Bridegrooms Required: One Bridegroom Required / One Wedding Required / One Husband Required

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Luke Goodwin was a no-good deceiving bastard!

‘Do you know him?’ repeated Caroline ominously, sounding as if she were counsel for the prosecution, and Holly were on the witness stand.

Well, she couldn’t lie. Margaret, Luke’s cleaner, knew that she had been staying up at the house while the shop was being renovated, and so did everyone else in the village. ‘Yes, I know him,’ she answered steadily.

Caroline looked at her wordlessly, her eyebrows raised in expectation.

‘You see, I was...I was staying up at Apson House—’

‘You were what?’ came the disbelieving snap.

‘Just for a couple of weeks—’

‘A couple of weeks?’ Caroline’s eyes were spitting fire. ‘Perhaps you’d care to explain?’

Holly swallowed. ‘This shop and the flat above it were in the most dreadful state when I arrived, and Luke kind of came to the rescue. He had to sack the agent and there was nowhere habitable for me to stay—that’s why he put me up.’

‘And why would he do that?’ Caroline asked, in a voice of quiet menace.

‘Because he owns the freehold of this building—but you probably knew that already.’

Caroline’s mouth had thinned into a sarcastic line. ‘I’m afraid that my knowledge of Luke’s life in England is somewhat patchy—certainly when compared to yours. You must fill me in, Holly. Just how well do you actually know Luke?’

Holly stared at her. The inference was clear. ‘What do you mean, exactly?’

‘I’ll tell you exactly what I mean!’ Caroline put her head forward, like a tortoise emerging from its shell and blinked rapidly at Holly. ‘Luke is a man with certain, shall we say... appetites? And he’s a little old-fashioned at heart You know, one of those men who marry a woman because they love and respect her, but who will avail themselves of an attractive substitute should the need arise—if you’ll forgive the pun,’ she finished maliciously. ‘So did he?’

Holly’s throat was so tight she could scarcely breathe, let alone speak, but somehow she forced the words out. ‘Did he what?’

‘Did he sleep with you?’

Only in her tortured and exquisite dreams. ‘How dare you ask me that?’

There was a pause. Caroline looked her straight in the eye. ‘I’ll ask you again, Holly. I’m a very understanding woman, you know, and sex has nothing to do with respect—especially where Luke is concerned. Did you sleep with him?’

Thoughts buzzed into Holly’s mind like sandflies, but the most disturbing dominated all the others. She could hear Caroline saying it defiantly, almost proudly: ‘Oh, I’d never have agreed to marry him if he hadn’t come into money.’

She met Caroline’s gaze without blushing. Guided solely by instinct coloured with a gut feeling of pure indignation, Holly realised that with her next words she could wreck her reputation. But she had gambled everything else—why not her reputation? ‘I stayed in his house for days,’ she replied, with slow deliberation. ‘And you know Luke. What do you think?’

‘I’ll tell you what I think! I think you’re deluding yourself if you think you stand any chance with him.’ Caroline gave her a smile which was almost sympathetic. ‘Because Luke was always rather bored by any woman who was such an easy lay!’

CHAPTER NINE (#ulink_6eceb155-a932-5ad7-8f14-01fb49260b48)

AFTER Caroline had flounced out of the shop, telling Holly exactly what she could do with her wedding dress, Holly went through to the kitchen at the back and sat down, her hands trembling, her nerves shot to pieces by what Luke’s fiancée—Luke’s fiancée!—had just told her, and by the enormity of what she had done in retaliation.

Luke was engaged to be married.

That was the one fact which overrode every other thought. Crucial.

But even more crucial was the fact that he had deceived her. He had lied by omission. He had allowed an easy companionship to develop, and had ignited the flames of sexual desire when he could have effectively doused them completely by telling her the simple truth.

That he was engaged to be married.

Holly buried her head in her hands as she thought about him and found that she wanted to weep—she who never wept. Who as a child had constantly kept the noncommittal smile expected of her, even when her life had been torn up by the roots, time and time again.

It was bad enough that he had lied. Bad enough that he had chosen to commit himself to someone who, yes, Holly could see, had all the attributes of a good wife. Caroline was intelligent enough. Neat, organised, attractive, and determined but, oh ... how could a man like Luke—Luke—be contemplating spending the rest of his life with her?

Because even worse than the pain of his deceit was the pain of knowing why he had pushed her away, and why he had stayed out of her life in the days since that frustrating encounter. For he wasn’t hers, and he never would be. Holly had finally met a man she would change her life for, but he belonged to somebody else.

But businesswomen couldn’t hurl themselves to the ground and drum their feet in anger and frustration, which was what she felt like doing! There wasn’t even a packet of biscuits to defiantly plough her way through—not that she really wanted to start comfort eating at this stage in her life.

Instead, she spent the afternoon sewing her first full order—a gown for a Christmas wedding, with a full white taffeta skirt and a buttoned bodice in deep forest-green velvet The tiny bridesmaids’ dresses had the pattern reversed, with velvet skirts and taffeta bodices, and Michelle was going to make mistletoe and holly coronets.

