Bridegrooms Required: One Bridegroom Required / One Wedding Required / One Husband Required
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She sat down next to the fire and shook her damp hair out, watching while he began to boil up pasta and heat through a sauce.
‘Like a beer?’ he asked.
‘Love one.’
He opened two bottles and handed her one, and she sipped it while he strained the pasta and stirred the sauce and pushed a bowl full of freshly grated Parmesan into the centre of the table.
‘You look like a man who knows his way round a kitchen,’ she observed slowly.
He shrugged. ‘I’m used to fending for myself.’
‘I thought people had lots of help in Africa?’
His smile was arcane. ‘Some people do. I chose not to—just help with the cleaning, same as here. A woman named Margaret starts in the morning—I guess I’d better warn her that I have company.’ He gave the sauce a final stir. ‘I always think that, if you don’t cook for yourself, then you lose touch with reality.’ He looked up to where she sat, looking at him intently, and he thought that reality seemed a long way away at this precise moment.
Soon he had heaped two plates with pasta and sauce and they ate at the table in front of the fire.
Forcing himself to eat, Luke struggled to free himself from his rather obsessive study of the way the firelight warmed her skin tones into soft apricot and cream, casting around for something to say. Something which might make him forget that she was a very beautiful woman. ‘So what were you doing before you came to Woodhampton?’
She shot him a half-amused glance. ‘Just checking that you haven’t given refuge to some gun-toting maniac?’
‘We could always talk about the weather, if you prefer,’ he told her deliberately. ‘But we have a whole evening to get through.’
So they did. Holly took a hasty sip of her beer. It was difficult to concentrate when those amazing blue eyes were fixed on her with such interest. ‘After school I went to art school, where I studied textile and design.’
‘And were you a model student?’ he mocked.
Holly frowned. ‘Actually, I was, now you come to mention it. And I get a little fed up with people thinking that, just because a person is creative, they’re automatically a lazy slob—’
‘I doubt whether a lazy slob would go to the trouble of starting up their own business,’ he put in drily.
‘No, they wouldn’t.’ Feeling slightly mollified, Holly put her beer bottle back down on the table. ‘I got quite a good degree—’
‘And are you being modest now?’
Her eyes threw him a challenge. ‘Mmm! I’m trying—’
‘Very trying,’ he agreed, deadpan.
‘After I left college I went to work for the same fashion house which had employed my mother, but I hated it.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I felt exactly like an employee, with little control over the entire design process—not really. I felt like I was working in a factory, and I didn’t want to be. I wanted to feel creatively free. So I entered the competition.’ A dreamy smile came over her face as she remembered. ‘And won.’
‘Tell me about it,’ he said, aware that his voice was unusually indulgent—but that kind of sweet enthusiasm would have melted the hardest heart.
Holly finished a mouthful of tagliatelle and looked into his eyes. Such gorgeous eyes. ‘It was organised by one of the glossy bridal magazines to celebrate twenty-five years in publishing.’ She met his blank stare ‘You know the kind of thing.’
‘Not really,’ he demurred, and gave a sardonic shake of his golden-brown head. ‘Don’t forget I’ve been living in the wilds all these years—and bridal magazines are pretty thin on the ground!’
Holly got a sudden and disturbingly attractive image of Luke Goodwin wearing a morning suit. ‘The idea was to create a wedding dress for the new century—’
‘So, let me guess—you did something wild and untraditional?’
She shook her head slowly. ‘No, I didn’t, actually. Brides usually don’t want to be too wild and wacky. Most conform. In fact, I based the dress on an idea that my mother had.’ She saw his puzzled look. ‘She was a dress designer, too,’ she explained. ‘She created this most wonderful wedding dress when I was little—I’ve seen pictures of it.’
‘But if yours is almost the same as hers, isn’t that called copying—even stealing?’
She shook her head. ‘There’s no such thing as originality in fashion—you must know that. What goes around comes around. My design was very similar to my mother’s but it wasn’t exactly the same. Unfortunately, Mum’s dress was sold, and we never saw it again.’
Luke frowned. ‘Why would you expect to?’
‘Because she designed it for a very famous fashion house, and those types of garments don’t usually disappear without trace. They’re usually worth a lot of money.’
‘But this one did?’
