Tasha turned the wedding ring on her finger 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 CHAPTER ELEVEN CHAPTER TWELVE Copyright

Tasha turned the wedding ring on her finger

“Real gold,” she said. “A real wedding. You’re really my husband. It feels so strange.”

Chase took her hand in his for a moment, his thumb stroking the ring on her finger. “The fact that you are wearing that piece of metal doesn’t mean I have any rights over you.”

“Legally you do,” said Tasha.

He smiled, and that unsettling look was back in his warm, dark eyes. “I could kiss you...”

Linda Miles was born in Kenya, spent her childhood in Argentina, Brazil and Peru, and completed her education in England. She is a keen rider, and wrote her first story at the age of ten when laid up with a broken leg after a fall. She considers three months a year the minimum acceptable holiday allowance but has never got an employer to see reason, and took up writing romances as a way to have adventures and see the world.

Last-Minute Bridegroom
Linda Miles

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

RAIN poured from a pitch-black sky. The wind howled through the woods. Not the best night for a two-mile walk up a bad country road, but at this point Natasha Merrill didn’t have much choice. The nearest taxi service was thirty miles away; she’d called the house, but there had been no reply.

Not for the first time she had glared from the station phone booth to the house at the top of the hill. All the lights were lit; her father was home, but the phone rang ten, twenty, thirty times and went unanswered. Her father was obviously in his study. The phone could not be heard from his study. Well-meaning people who did not know him well sometimes pointed out that he could easily put an extension through to the study.

‘I could,’ was the usual reply. ‘But in that case I would have to find some other room for my study where I would not be disturbed by the phone.’

Tasha sighed. She’d been trying desperately to call him all day, but now, perversely, she was almost glad she hadn’t been able to reach him. She didn’t want to tell him about it on the phone. She wanted to throw herself in his arms and cry until she couldn’t cry any more. There wouldn’t be anything he could do, but it wouldn’t matter. He would hold her, and talk about what had happened, and after a while it would remind him of something completely irrelevant but more interesting to a professor of philosophy. He would drift into a discussion of some obscure philosophical problem and insist that she try to discuss it too, and she would forget about Jeremy and what he had done.

Lightning flashed overhead. There was a crash of thunder two seconds later. She was soaked to the skin, but she almost welcomed the violence of the weather. For a few seconds at a time it knocked out of her head the catastrophe that was her life. Wouldn’t she ever learn? Because the worst of it was that it wasn’t just Jeremy. She’d neglected her work at university because she’d spent so much time being business manager of various student drama productions starring Malcolm, her boyfriend It hadn’t been an ideal relationship, but she’d tried hard to make it work; then Malcolm had met the sister of a famous producer and walked out.

Tasha had scraped through her finals somehow and found a job in the teeth of deservedly unenthusiastic references. She’d started at the bottom in the marketing department of a publishing house, working insanely hard to forget about Malcolm, and had soon had a promotion. Just when things had been beginning to look good she’d started going out with Colin, a struggling writer. Colin had moved in with her and forgotten to pay the rent for two years, and then he had married a well-known literary agent. Tasha did not really subscribe to the theory that men were scum, but why did she always end up with the kind of man who thought every relationship involved a certain amount of take and take? She’d found a new job in the marketing and promotions department of a well-known women’s magazine, had a short disastrous relationship for a change, and then she’d met Jeremy. And now she was twenty-six. Was it going to be like this for the rest of her life?

Blasts of rain battered her face. Tasha scowled. It was stupid dwelling on the past. Stupid to be miserable about things she could do nothing about. The only problem was that it was better than the alternative: being miserable about all the things she was somehow going to have to do something about. Finding a new job, for instance, because she’d given notice and her replacement was arriving this week. Finding a place to live at a week’s notice, to take another example, because the new tenant of her old flat was due to move in next week and Tasha certainly wasn’t going to be living with Jeremy. And last but not least, horror of horrors—no. She was not going to think about that. She was turning the last bend in the road. Another five minutes, and she would be there.

The house was blazing with lights. If her father couldn’t hear the phone, though, chances were he wouldn’t hear a knock or doorbell either, and Tasha was too wet and cold to wait to find out. Like all the professor’s children, stepchildren, nieces, nephews and third cousins twice removed Tasha had a key. She turned it in the front door, and stepped inside.

She glanced, ruefully, in the hall mirror—she actually looked as bad as she felt, which was saying something.

She would never be conventionally beautiful—her large, misty grey-green eyes were her best feature, but they were set in a face which combined high, broad cheekbones with a pointed chin. Her eyes slanted up slightly under flyaway brows, and on a good day they gave her oddly shaped face a haunting, almost elfin look. On a good day there was something almost other-worldly about her colouring, hair like silver gilt cut along the jaw as a brilliant frame for the misty eyes and pale skin.

Today, however, was emphatically not a good day. Her wet hair clung to her head like dirty, sodden straw; her skin was deathly pale, her small chin just made her face look pinched. Her eyes weren’t red from crying because she hadn’t been able to cry; they just stared blankly out from the pale, pinched face. It was stupid to care about how she looked at a time like this, except that seeing herself in the mirror, plain, wet, miserable, she could hardly blame Jeremy for walking away from someone a little rain could turn into a drowned rat.

She grimaced, and headed automatically for the stairs to the top of the house, where her father was no doubt wrestling with a recalcitrant footnote.

There are fathers who deal with a crisis in a daughter’s love life by offering to beat her boyfriend to a pulp, or to send her on a package holiday to Hawaii. Then there are fathers who talk thoughtfully about the seventeenth-century philosopher Spinoza, who analysed the emotions according to the rules of geometry. The professor belonged to this smaller category of father, with the result that the emotions he talked about always seemed to exist somewhere off on Planet Philosophy, and to have nothing whatsoever to do with anything anyone might feel in the real world. Tasha’s mother had always found this attitude intensely irritating, but Tasha liked it: it made her feel as though nothing in the real world mattered that much. The more unspeakably horrible things were, the more desperately it mattered to be told that they weren’t really all that important. Another minute and—well, nothing would be any different, but her father would put an arm around her and say something about his hero and maybe she would feel a little bit better.

She’d already put her foot on the first step when she heard the unmistakable sound of a glass being set on a table.

‘Daddy!’ she exclaimed, and rushed into the sitting room. ‘Daddy, it’s me—’

A man was standing by the fireplace with his back to the door.

‘I’m afraid he’s not here,’ he said. ‘I got here this morning and there was no sign of him.’

Tasha stared speechlessly as the man turned to face her and give her a familiar sardonic smile. She’d come four miles by bike, two hundred and twenty miles by train and two miles on foot in the pouring rain to be all alone with Bad Cousin Chaz.

Chase Adam Zachary Taggart looked as though he’d stepped out of the kind of ad where tall, loose-limbed, impossibly handsome men run through the streets of Paris at dawn with a good-looking double bass. He was standing with his weight on one leg, hands in his pockets, with loose-limbed easy grace; he was wearing a suit which managed, for all its ravishing dark elegance, to look like a careless afterthought, something to throw on if you had to open a West End show or pick up an Oscar or improvise jazz in a backroom bar—he’d done all three. Black hair swept back from a sardonic face; black eyes looked cynically out at the world from under hooked black brows; a finely carved yet sensuous mouth curved in a faint, cynical smile. He was instinctively graceful, terrifyingly elegant, impossibly handsome and, unlike her bedraggled self, dry.

He was also, Tasha thought resentfully, supposed to be several thousand miles away. She’d done the decent thing and sent him an invitation six months ago to the wedding. Bad Cousin Chaz had replied that, much as he’d love to come, business commitments would make it impossible to get away from New York at that particular time. Company A was going to be taking over Company B, or Company C was launching a flotation of shares, or maybe Chaz had just scheduled the assassination of the director of Company D for the day of the wedding—Tasha couldn’t remember precisely which flimsy excuse had formed the substance of the calculated rudeness of the reply. She’d been too relieved. The wedding was to be her special day; it had been wonderful to know for sure that, on that day of all days, Bad Cousin Chaz would not be there.

