Bride for Hire

“I knew you were wrong for the job from the start.” About the Author Title Page CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN Copyright

“I knew you were wrong for the job from the start.”

Seth continued savagely. “You don’t look right, you don’t dress right, and you’ve absolutely no idea how to behave.”

“B-but what about our agreement?” stammered Daisy.

“Since you haven’t stuck by a word of it, I hardly think that you’re in a position to quote it back to me now,” he pointed out with a cold look. “You’ve been nothing but trouble, and I’m not putting up with you any longer.”

“But you’ve told everyone that you’re in love with me now,” said Daisy desperately.

“I’ll find someone else,” Seth said flatly. “And next time I’ll make sure I get a girl who doesn’t argue!”

Jessica Hart

had a haphazard career before she began writing to finance a degree in history. Her experience ranged from waitress, theater production assistant and Outback cook to newsdesk secretary, expedition PA and English teacher, and she has worked in countries as different as France and Indonesia, Australia and Cameroon. She now lives in the north of England, where her hobbies are limited to eating and drinking and traveling when she can, preferably to places where she’ll find good food or desert or tropical rain.

Look out for Jessica Hart’s next book, BIRTHDAY BRIDE, (#3511)

out in July1998 as part of our special new series

THE BIG EVENT!

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

DID she dare?

Daisy chewed her bottom lip as she looked from the telephone to the letter in her hand. It was short and enigmatic, the bold black scrawl thrusting itself across the page as if the writer was used to expressing himself in a blunter, less elusive style. ‘...your name given to me by a mutual acquaintance...believe you might be interested in a proposition I have in mind...someone of your talents and discretion required for a forthcoming trip to the Caribbean...’ Daisy’s eyes skimmed the letter again, although she knew it by heart, and stopped at that tantalising mention of the Caribbean, just as they had done when she’d first ripped open the envelope—before she had realised that it wasn’t addressed to her at all.

‘I will be in London from May 19,’ the letter had concluded curtly, with the name and telephone number of one of London’s most exclusive hotels. ‘Call me if you are interested.’ It was signed in the same aggressive script: ‘Seth Carrington’.

Daisy looked back at the telephone. She didn’t recognise the name, although it had a vaguely familiar ring to it, but everything about the letter was suspicious—not least the fact that Seth Carrington wrote like a man used to dictating letters and having them typed immaculately for him. Why had he written this one by hand? If she had any sense she would fold up the letter, put it back in its envelope and return it to the sender with a message saying that it had been opened in error.

But being sensible wouldn’t get her to the Caribbean and it wouldn’t help her find Tom. Wiping her palms on her skirt, Daisy reached for the phone.

‘I’d like to speak to Seth Carrington, please,’ she said when she was finally put through to someone who announced herself as Mr Carrington’s personal assistant.

‘May I ask who’s calling?’

Daisy glanced at the top of the letter. ‘Dee Pearce,’ she said, wondering if the other girl could hear the lie.

‘I’m afraid Mr Carrington is unavailable at the moment.’ The voice at the end of the phone was cool with suspicion. ‘Would you care to leave a message?’

Daisy hesitated. What could she say? What would the unknown Dee be likely to say? In the end, she just left her number and rang off, feeling depressed. That the letter with its prospect of the Caribbean had arrived at 4 Lawrence Crescent instead of 4 Lawrence Street had been a mere coincidence, but when she had discovered that Dee Pearce had gone away without leaving a forwarding address Daisy had been sure that fate was taking a hand.

That’s when the idea had first come to her, but it had still taken her all night to work up the courage to telephone Seth Carrington and he might at least have had the decency to be there! Daisy didn’t think she would have the nerve to try again.

The whole idea was madness, anyway, she told herself, slumping down into a chair. It was pretty obvious that whatever Seth Carrington’s interesting proposition was it wasn’t going to be anything her mother would be likely to approve of, and while Daisy was prepared to do almost anything to find Tom at the moment there were limits. She would just have to find some other way to get to the Caribbean to look for him. Seth Carrington would never ring back, anyway.

The phone rang.

Daisy jumped, her heart hammering as she jerked upright. It was her mother, she persuaded herself as she took a deep breath to calm herself. Her mother or Lisa or Robert, but her palm was still slippery as she picked up the receiver.