Holly nodded. ‘Someone bought it in a sale. My mother was disappointed it was reduced in price, but not surprised—’ Her face lit up with enthusiasm. ‘It was a very unusual design, and only an exceptionally thin woman could have worn it. And that was that. Funnily enough, an older Irish woman who cleaned in the store where it was sold—she bought it. After that it disappeared into thin air.’
Luke was more interested in the things she didn’t say than in the things she did. ‘And where’s your mother now?’
‘Well, it’s November, so she’s probably in the Caribbean,’ replied Holly flippantly. ‘Either that, or on a cruise ship somewhere.’
The bitterness in her tone didn’t escape him. ‘And why isn’t she here—helping her daughter get settled into her brand-new business venture?’
‘Because her latest disgusting rich old husband probably won’t let her,’ grimaced Holly.
‘Oh, it’s like that, is it?’ he queried softly.
She threw him a look, a nonchalant expression which had become second nature to her. At school she had quickly learnt that if you learned to mock yourself, then no one else would bother. ‘Doesn’t everyone have a mother who uses a man as a meal ticket?’
‘You must hate it,’ he observed slowly.
Holly shrugged. ‘I’m used to it—she’s used men all her life. But I’m not complaining—not really. Their money paid for my education, saw me through art school.’
‘And wasn’t there a father on the scene?’
‘No, I never knew my father—’ Holly met his curious stare with a proud uptilt to her chin, feeling oddly compelled to answer his questions. Maybe it was something to do with the penetrating clarity of his blue eyes. Or maybe it was just because he actually looked as though he cared.
She ran a finger down the cold beer bottle. ‘And no, I’m afraid that it’s nothing heroic like an early death—I mean it literally. My mother didn’t know him either. According to her, he could have been one of two people and she didn’t care for either of them—so she never bothered to tell either of them that she was pregnant.’
Luke expelled a slow breath of air ‘Hell,’ he said quietly, realising that he didn’t have the monopoly on unconventional childhoods.
‘I suppose I must be grateful that she saw fit to give birth to me.’ Her gaze was unblinking ‘Have I shocked you?’
‘A little,’ he admitted. ‘But that was part of your intention, wasn’t it, Holly—to shock me?’
She looked at up at him, her eyes partially shaded by thick dark lashes. ‘And why would I want to do that?’
‘Because illegitimacy hasn’t always been accepted the way it is now. When you were growing up, it was probably even a stigma—something to be ashamed of. Wasn’t it?’ he probed gently.
The memory of it was like a knife, twisting softly in her belly. Little girls taunting her in the playground. The sense of always being different. ‘Yes.’
Her reply was so quiet that he had to strain his ears to hear it. ‘So maybe you got used to relating the facts as starkly as possible—to pre-empt that kind of reaction. And if you said the worst possible things about not having a father, then that way no one could hurt you. Or judge you.’ He paused, and the piercing blue eyes were as direct as twin swords. ‘Am I right?’
She put her fork down quickly. ‘Yes, you’re right.’ He was very perceptive. Too perceptive. ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you all this,’ she said. ‘Just because you’ve been a Good Samaritan. I don’t normally open up to people I’ve only just met, you know.’
He smiled through the ache that had haunted him since he had first laid eyes on her. ‘Maybe it’s because we’re strangers. And because we’ve been thrown together in bizarre circumstances.’
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘Like people trapped in lifts, or stuck on the side of a mountain—that sense of isolation makes the rest of the world seem unimportant. You break rules.’ He looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Sometimes you make new ones in their place.’
Holly badly needed to distract herself—wasn’t he aware that when he looked at her that way she just wanted him to kiss her? ‘I may have told you things about me,’ she corrected him. ‘But it hasn’t been very reciprocal. You’ve told me very little about you!’
‘There’s my inheritance,’ he said blandly. ‘You know about that.’
‘Oh, that!“ she scoffed. ’That’s boring! I want to hear about real life.‘ She tried an impersonation of his distinctive drawl. ’Life on the ranch!’
He laughed. It would be so easy to stay here, to bask in the firelight and the soft, green light of her eyes. Easy and dangerous...
‘It’s late and it’ll keep,’ he said, swallowing the last of his beer and wondering why it tasted so sour. ‘And if I tell you about cheetah kills before bedtime—then you might have nightmares, mightn’t you?’
‘I suppose so!’ She laughed nervously.
