Their six-week betrothal bargain

Samantha Wilson never forgot the sting of Leo Morgan-White’s youthful rejection, but now the brooding billionaire is offering a solution to her mother’s debts that she can’t refuse.

Leo’s deal was simple. Samantha would pose as his fiancée to help secure custody of his late stepbrother’s daughter. But Samantha’s purity is a breath of fresh air in Leo’s cynical world, and the temptation to satisfy his lust for her becomes irresistible.

As the end of their agreement approaches, Sam’s ability to resist their potent attraction is buckling under the weight of wearing Leo’s ring and the heat of his expert touch...

‘I’m going to give you twenty-four hours to think about my proposition. I’ll leave the engagement ring here. Try not to misplace it.’

‘I may not agree to anything.’

‘Your call.’ Leo shrugged. ‘I anticipate six weeks of inconvenience. Think about the trade-off.’ He stood up and glanced at his watch to find that far more time had gone by than he’d expected. ‘Just one more thing to consider...’

Sammy had scrambled to her feet, but she was still keeping her distance. She wasn’t going to touch this offer with a bargepole. Was she...? It smacked of blackmail, and surely any form of deceit, however well intended, was a bad thing...

‘What’s that?’ She eyed him warily.

‘You asked why you’re perfect for this...arrangement.’ He kept his eyes fixed on her face as he began putting on his coat. ‘You understand the rules. I don’t mean the rules that involve pretending...I mean the rules that dictate that this isn’t for real. You’re not one of my women who might get it into their heads that a fake engagement will turn into a real engagement.’

‘No. I’m not.’ Because there was no way he would ever consider getting engaged for real to someone like her. She’d never wanted to slap someone as much as she wanted to slap him.

‘So we’re on the same page,’ Leo drawled, tilting his head at her. ‘Always a good thing. I’ll be in touch tomorrow evening for your decision...my wife-to-be.’

CATHY WILLIAMS can remember reading Mills & Boon books as a teenager, and now that she is writing them she remains an avid fan. For her, there is nothing like creating romantic stories and engaging plots, and each and every book is a new adventure. Cathy lives in London, and her three daughters—Charlotte, Olivia and Emma—have always been, and continue to be, the greatest inspirations in her life.

Books by Cathy Williams

Mills & Boon Modern Romance

Snowbound with His Innocent Temptation

A Virgin for Vasquez

Seduced into Her Boss’s Service

The Wedding Night Debt

A Pawn in the Playboy’s Game At Her Boss’s Pleasure The Real Romero The Uncompromising Italian The Argentinian’s Demand Secrets of a Ruthless Tycoon Enthralled by Moretti His Temporary Mistress

The Italian Titans

Wearing the De Angelis Ring

The Surprise De Angelis Baby

One Night With Consequences

Bound by the Billionaire’s Baby

Seven Sexy Sins

To Sin with the Tycoon

Visit the Author Profile page at

millsandboon.co.uk for more titles.

Bought to Wear the Billionaire’s Ring

Cathy Williams

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

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

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

‘SO...’ LEO MORGAN-WHITE handed his father a glass of claret and sat down opposite him.

Harold had travelled all the way from Devon and had been delivered only half an hour previously by his chauffeur. It had been a surprise visit, which he had been told by his agitated father the evening before couldn’t wait.

Despite this, they had yet to get down to business and, although Leo knew what it concerned, he was still puzzled as to why it couldn’t have waited until the weekend when he would gladly have travelled to Devon.

But his father was emotional and impulsive and so it was nigh on impossible to gauge just how important his news actually was. Leo couldn’t think that it would be important enough to have him rushing up to London, a city he tried to avoid at all costs.

‘Too noisy,’ he was fond of complaining. ‘Too crowded. Too polluted. Too many expensive shops selling nonsense. A man can’t hear himself think there! You know what I say, Leo—if you can’t hear the grass growing, you’re in the wrong place!’

‘What’s going on?’ Leo now asked, reclining back and stretching out his long legs. He carefully placed his glass on the table next to him and linked his fingers loosely on his stomach.

His father’s eyes were glistening and he looked on the verge of bursting into tears. His chin was wobbling and his breathing was suspiciously uneven. Leo knew from experience that it was always better to ignore these signs of an imminent breakdown and focus on what needed to be discussed. His father needed very little encouragement when it came to shedding tears.

It was a trait Leo had thankfully not inherited. Indeed, anyone would have been forgiven for thinking that the two were not related at all as, both temperamentally and physically, they couldn’t have been more different.