‘Hello,’ she said warily.

‘This is Seth Carrington.’ It was an American voice. deep and gravelly, with a harsh edge of impatient authority. He sounded just like his writing. ‘Is that Dee Pearce?’

Daisy teetered on the brink of indecision, conscious that this was the point of no return. She could say, No, I’m sorry, I’ve wasted your time; it’s all a mistake. That was the only sensible thing to say, and she had every intention of saying it until she opened her mouth and somehow ‘Yes,’ came out instead.

He had caught the momentary hesitation, though. ‘You don’t sound very sure,’ he commented, and something about the sarcastic tone put Daisy’s back up.

‘Yes, I’m Dee Pearce,’ she lied coldly. ‘You took me by surprise, that’s all.’

‘Easily surprised, aren’t you?’ said Seth Carrington in the same hatefully sardonic voice. ‘You only asked me to ring you five minutes ago. Don’t say you’ve forgotten already?’

‘Of course not,’ said Daisy. Conscious of being forced onto the defensive, she opted for attack. ‘I thought you weren’t supposed to be available at the moment,’ she went on, matching his sarcastic tone. ‘Your secretary certainly gave me the impression that you were far too busy to go anywhere near a phone so, naturally, I wasn’t expecting you to call back right away.’

The brief silence at the other end of the phone indicated that Seth Carrington wasn’t used to being answered back. ‘Maria’s there to filter out unwanted calls,’ he said after a moment. ‘I didn’t tell her about you. I’m sure you’ll agree that the fewer people who know about you the better.’

‘Absolutely,’ agreed Daisy, mystified.

‘And now, since I am extremely busy, perhaps we could get down to business?’ he continued brusquely. ‘I take it Ed has explained the situation to you?’

Ed? Who was Ed? ‘I’ve just had your letter,’ she said cautiously.

Seth swore under his breath. ‘He said he’d ring you before he went back to the States,’ he said, and Daisy breathed a sigh of relief. If Ed knew Dee Pearce it was just as well he was going to be on the other side of the Atlantic.

‘There was a rather vague message on my answering machine,’ she said, rather surprised at her own capacity for invention. ‘Perhaps he couldn’t get hold of me and didn’t want to leave too explicit a message.’

Seth only grunted. ‘I don’t want to explain over the phone. You’d better come up here.’ He was clearly thinking aloud. ‘I may as well take a look at you, anyway.’ There was a sound of impatiently rustled papers. ‘I’ve got a window at four o’clock. Can you make it by then?’

Daisy reflected that she had had more gracious invitations, but this wasn’t the time to object to Seth Carrington’s telephone manner. If this was a job that took her to the Caribbean then surely it was worth putting up with a little rudeness. ‘Yes, I can be there.’

She wasn’t surprised when he refrained from going into raptures of delight. ‘Don’t be late,’ was all he said and then added, just before he put the phone down on her, ‘And be discreet.’

Daisy was left holding the receiver buzzing in her ear. She put it down slowly, hardly able to believe what she had done. Had that really been her, Daisy Deare—whose most foolhardy adventure to date had been driving through a red light on a deserted street at two in the morning—calmly agreeing to meet a strange man in a hotel to discuss a suspicious-sounding proposition?

For a moment she was tempted not to go, and then she thought of her stepfather, grimly hanging onto life in his hospital bed; of her mother’s haggard face, and the guilt in her eyes whenever she thought about Tom. Daisy knew that her mother was convinced that Tom had left because of her, and they both knew that what Jim Johnson wanted more than anything was to see his son again before he died. If they could find him.

Daisy had been in touch with any of Tom’s friends that she could think of, but only one had had any news of him. Mike had written to Daisy from Florida, saying that he had last seen Tom on his way down to work in the Caribbean and that he would try to find out more. It had been his letter that Daisy had been expecting when she had snatched up the envelope with the American stamp and ripped it open eagerly, to find herself reading Seth Carrington’s enigmatic letter to Dee Pearce.