She was undisturbed for the most part, with just two customers wandering in. Young women who said that they wanted to browse. They also wanted to enter the free draw for the prize-winning dress, which Holly suspected was their main reason for coming into the shop!

They filled out their cards respectively, and dropped them into the slightly garish red satin box which Holly had provided.

‘When’s it being drawn?’ asked one.

‘New Year’s Day,’ answered Holly with a faint smile.

‘At the stroke of midnight?’ asked the other hopefully.

‘Like Cinderella, you mean?’ Holly smiled properly then. Your emotional world could collapse around you, and yet romance never seemed to die. Thank heavens. ‘Why not?’ She shrugged.

The rest of the afternoon dragged like Christmas Eve to a child. At four o‘clock she was longing to shut up shop and go upstairs. There were accounts which needed to be sorted out and she could put the finishing touches to the green velvet wedding dress in comfort. Enough to keep her busy for the rest of the evening, anyway. That was if she could resist the temptation to crawl beneath the duvet and just wish that the world would go away.

She was just tucking a frilly blue garter to the back of a drawer when the shop bell rang and she looked up, her words dying on her lips when she saw who it was.

Her first thought was that it didn’t really look like Luke at all, since he was wearing an unfamiliar deep blue suit and a silk tie of palest blue. A tie! Luke! She would never have imagined him wearing such fine wool and silk, though it came as no surprise to see how well the formal clothes fitted his rugged frame. But the impeccably cut outfit had the effect of distancing him, making him look like some cool and devastating stranger.

Luke quietly closed the door behind him and then locked it, and something about his face and the rigid set of his shoulders made Holly run her tongue over her lips and say nervously, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

‘What does it look like? I’m locking the door.’

‘But we’re still open!’ she objected, her pulse picking up speed like a racehorse. ‘You can’t do that.’

‘Oh, can’t I?’ He turned round then, and the shadowed fury which darkened his features made Holly freeze with apprehension.

‘Just watch me, sweetheart,’ he drawled, and he began to walk towards her.

Holly correctly read the menace and determination in that walk, and some mad, unthinking part of her wanted to run away from him. She found herself looking frantically from side to side, as though a trapdoor would suddenly appear and she would be able to make her escape.

Luke could see her anxiety, but he felt not a jot of pity for her, only the anger which had burned through his veins all afternoon and which was threatening to consume him.

He was directly in front of her now, and Holly saw that he was controlling his breathing only with great difficulty.

‘What are you doing here?’ she whispered, her voice sounding like a husky croak.

It was the wrong thing to say. His mouth curved into a thin parody of a smile which chilled her.

‘You know damn well what I’m doing here.’

‘I d-don’t.’

He drew a breath as though he were taking in poison. ‘What exactly did you tell Caroline?’

‘You mean your fiancée?’ she bit back.

‘Answer me, you little bitch!’

The insult first rocked her, then filled her with the fury to fight him back.

‘I told her the truth!’

‘You’re lying, Holly.’ He was itching to grab her by the shoulders, to haul her up against his chest and extract every raw, painful word of what she had actually told Caroline. And then?

‘You weren’t there,’ she pointed out.

‘I didn’t need to be.’

‘Well, then.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s her word against mine—whatever she’s told you.’

Her audacity momentarily stunned him. ‘I’ll tell you what she told me, sweetheart. That you and I apparently slept together.’ He gave a cold, empty laugh. ‘Strange, that—the earth can’t have moved for either of us, since I don’t actually remember doing it.’

Doing it. Holly felt the hot rush of excitement and prayed for it to pass. She shook her head in an effort to distract herself. ‘I didn’t tell her that I slept with you,’ she contradicted. ‘That was her accusation.’ Her lashes lowered by a fraction to partially conceal her eyes, but she was certain that he had read the longing there ‘An accusation which she found impossible not to believe was true.’

‘Particularly as you refused to deny it?’ he suggested, with icy calm.

Holly shrugged. ‘There was no point in denying it. Since Caroline—’ she spat the word out, appalled at herself for doing so and yet unable to prevent the anger which was still distorting her voice ‘—had already made her mind up. And she seemed to find it unbelievable that you and I had managed to remain under one roof for a fortnight without having sex!’

He found it pretty unbelievable himself, come to think of it, but that was beside the point. ‘What right do you think you have to start meddling in my life?’ he demanded. ‘How dare you let Caroline believe that we had been intimate?’

Holly had had enough. He was acting as if there had been nothing between them—as if the camaraderie which had grown up between them had not existed! ‘But we were intimate! You know we were!’

His mouth twisted. ‘I’m sorry? Have we been existing in parallel universes, or is there something I have missed? Just when are we supposed to have been intimate?’

She felt as if she was floundering in a dark, cold pool of misunderstanding. She remembered the touch of his hand on her ankle, the way she had drawn in a breath and looked down at him. Their gazes had locked the instant before they’d kissed, and something momentous had happened—surely he wasn’t going to deny that?

