Kitabı oxu: «Husband By Arrangement»

“Let’s be frank. Our grandparents have hopes of marriage between us, yes?”

“So I was led to believe,” she hedged.

“Okay. To be honest, initially I didn’t like the idea of being pushed into marriage with you,” he told her.

“Thanks.”

His eyes danced. And more. There was…admiration? Certainly desire. In buckets. She felt her body quiver.

“My pleasure,” he said with a chuckle, nibbling her knuckles.

“So?” Stupid though it was, the feel of his mouth was robbing her of speech. Or perhaps it was the lowered flutter of his impossibly thick black lashes. “So,” she said, appalled at how croaky she sounded. “What changed your mind?”

“You did.”

He was croaky, too. Maddy began to panic. Dex wasn’t supposed to be attracted to her!

“I did?” she squeaked in alarm.

“Very much so,” he murmured. “You are…” His slow gaze burned all the way from the top of her head to her feet, stopping at strategic points in between. “A knockout,” he said on a husky out-breath.

Legally wed,

But he’s never said…

“I love you.”

They’re…

The series where marriages are made in

haste…and love comes later…

Look out for more Wedlocked! stories in

Harlequin Presents^® throughout 2003.

Coming in July

Bride by Blackmail #2334

by

Carole Mortimer

Husband by Arrangement
Sara Wood

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 ONE

MADDY had waited long enough. She had to see. Catching her friend’s hand in a desperate plea, she steeled herself for the result.

‘Let me look!’ she begged.

Debbie laughed. ‘Patience. Just a little more lipgloss…. There! Ready?’

Maddy nodded, her mouth horribly dry. So much rested on this! The chair was swung around to face the mirror and she found herself staring at a totally different person.

‘Oh, my gosh!’ she breathed in awe.

Instead of being outrageous, as she’d planned, the burgundy hair flattered her pale colouring and made her solemn grey eyes gleam with a smoky, almost wicked allure. Her lips parted in astonishment and her poppy-coloured mouth pouted back at her as if it were kissed forty times a night.

As if! She smiled wryly. Since her last, barely-got-started relationship had gone pear-shaped, her grandfather was the only one who kissed her. On the cheek. And only to say goodnight. Dear Grandpa, he didn’t believe in displays of affection, even though he did care for her.

That was why he was set on her marrying the grandson of his ex-business partner in Portugal. And why she was all done up like a dog’s dinner—in a desperate effort to look totally unsuitable as the future bride for Dexter Fitzgerald. And why, in a few hours, she was flying out to a country she’d left almost twenty years ago.

‘It’s a bit…over the top,’ Maddy said doubtfully, shocked by the brazen hussy in the mirror.

‘’Course it is. How else are you to be rejected point-blank? You said the Fitzgeralds were traditional-minded. Trust me. They’ll be appalled.’

Maddy began to smile. Her hopes rose.

‘I think they might!’ she conceded.

‘Now you’ve got to learn to do a come-hither walk,’ commanded Debbie. ‘Like this.’

Egged on by her giggling friend, Maddy leapt from the chair and followed Debbie, exaggerating the swing of her leather-clad hips till she felt her pelvis would break loose from its moorings.

‘It’s too ridiculous!’ she protested, as they fell in a heap of helpless laughter on her friend’s bed. ‘I could never walk like that in public!’

‘Duckie, you’ve got to overdo it if you’re to succeed. That’s why we bought the gaudiest clothes from the charity shop.’ Debbie’s face grew serious. ‘Look, you have no choice. Your grandfather’s been on and on at you for ages. He’s mad keen for you to marry this Dexter guy. This will definitely foil his plans.’

‘He wants me to be secure,’ she defended loyally. ‘He thinks I’m a hopeless case because I’m thirty. And I’m unemployed, now that the children’s home has closed. I’m going to miss working there,’ she sighed. ‘But you can understand his concern. He’s old and sick and worried what’ll happen when he dies.’

Debbie sniffed. ‘Personally, I’d tell my grandpa to stay out of my life.’ Her face softened and she hugged Maddy warmly. ‘Trouble is, being the kind, caring person you are, you’re trying not to upset him. So here you are, apparently submissive and on the brink of flying to Portugal to meet your eager bridegroom and—’

‘Hell-bent on behaving like a badly behaved gold-digger to put him off!’ Maddy giggled, batting her eyes like mad.

‘Brilliant! You can do it!’ crowed Debbie.

‘Can I?’

‘Sure! Psyche yourself up. Look at yourself!’ encouraged Debbie.