This was her only chance to get to the Caribbean and find Tom for herself, Daisy reminded herself as she caught the bus into Mayfair. She couldn’t come to that much harm in a famous hotel, surely, with that efficient-sounding secretary sitting just outside the door? She could at least hear what Seth Carrington’s proposition was. If he was just looking for a call-girl she would simply walk away, but his manner on the phone had been too brusque for that. Why bother with a letter or holding out the lure of a trip to the Caribbean if it was simply a question of sex? Surely there must be easier ways to arrange it?

Besides, Daisy reasoned, Seth Carrington hadn’t sounded like a man who would need to buy women. The fresh green branches of May brushed against the top deck of the bus in the King’s Road, but Daisy didn’t even notice. Her dark blue eyes were thoughtful as she gazed unseeingly through the window at the shops and the cars and the crowds, and wondered what Seth Carrington would be like. He hadn’t been exactly charming on the phone, she thought, remembering that deep, hard voice. ‘Ruthless’ was the word that slid insidiously into her mind but Daisy dismissed it, along with the tiny shiver creeping down her spine. He probably just had an unfortunate telephone manner.

There was an expensive hush in the hotel foyer. Daisy felt horribly conspicuous in her long black T-shirt and grey leggings as she waited for the lift up to the penthouse suite. Everyone else looked so sleek and glamorous with that indefinable sheen of wealth. She was passionately grateful that the lift was empty when it arrived. She could study her own wide-eyed reflection in the mirror as she slid silently upwards, and reflected that if Seth Carrington was expecting her to look sleek and glamorous he was in for a disappointment.

Her mop of dark curls looked tangled no matter how firmly she brushed them and, although she was slender, she had a sort of gangly awkwardness that could never in a million years be confused with sleekness. No, she would never be glamorous, Daisy sighed to herself, surveying her heart-shaped face with its merry mouth and innocent blue eyes beneath tilted lashes. She looked young, fresh, even pretty, but definitely not glamorous.

She would never get away with it! In a sudden surge of panic Daisy reached out to press the button to take her back down to the ground floor, but it was too late. The lift doors were whispering open, and a svelte assistant was rising from behind a desk to greet her. In her late thirties, she had a mask-like expression that didn’t quite conceal her surprise at the sight of Daisy in her leggings.

‘Mr Carrington still has a visitor with him,’ she said. ‘He won’t keep you long. Would you like to take a seat?’

What she would really like to do was go home and forget that she had ever seen the name, Seth Carrington. Instead, Daisy perched on the edge of one of the plush sofas and bolstered her confidence with the thought that he had no way of knowing that she wasn’t Dee Pearce and that, even if he had, the worst he could do was tell her to get out.

Suddenly the door on the far side of the room opened with the force of a slap and Daisy’s heart jumped to her throat. Even if she hadn’t heard his voice as he said goodbye to his guest she would have known instantly which of the two men was Seth Carrington. He was dark and very powerfully built, with a harsh face and a quality of almost overwhelming magnetism. Escorting his guest to the lift, he shook his hand and waited until the doors had closed after him before he turned and a steely stare swung round to Daisy, who was still perched nervously on the sofa and feeling completely out of place.

Without quite knowing why, she got to her feet. ‘Hello.’ Her voice came out as a thin squeak, and she cleared her throat in embarrassment.

His brows rose and then snapped together. ‘Dee Pearce?’

Daisy didn’t like the incredulous note in his voice, but she nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said, and his frown deepened. She thought for a moment that he was going to tell her to get out there and then but, after an unnervingly hard look, he strode over and held the door open for her.

‘You’d better come in,’ he said, and then glanced over at his secretary. ‘Hold all calls, Maria.’ He stood back as Daisy passed him, peeking a nervous glance up at his forbidding expression under her lashes. She wished now that she’d run while she’d had the chance.

Seth shut the door behind her and Daisy found herself in a luxuriously appointed living area with several doors leading off it. It was impossible to concentrate on the furnishings, though, with Seth prowling round her like a tiger and looking her up and down with a tiger’s baleful stare. More than ever, Daisy wanted to turn and run but the feeling that he was half expecting her to do just that made her tilt up her chin and stare back at him.

There was a flicker of something that might almost have been appreciation in his eyes, and then he pointed at an armchair. ‘Sit down.’

‘Please,’ Daisy muttered under her breath, but she did as she was told.

Then she wished that she hadn’t. Sunk into the comfort of the chair, she was at an immediate disadvantage when Seth didn’t sit down but towered over her—frowning down at her in a way that made her shift uncomfortably.