Where Leo was long, lean and darkly handsome, a legacy from his Spanish-born mother, his father was of an average height and rotund.

And where Leo was cool, composed and cut-throat, his father was unapologetically emotional and fond of dramatic outbursts. Leo’s mother had died a little over a decade ago, when Leo had been twenty-two, and he remembered her as a tall, ridiculously good-looking woman who, having inherited her family’s business at the tender age of nineteen, had been very clever, very shrewd and who had a natural flair for running a company. On paper, she and his father should have had nothing in common and yet theirs had been a match made in heaven.

In an age where men went out to work and women kept the home fires burning, his home life had been the opposite. His mother had run the family business, which she had brought from Spain with her, while his father, a hugely successful author, had stayed at home and written.

In a weird and wonderful way, opposite poles had attracted.

Leo loved his father deeply and his eyes narrowed as Harold carefully took a sheet of paper from his pocket and pushed it across the table to his son.

He fluttered one hand and looked away, before saying in a shaky voice, ‘That woman has emailed me this...’

Leo eyed the sheet of paper but didn’t reach for it. ‘I’ve told you that you need to stop getting yourself worked up about this, Dad. I have my lawyers working on it. It’s all going to be all right. You just have to be patient. The woman can fight all she likes but she won’t be getting anywhere.’

‘Just you read what she has to say, Leo. I...I can’t bring myself to read it out loud.’

Leo sighed. ‘How is the book coming along?’

‘Don’t try and distract me,’ his father responded mournfully. ‘I haven’t been able to write a word. I’ve been too worried about this business to spare a thought for how DI Tracey is going to solve the case. In fact, I don’t care! At this rate, I may never put pen to paper again. It’s all very well for you business types...adding up numbers and sitting round conference tables...’

Leo stifled a smile. He was worth billions and did a lot more than just add up numbers and sit round conference tables.

‘She’s made threats,’ Harold said, sucking in a shaky breath. ‘You read the email, Leo. The woman says she’s going to fight for custody and she’s going to win. She says she’s spoken to her lawyer and although Sean stated in his will that Adele was to come to you if anything happened to him, Louise never agreed and now they’re both gone. All that matters is that Adele’s well-being would be put in jeopardy if she stays with that woman.’

‘Heard it all before.’ Leo drained his claret and stood up, massaging the back of his neck as he strolled towards the expanse of glass that separated him from the busyness of London which never stopped, even in the most prestigious of postcodes.

His apartment occupied the top two floors of an impressive Georgian building. He had hired the most prestigious architect in the city who had cleverly used the vast space to create an elegant blend of old and new, leaving the coving and fireplaces and ceiling details intact while changing pretty much everything else. The result was an airy, four-bedroomed testament to what could be done when money was no object.

The walls were adorned with priceless modern art. The decor was muted—shades of grey and cream. People’s mouths fell open the second they walked through the door but Leo was barely aware of his surroundings. They didn’t intrude and that was the main thing.

‘This is different, Leo.’

‘Dad,’ he said patiently, ‘it’s not. Gail Jamieson wants to hang on to her granddaughter for dear life because she thinks it’s a conduit to my money but she’s utterly ill-equipped to look after a five-year-old child. She’ll be especially ill-equipped when my money stops and she has to fend for herself. The fact is...this is a case I will win. I don’t want to throw money at the woman but if I have to, I will. She’ll take it and head for the hills because, like her daughter before her, Gail is a money-grabbing gold-digger who’s not above manipulating a situation for her own advantage. Need I remind you of the train of events that led Sean to Australia?’

His father grunted and Leo didn’t push it. They both knew Sean for the man he had been.

Seven years younger than Leo, Sean had arrived on their doorstep at the age of sixteen, along with his mother, Georgia Ryder, with whom Leo’s father had fallen head over heels in love less than a year after Leo’s mother had died.

From the very beginning Sean, an incredibly pretty boy with overlong blond hair and light blue eyes, had been lazy and spoiled. Once his mother had a ring on her finger and free access to the Morgan-White millions, he had quickly become even more demanding and petulant. His studies had fallen by the wayside and, cosseted by his mother, he had spent his time hanging around with a gang of like-minded teenagers who had gravitated towards him like bees round a honeypot. It hadn’t been long before drugs had crept into the scene.