But then, Holly suspected that she might have trouble sleeping in any case. Because surely the thought of a big, virile man like Luke Goodwin sleeping in the same house would cause any normal woman to be restless.
Especially a woman whose green-eyed and naturally foxy appearance often gave people a totally misleading view of her true nature...
CHAPTER FOUR
DESPITE her reservations, Holly slept soundly and undisturbed in a beautiful high-ceilinged bedroom painted in palest blues and greys. It overlooked the rain-soaked lawn at the back of the house, which sloped down to a fruit orchard at the far end of the garden.
When she woke up it was almost nine, and she stretched luxuriously in the bed, rubbing her sleepy eyes as she threw back the duvet and padded over to the window.
The garden was like an illustration from a child’s story book, and Holly could almost imagine the trees being able to speak, the fruits full of enchantment.
Her room had its own bathroom, a luxury she decided she would never take for granted! She showered and washed her hair again, put on Luke’s white towelling gown, and was just thinking about going in search of her clothes when there was a rap on the door and she opened it to find him standing there, his eyes all shadowed, as though sleep had been at a premium.
His hair was still damp from the shower and he was dressed casually—still in a pair of faded blue denims with a thick, navy sweater pulled down low onto his hips.
‘Hello, Holly,’ he said softly, and just the sight of her stirred the memories of erotic dreams which had given him one of the worst nights in memory. ‘Sleep well?’
She beamed at him with a sunny smile. ‘Like a log!’
‘Lucky you,’ he commented drily, seeing the way her fingers fumbled to tighten the belt of her robe, or rather his robe, and he quickly held out her clean jeans, shirt and underwear. ‘Thought you might need these. Washed and folded.’
She took the stack of neatly folded clothes from him, and looked down at them in surprise. ‘I’m impressed,’ she murmured.
Luke’s eyes danced at her. ‘Real men don’t fold clothes, right? That’s your stereotype?’
‘I don’t know enough game reserve managers-cumlords of the manor to have formed a stereotype! But if ever times are hard—you could always find work in a laundry!’
She hugged the pile of clothes to her like a hot-water bottle, but the movement caused her black lace panties to dangle from the middle of the pile, and she realised that he must have folded those, too—as well as her jeans!’
‘I’d better get dressed,’ she said indistinctly.
‘I’ll have breakfast ready in ten minutes.’
‘I don’t generally eat breakfast.’
‘I can tell.’ Blue eyes roved over her narrow hips critically. ‘Bad idea. The brain and the body need fuel after fasting overnight. You’ll feel better for it. Trust me, Holly!’
Holly laughed as she shut the door on him. That was the oddest thing. She did! And, after the succession of doubtful escorts which her mother had trailed through her life, she didn’t give her trust easily—certainly not to virtual strangers. Though when you’d shared a house with a man for the night, and he had washed and folded your underwear, then he hardly qualified as a stranger any more, did he?
She quickly put the clothes on, then went downstairs to find him.
He was standing in the kitchen, frying rashers of bacon on the Aga, and the aroma made her mouth water.
‘That smells wonderful!’ she confessed weakly.
He glanced up from flipping a rasher over in the pan.
‘Sit down and have some juice,’ he instructed, thinking that this was the first time he had ever cooked a woman breakfast without having had sex with her. He watched her intently reading the label of a marmalade jar. ‘There’s coffee in the pot—unless you’d rather have tea?’
She shook her head. The coffee smelt good, too. Far too good to refuse—hot and strong and black. ‘Mmm. Bliss,’ she told him, taking a sip.
‘I make the best coffee in the world,’ he said, with a not-so-modest shrug of his shoulders. ‘Or so I’m told.’
‘And there’s your laundry skills. Tell me—is there no end to your talents?’ she teased.
Well, there was something he’d been told he was very good at. There was a brief moment of silence while Luke bit back the temptation to look directly into her eyes and tell her exactly what it was...
‘Have some toast,’ he said abruptly as he put her food down in front of her.
It was the first time for as long as she could remember that Holly had sat down to a proper breakfast. She surveyed the plate piled with egg, bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes and beans, while Luke slipped in across the table opposite her.
‘And where did all this food come from?’ she wanted to know. ‘Not the freezer?’
‘No. While you were sleeping I went shopping—’
‘You should have woken me,’ she said automatically.
‘What for? You looked like you needed the sleep.’