‘Is something the matter?’ she asked at last when he still didn’t say anything. He wasn’t a conventionally handsome man, she decided, but there was something darkly, dangerously attractive about him. Daisy wasn’t quite sure where it lay. Everything about him spoke of arrogance and power. His eyes were the cold colour of iron beneath that alarming frown, the angles of his face fierce and unyielding and his mouth utterly ruthless. Too late Daisy realised that she was staring at it, and her stomach contracted in an odd mixture of apprehension and fascination.

‘I was just trying to decide what you were doing here,’ Seth said slowly at last, his American drawl very pronounced. It was odd that a voice so deep could sound so cold.

Daisy tore her eyes away from his face and tried to pull herself together. ‘You asked me to come,’ she said a little uncertainly. ‘Don’t you remember? We are going to discuss your proposition.’

‘I was going to discuss my proposition with Dee Pearce,’ he said flatly. ‘I want to know who you are.’

‘I am Dee,’ said Daisy, but she knew that she was beginning to look hunted.

‘I don’t think so.’ Seth propped himself against a table and folded his arms, surveying Daisy with sardonic grey eyes. ‘Ed described Dee to me as a stunning blonde.’ His cold gaze swept over her dismissively. ‘Even allowing for Ed’s undoubted talent for exaggeration, I wouldn’t have said that description fits you, would you?’

Daisy bit her lip. Why couldn’t Dee Pearce have been dark and ordinary-looking? She wondered if it was worth claiming that she always wore a wig whenever she met Ed, but a glance at Seth’s implacable mouth made her abandon that idea. He was quite capable of telling her that a wig wouldn’t be enough to make her stunning.

‘Probably not,’ she sighed reluctantly, and was astonished to see a gleam of amusement dissolve the coldness in the grey eyes, transforming his expression for a brief, unnerving instant before they shuttered once more.

‘If you’re not Dee Pearce, who are you?’

‘My name’s Daisy Deare,’ she said, and saw his brows lift in inevitable mockery. ‘That’s Deare with an “e”,’ she added with dignity.

‘Well, Daisy Dear-with-an-“e”,’ he said sardonically, ‘perhaps you’d like to explain what you’re doing here under false pretences?’

Daisy was thinking fast. ‘I’m a friend of Dee’s,’ she said. ‘She...she’d already arranged to go away for three months when she got your letter, but she knew how much I wanted to go to the Caribbean so she suggested I come in her place. We...er...we often help each other out.’

‘Do you now?’ Daisy didn’t like the unpleasant note in Seth’s voice. She had a nasty feeling that he hadn’t believed a word. ‘And are you an actress, too, Daisy Deare?’

‘Yes,’ said Daisy firmly. She hadn’t performed in public since a humiliating appearance as a sweet pea in an end-of-term ballet, aged seven, but she was beginning to suspect that Dee Peace didn’t spend that much time on stage either. ‘Only I’m resting at the moment, so I could go to the Caribbean whenever you wanted.’

Seth ignored that hint. ‘Why didn’t you tell me this when I called?’ he asked abruptly.

‘I thought it would be easier to explain face to face. Besides,’ she went on with an ingenuous look, ‘you might not have agreed to see me if I hadn’t said I was Dee.’

‘I wouldn’t,’ Seth told her grimly. ‘I only approached Dee in the first place because Ed assured me she was very discreet, and now I find that she gaily passes on my letter to the first out-of-work actress she comes across who fancies a trip to the Caribbean!’

‘She wouldn’t have told me if she hadn’t known that I was discreet too,’ said Daisy, who was surprising herself with her own facility for lying. ‘Anyway,’ she went on frankly, ‘I don’t know anything to be indiscreet about yet. Your letter was as clear as mud! But it sounded as if you needed someone who was uncommitted and, since Dee couldn’t make it, I’d have thought you’d have been pleased that she arranged for someone suitable to come instead.’

‘I might have been if she had sent someone suitable,’ he snapped. ‘As it is, you’re the exact opposite of what I had in mind. I need someone sophisticated. and glamorous.’ The cold gaze raked disparagingly from her soft, tousled curls down to her grey leggings and the faded yellow canvas shoes she wore with them. ‘You don’t look much more than a schoolgirl!’