She dragged Maddy back to the mirror. Fiddling with her alarmingly low-cut top, Maddy thought of the prim and grim Sofia Fitzgerald, Dex’s grandmother. Sofia would loathe a money-grabbing vamp as a prospective bride for Dex—and from what she remembered of him, he’d want a docile, nicely dressed woman to be his wife, not a flighty-looking piece with a come-hither walk.

Maddy pushed back her uncertainties. It would be the act of a lifetime. But her grandfather had been almost apoplectic when she’d tried to tell him she didn’t want to go along with his marriage plans. If she wanted to stop her grandfather from having another heart attack, she had no choice. She’d appear to go along with his plan, but would make sure it failed. She took a deep breath and summoned up all her inner strength.

‘Then help me, Debs,’ she said decisively. ‘Teach me what to do.’

They practised being sensual, bold and assertive. Took a walk outside, drawing lustful glances. Amidst the laughter she shared with her friend, Maddy found herself gaining in confidence as the day wore on and she was being openly propositioned in the street.

Now she was the kind of woman that men picked up! It still felt very unnatural to her, but at least she could pretend to be a sex-siren, if only for a short while. She would appear to be totally unsuitable as a Fitzgerald bride. The marriage-making that had gone on between Maddy’s grandfather and the aristocratic Sofia would come to nothing.

‘Just don’t be your usual sweet self. You’re a sharp cookie, remember,’ Debbie warned as she finally drove Maddy to the airport.

‘Dex would hate that,’ Maddy mused. ‘I didn’t see him very often after his eighth birthday when he went to boarding-school in England, and I was only four at the time. But I remember he was very reclusive and aloof—’

‘With bottleglass specs and as thin as a reed,’ Debbie reminded her.

‘I’m sure he’s very nice,’ Maddy conceded kindly, twiddling a spiky piece of hair. ‘But I’d never marry someone I didn’t love.’

Her husband would have to be very understanding, she thought. Her restless hands stilled. Someone who didn’t mind that she couldn’t have children. She had come to terms with that a long time ago, after the infection had ruined her chances of motherhood, even though the inner ache, the wistful longing, would be with her always. What man would be content with just her, and no child to call his own?

‘You’re pretty tough, aren’t you? Even though you might seem quiet and submissive to people who don’t know you,’ Debbie said admiringly. ‘I don’t know how you’ve coped, being head cook and bottle-washer to your grandfather all these years. He’s a bit of a tyrant, isn’t he?’

‘He needed me,’ Maddy said simply. ‘And I learnt to keep quiet and get on with things when the business he started up over here failed and we lost all our money.’

‘Rotten for you.’

‘Worse for him.’ She remembered how hard it had been for her grandfather to be poor. The Fitzgeralds had settled a large sum on him in exchange for his share of the plant nursery in Portugal. But all of that money had been swallowed up by debts. ‘If only Grandpa didn’t feel such a violent resentment towards the Fitzgerald family!’ she sighed. ‘He thinks that half of Dex’s inheritance should rightly be mine. That’s why he’s so determined that the two of us should marry.’

Debbie looked puzzled. ‘Why does he resent the Fitzgerald millions?’

Maddy fell silent for a moment. ‘He blames them for the car accident that caused the deaths of my parents and Dex’s,’ she explained sadly. ‘Our two families shared the same rambling farmhouse in Portugal. Apparently Dex’s mother flung herself at my father. If she hadn’t, Grandpa says, there would have been no accident whatsoever. We’d be wealthy, both sets of parents would be alive and we’d all still live in Portugal.’

‘Can’t dwell in the past,’ Debbie said, matter-of-fact as ever. ‘You’ve got a future to plan. Almost there. Remember: stay in character. Do things that are socially unacceptable.’

Squaring her shoulders, Maddy resolutely faced up to the challenge ahead.

‘Like slurping my soup?’ she suggested.

The car rolled to a stop. ‘Perfect. Or do the cancan on the table. Eat spaghetti with your fingers. Anything. Just come back single!’

Maddy slid out, moving carefully to keep her balance in the gold killer heels. Two male passers-by leapt over to help her with her luggage and she beamed her thanks at them. Their eyes glazed over and she saw Debbie giving her a conspiratorial wink.

‘Go for it,’ her friend said fondly, hugging her. ‘Show time! Have fun.’

‘I will!’

Maddy felt excited. She’d quickly scotch any ideas of a loveless marriage and then demand to hear the Fitzgeralds’ version of the events leading to the fatal car accident.

However hard she’d probed, her grandfather had refused to explain why her loving father had run off with Dex’s mother without saying goodbye. There had to be a good reason—and this was her opportunity to discover it.