‘I did.’ Holly glanced around the kitchen as she finished a mouthful of bacon. Last night it had been dark, and she had been unable to properly appreciate the beauty of her surroundings. Through the French doors which opened out onto the garden she could see a winter-flowering blossom tree, its buds beginning to reveal the ice-pink petals which lay beneath.
It was so comfortable here, Holly thought. She leaned back in her chair and looked at him, trying to sound as though she minded the delay. ‘And heaven knows how long it will take to get the shop looking habitable!’
‘Two weeks, I’ve been told,’ he offered drily. ‘And that’s going to be cutting it fine.’
‘But I can’t stay here for two weeks!’
Luke sipped his coffee, the cloud of steam obscuring the expression in his eyes. ‘Have a problem with that, do you, Holly?’
‘I’ll get in your way—’
‘No, you won’t. I won’t let you. I have a lock on my study door,’ he grinned wolfishly.
Holly shrugged, the idea appealing more by the minute. ‘It just seems a long time for me to impose on your hospitality—but if you’re happy—’
‘I don’t know whether happy is the adjective I would have selected,’ he observed drily. ‘I had planned to spend the next couple of weeks sorting out my uncle’s affairs—not entertaining a house guest.’ Especially such a nubile house guest.
‘Oh, but I won’t need any entertaining!’ she assured him. ‘I’ve got masses to do myself. Paperwork and sewing and finding a florist I can work with. I’ll keep out of your way. I promise.’ It was no idle threat, either. Luke was an unsettling man, tempting and disturbing—and Holly needed that kind of distraction like a hole in the head right now.
He hoped she meant it. Lending her that bathrobe had been a bad idea. In fact, even thinking about that bathrobe was a bad idea. ‘I’ve been on the phone to Doug again this morning. Who assured me that the structural repairs can be done inside forty-eight hours.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Someone will be seeing to that roof right now.’
‘Thank God for that!’
‘Yeah,’ he agreed blandly. ‘Which just leaves decor. If you let me know your colour choices, I’ll make sure that it gets done.’
Holly put her fork down and stared at him. ‘But I thought that I’d be expected to decorate?’
Luke was keen not to come over as a completely soft touch. He told himself that he would behave in exactly the same way if the tenant happened to be a man. ‘And so you would, if the condition of the place wasn’t so disgusting—if it was just a question of cosmetics. But, since it needs more than a face-lift, I’ll agree to decorate it to your specifications. How about fresh white paint everywhere? Sound okay?’
There was a pause. Holly pulled a face. ‘Well, no. Now you come to mention it—not really.’
Denim-blue eyes narrowed. ‘Oh?’
She pushed her plate aside, and leaned across the table towards him. ‘I don’t want to sound ungrateful, or anything, Luke—but what I envisaged as a colour scheme was something much more dramatic than that. Everyone else is doing white walls and big green plants in pots. But this is going to be the kind of bridal shop that no one will ever forget.’
He didn’t react. ‘Go on.’
‘I wanted a deep, peacock-green wall.’
Luke noted her use of the singular. ‘That’s only one wall,’ he commented.
Sharp of him. She drew in a deep breath, determined that he would be able to visualise the vibrant combinations of colours she had in mind. ‘That’s right—three walls and one window. I’d like another painted in that very rich, intense, almost royal purple—you know the shade.’
‘And the final wall?’ he queried, deadpan. ‘What plans did you have for that—sky—blue pink?’
‘Gold.’ The same glossy gold which touched the tips of his hair.
‘Gold?’
‘Mmm.’ Holly nodded her head enthusiastically. ‘It’s the perfect wedding colour—it symbolises the ring and it suggests pageantry and ceremony. And I want this shop to really stand out!’
He fleetingly wished that she wouldn’t move with such a refreshing lack of inhibition when she got carried away like that. If only she’d wear a bra. Didn’t she realise how ripe and how luscious such sudden movements could make her breasts appear? The hint of their succulent swell against the simple shirt she wore seemed positively indecent.
He swallowed down the erotic fantasies which were beginning to burgeon into life again. ‘Stand out?’ he quizzed mockingly, reflecting that it was a poor choice of phrase, given the circumstances. ‘It will certainly do that!’ He frowned. ‘Though won’t using specialist paints delay your opening—since I imagine that you’ll have to buy the more unusual materials in London?’
Holly shook her head with a smile ‘Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong! There’s a specialist paint shop right in Winchester—we need look no further than there!’