Except that he was here, now, of all impossible times—

‘What are you doing here?’ she managed to say at last. ‘I thought you were in New York.’

‘I was.’

‘I thought you couldn’t leave New York,’ Tasha said pointedly. ‘I thought the reason you couldn’t come to the wedding was that you were going to be expectedly detained on urgent business that couldn’t spare you for two hours let alone two days.’

Chaz shrugged. ‘Deal’s off. Something I wanted to discuss with the professor. I’ll have to get back soon, though; ’fraid I can’t stay for the wedding.’

He raised a sardonic black eyebrow in a gesture she knew and loathed. ‘Speaking of which, what are you doing here? You should be ticking off items on “101 Things Every Bride Should Do For a Perfect Wedding”, not gallivanting around the countryside.’

Tasha gritted her teeth. He was going to have to know sooner or later; no point fighting off the inevitable.

‘Deal’s off,’ she said curtly.

Chaz had never made any secret of despising Jeremy; she braced herself for some acerbic remark.

He was frowning. ‘Off? You mean as in bridesmaids dismissed, cancel the cake?’

‘That’s right,’ said Tasha.

Chaz whistled softly, then grinned. ‘Well, let me be the first to congratulate you, Tash, I couldn’t be more pleased. What exactly made you change your mind?’

Tasha gritted her teeth again.

‘I didn’t,’ she said.

An astonished swoop of eyebrow met this new development. ‘You mean it was Jeremy’s idea?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, don’t stop there,’ said her abominable cousin. ‘Tell me all about it, or, no, wait, let me get you a drink and then tell me all about it. What are you having?’

‘Scotch,’ said Tasha. ‘And it’s none of your business.’

Chaz crossed the room to the drinks cupboard. ‘Just as you like,’ he said, filling two glasses. ‘Depends whether you want me to hear your version or someone else’s.’ He put the drink in her hand, then gestured towards the sofa. ‘Come and get dry.’

Tasha sank wearily to the sofa. Chaz sat down beside her, one leg crossed over the other, an arm along the back of the sofa.

‘Well, you may as well know,’ she said dully. ‘You know how Daddy has all those investments?’

‘Yes?’

‘But he’s not one of those rich men people have heard of, and I didn’t realise Jeremy knew.’

‘Yes?’

‘But he did, only he didn’t realise—what I mean is, I told him Daddy had decided to give each of us now the money he would have left to us in his will, but I never said he was going to give most of it to that educational trust because it didn’t seem relevant. I didn’t know Jeremy knew how much Daddy had so I didn’t know how much he thought I’d be getting.’

‘So he’d done his homework and thought he’d be on first name terms with five or six million pounds instead of a couple of hundred grand?’

‘And he said he needed the money to do what he wanted to do, it wasn’t for him it was for us, if he couldn’t do the things he’d dreamed of accomplishing he wouldn’t be the man I thought I was marrying and we’d both be diminished—’

She turned her head away. She wasn’t going to cry in front of Chaz.

When her voice was steady again she said, ‘It’s stupid. I feel ashamed even though I didn’t do anything wrong. I feel sick inside. It’s as if I’ve lost someone who never even existed, and I keep seeing his face and hearing his voice saying those things and they won’t go away and nothing makes it any better. I don’t know what would make it better.’

As long as her head was turned away she could say the things she would have said to her father. Her father would have said something philosophical.

Chaz said, ‘Well, I know what I’d do, but it probably isn’t your style.’

‘What’s that?’ said Tasha drearily. ‘Puncture his tyres?’

‘I was thinking more in terms of violent physical exercise,’ said Chaz.

‘I’ve already ridden four miles by bicycle and walked two miles in the rain,’ said Tasha.

‘That wasn’t quite the kind of exercise I had in mind,’ said Chaz.

Something in his tone of voice made Tasha lift her head. There was a lurking spark of mischief in her cousin’s eyes.

‘Oh, you mean sleep with someone,’ she said baldly. ‘I should have known—when do you ever think of anything else?’

‘Once in a while,’ said Chaz. ‘I did say I thought it wasn’t your style.’

‘It’s just that it’s such a stupid idea,’ said Tasha. ‘What am I supposed to do? Walk into a pub or a wine bar or something and proposition the first man I see? Why on earth would that make me feel better?’

‘I wasn’t suggesting you should sleep with just anyone,’ said Chaz.

‘Well, what did you have in mind?’ said Tasha in exasperation.

A black eyebrow swooped up mockingly. ‘You could spend the night with me.’

Tasha stared at him for a moment—then, to her astonishment, burst out laughing. ‘Chaz, you’re impossible. Of all the times to be making stupid jokes—’

‘It wasn’t a joke,’ said Chaz. ‘It’s a serious suggestion in that it would probably make you feel better. Of course it’s true I wouldn’t expect you to try it, but that doesn’t make it a joke.’

Tasha stared at her mad, bad cousin. Except, of course, that he wasn’t her cousin. Chase Taggart was the son of the first wife of the second husband, or was it the second wife of the first husband—? No. Tasha’s parents had got divorced when she was ten. Her mother, leaving her first husband, had gone to stay briefly with her sister, then on her third. Tasha’s Aunt Monica had had a glamorous new husband; the husband had had a son. That son, who was absolutely no relation of Tasha’s of any kind, was Chaz: five years older and five thousand years more sophisticated, black-haired, black-eyed, black-browed, with a razor-sharp wit used unsparingly on whichever of his four or five families he happened to visit.

Her mad, bad not-really-cousin stared back at her, eyes brilliant with amusement. ‘Well?’

‘Well what?’ said Tasha.

‘Well, what’s the answer?’

‘The answer is I think you’re completely despicable,’ snapped Tasha. ‘I suppose this is something that’s worked for you in the past? You find some woman whose world has fallen apart and who’s completely devastated and instead of showing even an iota of sympathy you take advantage of her vulnerable state to seduce her.’

A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. ‘There are different ways of showing sympathy,’ said Chaz unrepentantly. ‘Anyway, there’s a limit to how much sympathy I can feel for you when you’ve just escaped being sentenced to life with a complete and utter prat. Look on the bright side, at least you’ll never have to sleep with Jeremy again, or for that matter with that other idiot—what was his name? Oh, yes, Martin, or with the one before that—Malcolm, was it? No, I’m getting mixed up, aren’t I? Malcolm was your first, then there was Colin, then the man like a piece of damp felt—where in God’s name do you find them all, Tash? If you’ve got to fall for a complete loser, why can’t you at least pick one who’s good in bed?’

Tasha had had plenty of arguments with Chaz over the years, but she hadn’t realised how angry it was possible to be. She felt as if the blood in her veins was foaming with fury. ‘I’m certainly not going to discuss them with you,’ she said coldly. ‘I’d just like to point out, though, that you can’t possibly know what any of them were like in bed—’

‘Sure I can,’ Chaz said cheerfully. ‘If you think it’s selfish to seduce someone, as you put it, it must be because you think the man is the only one who can enjoy it, which means, sweet coz, that they can’t have been doing it right.’

Tasha realised that she was actually grinding her teeth. ‘I don’t want to discuss it,’ she said again, in a tone that had moved from the refrigerator to the freezer.

‘Poor darling, was it that bad?’ said Chaz, with the same lurking smile. ‘Mind you, I had my suspicions—’

‘I don’t want to discuss it,’ Tasha said furiously.

‘Of course you don’t,’ said Chaz. ‘You’d like to hit me for being right. Completely unfair, if you ask me. After all, I’m not the one who left you bored and frustrated through lack of imagination and sheer technical incompetence—’

Tasha didn’t even think. Rage snapped her hand back and sent it slicing through the air at the handsome, taunting face.

A hand shot up and caught her wrist.

