entirely on your own. I have to go away tomorrow, but I’ll pull my weight until then.’
‘Oh, right. And how do you intend to do that?’
‘I’ll take the night watch. The master bedroom is made up. I’ll pack a bag and move in there today.’
Chapter Five
‘WHAT?’
The word was shocked from her.
May swallowed again, tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear in a nervous gesture that drew attention to her neck. It was long and smooth. She had the clearest ivory skin coloured only by the fading blush…
‘If we get married, people will expect us to live together,’ he pointed out. ‘You wouldn’t want the Crown Commissioners getting the impression that it was just a piece of paper, would you? That you were cheating.’
‘But—’
Before she could put her real objection into words, Nancie, bless her heart, began to grizzle.
‘What do I do now?’ he asked, looking at her helplessly. That, at least, wasn’t an act.
‘I think the fact that she’s chewing your neck is the clue,’ she said distractedly.
‘She’s hungry?’
‘Feeding her, like changing her nappy, is something that has to happen at regular intervals. No doubt there’s a bottle and some formula in that bag.’
She didn’t wait for him to check, but went into her bedroom, fetched the bag and emptied it on the table.
‘There’s just one carton. I wonder what that means.’
‘That we’ll probably need more very soon,’ he replied, picking up on her unspoken thought that it might offer a clue about how long Saffy intended to stay out of sight. Always assuming she was thinking that rationally.
‘Adam!’ she protested as she turned the carton over, searching for instructions.
‘I’m sorry. I can plan a takeover bid to the last millisecond, but I’m out of my depth here.’
‘Then get help.’
‘I’m doing my best,’ he replied. ‘If you’d just cooperate we could both get on with our lives.’
May was struggling to keep up a calm, distant front. She’d been struggling ever since he’d stood beneath the tree in the park. Used that ridiculous name.
Inside, everything was in turmoil. Her heart, her pulse were racing.
‘Please, Adam…’ Her voice caught in her throat. He couldn’t mean it. He was just torturing her…‘Don’t…’
He lifted his hand, cradling her cheek to still her protest. His touch was gentle. A warm soothing balm that swept through her, taking the tension out of her joints so that her body swayed towards him.
‘It wouldn’t be that bad, would it, Mouse?’
Bad? How much worse could it get?
‘It seems a little…extreme,’ she said, resisting with all her will the yearning need to lean into his palm. Surrender everything, including her honour.
‘Losing your home, your business, is extreme,’ he insisted. ‘Getting married is just a piece of paper.’
Not for her…
‘A mutually beneficial contract to be cancelled at the convenience of both parties,’ he added. ‘Think of Robbie, May. Where will she go if you lose the house?’
‘She’s got a pension. A sister…’
‘Your business,’ he persisted.
The bank loan…
‘And what about your animals? Who else will take them in? You know that most of them will have to be put down.’
‘Don’t!’ she said, her throat so tight that the words were barely audible.
‘Hey,’ he said, pulling her into her arms so that the three of them were locked together. ‘I’m your trusty sidekick, remember? As always, late on the scene but ready to leap into action when you need a helping hand.’
‘This is a bit more than a helping hand.’
‘Hand, foot and pretty much everything in between,’ he agreed. ‘Take your pick.’
He was doing his best to make her laugh, she realised, or maybe cry.
Either would be appropriate under the circumstances. What would her mother have done? Spit in the devil’s eye? Or screw the patriarchal system, using it against itself to keep both her house and her freedom?
Stupid question. Heaven knew that she was not her mother. If she’d had her courage she’d be long gone. But all she had was her home. Robbie. The creatures that relied on her. The life she’d managed to make for herself.
As for breaking the promise to her grandfather, her punishment for that was built into the bargain of a barren marriage with a self-destruct date.
‘May?’ he prompted.
Decision time.
What decision…? There was only ever going to be one answer and, taking a deep breath, her heart beating ten times faster than when she’d climbed that tree, her voice not quite steady, she said, ‘You’re absolutely sure about this? Last chance.’