Leo’s father, with the ink on the marriage certificate barely dry, had woken up from his grief-induced daze and realised the size of the mistake he had made. He didn’t want a blonde bombshell twenty years his junior pretending to love him when the only thing she loved was his money. He wanted to mourn the passing of the woman he had loved. He wanted uninterrupted misery.

Leo had taken Sean to one side and had given him the talking-to of his life, which had done no good at all. The opposite. Within two years Sean had dropped out of school. Within four, he had become heavily involved with Louise Jamieson, an enthusiastic member of the club for losers to which he belonged, and by the time his mother, after a series of unabashed flings with men her own age, had quit her marriage to Harold and begun her bid for as much alimony as she could get, Sean had moved to Australia with a heavily pregnant wife.

By this time Leo’s father had all but given up. His writing had stopped completely and his editor’s frantic communications had remained unanswered. He had become a virtual recluse and Leo had been left to pick up the pieces.

Unchecked, Georgia had spent vast sums of money on everything under the sun, from diamonds and tiaras to horses, cars and exotic holidays abroad, while she still had access to her soon-to-be ex-husband’s bank accounts. She had lavished money on her son. Leo, building his own career, had not had his eye sufficiently on the ball to have stopped the momentum.

By the time the nuts and bolts of the messy divorce had been ironed out, his father had been left with a bank account that had been severely dented. The fact that he hadn’t put pen to paper for years hadn’t helped.

Then Georgia was catapulted to her death off a hairpin bend on a road while vacationing in Italy with the money she had squeezed out of Harold. Left to make the decision, Leo would have thrown Sean to the wolves but his father, much softer and with a conscience that could be pricked by almost anything, had continued to send money to his former stepson. He had dug deep to make sure Sean’s daughter had all the things he would have given her, had she lived in the same country. He had begged for photos and had been thrilled with the handful of pictures Sean had emailed over.

He had tried to make plans to visit but Sean had always had an excuse.

Georgia had been a disaster and her son had been no less of a catastrophe and, unlike his sentimental father, Leo wasn’t going to allow emotions to hold sway over the outcome of this bizarre custody battle.

He would win because he always won. Louise’s mother, whom he had met once when he went to Australia, had confirmed all his suspicions that the last thing she was concerned about was the welfare of her grandchild. She was an appalling woman and no appalling woman was going to get the better of him.

‘She says that it doesn’t matter how much money you have to fight this, Leo. She’s going to win because you’re not fit to be a father to Adele.’

Leo stilled. His father’s eyes had welled up. Reluctantly, he retrieved the paper from where his father had earlier shoved it to him and carefully read the email that had been sent by Ms Jamieson.

‘Now you see what I mean, Leo.’ His father’s voice shook. ‘And the woman has a point. You have to see that.’

‘I see nothing of the sort.’

‘You don’t lead a responsible life.’ Harold’s voice firmed. ‘Not as far as bringing up a young child is concerned. You spend half your life out of the country...’

‘How else am I supposed to run my companies?’ Leo interjected, enraged that a woman who appeared to have the morals of a sewer rat should dare to criticise him. ‘From an armchair at home?’

‘That’s not the point. The point is that you do spend a great part of the year out of the country. How is that supposed to be good for the well-being of a five-year-old child? Furthermore, she’s not wrong when she says that you...’ His hands fluttered in a gesture of resignation and disappointment.

Leo’s mouth thinned. He knew that the choices he made when it came to women did not fill his father’s heart with glee. He knew that Harold would have done anything to have seen him happily settled down with a nice, respectable girl who would have those home fires burning for him when he returned home after a long day toiling in the fields.

It wasn’t going to happen. Leo had too much first-hand experience of how life could be derailed when emotions got in the way of common sense and good judgement. No matter that his father had adored his wife—when Mariela Morgan-White had died, he had been left a broken man. Yes, some idiots might fall for that hoary old chestnut about it being better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, but Leo had never signed up to that.

His father might not have agreed with Leo’s choices but he had stopped trying to take him to task about them, and this was the first time in years that he had voiced his disappointment.

‘Your face is never out of the papers,’ Harold admonished, dabbing his eyes and then looking sternly at his son. ‘There’s always some...some silly little thing hanging on to your arm, batting her eyelashes at you.’

Leo flushed with irritation. ‘We’ve covered this ground already.’

‘And we’ll cover it again, son.’ Harold sniffed and, just like that, Leo realised it was as though the energy and life force had been sucked out of him, leaving behind a shell. He was an aging man and it seemed as though he had suddenly lost the will to live.