‘You touched me!’ she protested throatily. ‘You know you did!’

‘I touched you?’ he echoed in disbelief. ‘And you think that gives you carte blanche to try to take control of my life by implying that there had been so much more than that? What right do you have to do that, Holly?’

She shook her head distractedly, copper curls spilling like corkscrews over her shoulders. ‘But there are other kinds of intimacies, too—the little, unspoken ones. We grew close when I stayed with you, Luke—you know we did! You even admitted it! If you’d been honest with me then, and told me about Caroline, there would have been a completely different atmosphere between us! An atmosphere which would not have given rise to that kiss.’ She drew a deep shuddering breath. ‘So why didn’t you tell me, Luke? Just answer me that?’

He gave an arrogant smile. ‘You didn’t ask.’ But that wasn’t the full story, and he knew it. He hadn’t wanted to tell her, hadn’t wanted to say the words out loud because that would have meant acknowledging reality, and it had been sweet indeed to pretend that reality didn’t exist. It had been wonderful having Holly around. He had been enjoying the warmth of her company, and that was a fact. Enjoying the easy atmosphere coupled with the excitement of knowing that he couldn’t have her...

‘I can’t believe you didn’t even mention a girlfriend!’

His eyes glittered in legitimate challenge. ‘Well, maybe you should have asked me.’

‘That’s not fair and you know it!’ she objected hotly.

‘Isn’t it?’ His eyes were azure spotlights which fixed her in their glare. ‘Then let’s just say that I didn’t want to stray into the dangerous waters of the deeply personal.’

‘But you told me all about your mother—and you can’t get more personal than that!’

‘That’s different!’ he snarled, remembering her gentle questions, the careless way she had shrugged at his reluctance to answer, so that—perversely—he had wanted to tell her. And then the way that it had all seemed to come pouring out of him, like the bursting of a dam. Disturbing. And especially disturbing for a man like Luke who had grown up with no one to confide in, who had convinced himself that it was better like that. That feelings should be locked out of sight and out of harm’s way. When you were the only motherless boy in an English boarding-school, it was easier like that...

Holly gave a bitter laugh as she saw the shuttered look which had given him the face of a dark, beautiful statue. ‘I used to wonder why you hadn’t jumped on me like most men try to—’

‘Did that disappoint you, then?’ he enquired silkily. ‘Do you like being jumped on, Holly?’

She ignored the crude taunt. ‘I thought it was because you were a gentleman and that you respected me, but now I see I couldn’t have been more wrong! You’re a bastard, Luke Goodwin—to make a promise to one woman, and then to flirt like crazy with another!’

A pulse began to flicker ominously in his cheek. ‘If I had flirted like crazy, then you would have known all about it, sweetheart,’ he ground out. ‘And the bottom line is that we kissed. Nothing more. Like you said yourself at the time, as I recall.’ His mouth twisted with agonised desire. ‘Though, quite frankly, if you wear skirts as short as the one you had on that day then—’

‘Then I can expect men to lose all control?’ she put in. ‘Is that what you were about to say, Luke? That I was asking for it?’

‘But I didn’t lose control, did I?’ he retorted. ‘I stopped at a kiss, though God knows how, since you weren’t just asking for it, Holly, you were simply begging for it—’

That did it! ‘You bastard!’ There was a loud crack as her palm connected with his cheek, and they both looked at one another, aware that an unbreachable line had just been crossed.

Luke felt desire and anger bubbling up in a heady cocktail inside him as he slowly rubbed his reddening cheek. ‘So that’s the way you want it, is it, sweetheart?’

Holly looked at him, powerless to resist the primitive emotions which were swirling so powerfully in the air around them. ‘Luke...’ she began, but he shook his head, and something in his eyes silenced her words, though he could do nothing to still the shuddering of her breath.

He moved to within a step away, his mouth a grim, forbidding line, the blue eyes dark as sapphires. ‘Why did you let her think that I’d slept with you, Holly? Why did you let Caroline believe a lie like that?’

She pushed the feelings of guilt away. He was the one guilty of deceit. ‘Haven’t you stopped to ask just why she believed me? There doesn’t seem much hope for a relationship if your fiancée is so willing to think that you’d be unfaithful at the first opportunity. Or maybe in the past you have been? Maybe she’s judging you on past experience?’

‘You think that of me?’

She heard the outrage and the surprise in his voice and shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ she told him tiredly. Her head was spinning so much she didn’t seem to know anything any more.

‘Well, I’d hate to disappoint you, sweetheart,’ he drawled. ‘So let me be the bastard of your dreams instead...’

She should have anticipated what was coming next from the heat which burned in the depths of his eyes, and the husky note which had deepened his voice to rich, dark velvet. But she had thought that he might be restrained by the fact that they were standing in the middle of the shop, for all the world to see, reflected three times over by the vast mirrors which lined the walls, with the chandelier spilling golden nuggets of light onto their heads.

‘Luke—’ she whispered again, but he pulled her into his arms and roughly, brutally, almost punishingly began to kiss her. ‘Luke, no!’