‘I know you’d like to hit me, Natasha,’ Chaz said softly, his deep, slow voice dragging over her name like a caress. ‘But don’t be too hasty.’ His eyes gleamed. ‘Here’s the deal. Let me kiss you, and if you don’t like it you can hit me and I won’t hit you back.’

Tasha tried to pull her hand away, but his grip tightened on her wrist.

‘Come on, Tash,’ he said, the smile lighting his eyes. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve never wondered. And it’s just a kiss, after all. What are you afraid of? That you might like it too much?’

Tasha glared at him speechlessly.

He laughed. ‘Well, let’s try unilateral disarmament.’ He released her wrist, allowing his hand to fall to his side. ‘Come on, Tash,’ he said even more softly, an eyebrow quirking up. ‘Close your eyes.’

Later she would never know why she did it. Instead of slapping him across the face the moment her hand was free, she let her hand drop harmlessly to her lap and closed her eyes.

At first she thought he’d been teasing her, that it was just a joke to see if she’d do it. Then something brushed her mouth as lightly as the wing of a butterfly, and was gone. It brushed her mouth again; it was as if someone had held a lighted match just short of her mouth, grazing her lips with the scorched air just outside the flame. Then it was gone, but her mouth stung from the fleeting contact. Then it was back, but this time it lingered just the fraction of a second longer before dropping away.

Tasha found that she was holding her breath. The featherlight touch seemed to have nothing to do with her horrible cousin Chaz, who was always so knowing, so arrogant, so convinced that he was a super-stud. Something touched her mouth again, long enough for her to feel the warmth of his breath before it was gone. Her lips parted involuntarily, and now his mouth was on hers and she could taste him, something as smooth and golden as her Scotch, with wickedness lurking in its amber depths. It warmed her like the Scotch, melting a little of the cold, hard core of misery that was like an icy rock in her chest; she breathed in, opening her mouth wider.

The tip of his tongue traced the sensitive skin of her upper lip, leaving it tingling as if from an electric shock—and the inside of the lip tingled too, as if in anticipation. But the tongue was gone, leaving only the memory of the thrill, a longing to feel it again. Now he ran the tip of his tongue just inside her lips, and the reality was better than imagination, intoxicating in its intensity, as if someone had doubled the strength of her drink behind her back. Tasha breathed out on a long sigh, relaxing into the kiss; the lovely honeyed warmth spread through her body, dissolving the wretchedness—or maybe just shielding her for the moment from its bitter cold. But even if it was just for the moment what did it matter? She let her mouth melt against his, savouring the heady taste of it.

He drew his mouth away, and she waited to feel his mouth on hers again, but this time it did not come back.

‘You can open your eyes now, Tasha,’ Chaz said softly.

She opened her eyes. It was a shock to see Chaz looking just as he always did; she might have thought she’d imagined those butterfly kisses, but his mouth was still moist. It was smiling slightly; if she put her mouth on his she would feel the smile on her lips.

She felt slightly sick. The warmth, the lovely sense that nothing mattered except the here and now, had gone with the kiss; the hard, cold rock was back inside.

She stared at Chaz as if she were seeing him for the first time, taking in the humorous, supple mouth, the brilliant black eyes under the black slash of brow, the hawk-like nose and hard jaw.

‘So how was it for you, darling?’ he asked, one of the eyebrows quirking up.

‘It was—’ Tasha began. She was still staring at him. ‘You were right,’ she said. ‘I was completely wrong. It has nothing to do with feelings; it’s just a question of technique. You must have practised a lot to be so good.’

Chaz started to say something and then stopped. He said slowly, ‘So you don’t want to hit me, Tash?’

Tasha was still staring at him. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I want to sleep with you.’

Chaz stared at her. ‘You what?’

‘It was your idea,’ Tasha reminded him. ‘And you’re right. It’s just a physical thing, after all. We can enjoy it for what it is and forget about it. It will help me to forget about all this.’

An odd, rueful expression crept onto the supremely self-confident face of the man beside her. ‘Oh, Lord,’ he said.

‘Daddy won’t be back for ages. I’m still on the pill. We can just go upstairs now,’ said Tasha. ‘Or would you rather have another drink first?’

Chaz took her hand in his, running his thumb over her palm. The honeyed warmth pooled in the palm of her hand and spread up her arm; she drew in a sharp breath.

‘Tash, darling,’ said Chaz, ‘I know it was my idea, but it probably wasn’t a very good one.’

‘Why not?’ said Tasha. ‘Don’t you think you’d enjoy it?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Don’t you think I’d enjoy it?’

‘Yes. butt—’

‘Then what’s the problem?’ Tasha said impatiently.

He smiled at her wryly. ‘I think you’d hate yourself and me afterwards. You probably can’t hate me any more than you do already, but—’

‘I don’t hate you, Chaz,’ Tasha interrupted ruthlessly, conveniently ignoring her conviction for the past sixteen years that Chaz was a blot on the planet. ‘I just think you’re selfish and afraid of commitment. Are you afraid I’ll come chasing you afterwards?’

‘No, I’m not afraid of that.’ His thumb was still stroking her palm. ‘I just think you’re taking on more than you can deal with at a time when you’re pretty vulnerable.’ He raised an eyebrow in self-mockery. ‘I’ll probably hate myself for this, but I don’t think I should take advantage of what’s obviously a momentary aberration.’

Tasha stared at him blankly. If he was going to talk about momentary aberrations, when had Chaz ever turned down anyone who was willing? It must be because she was so unattractive.

‘I know I look horrible,’ she said, ‘but it’s just because I got wet. I’ll look a lot better when I’ve dried off.’

‘You look bloody marvellous,’ said Chaz, ‘but the answer is no.’

‘Is it because you think I’m no good in bed?’ asked Tasha.

Chaz gave her another rueful smile. ‘Tash, darling,’ he said, ‘I don’t think that, and I’d love to have the chance to find out, but in case you hadn’t noticed I’m being chivalrous for the first time in my life.’

Tasha lay wearily back against the sofa. Just for a minute she’d thought she could escape the leaden weight in her chest. For an hour, maybe a couple of hours, that lovely golden warmth would have spread through her body and maybe for just a little while she could have put everything out of her mind as well. But she was just stuck with it. A tear trickled down her cheek.

Chaz wiped it away with a finger. ‘I may be good, but I’m not that good,’ he said.

‘I’d love to have the chance to find out,’ Tasha said pointedly. ‘I don’t call it very chivalrous to lead me on and then back out at the last minute. I’ll bet you’d be furious if a woman did that to you and then told you it was for your own good.’

‘Touché,’ said Chaz, ‘but I still think you’d regret it.’ He smiled at her. ‘Tell you what. Pretend I’m really your cousin, pretend you don’t think to know me is to loathe me, and I’ll give you a shoulder to cry on.’

He slid one arm behind her shoulders, the other under her knees, and scooped her up onto his lap. His strong arms closed tight around her; her legs lay across his powerful thighs, she could hear his heart beating in the powerful chest. ‘Is that better?’ he asked, his breath stirring her hair.

It was and it wasn’t. The sheer physical strength and solidity of the body which held hers was a comfort, keeping at bay a little of the misery. But it made her whole body ache with a yearning which couldn’t be satisfied.

‘It’s a bit better,’ said Tasha.

‘Good,’ said Chaz.

‘But could you not hold me quite so tight?’

‘Sorry,’ said Chaz. He loosened his arms.

‘Thanks,’ said Tasha. She put her arms around his neck.

Chaz looked at her warily.

Tasha looked at the firm, sensuous mouth. ‘Do you think I’ll regret it if I kiss you?’ she asked.

An eyebrow quirked up. ‘No,’ he said wryly. ‘But I may.’

Tasha smiled. ‘You can look after yourself,’ she said, and she kissed him full on the mouth.

There was a fraction of a second in which he hesitated, probably wondering whether it was chivalrous to take advantage of her vulnerable state of mind.

Tasha had already worked out that she’d better make the most of her chances, now that it turned out Chaz had this previously unsuspected streak of chivalry in his character. She couldn’t waste time on little butterfly kisses when any minute chivalry might raise its ugly head; she devoured his mouth the way a man downs his last drink before closing time.

