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Carole Mortimer
MILLS & BOON
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Copyright
CHAPTER ONE
‘WHAT on earth are you doing here?’ Casey gasped. She had arrived home exhausted at almost eleven o’clock after working that evening, only to come to a shocked halt in the doorway to her sitting room and stare at the man sitting there so unconcernedly.
The single source of light in the room came from a small table lamp, casting the man’s face in shadow as he sat in the armchair across the room. But even though she had only met him twice—briefly—in her life before, it was still possible for Casey to recognise the dark overlong hair, the wide shoulders and the tall, leanly powerful frame as belonging to Xander Fraser—a man whose brooding good-looks often graced the more prestigious gossip magazines as he attended the premieres of the numerous films released by his production company.
A man she hadn’t realised even knew where she lived.
Yes, they both lived in Surrey, but at completely different ends of the housing scale. The Fraser mansion was set in several wooded acres of grounds near the river, while her own home was on an estate and much, much smaller.
If she hadn’t been so shocked at finding him here, she might even have found a certain pleasure in having this ruggedly handsome man in her home. After all, he was the first eligible, gorgeous man she had been this close to since her marriage had ended a year ago.
Or perhaps not, she acknowledged with an inward grimace; she was hardly looking her best at the moment. Her hair probably smelt of the food cooked at the restaurant this evening, she was wearing some of her oldest clothes—for the same reason—and wore absolutely no make-up whatsoever to add colour to her naturally pale complexion.
Besides which, it was hardly a good idea for her to be attracted to the ex-husband of the woman who had stolen her own husband!
Xander Fraser shrugged those broad shoulders, shifting slightly so that his face was no longer in shadow, revealing an aquiline nose between high cheekbones, and an arrogant slash of a mouth above a strongly squared chin. He regarded her with hooded blue eyes. ‘I was waiting for you to get home, obviously,’ he drawled.
‘Yes, I realise that,’ she answered impatiently; it was why he was here that was important! ‘But—where’s Hannah?’ she asked, her voice sharpening with alarm.
Now that her first shock on seeing Xander was receding, Casey realised the girl she employed to look after her son on the evenings she worked at the restaurant was noticeably absent.
‘Is that the name of the babysitter?’ Xander Fraser quirked dark brows. ‘I told her she might as well take advantage of my being here and go home early.’
‘And she just went?’ Casey exclaimed. ‘But she doesn’t even know you! You could have been anybody!’
‘Such as?’ Those dark brows rose a second time. ‘A mass-murderer? Or a kidnapper, perhaps?’ He gave a humourless smile.
‘Well…actually, yes,’ Casey said with a frown, feeling she had every right to be annoyed with Hannah’s irresponsible behaviour.
Although Xander Fraser hardly looked the part of either, she acknowledged privately to herself, dressed in those designer label denims and navy blue silk shirt, and possessed of the kind of confidence that only the very rich or very good-looking seemed to acquire.
Xander Fraser scowled. ‘Believe me, the complications that go along with the one child I have are more than enough for me to cope with right now!’
His daughter Lauren was six years old—the same age as Casey’s son Josh. But there the similarities ended. Lauren Fraser was the daughter of multimillionaire film producer Xander Fraser, whereas Josh was the son of a single mother juggling two jobs to try and keep a roof over their heads.
She sighed as she put her handbag down on the coffee table, too tired to be able to make much sense out of this man’s unexpected presence here, let alone his enigmatic conversation.
It had been a long day for her. She’d got up at seven-thirty, to get her young son ready and at school for nine o’clock, then hurried off to the café she worked in until after the lunchtime rush. Once that was over, she’d collected Josh and spent a couple of hours at home with him, before leaving for her evening job at the restaurant of the local hotel.
Yes, it had been a very long and very tiring day, and she was in no mood to play verbal fencing games with Xander Fraser, of all people. Whether he was sinfully handsome or not!