‘You choose to do what you like when it comes to...women,’ his father said quietly. ‘And I know better now than to try and point you in the right direction. But this is more than being just about you. The woman claims that you’re morally unfit to take guardianship of the child.’

Leo pushed his hands through his hair and shook his head. ‘I’ll take care of it,’ he said grimly.

Theoretically, he and his father could simply reach an agreement to pull the plug on the money. Sean, after all, hadn’t been in any way related to either of them, but he knew and personally agreed that the child should not be allowed to suffer because of the mistakes of her parents. Like it or not, she was a moral responsibility.

‘It’s a worst-case scenario.’ His father shook his head and pressed his fingers to his eyes.

‘You’re upsetting yourself, Dad.’

‘Wouldn’t you if you were in my shoes?’ He looked up. ‘Adele is important to me and I cannot lose.’

‘If the law refuses to budge—’ Leo spread his hands in a gesture of frustration ‘—then there’s only so much I can do. I can’t kidnap the child and then hide her until she turns eighteen.’

‘No, but there is something you can do...’

‘I’m struggling to think what.’

‘You could get engaged. I’m not saying married, but engaged. You could present the court with the sort of responsible image that might persuade them into thinking that you’re a good bet as a father figure for Adele.’

Leo stared at his father in silence. He wondered whether the events of the past few weeks had finally pushed the man over the edge. Either that or he had misheard every single word in that sweeping, unbelievable statement.

‘I could get engaged...?’ Leo shook his head with rampant incredulity. ‘Do you suggest I purchase a suitable candidate online?’

‘Don’t be stupid, son!’

‘Then I’m not following you.’

‘If you need to present the image of a solid, dependable, normal human being with a serious and suitable woman by your side, then I don’t know why you wouldn’t do that. For me. For Adele.’

‘Serious and suitable woman?’ Leo spluttered. He didn’t do either serious or suitable when it came to women. He did frivolous and highly unsuitable. He liked it that way. No involvement, easy to dispatch. If they enjoyed his money, then that was fine because he wasn’t going to marry any of them. When it came to women, the revolving door that brought them in and took them out was efficient and worked for him.

‘Samantha.’ His father dropped the name with the flair of a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

‘Samantha...’ Leo repeated slowly.

‘Little Sammy Wilson,’ Harold expanded. ‘You know who I’m talking about. She would be perfect for the part!’

‘You want me to involve Samantha Wilson in a far-fetched charade to win custody of Adele?’

‘It makes perfect sense.’

‘In whose world?’

‘Don’t be rude, son!’ Harold reprimanded with an unusual amount of authority.

‘Does she know about this? Have you two been plotting this crazy scheme behind my back?’ Leo was aghast. His father had clearly taken leave of his senses.

‘I haven’t mentioned a word of this to her,’ Harold admitted. ‘Well, you know that she only manages to get to Salcombe on weekends...’

‘No, I didn’t. Why would I?’

‘You will have to broach the subject with her. You can be very persuasive and I don’t see why you wouldn’t bring those considerable skills to bear on this. It’s not as though I ask favours of you as a general rule. I think it’s the very least you can do, son. I would so love to know Adele is safe and cared for and we both know that Gail would make as bad a grandparent as her daughter made a parent. I would spend the remainder of my days fearing for what might happen to the girl...’

‘Gail might be many things,’ Leo returned drily, ‘but aren’t you over-egging the pudding here?’

His father breezed over the interruption. ‘And you would condemn a child to a future with a woman of that calibre? We both know the rumours about her...’ His eyes, when they met Leo’s, were filled with sadness. ‘I can’t force you but I’m very much afraid that I... Well, what would be the point of my living...?’

* * *

Samantha hadn’t been in her tiny rented flat for more than half an hour before she heard the insistent buzz of her doorbell and she grimaced with annoyance.

She had too much to do to waste time on a cold-caller. Or, worse, her neighbour from the flat upstairs, who had a habit of randomly showing up around this hour, a little after six in the evening, for wine with someone too polite and too soft-hearted to turn her away.

Samantha had spent many hours listening to her neighbour discuss her latest boyfriend or weep over a broken heart that would never be mended.

Right now, she simply had too much to do.

Too much homework from her eight-year-old charges to mark. Too many lessons to prepare. Too much red tape with Ofsted to get through. Not to mention the bank, who had been politely reminding her mother for the past three months that the mortgage hadn’t been paid.

But whoever was at the door wasn’t about to go away, not if the insistent finger on the button was anything to go by.