Chivalry went to the wall.

His arms tightened around her again; his mouth opened under hers, and he responded to the urgency of her kisses with a hungry passion which showed, she realised dimly, how much restraint he must have been showing earlier. She buried her hands in his hair, holding his head so he couldn’t move it, and raised her head so that she could look into the face of her mad, bad kissing cousin. Now her eyes devoured his face as hungrily as her mouth had devoured his mouth. When she’d kissed her boyfriends physical imperfections hadn’t seemed to matter, because she’d always thought she was kissing someone with a wonderful character. Chaz, on the other hand, was selfish and bad tempered and had countless bad qualities without a single one to redeem them—but he was so beautiful. She kissed one corner of his mouth, then the other, tucking her tongue into the crease. He smiled, so that the corner of his mouth quirked up under hers, and then he kissed the corner of her mouth, still smiling, and slid his tongue into her mouth.

Instead of the honeyed warmth she felt something hotter and sweeter, as fiery as a slug of brandy. Her misery did not melt this time from her mind—it was blasted out of it. There was nothing but the taste of his mouth, the hard muscle of his body—that, and the feeling that lava ran in her veins. She lost all sense of time. All that mattered was the scorching heat that flared up at his touch, burning away all thought—and the intoxicating awareness that she had the same effect on him. Chaz was always so mocking, so cool, so superior—but now his heart pounded next to hers, and she could hear his breath coming in ragged gasps. His hand dropped to her thigh, forcing her up against his hips so that she could feel his desire for her.

At last he raised his hands to her shoulders and held her away.

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘This is insane. Let’s go upstairs.’

Tasha looked into his face. His hair had fallen forward over one eyebrow; his eyes were brilliant, his mouth slightly smiling. She hadn’t known it was possible to want a man so badly. But there were other passions boiling up inside her too. She had somehow been polite and civilised to Jeremy, she’d had to walk away from what she’d thought was a whole lifetime with the perfect man, someone who’d turned out not to exist. There was rage just below the surface for men who pretended they wanted something for your good, men who changed the rules as soon as they saw something they wanted. Sitting across Chaz’s lap, she could feel the tension in his body, feel the desire just barely held in check.

‘I don’t think that’s a very good idea,’ said Tasha, jumping to her feet.

‘What?’ said Chaz.

‘I think you’d hate yourself afterwards,’ Tasha explained cheerfully. Her pulse was still racing at about twice its normal speed; the look on his face at this riposte did nothing to slow it down.

‘Very funny,’ said Chaz.

‘I think you were right,’ Tasha said. ‘I’m in a very vulnerable state of mind. You’d regret it if you felt you’d taken advantage of me.’

Temper sizzled in the black eyes. The lovely, sensuous mouth tightened ominously.

‘All right,’ said Chaz. ‘You’ve made your point. Satisfied?’ He stood up, thrust his hands in his pockets, and made an effort to shrug off his irritation. ‘I admit it was patronising,’ he said. ‘But we both want the same thing, after all.’ He smiled at her, running a finger over her kiss-swollen mouth. ‘Fireworks,’ he said softly. ‘Let’s go upstairs and set some off.’

Tasha looked up at him. He was right in a way. All these years she’d despised him for being unfair to her boyfriends, for judging them by superficial standards—she was just beginning to realise that she hadn’t even understood what he was talking about. She could go upstairs and find out with a vengeance.

But there were still other passions raging inside her. It was wonderful to have Chaz standing there, furious at her but not able to stay furious because he wanted her so badly. When would she ever have a chance like this again? Whereas if she wanted to sleep with him, she thought flippantly, she could do that any time.

Chaz was still smiling. Of course, he could see the way she was looking at him, eyes lingering on the mouth she had kissed; how could he imagine she wouldn’t give in?

If she were her usual self of course she would give in. But where had being her usual self got her? She knew she was behaving badly; it felt wonderful to know she was behaving badly and do it anyway. She was going to be a bad, bad, bad, bad girl.

‘I’d just rather not,’ said Tasha, and hugged herself at the look of blank incredulity that replaced the confident smile.

‘You’re actually serious about this,’ Chaz said slowly.

‘Of course I’m serious about it,’ said Tasha.

A muscle twitched in his cheek. ‘I should take you over my knee and spank you for this,’ he said tightly. ‘And I’m quite serious about that, in case you’re wondering.’

‘I don’t know why,’ Tasha shot back. ‘You backed out and I didn’t threaten you with physical violence; why is this any different?’

‘The difference,’ Chaz said acidly, ‘is that you’re doing it out of sheer bloody-mindedness.’

‘I know,’ Tasha said with disconcerting frankness. ‘But it feels so lovely.’

‘Is that meant to make me feel better about it?’ asked Chaz.

‘I’m upset,’ said Tasha. ‘My life has been turned upside down. It may not be your fault, but you’re here. It’s not fair, but then life isn’t fair.’ She gave him a dazzling smile. ‘Anyway, who knows when I’ll have another chance to be bloody-minded to you? Whereas there’s a good chance I can sleep with you some other time if I want to. Unless, of course, you decide you want your revenge.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake—’ He scowled at her.

‘You know, we could go on like this for years,’ Tasha said blithely. ‘Next time you could proposition me and turn me down when I accept, then I could proposition you and then change my mind, then you could start to seduce me and then have a headache—’

‘Will you stop it?’ There was still a glint of temper in the black eyes, but a reluctant smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. ‘I don’t know whether to kiss you or kill you,’ he said exasperatedly.

‘Well, you’d better not kiss me,’ said Tasha. ‘I wouldn’t want you to get excited.’

Chaz gave her a sardonic look. ‘You know, the funny thing is people have quite the wrong idea of you. Everyone thinks you’re such a nice girl.’

‘Yes,’ Tasha said rather bitterly. ‘That’s why they walk all over me.’

‘No comment,’ said Chaz. ‘I’m going to have another drink to calm my nerves.’

He walked over to the sideboard. Tasha followed him. She could do with a drink herself. It occurred to her that she’d never been so horrible to anyone in her whole life. For some reason she liked Chaz a lot better now that she’d been so horrible to him.

‘I enjoyed the kiss, anyway,’ she said politely. ‘Both kisses.’

Chaz flicked her a glance. ‘I could tell.’ An eyebrow shot up. ‘Me too. Let’s not pursue that line of thought, shall we?’

He poured out a drink for himself, and one for Tasha.

He lifted his glass. ‘To what might have been,’ he said.

‘To what might have been,’ Tasha said gloomily. She took a sip of her drink.

For about the two-hundredth time in twenty-four hours her mind turned to composition. It was struggling with a communication which was sometimes a letter starting ‘I am sorry to say’, and sometimes a repulsively formal printed invitation retraction starting ‘Professor G.G. Merrill regrets to inform you’, but which always got bogged down at ‘that’. ‘I am sorry to say’, she began, decided again that the printed formal version worked better, decided again that it would be repulsively formal, and abandoned the debate for the two-hundredth time to try to think of a new job to try for. In a week. When she had nowhere to live and nowhere to put her things. Tasha took another sip of her drink.

If she stored them with her father, she thought again, she would have to move them twice, and anyway he had nowhere to put them. If she stored them with her mother she would get a long lecture on scaring men away and anyway her mother had nowhere to put them because her house was full of wedding presents. Wedding presents! For the two-hundredth time she remembered that she was going to have to do something about the wedding presents. She took another sip of her drink, scowling.

She was going to have to say something about the presents when she wrote to people so they would know they would get them back. But she would have to say that they should not expect to get them back too soon because she had to look for a new job and a place to stay. But you couldn’t say that; you just couldn’t. But she just couldn’t send them back until she had a job and a place to stay. But what if it took weeks or months and she still hadn’t sent back the presents? But what if—?