As he was sitting in the only chair in her sparsely furnished sitting room, Casey remained standing, still very unhappy with Hannah—but that, she promised herself, was something she would take up with the girl tomorrow.
‘So, what can I do for you, Mr Fraser?’ she challenged tersely.
With her painfully thin frame clothed in a figure-hugging black tee shirt and faded blue denims, and at only a couple of inches over five feet tall, Casey Bridges had all the appearance of a bantam hen aligning itself against a hawk, Xander decided ruefully. Her soft blonde hair was styled wispily about her temples and nape, and her beautiful heart-shaped face was dominated by dark green eyes that did absolutely nothing to dispel that illusion of fragility.
And she looked exhausted… Even as he thought it, she swayed slightly on her feet.
Abruptly, Xander stood up. ‘Sit down,’ he commanded, ‘before you collapse.’
She obviously bridled at the order, but then did as he’d said. Perhaps she realised he was fully capable of picking her up and sitting her in the chair himself, if she refused…
The chair, the coffee table and the lamp were the only furniture in the room. He had noted that with a frown when he’d arrived earlier. There was no television in the room, either, and when he had taken a quick look around the rest of the house he had found that to be no better. Casey Bridges seemed to have taken the ‘minimalist’ effect to a barren degree.
Or else—as his daughter Lauren had already hinted—there was another explanation altogether for such austerity…
Xander’s eyes narrowed as he registered just how fragilely thin the woman before him was. He noted the shadows beneath those dark green eyes, the hollows beneath her cheekbones, and the skin on her hands and wrists that was almost translucent.
‘Exactly what’s been going on here, Casey?’ he asked, his blue gaze uncomfortably penetrating now. ‘Where were you this evening?’ He had thought she must be out with friends—possibly even a boyfriend, as her husband had left her a year ago—but she hardly had the look of a woman returning from a pleasant evening out.
She gave a firm shake of her head as she seemed to regain some of her composure. ‘That really isn’t any of your business, Mr Fraser.’ She stood up. ‘I should go up and check on Josh. I still can’t believe—Has he woken up? Is he aware that Hannah has left?’ she asked anxiously.
‘Josh is fine,’ Xander assured her. ‘He did wake up once, but when I told him I was Lauren’s daddy he wasn’t concerned. He and Lauren have become friends—did you know that?’
Yes, she did know that. Ironically, Josh and Lauren had become friends during the eight months when Sam and Chloe had lived together, their visits to their individual parents often coinciding. Casey also knew that Josh had missed seeing the little girl since Chloe and Sam’s deaths four months ago.
‘Yes, I believe they have—did,’ she corrected. ‘If you would just like to wait here while I go and check on Josh, we can—continue this conversation when I come back down.’ Her gaze didn’t quite meet his before she turned and left the room, to run up the stairs to Josh’s small bedroom above with a vague feeling of relief.
She had to admit to finding Xander Fraser’s powerful presence and fiercely intelligent blue eyes slightly overwhelming in the small confines of the three-bedroomed house that she had lived in first with her parents, then with Sam and Josh, and now just with Josh. The house she was determined to hold on to if humanly possible.
Quite what sort of conversation she and Xander Fraser were going to have she had no idea, but he obviously considered it important enough for him to have gone to the trouble of finding out where she lived.
She very much doubted Xander’s ex-wife would have told him. Casey and Xander’s previous two meetings had been when they’d happened to call at the same time to collect Josh and Lauren after one of their weekend visits to the house Sam and Chloe had so briefly shared. The dazzlingly beautiful Chloe had had no choice but to introduce the two of them, but her hypnotic blue eyes had been narrowed on them watchfully as she’d done so.
Casey hadn’t liked the sophisticated but brittle Chloe Fraser; she knew she wouldn’t have liked her even if she hadn’t been ‘the other woman’ in Casey’s marriage break-up. The two of them had absolutely nothing in common—except Sam, of course.
Only Chloe Fraser’s beauty had been such that her more negative traits obviously hadn’t repulsed the golden and handsome Sam, or the darkly brooding and immensely rich Xander Fraser.