Her eyes sparkled. For once in her life, she had a wonderful sense of taking control of her own life. It was exhilarating to feel so free.

With a wave to her approving friend, she graciously allowed one of the young men to push the luggage trolley and set off after him, her hips swinging exuberantly in the tight leather skirt.

This was an adventure, she thought. And she was determined to enjoy it.

CHAPTER TWO

DEXTER’S manic schedule meant that he’d come to the airport grimy and unshaven. Sourly he waited as the passengers from the London flight filed past, though he barely saw them, not even the admiring glances from women as they passed.

His mind was elsewhere: on the charred ruins of the Quinta, that had once been the Fitzgerald home.

He didn’t want to be here. Hell, he didn’t even want to be in the country.

Seeing a plump, timid-looking woman in ill-fitting clothes, he raised his placard with exhausted resignation. She caught his eye, brightened and then looked at the hastily felt-tipped name: Maddy Cook. Looking disappointed, the woman continued dolefully on her way through Faro Airport. Not her, then.

The last stragglers wandered out and he was on his own. It seemed that Maddy wasn’t coming to the Algarve after all, and he felt such a huge sense of relief that he might have burst into song if he hadn’t been so dog-tired and disinclined for anything remotely resembling merriment.

Then, just as he turned to leave, his attention was caught by a crowd of chattering, laughing men who’d surged through from Customs. Dexter saw that they were rugby players on tour, complete with team kit, coach, acolytes and, he noted appreciatively, a team mascot.

The mascot’s burgundy head bobbed up and down amid the ruck, almost lost under the welter of burly arms and giant hands. But between the mountainous shoulders and tree-trunk thighs Dex had glimpsed her dazzling grin and stunning legs. For the first time in a week his stony face cracked with the faint hint of a smile.

‘Hey, babe, here’s your meeter-and-greeter!’ shouted one of the giants, pointing directly at him.

Dex turned around, expecting to see—somewhere behind him—a welcoming committee of seven-foot giants in striped jerseys bulging with muscles. He saw nothing of the kind.

And when he turned back he noticed that the scrum had parted to reveal the mascot in all her glory. Despite his hurry to leave, he paused, utterly arrested by the startling sight.

She was like an exotic butterfly, shimmering with glitter and iridescence. Obvious, for sure. Not his type. Yet something about her joyous exuberance and lovely face touched his rock-bottom spirits and lifted the weight that had settled so leadenly in his mind.

He blinked. The butterfly was coming in his direction, her smoky eyes fixed with eager interest on the placard he was still holding.

His mouth dried. It couldn’t be. Wrong shape. Wrong personality…

‘Hi,’ she said breathily. ‘I’m Maddy. Are you the driver?’

Maddy? He stared. Impossible! And yet there were the enormous grey eyes, though they were sparkling instead of how he remembered them—apprehensive and all too ready to shed tears.

There was something vaguely familiar in that mouth, too, even if the fine cheekbones and delicately shaped nose bore no resemblance to the podgy, childish features he remembered.

‘You are my driver?’ she prompted with an extraordinarily sweet smile, enunciating clearly and making steering motions with her hands.

‘Uh,’ he said inadequately, wondering how anyone short, plump and permanently anxious could ever have hatched into this extraordinary, confident bombshell of a woman.

She put her head on one side and looked uncertain.

‘Oh, dear. You’ve no idea what I’m saying, have you? My Portuguese is horribly rusty. Do you speak any English?’ she asked with slow care.

He’d thought that nothing could surprise him any more. He’d travelled the world. Been startled, shocked and scared out of his wits. One broken arm, several broken ribs and a snake-bite to show for his travels. Two passionate affairs, a wonderful but poignantly brief marriage, his bride dead of dengue fever before their unborn child could survive outside the womb. His mouth tightened and he forced back the desperately painful memory.

Perhaps because he put himself in dangerous situations, life was always flinging him off balance. And it had done it again.

This was an amazing transformation. Tubby little Maddy. To this! He rubbed a hand over his stubbled jaw in amazement.

‘English. Er—yeah,’ he managed, and she nodded, bright with relief, then wiggled her way back to the rugby players, blissfully unaware of Dexter’s confusion. He found that his jaw had dropped open and hastily closed it.

Ironically, she hadn’t recognised him at all. Though of course he’d changed considerably since his skinny youth. That could be to his advantage. Could he keep his identity a secret? His mind whirled with possibilities.

He’d been expecting the dullest, dreariest woman alive. After all, Maddy had been brought up by her tyrannical old grandfather and was still living with him. He’d imagined that she’d only survive such a relationship if she was subservient and obedient.