‘It’s going to be so horrible,’ she said. ‘I gave notice on my flat and someone else is moving in so I’ve nowhere to stay. I gave notice at work so I could work in Jeremy’s venture capital company and now I don’t have a job. On top of which we’ve invited hundreds of people to the wedding. Now I’ll have to uninvite them and send back hundreds of presents and explain and explain and explain... What is it?’

Chaz was staring down at her with an arrested expression. ‘I’ve had an idea,’ he said. ‘Just when is this wedding?’

‘Next week,’ said Tasha with a grimace.

‘Not a problem,’ said Chaz. ‘Special licence.’

‘You don’t need a licence to call off a wedding,’ Tasha said wearily.

‘I know that,’ said Chaz. The black eyes were brilliant with amusement. ‘But I don’t think you should call it off.’

‘I don’t have any choice in the matter,’ Tasha said impatiently. ‘Even if Jeremy changed his mind I just couldn’t after what he said—’

Chaz shook his head. ‘Oh, you can’t marry Jeremy,’ he said. ‘That would never do.’ He smiled at her blandly. ‘I think you should go ahead with the wedding, and marry me instead.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘WHAT did you say?’ said Tasha.

‘You should marry me,’ said Chaz. ‘It’s obvious, really. Can’t think why I didn’t think of it before.’

Tasha could think of about five million reasons not to marry Chaz. ‘Are you out of your mind?’ she said feebly.

Chaz gave her a faintly malicious smile. ‘Not at all,’ he said blandly. ‘Only trying to help. It solves everything.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Tasha. ‘I couldn’t possibly marry you.’

‘Oh, not permanently, of course,’ said Chaz. ‘Just for a year or two. Everyone will be expecting it to break up, so they won’t be surprised—the only thing that they’ll be surprised about is that we married in the first place.’

‘Exactly,’ said Tasha. ‘Because it’s a ridiculous idea.’

Chaz raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re not thinking,’ he said. ‘If you call off the wedding you don’t have to give the guests the real reason, but you’ll have to explain to your father, no?’

‘Yes,’ said Tasha.

‘Are you sure you want to do that?’

Tasha stared at him. Ever since she’d talked to Jeremy the only thing she’d been able to think of was her father—of throwing herself into his arms and crying her heart out and explaining what had gone wrong. Now, for the first time, she thought of her father’s reaction to hearing the reason for the break-up. What if he felt guilty for not giving her more money? What if he thought she was blaming him for not giving her more money?

Tasha bit her lip.

‘Quite,’ said Chaz. ‘It’s a pretty big burden to ask him to bear. This way we can give the same story to everyone. We ran into each other somewhere and fell madly in love; you broke off your engagement with Jeremy and decided to marry me instead. We knew it was short notice but since the wedding had already been planned we decided to go ahead with it.’

He grinned at her. ‘The beauty of it is in the arrangements. Knowing you, I’ll bet you’ve ended up inviting all five of my fractional families—which means the groom’s guests are already taken care of apart from a few friends. That just leaves Jeremy’s side. Well, they’re his guests—let him uninvite them. If any of them happen to show up we’ll simply make them welcome—we can afford to be generous on our big day.’

Tasha was giggling in spite of herself. The thought of various of Jeremy’s repulsive relations sitting in their pews and seeing Chaz at her side appealed to the nasty side of her nature which she hadn’t known she had.

“That is a temptation,’ she admitted. ‘In fact, it would be quite helpful, because then they could pick up their gifts on the way out.’

Chaz laughed. ‘That’s the spirit. Then you can come to New York with me, and file for a divorce in a year.’

Tasha sighed. ‘I wish it were that simple.’

Chaz flicked up an eyebrow. ‘What’s complicated? The most important thing is not to upset your father. The second most important thing is to make things easy for yourself. Well, you’ve done all the work for the wedding, it’s easier to go ahead than do all the extra work of calling it off.’ He smiled at her. ‘I know it may be a bit hard for you to go through it as a charade when you thought it would be for real, but I’ll see you through it. It won’t be as bad as you think. And afterwards you can just leave everything behind. Spend a year in New York, where there’s nothing to remind you of Jeremy or the things you planned to do. At the end of the year make up your mind what to do next.’

Tasha ran a hand absent-mindedly through her hair. For the first time she considered the preposterous suggestion as a serious possibility. There was no doubt about it; it would be far simpler to go through with things at this stage than to pull back. But how could she marry Chaz?

‘Even if all that’s true,’ she said at last, ‘why would you do such a thing? You can’t possibly want to be married. It’ll put a terrible cramp in your style.’

Chaz shrugged. ‘True enough.’ The black eyes were thoughtful. ‘But your father’s been pretty decent to me. He’s certainly the nearest thing I’ve ever had to a father, and I don’t have many chances to do something for him.’ His mouth quirked up. ‘Besides, Tash, you’ve always been the most amusing of all my ragbag of sort-of relations, and there’s not much I won’t do for people who don’t bore me.’

Tasha stared at him. ‘But you hate me,’ she protested.

‘You hate me,’ Chaz corrected her gently. ‘But your passion is unrequited.’ He gave her a gleaming glance. ‘And, if I may say so, misplaced. You don’t have to put me in your top ten for this, but I expect you to give me credit, for once, for doing something not purely out of self-interest.’

Tasha still had her drink in her hand. She finished the glass absent-mindedly and set it down.

She frowned. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’ve never slept with anyone I wasn’t in love with. I know I said I was going to a little while ago but I’m not really myself today. I have a feeling when I’m myself again it will just seem impossible again. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.’

She glanced up again, forcing herself to meet his eyes. Chaz gave her a rather wry smile. ‘I don’t have the wrong idea,’ he said. ‘I always said it wasn’t your style. It’s an unconditional offer, Tash; you don’t have to sleep with me if you don’t want to.’ An amused eyebrow shot up as a thought struck him. ‘Anyway, if I start committing adultery a couple of weeks after the wedding it’ll give you ironclad grounds for divorce, and God knows the temptation will be there—all the women I didn’t marry will have their hatchets out for you, darling, and be only too happy to remind me of what I let slip.’

Tasha realised that she was feeling unreasonably annoyed by this remark. It was completely ridiculous. If she went through with it she couldn’t expect Chaz to remain celibate for a year to honour a paper marriage, and she had absolutely no right to be jealous of him. The comment was the type of cynical, sophisticated remark that had always irritated her, but the chances were his assessment of the situation was actually right; it was ridiculous to hold it against him for knowing his world. The bottom line was that he was being very generous, offering her a way out of a nightmarish situation without asking anything in return.

Without asking anything in return? Chaz?

‘Well, if you don’t want sex what do you want?’ asked Tasha.

Chaz grinned. ‘I didn’t say I didn’t want it, darling. I just said you didn’t have to oblige.’

‘Exactly,’ said Tasha. ‘So what do you expect from me? Is it enough to know you’re protecting Daddy from something you think he shouldn’t know? Or do you want something more?’

Chaz paused for thought. ‘Well, if we split up I want half the wedding presents,’ he said. ‘I’ve always wanted to run a five-toaster flat; I reckon we can count on a good ten even without Jeremy’s side.’

‘I did have a wedding list,’ Tasha pointed out.

‘Did you? How disappointing. Well, bags the toaster if we only get one.’

Tasha smiled in spite of herself. ‘Will you be serious?’ she asked. ‘I just want to know what I’m getting into. If there’s something you want out of this I’d rather know now.’

Chaz shrugged. ‘No strings attached, if that’s what you mean. When I say unconditional I mean unconditional. You could keep me company at a few boring dinners, but if you can’t face it I shan’t mind. You don’t have to pretend to be in love with me when we’re out together in public. Half the women I know married for money; no one will think the worse of you if they think you did—they’ll just think you did well for yourself to get someone who wasn’t physically repulsive into the bargain.’

Tasha grimaced. ‘But that’s horrible,’ she said. ‘How can you stand it?’

‘Stand what?’

‘Living with all those miserable people,’ said Tasha.

