скачать книгу бесплатно
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.
‘I believed her when she said she wanted children.’
‘You wanted children?’
‘As soon as possible. Tara said she did too.’
Andie frowned. ‘But she didn’t?’
Even now, bitterness rose in his throat. ‘After we’d been married a year and nothing had happened, I suggested we see a doctor. Tara put it off and put it off. I thought it was because she didn’t want to admit to failure. It was quite by accident that I discovered all the time I thought we’d been trying to conceive, she’d been on the contraceptive pill.’
Andie screwed up her face in an expression of disbelief and distaste. ‘That’s unbelievable.’
‘When I confronted her, she laughed.’ He relived the horror of discovering his ex-wife’s treachery and the realisation she didn’t have it in her to love. Not him. Certainly not a child. Fortunately, she hadn’t been clever enough to understand the sub-clauses in the pre-nuptial agreement and divorce had been relatively straightforward.
‘You had a lucky escape,’ Andie said.
‘That’s why I never want to marry again. How could I ever trust another woman after that?’
‘I understand you would feel that way,’ she said. ‘But not every woman would be like her. Me...my sisters, my friends. I don’t know anyone who would behave with such dishonesty. Don’t write off all women because of one.’
Trouble was, his wealth attracted women like Tara.
He was about to try and explain that to Andie when her phone started to sound out a bar of classical music.
She got up from the sofa and headed for the kitchen countertop to pick it up. ‘Gemma,’ she mouthed to him. ‘I’d better take it.’
He nodded, grateful for the reprieve. Tara’s treachery had got him into this fake engagement scenario with Andie, who was being such a good sport about the whole thing. He did not want to waste another word, or indeed thought, on his ex. Again, he thanked whatever providence had sent Andie into his life—Andie who was the opposite of Tara in every way.
He couldn’t help but overhear Andie as she chatted to Gemma. ‘Yes, yes, I saw it. We were having lunch after the meeting that Friday. Yes, it does look romantic. No, I didn’t know anyone took a photo.’
Andie waved him over to her. ‘Shall I tell her?’ she mouthed.
He gave her the thumbs-up. ‘Yes,’ he mouthed back as he got up. There was no intention of keeping this ‘engagement’ secret. He walked over closer to Andie, who was standing there in bare feet, looking more beautiful in jeans than any other woman would look in a ball gown.
‘Actually, Gemma, I...haven’t been completely honest with you. I...uh...we...well, Dominic and I hit it off from the moment we first saw each other.’
Andie looked to Dominic and he nodded—she was doing well.
She listened to Gemma, then spoke again. ‘Yes. We are...romantically involved. In fact...well...we’re engaged.’ She held the phone out from her ear and even Dominic could hear the excited squeals coming from Gemma.
When the squeals had subsided, Andie spoke again. ‘Yes. It is sudden. I know that. But...well...you see I’ve learned that you have to grab your chance at happiness when you can. I... I’ve had it snatched away from me before.’ She paused as she listened. ‘Yes, that’s it. I didn’t want to wait. Neither did he. Gemma, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone just yet. Eliza? Well, okay, you can tell Eliza. I’d just like to tell my family first. What was that? Yes, I’ll tell him.’ She shut down her phone.
‘So it’s out,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘No denying it now.’
‘What did Gemma ask you to tell me?’
She looked up at him. ‘That she hoped you knew what a lucky guy you are to...to catch me.’
He looked down at her. ‘I know very well how lucky I am. You’re wonderful in every way and I appreciate what you’re doing to help me.’
For a long moment he looked down into her face—still, serious, even sombre without her usual animated expression. Her eyes were full of something he couldn’t put a name to. But not, he hoped, regret.
‘Thank you, Andie.’
He stepped closer. For a long moment her gaze met his and held it. He saw wariness but he also saw the stirrings of what he could only read as invitation. To kiss his pretend fiancée would probably be a mistake. But it was a mistake he badly wanted to make.
He lifted his hand to her face, brushed first the smooth skin of her cheek and then the warm softness of her lips with the back of his knuckles. She stilled. Her lips parted under his touch and he could feel the tremor that ran through her body. He dropped his hand to her shoulder, then dipped his head and claimed her mouth in a firm gentle kiss. She murmured her surprise and pleasure as she kissed him back.
CHAPTER TEN (#ulink_a90fcf4b-ff33-57e2-b0b7-3f2af1fc91f6)
DOMINIC WAS KISSING her and it was more wonderful than Andie ever could have imagined. His firm, sensuous mouth was sure and certain on hers and she welcomed the intimate caress, the nudging of his tongue against the seam of her lips as she opened her mouth to his. His beard growth scratched her face but it was a pleasurable kind of pain. The man knew how to kiss.
But as he kissed her and she kissed him back she was shocked by the sudden explosion of chemistry between them that turned something gentle into something urgent and demanding. She wound her arms around his neck to bring him closer in a wild tangle of tongues and lips as she pressed herself against his hard muscular chest. He tasted of coffee and hot male and desire. Passion this instant, this insistent was a surprise.
But it was too soon.