‘Quite sure,’ he replied, his own voice as steady as a rock. No hint of doubt, no suggestion of intestinal collywobbles on his part. ‘It’s a no-brainer.’
‘No…’ she said, wondering why, even now, she was hesitating.
‘No?’
‘I mean yes. You’re right. It’s a no-brainer.’
‘Shall we aim for something a little more decisive?’ he suggested. ‘Just so that we know exactly where we stand?’
‘You’re not planning on going down on one knee?’ she demanded, appalled.
‘Heaven forbid. Just something to seal the bargain,’ he said, taking his hand from her back and offering it to her.
‘A handshake?’ she said, suddenly overcome with the urgent need to laugh as she lifted her own to clasp it. ‘Well, why not? Everything else appears to be shaking.’
As his hand tightened around hers, everything stilled. Even Nancie stopped nuzzling and grumbling. All she could hear was her pulse pounding through her ears. All she could see were his eyes. Not the bright silver of the boy she’d known but leaden almost unreadable. A shiver ran through her as he closed the gap between them, kissed her, but then she closed her eyes and all sense of danger evaporated in the heat of his mouth, the taste of him and the cherished bittersweet memory flooded back.
It was different. He was different.
The kiss was assured, certain and yet, beneath it all, she recognised the boy who’d lain with her in the stable loft and kissed her, undressed her, touched her. And for a moment she was no longer the woman who’d subjugated her yearning for love, for a family of her own into caring for her grandfather, creating a business, building some kind of life for herself.
As Adam’s lips touched hers, she was that girl again and an aching need opened up before her, a dizzying void that tempted her to plunge headlong into danger, to throw caution to the winds and boldly kiss him back.
‘Oh…’
At the sound of Robbie’s shocked little exclamation, May stumbled back, heat rushing to her face.
That girl reliving the moment of guilt, embarrassment, pain when they’d been discovered…
‘Robbie…’
‘I thought I heard you come in earlier,’ she said.
‘I had a fall. In the park. Adam came to my rescue.’
‘That would account for the kitten, then,’ she said stiffly. ‘And the trousers hanging over the Aga.’
‘We both got rather muddy,’ Adam said.
‘I’m sure it’s nothing to do with me what you were doing in the park,’ Robbie said, ignoring him. ‘But Jeremy is here.’
‘Jeremy?’ she repeated, struggling to gather her wits.
‘He’s brought the designs for the honey labels.’
‘Has he? Oh, right…’ Expanding honey production had been part of the future she’d planned and Jeremy Davidson had volunteered to design the labels for her.
‘He’s doing you a favour, May. You won’t want to keep him waiting,’ she said primly before turning to leave.
‘Robbie, wait!’ she began, then glanced at Adam, suddenly unsure of herself. She wanted to tell Robbie that the kiss had meant nothing. That it was no more than a handshake on a deal. Except when Robbie paused, her shoulders stiff with disapproval, the words wouldn’t come.
‘Go and see the man about your labels,’ Adam urged, then nodded, as if to reassure her that she could go ahead with her plans. That she had a future. ‘Leave this to me.’
‘But Nancie…’ She looked at the baby. It was easier than meeting his eyes, looking at Robbie.
‘I’ll bring her down in a moment.’
Adam watched as she stumbled from the room in her haste to escape her embarrassment and he could have kicked himself.
Most women in her situation would have leapt at the deal he’d offered, no questions asked, but her first response had been flat refusal, anger at his presumption, and that had caught him on the raw.
His kiss had been intended as a marker. A promise to himself that she would pay for every slight, every insult but, instead of the anticipated resistance, she had responded with a heat that had robbed him of any sense of victory. Only left him wanting more.
He did not want her.
He could have any woman he wanted. Beautiful women. The kind who turned heads in the street.
All he wanted from May Coleridge was her pride at his feet. And he would have it.
She had been his last mistake. His only weakness. Since the day he’d walked away from this house, his clothes freezing on his back, he’d never let anything, any emotion, stand in his way.