Chaz raised a sardonic eyebrow. ‘Who says they’re miserable? They sell the one thing they have for the one thing they want—it’s not a bad deal.’

Tasha shuddered. What was the use of all that money, she thought, if someone had a whole life without love? But she certainly wasn’t going to argue about that with Chaz.

‘So what’s the verdict?’ said Chaz. ‘Do you want to give it a whirl?’

Tasha looked at him doubtfully. It wouldn’t be a real marriage, of course, but what on earth would it be like to live for a whole year with Chaz? He could be charming when he chose, but there was a cynical side to his character that always made her want to hit him. What would it be like to live with someone who always thought the worst of everyone? On the other hand if she didn’t, what could she tell her father?

‘Well,’ she said.

Chaz sipped his drink, looking up at her from under Satanic eyebrows, the sardonic expression more pronounced. She had the impression he knew exactly what she was thinking.

She had to do something. Tasha closed her eyes, and she saw a list of hundreds of wedding guests, and three rooms full of wedding presents. If she said no she would have to write to all those guests in the next two days. Some had already made expensive and non-refundable travel arrangements...

She opened her eyes. Chaz was still watching her. He really was devastatingly handsome, she thought irrelevantly. It was hard to believe she’d actually kissed him about ten minutes ago.

‘All right,’ said Tasha. ‘I accept.’

‘Against your better judgement,’ Chaz said acutely. ‘Poor darling. Marriage to the Archfiend versus one thousand disappointed guests.’ He smiled at her, the slightly crooked, uncynical smile that was so disarming because so seldom seen. ‘Never mind, Tash, I’ll try to see you don’t regret it.’

‘I’m sure I shan’t regret it,’ Tasha said stoutly if untruthfully.

‘Liar,’ said her husband-to-be. His eyes were bright with amusement. ‘Don’t look so despondent, darling. We’re in this together. We’ll have a marvellous time. First but not least the wedding—I’ve managed to avoid playing the lead in one for thirty-one years, but if I’ve got to start I can’t imagine a better way than as an understudy. Then there’s my family, most of whom I haven’t seen in donkey’s years—you can’t avoid all of the people all of the time, but you can avoid most of the people most of the time, and since you are deservedly and unreservedly adored by all I’ll enjoy a brief return to favour as the prodigal—followed by a complete severance of relations, with any luck, when I’m unfaithful to their darling within a month of the wedding...’

Tasha suppressed a smile. It was certainly true that the family were going to see marriage as an unexpected sign of good behaviour on the part of their most disgraceful member. ‘You’re so cynical,’ she said. ‘People have been saying to me for years that you weren’t bad at heart, you just hadn’t found what you were looking for, that if you just found the right woman it would make all the difference. They’ll just be happy because they’ll think you’ve found the right person. It’s not their fault that it’s not true.’

The black eyes gleamed. ‘It sounds just the sort of thing they would say,’ he said sardonically. ‘No surprises there. The question is, Tash darling, what did you say back?’

He gave a shout of laughter at her embarrassed expression. ‘Unrepeatable, was it?’ he said, grinning. ‘Thought so. Let’s see, I’ll bet you said if I ever did find the right woman heaven help the woman.’

‘I don’t remember what I said,’ said Tasha.

‘How convenient,’ said Chaz, with a gleaming glance. ‘Well, it’s what I’d say, so I don’t see why you shouldn’t. But enough of me. We have something to celebrate.’

‘Do we?’ said Tasha.

‘Sure we do,’ said Chaz. ‘This calls for champagne. Does your father have champagne?’

‘No,’ said Tasha.

‘Well, let’s stick to Scotch, then,’ said Chaz. ‘We seem to have done all right on it so far.’

He filled their glasses.

He raised his own. ‘To Jeremy,’ he said. ‘The word “cad” has gone out of fashion, but the behaviour never goes out of style. Here’s hoping he gets what’s coming to him.’

‘That’s a horrible toast,’ said Tasha.

‘But one from the heart,’ said Chaz, looking uncharacteristically grim.

‘Well, I’m not going to drink to it,’ said Tasha.

Chaz smiled at her. ‘Well, propose your own, then.’

‘All right, I will,’ said Tasha. She gave him a mischievous smile, and raised her glass. ‘To the right woman, heaven help her.’

Chaz laughed. ‘Well, I’ll drink to that.’ A sardonic eyebrow flicked up. ‘To the right woman, heaven help her,’ he repeated, raising his glass, and he drained it at a single swallow.

CHAPTER THREE

IN THE days that followed Tasha was to find herself looking back on that evening with blank incredulity. She’d been upset, yes. She’d had a couple of stiff drinks, yes. That still didn’t explain how she’d come to kiss Chaz and enjoy it, let alone agree to the most insane proposition she’d ever heard of in her life. The most likely explanation was that she had, in fact, been temporarily insane. The problem was, once she’d agreed to the suggestion in a moment of derangement she was stuck with it when sanity returned.

Chaz had not only had to pay a lot of money for the special licence. He had also had to find a bishop and persuade him that the circumstances requiring the licence were seriously special—on a par with, say, the groom being called off to fight for his country at short notice. Given that he had been able to talk Tasha into it in the first place it was perhaps not surprising that he was able to talk a bishop around as well, but Tasha had a feeling it had not been as easy as he had made it sound.

He had then commandeered the guest list and taken it upon himself to notify all guests of the change. To cancel the wedding now would involve not only notifying everyone again, but explaining how she had come to acquire and discard a new fiancé in a few days’ time. She just didn’t feel up to it.

She found the actual wedding much harder to bear than she had expected.

When Chaz had made the suggestion she’d thought only of the invitations she wouldn’t have to retract, the problem of having to live with Chaz for a year afterwards. It wasn’t until she was actually walking down the aisle on her father’s arm that she remembered the comment Chaz had made, that she’d go through as a charade something she’d expected to be for real.

The whole point of marrying Chaz, after all, had been to avoid upsetting the arrangements. The result, naturally, was that the wedding was in every detail exactly what it would have been if she had been marrying the man she’d expected, only last week, to be spending the rest of her life with.

The dress was obviously the same. It had a bodice of white beadwork that glinted in the soft filmy fabric like tiny pearls, and a long narrow skirt of layers and layers of the same filmy white. Putting it on, she had not been able to help remembering the day she had chosen it, the endless fittings she’d undergone, imagining always the day when Jeremy would see this vision of loveliness walk down the aisle towards him. Now the vision of loveliness was walking up to Chaz, who she suspected would take a completely cynical view anyway.

The jonquils and paper-white narcissus on the pews were just what she’d wanted for a spring wedding, and lining the benches were all the innocent guests she’d invited, for whose benefit she was staging the performance. Quite a lot of the people there had been married to each other at one time or another. She could see why Chaz was so cynical about the whole thing, but she’d taken it seriously. She had practised saying the words she would say, words she wouldn’t have said if she hadn’t meant them. Except that now she was going to say them anyway...

Her bridesmaids paced behind her in the dresses they’d chosen, laughing over colour schemes and designs. The flower girls paced behind them in the tiny dresses she’d chosen for them. She’d never realised how many decisions had to be made in organising a wedding; she’d spent months trying to get everything just right, and all for an empty show.

She had reached the head of the aisle. Chaz was standing there waiting. His eyes met hers, a spark of mischief in them. Well, men didn’t fantasise about their weddings; even as a little girl she’d been imagining hers, and she’d never thought she would stand here with someone she didn’t love. All the same, that conspiratorial glance had warmed her; here was the one person for whom she didn’t have to pretend. Here was someone who knew what she was going through—who’d known better than she had herself what this would be like.

The minister was asking whether anyone could show any just cause why these two should not be joined together. Tasha would have liked to stop the whole thing then and there, but she stayed standing in front of him.

‘I require and charge you both, as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgement when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, that if either of you know any impediment, why ye may not be lawfully joined together in Matrimony, ye do now confess it.’

Tasha gritted her teeth. Why, oh, why had she said she would do this?

