One Winter's Sunrise

CHAPTER NINE

ANDIE ALMOST LAUGHED out loud at Dominic’s perplexed expression. He was most likely used to calling the shots—in both business and his relationships. ‘Conditions?’ he asked.

‘Yes, conditions,’ she said firmly. ‘Come on over to the sofa and I’ll run through the list with you. I need to sit down; these heels aren’t good for pacing in.’ The polished concrete floor was all about looks rather than comfort.

‘Do I have any choice about these “conditions”?’ he grumbled.

‘I think you’ll see the sense in them,’ she said. This was not going to go all his way. There was danger in this game she’d been coerced into playing and she wanted to make sure she and her loved ones were not going to get hurt by it.

She led him over to the red leather modular sofa in the living area. The apartment in an old converted factory warehouse was owned by one of her roommates and had been furnished stylishly with Andie’s help. She flopped down on the sofa, kicked off the leopard stilettos that landed in an animal print clash on the zebra-patterned floor rug, and patted the seat next to her.

As Dominic sat down, his muscular thighs brushed against hers and she caught her breath until he settled at a not-quite-touching distance from her, his arm resting on the back of the sofa behind her. She had to close her eyes momentarily to deal with the rush of awareness from his already familiar scent, the sheer maleness of him in such close proximity.

‘I’m interested to hear what you say,’ he said, angling his powerful body towards her. He must work out a lot to have a chest like that. She couldn’t help but wonder what it would feel like to splay her hands against those hard muscles, to press her body against his.

But it appeared he was having no such sensual thoughts about her. She noticed he gave a surreptitious glance to his watch.

‘Hey, no continually checking on the clock,’ she said. ‘You have to give time to an engagement. Especially a make-believe one, if we’re to make it believable. Not to mention your fake fiancée just might feel a tad insulted.’

She made her voice light but she meant every word of it. She had agreed to play her role in this charade and was now committed to making it work.

‘Fair enough,’ he said with a lazy half-smile. ‘Is that one of your conditions?’

‘Not one on its own as such, but it will fit into the others.’

‘Okay, hit me with the conditions.’ He feinted a boxer’s defence that made her smile.

‘Condition Number One,’ she said, holding up the index finger of her left hand. ‘Hannah never knows the truth—not now, not ever—that our engagement is a sham,’ she said. ‘In fact, none of my family is ever to know the truth.’

‘Good strategy,’ said Dominic. ‘In fact, I’d extend that. No one should ever know. Both business partners and friends.’

‘Agreed,’ she said. It would be difficult to go through with this without confiding in a friend but it had to be that way. No one must know how deeply attracted she was to him. She didn’t want anyone’s pity when she and Dominic went their separate ways.

‘Otherwise, the fallout from people discovering they’d been deceived could be considerable,’ he said. ‘What’s next?’

She held up her middle finger. ‘Condition Number Two—a plausible story. We need to explain why we got engaged so quickly. So start thinking...’

‘Couldn’t we just have fallen for each other straight away?’

Andie was taken aback. She hadn’t expected anything that romantic from Dominic Hunt. ‘You mean like “love at first sight”?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Would that be believable?’

He shook his head in mock indignation. ‘Again you continue to insult me...’

‘I didn’t mean...’ She’d certainly felt something for him at first sight. Sitting next to him on this sofa, she was feeling it all over again. But it wasn’t love—she knew only too well what it was like to love. To love and to lose the man she loved in such a cruel way. Truth be told, she wasn’t sure she wanted to love again. It hurt too much to lose that love.

‘I don’t like the lying aspect of this any more than you do,’ he said. He removed his arm from the back of the sofa so he could lean closer to her, both hands resting on his knees. ‘Why not stick to the truth as much as possible? You came to organise my party. I was instantly smitten, wooed you and won you.’

‘And I was a complete walkover,’ she said dryly.

‘So we change it—you made me work very hard to win you.’

‘In two weeks—and you away for one of them?’ she said. ‘Good in principle. But we might have to fudge the timeline a little.’

‘It can happen,’ he said. ‘Love at first sight, I mean. My parents...apparently they fell for each other on day one and were married within mere months of meeting. Or so my aunt told me.’

His eyes darkened and she remembered he’d only been eleven years old when left an orphan. If she’d lost her parents at that age, her world would have collapsed around her—as no doubt his had. But he was obviously trying to revive a happy memory of his parents.

‘How lovely—a real-life romance. Did they meet in Australia or England?’

‘London. They were both schoolteachers; my mother was living in England. She came to his school as a temporary mathematics teacher; he taught chemistry.’