He’d believed that she had meekly obeyed her grandfather’s command to put herself up for marriage because she was too scared to disobey. In other words, he’d been convinced she must be a doormat.

This Maddy, however, would be on the doormat, wiping her feet on others. It didn’t make sense.

He appraised her body and her manner. Spectacular. Flirtatious. Confused, he drew in a sharp breath as something else occurred to him. By no means was this a timid granddaughter who was doing old man Cook’s bidding. She was assertive enough to know exactly what she was getting into.

His eyes narrowed. That meant she really wanted to be a bride to the Fitzgerald heir! The mercenary little minx!

Well, he’d soon put her straight about her chances. He’d only agreed to meet her at the airport because his grandmother wouldn’t get off his back about this getting married business. Apparently she’d had a crisis of conscience, now that old man Cook was in poor health and Maddy was likely to be left a pauper when he died.

Dex was far too busy to dance attendance on a woman. But he’d been sure that his grandmother would forget her desire to marry him off when she saw how unsuitable the dull, meek little Maddy was—and when he made it clear that he had no interest whatsoever in his proposed boring little bride.

With a flash of amusement, it occurred to him that Maddy was unsuitable—but in a totally unexpected way! This seductive little madam might make men’s eyes come out on stalks, but she’d horrify his grandmother.

He relaxed. He’d be off the hook. What a relief.

Dazed, he watched the men bending to kiss Maddy farewell, her slender, luscious body dwarfed by so much muscle and brawn. One solid head after another dipped gently towards hers. There were promises of meetings; she was going to watch them play; they were going to treat her to a slap-up meal.

And then they were gone in a rush of testosterone and body odour and Maddy was dashing up to him again, bodice glittering, eyes as bright as diamonds.

Hell. He nearly smiled at her infectious enthusiasm.

‘Hope you don’t mind,’ she apologised. ‘Had to say goodbye. They were so sweet to me on the flight. Sorry if you’ve been waiting long,’ she breathed happily, flushed and flashing a friendly grin at him.

Her extraordinary hair was tousled and there was such an air of sensuality about her that she looked as if she’d been recently hauled away from a particularly energetic orgy.

Dexter tried to keep his scowl going but it was hard. He felt as if all the darkness that inhabited his body had been lit up by an arc lamp. But he couldn’t let himself be diverted. There were far more important things on his mind.

‘I’d given you up,’ he muttered, his voice hoarse from the inhalation of the dust and smoke he’d been working with all day.

He had already focused again on the matter that had occupied his mind and body for the past week: the wreckage of his old family home. Or what had once been a home.

His mouth tightened into a grim line and his features settled into a heavy frown. He was impatient to get back, get things done.

‘Oh, dear. You do look cross! It wasn’t my fault, though. The fact is, I was searched!’ she cried, grey eyes all wide and astonished. ‘Every scrap of my luggage—and almost me! I’ve heard what they do and I was scared, I can tell you. Now, give me your honest opinion. Do I look as if I’m a drug addict?’ she asked indignantly.

Reeling from her chatter, he checked, working his way up and down. Her glittering gold top seemed to be wrestling with her breasts, which were making a bid for freedom. They were unnervingly close to succeeding.

Suddenly he realised to his horror that he’d started to sizzle with a vital energy, the blood roaring around his veins as if it were racing to reach his heart to win a prize.

He scowled. She was certainly altering his body functions. He supposed it was a long time since he’d been even vaguely interested in a woman and he wished his hormones hadn’t chosen this particular moment in time to make themselves known.

But the curves of her lush figure literally took his breath away. To say nothing of the tight leather skirt and slender legs which went on forever and which were causing a glow to spread in the direction of his loins.

Feeling irritable with himself, he answered her query with a shrug and assumed cynically that the officials had just wanted to keep her in their sights as long as possible.

‘Perhaps they thought you were on amphetamines. Some kind of stimulant,’ he suggested.

‘The only stimulants I’ve had in the past twenty-four hours are coffee and life.’ She giggled, spread her arms wide as if to embrace everybody within reach. ‘And that’s more than enough for me!’

‘Shall we go?’ he groused, wondering why she was so all-fired happy.

Maddy looked at him from under her lashes, trying very hard to look coquettish.

‘Let’s. But would you be a sweetie and push my trolley?’ she chirruped. ‘It keeps going left when I’m heading right and I lurch into people. Some like that, some don’t, and I’d rather not upset anyone.’ She flashed him an enormous smile and virtually purred, ‘You look strong enough to control it.’