Sweeping the stack of exercise books off her lap and onto the little coffee table by the side of her chair and plunging her feet into her cosy bedroom slippers, she was working out which negative response, depending on who was at the door, she would be delivering so that her evening remained uninterrupted.

She yanked open the door and her mouth fell open. Literally. She stood there like a stranded goldfish, eyes like saucers, because the last person she ever, in a million years, had expected to see was standing in front of her.

Or rather lounging, his long, muscular body indolently leaning against the door frame, his hands thrust into the pockets of his black cashmere coat.

It had been several weeks since she had seen Leo Morgan-White.

He had nodded to her from across the width of his father’s massive drawing room, which had been crowded with at least three dozen locals, all friends from the village where his father and her mother lived. Harold was a popular member of the community and his annual Christmas party was something of an event on the local calendar.

She hadn’t even spoken to Leo that night. He’d been there with a leggy brunette who, in the depths of winter, had been wearing something very bright and very short, garnering attention from every single male in the room.

‘Have I come at a bad time?’

* * *

He’d taken the bait. Sly old fox that his father was, Leo had been persuaded into doing the unthinkable by the threat of ill health and a return of the depression that had dogged his father for years and from which he was only recently surfacing.

Of course, Harold genuinely and truly wanted Adele close to him and safe and, of course, he truly believed, and was probably spot on, that Gail would turn out to be a horrendous influence on her five-year-old granddaughter, but when he had pulled the ill-health-so-what’s-the-point-of-carrying-on? threat from the hat Leo had confessed himself to be beaten.

So here he was, two days later, with the soon-to-be object of his desire standing in front of him in some dull grey outfit and a pair of ridiculous, brightly coloured bedroom slippers.

‘Leo?’ Sammy blinked and wondered whether it was possible for stress to induce very realistic hallucinations. ‘What do you want? How did you find out where I live? What on earth are you doing here?’

‘Lots of questions, and I’ll answer them just as soon as you invite me in.’

Struck by a sudden thought, Sammy paled and stared up at him. ‘Has something happened? Is your dad all right?’ She was finding it very difficult to think but then the wretched man had always had that effect on her. Something about his devastatingly good looks. He was just so...so much larger than life.

Taller, more striking, with the rakish, swarthy sexiness of a pirate. Next to him, the rest of the male population always seemed to pale in comparison and, considering the long, long line of women he had run through over the years, she wasn’t the only one who thought so.

Unlike that long, long line of women, though, she knew better than to let all that drop-dead male sexiness get to her.

She still cringed in shame when she thought back to that awful incident years ago. She’d had gone along to a party at the big house, as everyone in the village called the Morgan-White mansion up on the hill.

The place had been teeming with people. It had been a birthday bash for Leo and half the world seemed to be there. Heaven only knew why she’d been invited but she imagined that it had been something of a pity invite and, whilst she had cringed at the thought of going, she had been encouraged by the fact that several of the locals had also been on the guest list so she wouldn’t be a complete fish out of water. She’d spent ages choosing just the right dress. She’d only spotted him from a distance later, when she had been standing in the garden and, miracle of miracles, he had shown up right next to her and they had chatted for what had seemed like ages. He’d torn himself away from his gilded crowd and Sammy had been on cloud nine until, late in the evening, a very tall, very blonde girl had broken free from the group and confronted her just outside the marquee which had been erected in the garden.

‘You’re making a bloody fool of yourself,’ she’d hissed, words slurring from too much free champagne. ‘Can’t you see that Leo is never, and I mean never, going to give you the time of day? You may have grown up next to him but you’re poor, you’re fat and you’re boring. You’re making a laughing stock of yourself.’

Her infatuation had died fast. Since then, watching off and on from the sidelines, she had come to see just how repulsive his approach to women was. He picked them up and then, when he’d got what he wanted and boredom began setting in, he dumped them without a backward glance and moved on.

Romantic at heart, with a core of firmly held family values, Sammy marvelled that she could ever have looked twice at someone like Leo. But, then again, she’d been young and he’d been crazily good-looking.

‘He’s been better. Are you going to invite me in or are we going to have this conversation here?’

‘I suppose you can come in.’

* * *

Great start, Leo thought wryly. A very auspicious beginning to what’s intended to be the relationship of a lifetime.

He hadn’t thought about how she was going to react to his proposition but he didn’t expect too much protesting. He was, after all, bringing a great deal of money to the table and, as everyone knew, money talked a lot louder than words.