Andie decided not to risk a feeble joke about their meeting being explosive. Not when the parents’ love story had ended in tragedy. ‘No wonder you’re clever then, with such smart parents.’

‘Yes,’ he said, making the word sound like an end-of-story punctuation mark. She knew only too well what it was like not to want to pursue a conversation about a lost loved one.

‘So we have a precedent for love at first sight in your family,’ she said. ‘I... I fell for Anthony straight away too. So for both of us an...an instant attraction—if not love—could be feasible.’ Instant and ongoing for her—but he was not to know that.

That Dominic had talked about his parents surprised her. For her, thinking about Anthony—as always—brought a tug of pain to her heart but this time also a reminder of the insincerity of this venture with Dominic. She knew what real commitment should feel like. But for Timothy to get that vital treatment she was prepared to compromise on her principles.

‘Love at first sight it is,’ he said.

‘Attraction at first sight,’ she corrected him.

‘Surely it would had to have led to love for us to get engaged,’ he said.

‘True,’ she conceded. He tossed around concepts of love and commitment as if they were concepts with which to barter, not deep, abiding emotions between two people who cared enough about each other to pledge a lifetime together. Till death us do part. She could never think of that part of a marriage ceremony without breaking down. She shouldn’t be thinking of it now.

‘Next condition?’ he said.

She skipped her ring finger, which she had trouble keeping upright, and went straight for her pinkie. ‘Condition Number Three: no dating other people—for the duration of the engagement, that is.’

‘I’m on board with that one,’ he said without hesitation.

‘Me too,’ she said. She hadn’t even thought about any man but Dominic since the moment she’d met him, so that was not likely to be a hardship.

He sat here next to her in jeans and T-shirt like a regular thirty-two-year-old guy—not a secretive billionaire who had involved her in a scheme to deceive family and friends to help him make even more money. If he were just your everyday handsome hunk she would make her interest in him known. But her attraction went beyond his good looks and muscles to the complex man she sensed below his confident exterior. She had seen only intriguing hints of those hidden depths—she wanted to discover more.

Andie’s thumb went up next. ‘Resolution Number Four: I dump you, not the other way around. When this comes to an end, that is.’

‘Agreed—and I’ll be a gentleman about it. But I ask you not to sell your story. I don’t want to wake up one morning to the headline “My Six Weeks with Scrooge”.’

He could actually joke about being a Scrooge—Dominic had come a long way.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I promise not to say “I Hopped Out of the Billionaire’s Bed” either. Seriously, I would never talk to the media. You can be reassured of that.’

‘No tacky headlines, just a simple civilised break-up to be handled by you,’ he said.

They both fell silent for a moment. Did he feel stricken by the same melancholy she did at the thought of the imagined break-up of a fake engagement? And she couldn’t help thinking she’d like a chance to hop into his bed before she hopped out of it.

‘On to Condition Number Five,’ she said, holding up all five fingers as she could not make her ring finger stand on its own. ‘We have to get to know each other. So we don’t get caught out on stuff we would be expected to know about each other if we were truly...committing to a life together.’

How different this fake relationship would be to a real relationship—getting to know each other over shared experiences, shared laughter, shared tears, long lazy mornings in bed...

Dominic sank down further into the sofa, his broad shoulders hunched inward. ‘Yup.’ It was more a grunt than a word.

‘You don’t sound keen to converse?’

‘What sort of things?’ he said with obvious reluctance. Not for the first time, she had a sense of secrets deeply held.

‘For one thing, I need to know more about your marriage and how it ended.’ And more about his time on the streets. And about that broken nose and scarred knuckles. And why he had let people believe he was a Scrooge when he so obviously wasn’t. Strictly speaking, she probably didn’t need to know all that about him for a fake engagement. Fact was, she wanted to know it.

‘I guess I can talk to you about my marriage,’ he said, still not sounding convinced. ‘But there are things about my life that I would rather remain private.’

What things? ‘Just so long as I’m not made a fool of at some stage down the track by not knowing something a real fiancée would have known.’

‘Fine,’ he grunted in a response that didn’t give her much confidence. She ached to know more about him. And yet there was that shadow she sensed. She wouldn’t push for simple curiosity’s sake.

‘As far as I’m concerned, my life’s pretty much an open book,’ she said, in an effort to encourage him to open up about his life—or past, to be more specific. ‘Just ask what you need to know about me and I’ll do my best to answer honestly.’

Was any person’s life truly an open book? Like anyone else, she had doubts and anxieties and dumb things she’d done that she’d regretted, but nothing lurked that she thought could hinder an engagement. No one would criticise her for finding love again after five years. In truth, she knew they would be glad for her. So would Anthony.