His mouth tightened. Typical of the female burble he loathed. Flatter a man, twist him around your little finger, suck his bank balance dry. He’d met plenty of those in his lifetime.

And yet her admiring glance had apparently hit the spot. His pulses were racing madly.

Disgusted that his body had, like the trolley, developed a mind of its own, he took charge of the waywardly swerving luggage.

And there on the top of it all he noticed a book entitled How to Catch Your Man. Beneath that chilling title were the words and Make Him Marry You.

His stomach muscles clenched with horror and any passing interest in Maddy suddenly ceased.

‘This way,’ he growled, intent on getting rid of the threat to his freedom as fast as possible.

She beamed. ‘Right. Take me to your leader. I can’t wait to meet him!’

He grunted. Blithely Maddy sashayed along beside him. Dexter quickly realised that the whole airport was grinding to a halt around her. People were grinning, staring, commenting. Men openly lusted. Women looked sour and made catty comments behind their hands.

And she swayed on regardless, her walk uncomfortably reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe in Some Like it Hot.

Dexter surreptitiously ran a finger around his collar, thinking that the temperature had certainly risen a few degrees since she’d arrived.

‘You know, you look a bit like Dexter,’ she ventured. He started, and she must have thought he was insulted by the comparison, because she said with a placatory haste, ‘Only fleetingly. Just something about the eyes. I doubt he’s as—er—well-built as you. Do you work for the Fitzgerald family?’ she asked breathily, apparently mesmerised by the sooty streaks across his chest.

Presumably she was finding it hard to breathe because she was having difficulty keeping up. For some reason, his stride seemed to have increased to a half-jog.

Easing up, he tried a noncommittal, ‘Uh,’ still toying with the idea of pretending to be someone else.

‘You haven’t told me your name,’ she encouraged.

‘Nope.’

She waited but he didn’t elaborate. He wanted to keep conversation to a minimum. That way he could hang on to his dignity and not start panting like a dog on heat.

Stealing a sideways glance at Maddy, he saw that some of the bounce had gone out of her—though he doubted that had anything to do with him. A woman who was this confident wouldn’t be bothered in the least if she was snubbed by a grubby driver in a cinder-stained T-shirt and torn jeans.

Gloom settled over him again. He was filthy because he was working night and day, eating on the run and even occasionally crashing out in the smoking ruins of the Quinta.

Whenever he closed his eyes, all he saw were the charred timbers and scorched earth. His mind constantly raced with the thousand and one things he had to do. When he slept he dreamed of fire consuming whole forests. When he woke the images of desolation became reality.

His head was perpetually filled with the consequences of the disaster. The disruption to his life. His enforced return to Portugal. The destruction of thousands of valuable stock plants in the nursery and the knowledge that he was the only person who could build the business up again.

The forest fire had devoured several thousand acres of eucalyptus trees around the Fitzgerald estate. It had swept on to the eighteenth century manor house, the Quinta, which had been in its path. The majority of their land had been laid to waste and his distraught grandmother had summoned him from Brazil to recreate the farm and the nursery-garden business from the ashes.

Of course he’d agreed to come. Whatever had divided them before, his grandmama was elderly and she needed him.

But he felt trapped. Missed his travels. The joy of plant hunting, obtaining permissions for propagation and seed collection, organising production and despatch. A life of freedom and independence. The life he had chosen when his beloved mother had deserted him for Maddy’s father, Jim Cook, when his safe haven had suddenly become cold and unwelcoming.

Wretched with grief after the terrible accident had wiped out his parents and Maddy’s, he’d turned his back on everything he’d once loved. He didn’t miss his macho, authoritarian father, who’d made it no secret that a reserved, myopic son had been a disappointment. But his mother had loved him for his kind heart and his passion for plants. Until Jim Cook had turned her head.

If it hadn’t been for the fire, he wouldn’t be here. His grandmother wouldn’t have nagged him about producing an heir. And he wouldn’t be fending off the avaricious daughter of the man who’d seduced his mother and enticed her away…

He stopped himself from thinking further. Too painful.

Anger surged through him. His jaw tightened and his dark eyes glittered with loathing. The last person on earth he’d marry was the daughter of Jim Cook.

Even before he’d met her, he’d decided to make her feel completely unwelcome. Ensure that her stay was unpleasant. And he knew just how he could do that. By the time he’d finished with her she’d be hitching a lift back to the airport and taking the next plane home.

He wasn’t going to marry anyone from the Cook family. Especially a gold-digger. More important, he wasn’t ever going to marry again. Full stop.