But the fact that Chloe and Sam were now both dead—killed four months ago when the private jet they’d been travelling in had crashed—meant that Josh and Lauren’s visits to them had obviously stopped, too. And it should have meant that Casey would never have reason to see Xander Fraser again, either.
So why on earth was he downstairs in her sitting room, obviously waiting to talk to her?
CHAPTER TWO
XANDER became aware of Casey’s presence behind him as he stood in the kitchen. ‘You looked like you could do with a cup,’ he explained, as he turned and saw her brows raised at the two steaming mugs of coffee he had just made. ‘How was Josh?’ he prompted, when he noted the pallor of those hollow cheeks.
The shadows remained in her deep green eyes but she smiled. Deep grooves appeared beside the fullness of her lips, as if humour was something that hadn’t come easily to her recently.
And Xander doubted that it had. To Chloe, he knew, the seduction of the man who had come to their home as a landscape gardener had all been a game. A game she had played more times than even Xander was aware of. Or cared about. Although in Sam Bridges’ case Chloe had very quickly decided that she wanted to take their relationship to the next level—so the two of them had left their partners and set up home together.
The fact that at the same time she had robbed this woman of her husband, and six-year-old Josh of his father, wouldn’t have been of interest to the spoilt and wilful Chloe. She had seen something she wanted, and taken it without hesitation.
‘Fast asleep,’ Casey acknowledged ruefully. Then she flushed slightly. ‘Er—would you like a biscuit or something to go with that coffee?’
As he had checked all the cupboards in the kitchen while she was upstairs, and found them all bare—just like Old Mother Hubbard’s in the nursery rhyme—Xander didn’t hold out much hope of there being anything for him to actually have.
‘No, thanks—I ate earlier,’ he said easily. ‘Shall we go through to the sitting room, or would you prefer to stand in here and talk?’ Either way, only one of them would be able to sit!
Once again Xander wondered what the hell had been going on in this woman’s life these last four months. There was no food in the house, and very little furniture, either, and Casey Bridges looked as if a strong gust of wind would knock her off her feet.
‘Here is fine.’ Casey took one of the steaming mugs of coffee from him, her hand carefully avoiding coming into contact with his as she did so.
It was ridiculous, she told herself impatiently, to be so aware of this man. So physically aware of him. But there was no denying that her hands were trembling slightly with that awareness.
Perhaps she was just missing having sex?
Surely not! The physical side of her marriage to Sam hadn’t been that good in the first place, and had been completely nonexistent for the last six months they’d been together. No, it had to be Xander Fraser himself who had awakened all these sensual longings within her…
Her mouth tightened at the knowledge. ‘What did you want to talk to me about—?’
‘That can wait,’ he cut in abruptly. ‘First I would like you to tell me why there’s hardly any furniture in the house, and why the fridge is also bare, except for a bottle of milk and a piece of cheese.’
Her eyes widened with incredulous anger. ‘You’ve been looking through my refrigerator?’
‘I needed milk for your coffee,’ he pointed out with a sardonic smile. His own coffee was black.
‘Oh.’ Casey felt her cheeks warm at the rebuke. ‘But, still, what I do or don’t have in my refrigerator is none of your concern—’
‘When did you last eat, Casey?’ Xander Fraser asked bluntly, ignoring her attempt to put him in his place.
‘I don’t have to—’
‘Yes, you do,’ he interrupted again, his tone brooking no more denial or evasions.
She frowned her deep irritation at his autocratic attitude.
‘I cooked lamb chops, new potatoes and vegetables for tea before I went out—’
‘I’m prepared to accept that Josh had lamb chops and vegetables for his evening meal. Unlike you, he looks robustly healthy,’ he added pointedly. ‘Besides, I saw the bones from two chops in your pedal bin just now—’
‘Mr Fraser, you really do not have the right to question me like this!’ Casey gasped. ‘Let alone go poking around in my pedal bin!’ she added indignantly.