Anne Wilson, Samantha’s mother, was a close friend of his father’s and had been since Leo’s mother had fallen ill and Anne, a nurse at the local hospital, had gone beyond the call of duty to help out. Their bond had strengthened over the years as she had proved to be a solid rock upon whom his father had often leaned, particularly after his acrimonious divorce from Georgia.

It was no surprise then that Anne had confided in Harold about her ill health and the money problems she was having with the bank because she had been forced to quit her job. Though Harold had offered to give her the money, and, when that hadn’t worked, to lend it to her, she had refused.

* * *

‘So...’ Sammy folded her arms and stared at him almost before he had shut the door behind him. ‘What have you come here for?’ He was so good-looking that she could barely look at him without blushing.

Leo’s fabulous looks had to do with far more than just the arrangement of his features. Yes, he was indecently perfect, from the long, dark, thick lashes that shielded equally dark eyes and the straight, arrogant nose to the sensuous curve of his mouth. Yes, he had the toned, lean, six-foot-two-inch frame of an athlete and the lazy grace of some kind of predatory jungle animal, but he also generated an impression of power that was frankly mesmerising.

‘Are you always so welcoming to visitors?’ Leo drawled, ignoring her bristling hostility to shrug off his coat, which he proceeded to dump on the coat hook by the front door.

The house had clearly been made into flats, each with a separate entrance and, from the looks of it, on the cheap. Too much door-slamming and the whole structure would collapse like a house of cards.

‘I happen to be very busy at the moment,’ Sammy said shortly. She led the way into the sitting room and gestured to the mound of exercise books which she had been about to look at.

He sat himself in a chair. He had come to visit for reasons she couldn’t begin to understand and she was furious with herself for the silly heat that was pouring through her.

* * *

She was as awkward as he recalled. He’d never spoken to her without getting the feeling that she would much rather have been somewhere else. He’d never really paid a huge amount of attention to her appearance in the past, simply absorbing the impression that she didn’t dress to impress, but now that she was going to be the love of his life he couldn’t help but notice that she really had mastered the art of not making an effort.

Accustomed to women who bent over backwards to show off flawless bodies, who devoted unreasonable amounts of time to their appearance, he was weirdly disconcerted by someone who didn’t seem to give a hoot. He stared at her narrowly, recognising that, despite the appalling dress sense and the mop of blond hair that had been piled on top of her head and secured with a fluorescent elastic band, there was a certain pretty appeal to her heart-shaped face. Plus she had amazing eyes. Huge, cornflower blue with long lashes.

‘I take it you’re not interested in pleasantries, so shall I skip past the bit where I ask you how you are and what you’ve been up to recently?’

‘Do you care how I am and what I’ve been up to recently?’

‘You should sit down, Sammy. The reason I’m here is because I have something of a complicated favour to ask. If you insist on hearing me out on your feet, then you’re going to have aching calves by the time I’m through.’

‘A favour? What are you talking about? I don’t see how I could possibly help you out with anything.’

‘Sit down. No, better still...why don’t you offer me a glass of wine? Or a cup of coffee?’

* * *

Sammy resisted scowling. By nature, she was a kind-hearted woman who would never have dreamed of being downright rude to anyone she knew, but something about Leo always got her back up. She’d long ago written him off as too rich, too good-looking and too arrogant, and the way he had settled into her flat and was proceeding to order her about was only hardening her attitude.

She would quite have liked to have asked him politely to clear off.

As though reading her mind, Leo raised his eyebrows and subjected her to a long, appraising look that made her go red.

‘Okay,’ he drawled, ‘I’ll cut to the chase, shall I?’ He shifted slightly, reached inside his trouser pocket and withdrew a small box which he dumped on the table in front of him. ‘I’m here to ask you to marry me.’

CHAPTER TWO

SAMMY BLINKED AND then folded her arms, body as rigid as a plank of wood. Anger was bubbling up inside her. After one glance at the navy blue box he had dumped on the table, she hadn’t deigned to give it a second look.

‘Is this some kind of joke?’ she asked coldly.

‘Do I look like the kind of man who would show up on a woman’s doorstep and propose marriage as a joke?’

‘I have no idea, Leo. I don’t know what kind of person you are.’ Aside, she thought furiously, from the obvious.

‘Open the box.’

Sammy eyed it with a guarded expression and did nothing of the sort. But her fingers were twitching and, uttering a soft, impatient curse under her breath, she reached down and flipped open the lid.

