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‘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.
CHAPTER THREE
GRIMLY plotting mayhem, Dexter lobbed Maddy’s luggage with studied carelessness into the back of the pick-up, on top of the equipment he’d collected from the builders’ yard.
‘Gosh,’ she said, with an appealingly infectious giggle. ‘You could get work as a baggage handler any day.’
Dex met her amused glance with a blank stare. Privately he’d expected Maddy to have changed—but not this much! Maddy had rarely spoken unless given permission by her bullying grandfather.
Old man Cook had ruled his family like a dictator. For the first time it occurred to him that this might be why Maddy’s gentle, plant-loving father might have wanted to escape the evil old tyrant’s influence.
‘Get in,’ he said curtly.
Just in time, he remembered not to open the door for her, or to offer to help her up the high step. He had to give her the maximum of aggravation. And in that skirt she had a serious handicap, he thought with malicious satisfaction.
‘This’ll be fun. I’ve never been in a pick-up before!’ she declared enthusiastically. ‘Right.’ She took a deep breath that threatened the fragile construction of her straining top. ‘Here we go. Avert your eyes.’
He did nothing of the kind. Sourly he watched while she hitched up her soft leather skirt to eye-blinking heights, slipped off her spiky shoes and hauled herself onto the first step.
Perfect thighs. Toned and firm and clearly the result of high-maintenance work-outs in the gym. Cynically he saw her wrench open the buckled door a few inches and virtually limbo-dance her way in through its reluctant gap.
He couldn’t believe that Maddy could be so uninhibited. Or assertive. But he steeled himself not to show his grudging admiration.
‘Crikey! It’s very dirty in here,’ she commented, when he clambered into the driver’s seat beside her.
Illogically it annoyed him that she was stating a fact and didn’t seem in the least bit put out by the mode of transport, or its ramshackle nature.
‘Been too close to a fire,’ was all he offered, starting up the engine.
‘Oh. Camp?’
‘No. I’m straight,’ he replied, deliberately misinterpreting her.
She gave a little gurgle of laughter.
‘I mean was it a camp fire?’
‘Forest.’
‘Were you in it?’
‘The forest or truck?’ he drawled, annoyed to be enjoying the exchange.
‘Truck!’ She laughed in delight.
‘No.’
‘Lucky for you,’ she said, sounding surprisingly heart-felt.