The minister read inexorably on. Chaz said ‘I will’ with an air of patient politeness. Tasha repeated the words mechanically. And now they had come to point of no return.

‘I Chase Adam Zachary Taggart take thee Natasha Susan Merrill to my wedded wife....’

Chaz progressed through a long series of vows he’d gone out of his way to avoid heretofore, and certainly had no intention of keeping, with aplomb.

Then it was Tasha’s turn. ‘I Natasha Susan Merrill,’ she whispered, ‘take thee Chase Adam Zachary Taggart to my wedded husband...’

Somehow she managed to pronounce the words.

‘I pronounce that they be Man and Wife together,’ said the minister. ‘You may kiss the bride.’

Chaz brushed her mouth with his lips.

‘Well done,’ he said softly. ‘Not too much longer now.’ Soon they were walking back down the aisle. It was done now. Maybe one day she would meet a man she loved and many him, but if they had a ceremony she would know that she’d been through it before, and lied.

Then there was about an hour outside the church with the photographer. After the sham ceremony the perfectionism of the photographer was almost unbearable; first this group, then that, then about twenty different positions of her and Chaz, just as if anyone would ever care enough about this wedding to open a photo album and look at the pictures. He was just doing his job, of course. He had no way of knowing that there would never be children to leaf through an album, laughing at the old-fashioned nineties clothes, looking at their parents when they were young and in love... There would never be grandchildren looking through the yellowed pages, trying to imagine their parents’ grey-haired parents when they were a young and handsome couple...

Chaz glanced down at the woebegone face beneath the veil. They were standing to one side while the photographer took shots of the parents of the happy couple. This was taking some time, since two out of the four had not been on speaking terms for years and arrangement of the party was a delicate business.

‘You all right?’ Chaz asked.

Tasha nodded.

‘Well, if you say so.’ A sardonic eyebrow flicked up. ‘Fifty pounds says you’re thinking of all the adorable children who’d be looking at this rubbish if it were the real thing.’

‘It wouldn’t be rubbish if it were the real thing,’ Tasha hissed.

‘Tash, darling,’ said Chaz, sounding impossibly bored. ‘If it were the real thing you’d have a lot of pictures of you with a man passionately in love with six million pounds you don’t happen to have. The only good thing you could hope for in those circumstances would be that there wouldn’t be any children left sitting in the wreckage afterwards. You can’t make it the real thing by feeling the right thing at the right time, so stop wallowing in sentimentality.’

Tasha glared at him. ‘I’m not.’

‘No?’

Before she could crush him with a retort, they were swept off to the reception. Hundreds and hundreds of guests shook their hands. A substantial proportion whispered in Tasha’s ear how glad they were to see Chaz had found the right woman at last.

Then it was time to wander around the reception greeting people. Chaz stayed close by her side, murmuring wicked comments about people just out of earshot and providing a running commentary on the proceedings. At one point an elderly gentleman came up and shook Chaz’s hand.

‘Well, you won’t remember me,’ he said bluffly. ‘It’s Mr Phipps.’

‘Mr Phipps,’ Chaz said suavely. ‘Of course.’

‘Oh, you won’t remember,’ said Mr Phipps. ‘But it’s good to see you. Good of you to invite me. To tell you the truth I wouldn’t have recognised you, Jeremy—but then that’s often the way, as I always tell my boys. Sometimes the plainest little devils you could imagine turn into real ladykillers, heh, heh, heh.’

‘Is that a fact?’ said Chaz, with a perfectly straight face.

‘Well, life is full of surprises,’ said Mr Phipps. ‘But I won’t keep you.’ He wandered off in search of the buffet.

‘I wonder if it’s true,’ said Tasha. ‘After all, you were beautiful from the day you were born.’

‘You weren’t born when I was born,’ said Chaz.

‘I’ve seen pictures,’ said Tasha. ‘For all we know, all the ladykillers he thinks plain boys have grown into have been impostors.’

‘For all you know someone could have faked those pictures,’ he pointed out. ‘It isn’t true of you, anyway.’

‘I know,’ Tasha said with a grimace. ‘I was nothing much to look at then, and I never grew out of it.’

An eyebrow swooped up in exaggerated scepticism. ‘Fishing for compliments, Tash? You were lovely then; you must know you’re lovely now. I’m happy to say it if you’d like to hear it.’

Tasha stared at him in astonishment.

‘Natasha the fairy princess,’ he said mockingly. ‘Corny but true. Look at your hair. What colour is it? It’s not blonde, or brown, or red. It’s got threads of gold and silver and copper that catch the light, and every time the light changes your hair changes with it... And look at your eyes. What colour are they? You might as well ask what colour is water. Green? Silver? Depends on the light.’

He looked at her with narrowed eyes, as if trying to bring her into focus. ‘The funny thing is, it never comes out in photographs at all. I’ve never seen a picture of you that wasn’t terrible. It’s as if there really was something magical about it, something the camera can’t catch.’

Tasha was struck literally speechless. She couldn’t believe Chaz could actually mean this seriously—he had to be making fun of her. But he didn’t seem to be joking. But if she took it seriously he’d probably burst out laughing because she’d swallowed it.

‘You don’t believe me?’ he said. ‘I knew there was a jinx on cameras; don’t tell me it works on mirrors as well?’

‘I—I,’ she stammered. ‘That is, we—we’d better go in to dinner.’

The seating for the dinner had been one of those problems which make a bride wonder whether there isn’t something to be said for elopement. Jeremy’s side of the family had been all right; he came with a complement of two parents, both speaking to each other. They might not have had a lot to say, but they didn’t snub each other and they didn’t insult each other.

On Tasha’s side, on the other hand, were her father, her mother, her father’s second wife, her father’s second wife’s third husband—the marriage to Professor Merrill hadn’t lasted, but they wouldn’t miss Natasha’s wedding for worlds. There were also her mother’s third husband, her mother’s second husband and her mother’s second husband’s third wife—the marriage to her mother hadn’t lasted, but they wouldn’t miss little Natasha’s wedding for worlds. There were also Aunt Monica and her five husbands—the third, of course, being Chaz’s father as well, though this had not been uppermost in her mind when struggling with the seating plan. There were sundry former and current wives who had always had a soft spot for little Natasha—including, as it happened, Chaz’s mother, though again this had not been uppermost in her mind when devising a seating plan. There were lots and lots of more or less connected children.

It wasn’t that she wanted an ex-rated wedding—but there wasn’t a single person there who hadn’t made a point of calling her, when his or her own marriage was on the rocks, to say how much they’d always liked her, how much they hoped she wouldn’t drop out of sight just because the formal connection wasn’t there. There was no one who wouldn’t be mortally hurt if left out, or even relegated to a table for friends of the family. Well, what had she been supposed to do?

She had finally worked out a plan which placed each person between two other persons of the opposite sex with whom that person was not going to exchange insults. The change of groom had meant that about eight hours of solid anguish had been for nothing. Chaz’s parents obviously had to sit next to him, which meant that the whole meticulously calculated plan fell apart and had had to be started from scratch.

In the end she had just put names in a hat and dealt them out. She was not going through that again. Sure enough three sworn enemies were now sitting side by side; she sat between Chaz and her father, confidently expecting an explosion.

To her surprise, none came. On the principle that my enemy’s enemy is my friend, everyone seemed to have discovered common ground in their previously undisclosed loathing of Jeremy. Up and down the table people could be heard agreeing that better late than never. The closest anyone came to a nasty remark was the heartfelt wish, by Chaz’s mother, that she had had the sense to trade up before walking down the aisle.

‘Still, darling, you wouldn’t be here if I had, so perhaps it’s all for the best,’ she concluded cheerfully, blithely ignoring a black look from the man who should have got away.

Tasha almost wished they would all start fighting. She ate her way through the dinner, shrinking further and further into her chair, while the marital veterans called out more or less cynical pieces of advice. ‘Don’t make the mistake I made,’ they would begin, and then explain how it had all gone wrong and how she or Chaz could avoid this. Basically the mistake was to assume it would last for ever: what you were supposed to do was assume something was going to go wrong, assume a marriage was going to break up unless you watched it every single second to patch it up again as soon as cracks started to show.