‘I’m twenty-three,’ said Daisy, ruffled by that insultingly impersonal scrutiny. ‘And I may not look very glamorous at the moment but that’s because you told me to look discreet, if you remember!’

‘It’s possible to look discreet without looking like Orphan Annie,’ Seth retorted. It was stuffy in the room and he shrugged off his jacket as he straightened, tossing it over the arm of a sofa before prowling round the back of the sofa and over to the window. It was open to the early summer sunshine, and Daisy could hear the traffic grumbling down Park Lane. He stood, looking down at it, for a moment then turned back to Daisy. ‘From what I hear about Dee—if you’re a friend of hers I imagine that those big blue eyes of yours aren’t as innocent as they look, but I doubt that anyone would believe for a minute that I was seriously interested in you.’

Daisy didn’t know whether to feel relieved or offended. ‘Is that what you want?’

‘I need a decoy.’ Seth was unbuttoning his cuffs, loosening his tie and rolling up the sleeves of his pale blue shirt, the relaxed intimacy of his actions at odds with his brisk tone. ‘I may as well tell you what this is about and then you’ll appreciate why you’re not suitable, but you’d better be as discreet as you say you are.’

‘Of course,’ she said, resenting his tone.

‘All right, then.’ He came back and flung himself into a chair opposite her, obviously working out how he could tell her as little as possible. ‘I’m thinking of getting married,’ he began.

Whatever Daisy had been expecting, it wasn’t that. She stared at him, conscious of a quite absurd trace of wistfulness as she wondered what it would be like to marry someone like Seth Carrington; to see that hard face soften with love. Of course she wouldn’t want to. So far he had shown himself to be brusque, arrogant and downright unpleasant. He was the last kind of man she would want to marry. On the other hand, it would be nice to be able to confide all your problems to someone so strong and patently capable of dealing with them... Seth Carrington looked like a man who would guard his own, unlike Robert who was always so infuriatingly understanding about everything.

With a jerk, Daisy recalled herself to the present. ‘Er...congratulations,’ she offered, not at all clear what her own role in all of this was to be.

Seth looked faintly exasperated at her reaction, and she wondered if he suspected her of being sarcastic. ‘I’ve managed to avoid marriage up to now,’ he said repressively, ‘but Astra is a very special lady, and our companies complement each other. Marriage would be an ideal merger in every way.’

Daisy regarded him with puzzled blue eyes. He sounded pretty cool about the whole idea. Anyone would think that the business merger interested him more than his future wife, no matter what he might say about her being a special lady. Then another thought occurred to her and she sat up. It wasn’t exactly a common name...‘Astra?’

‘Astra Bentingger.’

‘Astra Bentingger?’ Daisy’s voice rose to a squeak. Astra Bentingger had inherited one of the largest fortunes in the world at the age of eighteen but, far from being crushed by the responsibility, she had taken her vast business into her own capable hands and made herself even richer. Barely a week went by without her picture appearing in some newspaper or magazine. Clever, effortlessly beautiful, fluent in five languages, known and courted and gossiped about the world over, Astra Bentingger was a name to conjure with. The original Superwoman, thought Daisy glumly, intimidated by the mere idea of her.

She looked at Seth with a touch of awe. If he was contemplating marriage with Astra Bentingger he must be even richer and more powerful than she had thought at first. It was well known that Astra only liked men who played in the same league... ‘But isn’t she—’ Daisy broke off as she remembered where she had last read about Seth’s fiancée. ‘Married to Dimitrios Klissalikos?’ he finished for her, unperturbed. ‘Yes, she is. That’s part of the problem.’

‘I can see that already having a husband might be a bit of a drawback if she’s contemplating marrying you,’ said Daisy.

Seth’s brows drew together at her facetiousness. ‘Naturally, Astra will be obtaining a divorce, but we’re still negotiating a pre-nuptial contract and for the moment we have to be extremely careful that our names aren’t linked at all. That’s where Dee came in. I need to be seen around with someone else to divert attention from my relationship with Astra. For the time being, I’ll only appear to meet her in large parties while the press think I’m involved with someone quite different—someone who’s prepared to act the part of a besotted girlfriend.