She knew she wanted him. But she hadn’t realised until now just how much she wanted him. And how careful she would have to be to guard her heart. Because these thrilling kisses told her that intimate contact with Dominic Hunt might just become an addiction she would find very difficult to live without. To him, this pretend engagement was a business ploy that might also develop into an entertaining game on the side. She did not want to be a fake fiancée with benefits.
When it came down to it, while she had dated over the last few years, her only serious relationship had been with a boy who had adored her, and whom she had loved with all her heart. Not a man like Dominic, who had sworn off marriage and viewed commitment so lightly he could pretend to be engaged. Her common sense urged her to stop but her body wanted more, more, more of him.
With a great effort she broke away from the kiss. Her heart was pounding in triple time, her breath coming in painful gasps. She took a deep steadying breath. And then another.
‘That...that was a great start on Condition Number Six,’ she managed to choke out.
Dominic towered over her; his breath came in ragged gasps. He looked so darkly sensual, her heart seemed to flip right over in her chest. ‘What?’ he demanded. ‘Stopping when we’d just started?’
‘No. I... I mean the actual kiss.’
He put his hand on her shoulder, lightly stroking her in a caress that ignited shivers of delight all through her.
‘So tell me about your sixth condition,’ he said, his deep voice with a broken edge to it as he struggled to control his breathing.
‘Condition Number Six is that we...we have to look the part.’
He frowned. ‘And that means...?’
‘I mean we have to act like a genuine couple. To seem to other people as if we’re...we’re crazy about each other. Because it would have to be...something very powerful between us for us to get engaged so quickly. In...real life, I mean.’
She found it difficult to meet his eyes. ‘I was going to say we needed to get physical. And we just did...get physical. So we...uh...know that there’s chemistry between us. And that...that it works.’
He dropped his hand from her shoulder to tilt her chin upwards with his finger so she was forced to meet his gaze. ‘There was never any doubt about that.’
His words thrummed through her body. That sexual attraction had been there for her the first time she’d met him. Had he felt it too?
‘So the sixth condition is somewhat superfluous,’ she said, her voice racing as she tried to ignore the hunger for him his kiss had ignited. ‘I think we might be okay, there. You know, holding hands, arms around each other. Appropriate Public Displays of Affection.’ It was an effort to force herself to sound matter of fact.
‘This just got to be my favourite of all your conditions,’ he said slowly, his eyes narrowing in a way she found incredibly sexy. ‘Shall we practise some more?’
Her traitorous body wrestled down her hopelessly outmatched common sense. ‘Why not?’ she murmured, desperate to be in his arms again. He pulled her close and their body contact made her aware he wanted her as much as she wanted him. She sighed as she pressed her mouth to his.
Then her phone sang out its ringtone of a piano sonata.
‘Leave it,’ growled Dominic.
She ignored the musical tone until it stopped. But it had brought her back to reality. There was nothing she wanted more than to take Dominic by the hand and lead him up the stairs to her bedroom. She intended to have him before this contract between them came to an end.
But that intuition she usually trusted screamed at her that to make love with him on the first day of their fake engagement would be a mistake. It would change the dynamic of their relationship to something she did not feel confident of being able to handle.
No sooner had the ringtone stopped than it started again.
Andie untangled herself from Dominic’s embrace and stepped right back from him, back from the seductive reach of his muscular arms.
‘I... I have to take this,’ she said.
She answered the phone but had to rest against the kitchen countertop to support knees that had gone shaky and weak. Dominic leaned back against the wall opposite her and crossed his arms against his powerful chest. His muscles flexed as he did so and she had to force herself to concentrate on the phone call.
‘Yes, Eliza, it’s true. I know—it must have been a surprise to you. A party?’ Andie looked up to Dominic and shook her head. He nodded. She spoke to Eliza. ‘No. We don’t want an engagement party. Yes, I know we’re party queens and it’s what we do.’ She rolled her eyes at Dominic and, to her relief, he smiled. ‘The Christmas party is more than enough to handle at the moment,’ she said to Eliza.
We. She and Dominic were a couple now. A fake couple. It would take some getting used to. So would handling the physical attraction between them.
‘The wedding?’ Eliza’s question about the timing of the wedding flustered her. ‘We...we...uh...next year some time. Yes, I know next year is only next month. The wedding won’t be next month, that’s for sure.’ The wedding—wouldn’t a loved-up fiancée have said our wedding?
She finished the call to Eliza and realised her hands were clammy. ‘This is not going to be easy,’ she said to Dominic.
‘I never thought it would be,’ he said. Was there a double meaning there?
‘I have no experience in this kind of deception. The first thing Eliza asked me was when are we getting married. She put me on the spot. I... I struggled to find an answer.’
He nodded slowly. ‘I suggest we say we’ve decided on a long engagement. That we’re committed but want to use the engagement time to get to know each other better.’
‘That sounds good,’ she said.
The deceptive words came so easily to him while she was so flustered she could scarcely think. She realised how hopelessly mismatched they were: he was more experienced, wealthier, from a completely different background. And so willing to lie.
And yet... That kiss had only confirmed how much she wanted him.