If she’d been marrying someone she loved, and who loved her in return, she might have stood up to them, or at least believed something else was possible. But how could she believe that with the kind of marriage she’d ended up with? It was as if the one thing she’d always wanted was the one thing she could never have. She’d spent most of her childhood and adolescence on the sidelines of relationships going wrong, waiting for things to fall apart and then finding herself suddenly in the middle of a brand new family being polite to the complete strangers who were now married to her parents. Her father had tried to provide an element of stability, but she’d wanted more than an element of stability. All she’d ever wanted was something she knew was going to last. Maybe they were right, and that was the one thing you could never have and never know.

Chaz glanced down at his drooping bride, then around the table at their relatives. He rapped on his glass with a knife. ‘Order, order,’ he said. He looked coolly round their startled faces, then laughed suddenly. ‘You’re giving Tasha the horrors,’ he said. ‘Stop it, all of you. The next one to mention a prenuptial contract gets sent out of the room.’

There was a little ripple of laughter.

‘Sorry, darling,’ said Tasha’s mother. ‘You know we just want what’s best for you, and you know what they say; an ounce of prevention—’

Chaz silenced her with a look.

‘I may have missed something in the ceremony just now,’ he said. ‘I don’t remember anything about covering my back or making sure Tasha didn’t take advantage of me. The only things I can remember have to do with doing things for her.’ He gave them all a lazy smile. ‘Now you all know what a monster of selfishness I am. I’ve been to a few weddings over the years, and the deal never appealed to me. In business you look after your own interests, and the other guy looks after his interests, and if you’re me you end up with a lot of money and a lot of people who don’t like you very much.’

There was another ripple of laughter.

‘Now of course it’s true that in the marriage ceremony you exchange vows, so if you promise to do everything you can to make the other person happy they promise to do the same for you. So if they do their part maybe you won’t lose out too badly.’ A black eyebrow slid up. ‘On the other hand if you’re as good as I am at looking after number one, why would you want to delegate?’

Someone said, ‘Hear, hear.’

Chaz smiled. ‘Quite.’ He took a sip of wine. ‘Well, it had me puzzled for years, why anyone would want to sign on for something like that.’ He picked up the bottle of wine and filled Tasha’s glass. ‘Then I happened to remember a rather wet story I once read by O. Henry. The story is about a couple at Christmas. The gist of the story is that they don’t have any money, but each has one precious thing. She has very long beautiful hair, and he has a gold watch. So she sells her hair to buy him a watch chain, and he sells his watch to buy her a tortoiseshell comb.

‘You might think they both ended up losing out, because they’d each lost the one precious thing they had in the world. But what they actually had was something so rare you hardly ever come across it—they each wanted the other’s happiness more than anything in the world. The hair and the watch were gone, but they still had that.’

He looked thoughtfully round the table. ‘Well, it seemed to me that that was the point of marriage. You think you care about somebody’s happiness more than you care about the gold watch, and you stand up in front of a lot of people and say so. Of course, you could be wrong—you could both be wrong; you could find you actually care more about the hair or the watch. But the idea of going into it making sure that, whatever happens, you’re still going to have a gold watch at the end of the day strikes me as insane. If that was the thing I cared about most I wouldn’t get married in the first place.’

Even in her rather depressed frame of mind, Tasha couldn’t help being amused by the range of expressions around the table. These were people who’d been calling Chaz’s girlfriends ‘darling’ for years because if you remembered a name from last time you could bet it was out of date. They’d been complaining of his restlessness, his refusal to settle down, his allergy to commitment. And now to be lectured on the meaning of marriage by the prodigal!

Chaz smiled at them benignly. ‘Now, only a few hours ago I promised to do everything I could to make Tasha happy, so I obviously can’t let you all make her miserable, and I can see it makes her miserable to think that marriage is all about hedging your bets. So I’d just like to go on record as saying that I disagree. It’s a gamble—everything in life is a gamble. But in my opinion the thing you’re playing for is the chance that you care about somebody else more than yourself. If you start out worrying about how to keep your watch safe, you’ve already lost the thing you were playing for; you’ve already decided you can’t care about someone that much. Well, we may find we don’t care about each other that way, and if so you can all say you told us so. But at least we’ll have played for something worth winning. And after all, in the immortal words of someone or other, you can’t win the lottery if you don’t buy a ticket.’

There was scattered applause around the table. Tasha’s father reached around her to grip Chaz’s shoulder. Chaz’s mother burst into tears.

‘Oh, darling,’ she sobbed into her handkerchief. ‘I’m so happy for you. All these years I thought I’d ruined your life, I thought you couldn’t love anybody, I thought you’d marry some society girl as a business accessory and never find true love.’ She gulped. ‘And now you’re marrying dear little Tasha and you’ll have children of your own. This is the happiest day of my life.’ She burst into sobs again.

Chaz put an arm round his mother’s shoulder and offered her a fresh handkerchief.

Tasha’s mother said, ‘Chaz, dear, that’s a lovely, lovely thought, and I couldn’t be more pleased that you feel that way. You know I’ve always thought of you as a son. I’m just saying that sometimes people have to be realistic.’

Chaz raised an eyebrow. ‘And sometimes they can’t afford to be. Shall we change the subject?’

Tasha’s mother looked at him askance. Everyone in the family knew he had a razor-sharp tongue when provoked; he’d been uncharacteristically restrained today, but who knew how long that would last?

‘Well, Chaz,’ she said drily at last, ‘if worse comes to worst at least I know you know one way to make her happy.’

‘Exactly,’ said Chaz. ‘Protect her from her family. I don’t remember making a vow on the subject, but I’ll do my poor best.’

Tasha’s father gave a crack of laughter.

Tasha’s mother said, ‘I don’t think that’s funny, Gervase.’

Local skirmishes broke out all around the table.

Tasha remembered suddenly just why she hadn’t wanted to invite Chaz to her wedding in the first place.

They got through the rest of the dinner and the speeches somehow, and then their car took them to their hotel. Chaz had booked a suite at the Ritz, with a sitting room and two bedrooms. They were leaving the next morning for Paris.

They took the lift to their floor and were shown to the suite.

The door closed behind them, and they were alone.

‘Alone at last,’ said Chaz.

Tasha gave a rather tremulous smile. Chaz was surveying the suite and looking distinctly unimpressed, though to Tasha’s eyes it looked palatial. When she didn’t reply he glanced down at her. ‘My poor darling,’ he said ruefully. ‘Your lovely wedding in ruins. Come here a minute.’

Tasha went wearily to his side. Considering that Chaz seemed to think sex was the solution for most of life’s little problems she had a pretty good idea of what he had in mind, and she really wasn’t in the mood either for sleeping with Chaz or for arguing with him about it, but she was too tired to argue that she wanted to stay where she was.

Chaz put his arms around her. At first she stiffened, thinking she should make sure he didn’t get the wrong idea. His arms tightened, holding her close; she felt one hand stroking her hair. ‘Poor Tash,’ he said softly. ‘All that trouble just to end up with Mr Wrong.’

Tasha giggled. The hours and hours of arguing over the guest list came back—the arguments over the style of invitation, arguments over refreshments, arguments over venue for reception, and after every argument all the work of putting it all into place. All that just so marriage-allergic Bad Cousin Chaz could walk in at the last minute and stroll down the aisle. Tasha thought of Chaz’s look of horrified disbelief on first seeing the flower girls and she started giggling all over again. She remembered, vividly, Chaz’s letter of refusal, her disgust at his rudeness, which was absolutely typical of the man, the way she’d shrugged and laughed because his absence was the one thing wanting to make the day perfect. And now her cheek was pressed against the jacket of the one person she’d wanted to stay away, because he’d come not to be just an unwelcome guest, but her husband.

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