No, he probably didn’t, Xander acknowledged grimly. And he really couldn’t say that he had given this woman, or her son, much consideration during the last year, either. He had been too busy for most of that time trying to deal with the trauma that Chloe’s desertion and subsequent death had caused his own daughter to worry about Sam Bridges’ family.
But all that had changed since his conversation with Brad Henderson, Chloe’s father, four days ago…
Since arriving at Casey’s home a couple of hours ago, and seeing the frugal way she lived, Xander was inclined to think the claim Lauren had made once that ‘Josh’s mummy is so poor she can’t buy him any new toys’ was probably a true one. Not that it gave Xander any pleasure to know that; it just meant, as he had hoped, that Casey might be the answer to his own dilemma.
In fact, if Casey were willing to be co-operative and agree to what he was about to suggest, she would be vastly improving her own situation at the same time as she helped Xander turn this whole situation around on Brad Henderson.
If Casey were willing to be co-operative…
Looking at her now, he could see just how completely exhausted she was—both physically and emotionally. He didn’t think that it was all due to the trauma of the events of the past year alone; from the little Xander had bothered to learn about Sam Bridges, the man hadn’t exactly been the perfect husband and provider for his family even before he’d become involved with Chloe.
No wonder his ex-wife had been so drawn to the man. They’d been two of a kind. Spoilt users, the pair of them.
Xander shrugged unapologetically. ‘Perhaps if you stop treating me like an idiot and answer my questions honestly I might stop poking my nose into your pedal bin and your business.’ Despite the mildness of his tone, he was nevertheless determined to have answers to his questions. ‘Where were you this evening, Casey?’ He was pretty sure now that she hadn’t been out for an evening of frivolity—the woman didn’t look as if she even knew the meaning of the word.
Casey looked up at him in a slight daze, still having no idea what had prompted this man’s visit, or why he was questioning her so intently. She was only aware that she was simply too tired to argue with him any longer…
‘I was at work,’ she sighed. ‘I work four evenings a week in the restaurant of a local hotel.’
Xander Fraser scowled darkly. ‘Wouldn’t it have been more convenient, with Josh still so young, for you to have found a job in the day—?’
‘I do have a job in the day!’ she told him impatiently, feeling at a distinct disadvantage as his body, with its superior height, loomed over hers; Xander Fraser was at least a foot taller than her own five feet two inches. ‘I work five days a week cooking at a local café as well as the four evenings at the hotel,’ she revealed, still reluctant to discuss her personal business with this man who exuded such wealth and power.
‘Why?’ he probed.
Her cheeks flushed. ‘That is none of your—’
‘Business?’ Xander finished for her. ‘What if I’m making it my business?’ he added softly, becoming more and more convinced as he talked to Casey that he had found the answer to getting out of the corner Brad was pushing him into.
That what he was about to propose would solve Casey’s problems, too…
She gave a disbelieving laugh, at once looking younger, even if the expression in her green eyes was derisive rather than genuinely amused. ‘And why would Xander Fraser, multimillionaire film producer, want to do something like that?’ she scorned, highlighting the immense gulf between their vastly different circumstances.
Not that she wanted to be mega-rich. Comfortably off would be nice. But the garden centre and the money that her father had left her when he died were long gone—the first bankrupted in a year under Sam’s management, the second frittered away as he had struggled to make a success—played at?—landscape gardening.
The only thing Sam had succeeded at was ending their torturous marriage once and for all by meeting Chloe Fraser!
‘Well, Mr Fraser?’ she said belligerently.
His mouth thinned at her tone of voice. ‘I have—a business proposition to put to you,’ he finally bit out.
Casey shook her head. ‘I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood my cooking abilities, Mr Fraser. I don’t cater for dinner parties—’
‘Not that sort of business proposition!’ he growled, pacing the small confines of the kitchen, his gaze narrowed to vivid blue slits. ‘Are you familiar with Brad Henderson?’