She remembered one day, lying together on the beach. ‘I would die if I lost you,’ she’d said to Anthony.

‘Don’t say that,’ he’d said. ‘If anything happened to me, I’d want you to find another guy. But why are we talking like this? We’re both going to live until we’re a hundred.’

‘Why not schedule in a question-and-answer session?’ Dominic said.

She pulled her thoughts back to the present. ‘Good idea,’ she said. ‘Excellent idea, in fact.’

Dominic rolled his eyes in response.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘You weren’t serious. I... I was.’

‘No, you’re right. I guess there’s no room for spontaneity in a fake engagement.’ It was a wonder he could get the words out when his tongue was so firmly in his cheek. ‘A question-and-answer session it is. At a time to be determined.’

‘Good idea,’ she said, feeling disconcerted. Was all this just a game to him?

‘Are there any more conditions to come?’ he asked. ‘You’re all out of fingers on one hand, by the way.’

‘There is one more very important condition to come—and may I remind you I do have ten fingers—but first I want to hear if there’s anything you want to add.’

She actually had two more conditions, but the final condition she could not share with him: that she could not fall for him. She couldn’t deal with the fallout in terms of pain if she were foolish enough to let down the guard on her heart.

* * *

Andie’s beautiful green eyes had sparkled with good humour in spite of the awkward position he had put her into. Coerced her into. But now her eyes seemed to dim and Dominic wondered if she was being completely honest about being an ‘open book’.

Ironically, he already knew more about Andie, the fake fiancée, than he’d known about Tara when he’d got engaged to her for real. His ex-wife had kept her true nature under wraps until well after she’d got the wedding band on her finger. What you see is what you get. He so wanted to believe that about Andie.

‘My condition? You have to wear a ring,’ he said. ‘I want to get you an engagement ring straight away. Today. Once Tara sees that she’ll know it’s serious. And the press will too. Not to mention a symbol for when we meet with Walter Burton.’

She shrugged. ‘Okay, you get me a ring.’

‘You don’t want to choose it yourself?’ He was taken aback. Tara had been so avaricious about jewellery.

‘No. I would find it...sad. Distressing. The day I choose my engagement ring is the day I get engaged for real. To me, the ring should be a symbol of a true commitment, not a...a prop for a charade. But I agree—I should wear one as a visible sign of commitment.’

‘I’ll organise it then,’ he said. He had no idea why he should be disappointed at her lack of enthusiasm. She was absolutely right—the ring would be a prop. But it would also play a role in keeping it believable. ‘What size ring do you wear?’

‘I haven’t a clue,’ she said. She held up her right hand to show the collection of tiny fine silver rings on her slender fingers. Her nails were painted cream today. ‘I bought these at a market and just tried them on until I found rings that fitted.’ She slid off the ring from the third finger of her right hand. ‘This should do the trick.’ She handed it to him. It was still warm with her body heat and he held it on his palm for a moment before pocketing it.

‘What style of engagement ring would you like?’ he asked.

Again she shrugged. ‘You choose. It’s honestly not important to me.’

A hefty carat solitaire diamond would be appropriate—one that would give her a good resale value when she went to sell it after this was all over.

‘Did you choose your ex-wife’s engagement ring?’ Andie asked.

He scowled at the reminder that he had once got engaged for real.

Andie pulled one of her endearing faces. ‘Sorry. I guess that’s a sensitive issue. I know we’ll come to all that in our question-and-answer session. I’m just curious.’

‘She chose it herself. All I had to do was pay for it.’ That alone should have alerted him to what the marriage was all about—giving her access to his money and the lifestyle it bought.

‘That wasn’t very...romantic,’ Andie said.

‘There was nothing romantic about my marriage. Shall I tell you about it now and get all that out of the way?’

‘If you feel comfortable with it,’ she said.

‘Comfortable is never a word I would relate to that time of my life,’ he said. ‘It was a series of mistakes.’

‘If you’re ready to tell me, I’m ready to listen.’ He thought about how Andie had read his mood so accurately earlier this morning—giving him breakfast when he hadn’t even been aware himself that he was hungry. She was thoughtful. And kind. Kindness wasn’t an attribute he had much encountered in the women he had met.

‘The first mistake I made with Tara was that she reminded me of someone else—a girl I’d met when I was living in the squat. Someone frail and sweet with similar colouring—someone I’d wanted to care for and look after.’ It still hurt to think of Melody. Andie didn’t need to know about her.

‘And the second mistake?’ Andie asked, seeming to understand he didn’t want to speak further about Melody. She leaned forward as if she didn’t want to miss a word.