An engagement ring nestled on a deep blue velvet cushion. The exquisite solitaire diamond blinked at her and she blinked back at it, utterly dumbfounded. Her hand was shaking as she placed the box, still open, back on the table and moved to sit down on the chair facing him.

‘What the heck is going on here, Leo? You can’t possibly be serious. You show up here with an engagement ring, asking me to marry you. Something’s wrong. What is it? Is that ring even real?’

‘Oh, it’s a hundred per cent real. And guess what? You get to keep it when this is all over.’

Sammy’s head was swimming. Less than an hour ago, she was a stressed out primary school teacher with a stack of exercise books to mark. Now, she was the main character in some weird parallel universe story with a sexy billionaire sitting on one of her chairs and an engagement ring in front of her.

Nothing about this scenario was making any sense.

‘When what’s all over?’ she asked as she tried to make sense of the situation and came up blank.

* * *

Leo sighed. Maybe he should have forewarned her but what would have been the point? She would still have been utterly bewildered. Much better that he was sitting in front of her so that he could explain the situation face-to-face.

If she couldn’t believe that this was happening then they were roughly on the same page.

Beyond the fact that the words will you marry me had never featured in any scenario he had ever envisaged for his future, he certainly would never have chosen Samantha Wilson as the recipient of his proposal.

He had met the woman over the years in countless different situations and he had been left with the impression of someone so background as to be practically invisible. She’d never been rude to him. She had always answered his questions politely, barely meeting his eyes before scuttling away as soon as she could. Aside from one conversation years ago. A conversation lodged at the back of his brain... But, after that, he had met her again—had tried to engage her attention—and nothing. He had no idea whether she had a boyfriend or not, whether she had a social life or not, whether she had hobbies or not.

In his world, where women strutted around like flamboyant peacocks, she was the equivalent of a sparrow. Perfect, of course, for the job at hand but hardly the sort of woman he would ever have looked at twice in that way.

‘I suppose you know about Sean and his wife,’ Leo began.

She nodded slowly. ‘I’m sorry. You have my condolences. It was a horrible end for both of them. What on earth would have persuaded Sean to take flying lessons, of all things? And to have flown solo in bad weather with Louise, without his instructor... It beggars belief. But I’m so sorry.’

‘No need for the sorrow or the condolences—’ he waved aside ‘—I wasn’t close to Sean so I can’t say his absence is going to leave a big hole in my life.’

‘That’s very honest of you.’

She was looking at him with those huge, surprisingly riveting blue, blue eyes and, while her voice was perfectly serious, Leo couldn’t help but suspect a thread of sarcasm underlying her remark. She’d never struck him as the sarcastic type.

‘I suppose you’re also aware that my father has been extremely upset that Sean’s daughter, whom he considers his granddaughter, remains in Australia as a ward of her maternal grandmother.’

‘It’s a shame, but I’m sure she’ll be allowed over to visit your dad in time, once she’s a bit older. Look, Leo, I still don’t see what this has to do with me or—’ her eyes flicked down to the box burning a hole on the table in front of her ‘—or that engagement ring.’

‘When Sean and Louise died, it was presumed that the child would be sent over here to live with me. Louise was an only child from a difficult background, without any extended family who could take Adele under their wing and Louise’s mother also had a somewhat...colourful history.’

‘I know there have been rumours...’

‘My father receives monthly requests from her for handouts and that is in addition to the money he continued to send to Sean over the years, well after his divorce from Sean’s mother was finalised.’

‘Your dad has a soft heart,’ Sammy said warmly.

‘A soft heart is only a small step away from being a soft touch,’ Leo muttered and she frowned disapprovingly at him.

‘I’m sure the money he sent over was really useful...’

‘I’m sure it was,’ Leo responded drily. ‘The question is, useful to whom? But no matter. That’s history. What we’re dealing with is the present, which brings me to the subject of the engagement ring...’ Admittedly, he had sprung this on her and had expected nothing but shock. Horror, however, hadn’t entered the equation because, whether the engagement was fake or not, he couldn’t think of a single woman who wouldn’t have been thrilled to see a diamond like that and to know that it was destined for her finger.

Right now, the woman sitting in front of him was glancing down at the box with a moue of distaste, as though looking at something that could prove infectious in a nasty way.