We.
Her easy use of the word caused Luke a moment of chilly disquiet, until he silently chided himself for his out-and-out arrogance. Was he now worried that Holly was getting possessive, or passionate, about him? When there had been nothing in his behaviour—not a word nor a gesture—which she could have interpreted or misinterpreted as some kind of come-on.
Holly saw the way his shoulders stiffened, and she could sense immediately what he was thinking. Her fingers crept up to cover her mouth apologetically. ‘I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to be presumptuous.’
He shook his head. ‘You weren’t being presumptuous. And we’ll both go into Winchester to choose your paint.’ After all, he was the one who was paying for them’
‘But aren’t you...?’ She found that her words were tripping over themselves, as though they couldn’t quite decide in what order to leave her mouth. ‘Wouldn’t you...?’
He looked into her widened green eyes with something approaching amusement. ‘Wouldn’t I what, Holly?’
‘Wouldn’t you rather be doing something else?’
He most certainly would.
Her words created such a shockingly graphic image in his mind that Luke briefly closed his eyes in despair. It was simply sexual attraction, he told himself over and over again, as if repetition would make it more believable. Nothing more than that—a combustive hormonal reaction which she had provoked in him, and which would fade as inevitably as the sunlight would fade from the afternoon sky. Was she aware of it, too? he wondered. Did it pulse and hum around her, too—the feeling almost palpable?
His mistake had been to take her into his house in the first place. To rush in playing the Good Samaritan, trying to fool himself into minimising the potency of the attraction he felt towards her—as if, by rationalising it, it would go away of its own accord.
Because it wasn’t conveniently disappearing, and he somehow doubted that it would—unless you took sexual attraction through to its natural conclusion, which he had no intention of doing. For how could it disappear, if she continued to haunt him with those emerald eyes and that pale skin, and the careless cascade of coppery curls?
Maybe she was destined to always be one of those ‘if only’ women—if only he’d met her when he’d been in that sowing wild oats stage of his life. Holly Lovelace was enchantingly beautiful with her wild, artistic looks—great for a tempestuous affair, but...
The sooner she was set up in her newly decorated shop and out of his life, the better—and, just in case he was forgetting, he wasn’t in the market for a lover.
‘There’s nothing else I’d rather be doing,’ he lied. ‘And besides, Margaret is coming in to clean the house this morning, so we’ll leave for Winchester just as soon as you’re ready.’
Winchester was crowded.
Luke looked at the throbbing crowds in disbelief. ‘Where’s the execution?’
‘Sorry?’
‘I mean, why else could all these people be here?’
‘They’re Christmas shoppers,’ explained Holly, craning her neck to gaze up in awe at the cathedral.
‘But it’s only November!’ he scowled.
‘And some people buy their Christmas presents throughout the year. Apparently,’ she added hastily, in case he thought that she was among them!
Luke stared at the looped ropes of fairy lights which twinkled in one shop window, surrounding the puffy cheeks of a beaming cardboard Santa. The same compilation tape of Christmas songs seemed to be blasting out of every shop they passed. He shook his head and thought longingly of the stark beauty of Africa. ‘It’s crazy—crazy—this whole commercial Christmas trip! A celebration of consumption and consumerism!’
Holly shrugged, pleased to hear his views echoing her own. ‘I know. I keep planning to go into hibernation!’
They passed a florist’s, where pots of fragrant winter jasmine were stacked next to the gaudy crimson of the seasonal poinsettias. Luke saw a wreath—glossy green and spiky, and studded with berries the colour of blood. Ignoring the appreciative ogling of a young assistant through the window, he slowed down.
‘I guess it’s your birthday soon?’ he hazarded.
Holly blinked. ‘How did you know that?’ she demanded, and then laughed as she looked down and spotted the holly wreath. ‘Oh!’
‘Well, it’s a Christmas name, isn’t it?’ He looked at her, a question in his eyes. ‘Usually.’
‘Yes, you’re right. I was born on Christmas Eve.’
“‘The night before Christmas?”’ he quoted softly, until something in her eyes made him ask, ‘But you don’t enjoy your birthday?’
Maybe other men had always just asked the wrong questions in the past. Or maybe this man just asked the right ones. Whatever his gift, Holly found that she wanted to tell him things—personal things—in a way which was definitely not her usual style.