Her eyebrows raised at the mention of the rich, retired owner of a Hollywood film studio. ‘Not personally, no.’
‘I am,’ Xander said.
Casey shrugged. ‘You’re both in the same business.’
‘He’s also Chloe’s father,’ Xander expanded. ‘And therefore Lauren’s grandfather.’
Casey hadn’t known that—although it probably went a long way towards explaining why Chloe had always been so sure of having her own way. A privileged, over-indulgent father, followed by marriage to an even richer husband—what choice had the other woman had but to be spoilt and selfish?
All of which was of absolutely no relevance whatsoever now that Chloe was dead.
Was it…?
Casey put up a tired hand to brush her hair away from her brow. ‘I really don’t see what this has to do with me.’
‘I’m getting to that,’ Xander assured her impatiently. ‘Lauren and Josh are already friends. Things obviously aren’t going too well with you if you have to work at two jobs in order to remain even this financially solvent—’
‘Now, look, Mr Fraser—’
‘Will you just hear me out, Casey?’ Xander cut in. ‘I have something to say, and your constant interruptions aren’t making it any easier!’
She raised blonde brows, indignant colour in her cheeks. ‘Maybe if you stopped making this so personal…?’
His mouth twisted humourlessly. ‘But it is personal, Casey. Very personal,’ he added heavily. ‘For reasons that I will explain in a moment, I’m here to ask if, in return for my financially providing for you and Josh, you would consider becoming my wife.’
Speechless.
Xander Fraser had rendered her completely speechless with his announcement—his question?
He couldn’t possibly be serious!
Could he?
CHAPTER THREE
CASEY felt as if she were fighting her way through cotton-wool—thick, wispy clouds of it that stopped her reaching the surface, stopped her from remembering—
This was all a dream! Xander Fraser was a dream. As his marriage proposal had been a dream—
‘Drink this,’ rasped an autocratic voice. ‘Come on, Casey, open your eyes and drink.’
Unfortunately, that voice was all too familiar. Not a dream, then. Or even a nightmare! Which meant that Xander’s marriage proposal had been very real…
‘I know you’re awake, Casey.’ His voice was softer now. ‘I’m not going to disappear just because you refuse to open your eyes and look at me,’ he taunted gently.
Her lids snapped open and she glared up at her tormentor. She was now sitting slumped in the armchair Xander must have carried her to when she’d fainted, and he was bent over her, holding out a glass of clear brown liquid.
A rueful smile touched those beautifully sculpted lips as he made no effort to back off. ‘Drink some of the sherry, Casey,’ he ordered as he held the glass closer to her. ‘It should be brandy, I know, but it’s all I could find in the way of alcohol,’ he added wryly.
It was cooking sherry, Casey recognised with a grimace as she took the glass from him, used to flavour a trifle she had made for Christmas, several months ago. And not a very good cooking sherry, either. But he was right. She needed something to dispel some of the numbed shock she was feeling.
Xander Fraser was the type of man who was always right, she decided, thoroughly disgruntled. She gulped down the sherry, finding it as disgusting as she’d thought it would be, but nonetheless reviving for all that.
Great, Xander muttered inwardly when he saw those green eyes begin to sparkle unnaturally and the flush that suddenly coloured Casey’s previously pale cheeks; one glass of bloody awful sherry and the woman was drunk. No doubt the fact that she obviously didn’t eat properly hadn’t helped.
‘That’s enough of that,’ he said firmly. He took the empty glass away from her and placed it on the coffee table, straightening as he did so to move slightly away from her. His deliberately bland expression showed none of the concern he had felt a few minutes ago, as he’d carried her limp body from the kitchen to place her in the chair in the sitting room.
The woman had been like gossamer in his arms—so light she’d felt as though she didn’t weigh much more than Lauren. As he had looked down at her he’d wondered what difference a few good meals and some TLC would bring to the hollows of her cheeks and the slender curves of her body. How she would look if the worry and stress she was obviously suffering were to be removed and she could actually start to enjoy life again.