With his degree in his pocket, a mountain of debt to pay off, his mother incapable of looking after either herself or Saffy, the only job he had been able to get in his home town was in an old import company that had been chugging along happily since the days when the clipper ships brought tea from China. It wasn’t what he’d dreamed of, but within five years he’d been running the company. Now he was the chairman of an international company trading commodities from across the globe.
His success didn’t appear to impress May’s disapproving housekeeper.
‘It’s been a while, Mrs Robson.’
‘It has. But nothing appears to have changed, Mr Wavell,’ she returned, ice-cool.
‘On the contrary. I’d like you to be the first to know that May and I are going to be married.’
‘Married!’ And, just like that, all the starch went out of her. ‘When…?’
‘Before the end of the month.’
‘I meant…’ She shook her head. ‘What’s the hurry? What are you after? If you think May’s been left well off—’
‘I don’t need her money. But May needs me. She’s just been told that if she isn’t married by her birthday, she’s going to lose her home.’
‘But that’s less than four weeks…’ She rallied. ‘Is that what Freddie Jennings called about in such a flap this morning?’
‘I imagine so. Apparently, some ancient entailment turned up when he took James Coleridge’s will to probate.’
The colour left her face but she didn’t back down. ‘Why would you step in to help, Adam Wavell? What do you get out of it?’ She didn’t give him a chance to answer. ‘And that little girl’s mother? What will she have to say about it?’
‘Nancie,’ he said, discovering that a baby made a very useful prop, ‘meet Hatty Robson. Mrs Robson, meet my niece.’
‘She’s Saffy’s daughter?’ She came closer, the rigid lines of her face softening and she touched the baby’s curled up fist. ‘She’s a pretty thing.’ Then, ‘So where is your sister? In rehab? In jail?’
‘Neither,’ he said, hanging onto his temper by a thread. ‘But we are having a bit of a family crisis.’
‘Nothing new there, then.’
‘No,’ he admitted. A little humility wouldn’t hurt. ‘Saffy was sure that May would help.’
‘Again? Hasn’t she suffered enough for your family?’
Suffered?
‘I met her in the park. She was up a tree,’ he added. ‘Rescuing a kitten.’
She rolled her eyes. An improvement.
‘The only reason she told me her troubles was to explain why she couldn’t look after Nancie.’
‘And you leapt in with an immediate marriage proposal. Saving not one, but two women with a single bound?’ Her tone, deeply ironic, suggested that, unlike May, she wasn’t convinced that it was an act of selfless altruism.
‘Make that three,’ he replied, raising her irony and calling her. ‘I imagine one of May’s concerns was you, Mrs Robson. This is your home, too.’
If it hadn’t been so unlikely, he would have sworn she blushed. ‘Did she say that?’ she demanded, instantly on the defensive. ‘I don’t matter.’
‘You know that’s not true,’ he said, pushing his advantage. ‘You and this house are all she has.’
And this time the blush was unmistakable. ‘That’s true. Poor child. Well, I’m sure that’s very generous of you, Mr Wavell. Just tell me one thing. Why didn’t your sister, or you, just pick up the phone and call one of those agencies which supplies temporary nannies? I understand you can afford it these days.’
He’d already explained his reasons to May and he wasn’t about to go through them again. ‘Just be glad for May’s sake,’ he replied, ‘that I didn’t.’
She wasn’t happy, clearly didn’t trust his motives, but after a moment she nodded just once. ‘Very well. But bear this in mind. If you hurt her, you’ll have to answer to me. And I won’t stop at a hosing down.’
‘Hurt her? Why would I hurt her?’
‘You’ve done it before,’ she said. ‘It’s in your nature. I’ve seen the string of women you’ve paraded through the pages of the gossip magazines. How many of them have been left with a bruised heart?’ She didn’t wait for an answer. ‘May has spent the last ten years nursing her grandpa. She’s grieving for him, vulnerable.’