‘My father has recently received an unpleasant email suggesting that Adele, against all common sense and certainly not in her best interests, may end up remaining in Australia with Sean’s mother-in-law. The woman has clearly decided that it makes sense financially for her to hang on to Adele because, as long as she has the child in her custody, she will continue to receive money from my father, which, incidentally, is actually money from me. You may or may not know that his writing has been off the boil for a long time. The family company is doing well but I would rather not be financially embroiled with this woman forever.’

‘I’m just wondering what all of this has to do with me,’ Sammy confessed.

This had to be the longest conversation in recent years that she had ever had with the man and she was mortified because the cool composure she was at pains to display was at vibrant odds with what she was feeling. She certainly wasn’t cool and composed inside. In fact, she was all over the place.

Her senses were on full alert and she didn’t fully understand why.

Surely she was mature enough not to turn into a dithering wreck simply because she happened to be in the company of a man who was too attractive for his own good? She was a working woman, a teacher, with heaps of responsibility, someone with enough life experience behind her to recognise Leo for the man he really was as opposed to the one-dimensional, gorgeous cardboard cut-out who had once turned her silly teenage head...

Except...

Maybe her life experience was sorely lacking in a certain vital area. Maybe that was why just looking at him was making her skin tingle.

She had plenty of experience in caring for her mother, as she had been doing for the past year and a half. She knew all about communicating with doctors and hospitals and nurses and making her voice heard because her mother, although she had been a nurse herself, had been swallowed up with fear and confusion. She had needed someone strong to lean on and that person had been her, Sammy. And she had plenty of experience under her belt of taking charge, of controlling unruly primary school children until they were as meek as little lambs.

She had argued with bank managers and spent hours trying to balance the books and had exhausted herself with pep talks to her mother, convincing her that the cottage was safe even though the mortgage payments had fallen behind.

And, through it all, she had done her best to hang on to her sense of humour and her sense of perspective.

But there was that whole other area where she had no experience at all.

A vast, blurry, opaque space where she was a stranger because, despite having had two serious boyfriends, she had yet to test the sexual waters.

They had both been attractive and she’d liked them very much. In fact, they’d ticked all the boxes in her head in terms of suitability and yet...she just hadn’t fancied them enough to go the whole way.

She and Pete had broken up over a year and a half ago, and since then she had resigned herself to the fact that there was probably something wrong with her. Some faulty gene in her make-up. Maybe it was because there had been no father figure in her life since she had been a kid, yet, even to her, that argument made no sense.

So she’d long stopped analysing the whys and maybes.

She hadn’t taken into account that her lack of experience in that small, stupid area, insignificant in the big scheme of things, might have left her vulnerable to a man like Leo, with his sexy, spectacular good looks and that lazy, assessing charm that oozed from every pore.

‘Sean had the foresight, strangely, to leave something of a will,’ he was saying now, ‘a scrap of paper signed by a friend. In it, he indicated that, should anything happen to him, I should take guardianship of the child. I’m sure,’ Leo elaborated with scrupulous honesty, ‘that that particular light bulb idea had something to do with my financial worth.’

‘That’s very cynical of you.’ Sammy was still smarting from the realisation that while two perfectly good boyfriends hadn’t been able to get to her, this utterly inappropriate man seemingly could. At least if the crazy somersaulting in her stomach was anything to go by.

‘So I’m cynical.’ He shrugged and stared at her. ‘It’s a trait that’s always stood me in good stead.’

‘If Sean meant for you to have Adele, then what’s the problem?’

‘The problem is the harridan of a grandmother who’s decided to hire a lawyer to argue the case that I’m unfit to be the child’s guardian. A scrap of paper, she maintains, counts for nothing, especially considering my former stepbrother lived with a stash of alcohol and drugs within easy reach.’

Sammy didn’t say anything and Leo frowned because he could read what she was thinking as clearly as if her thoughts had been transcribed in neon lettering across her forehead.

‘The woman isn’t equipped to raise Adele,’ he grated. ‘Even if she had been an angel in human form, it would still be a big ask for her to take over the role of looking after an energetic five-year-old child. Had I felt that she might conceivably be mentally fit for the job then I’d back off, but she isn’t. At any rate, my father is distraught at this turn of events.’

‘He’s always mourned the fact that he never got to see her. He talked about that a lot to me and Mum.’

‘Yes, well...’ Somehow that simple statement of fact, which came as no shock at all to Leo, indicated a familiarity that was a little unsettling. ‘Here’s where we’re nearing the crux of the matter. I’ve been accused of having too many women and spending too much time out of the country.’ He raked his fingers through his hair and gestured in a manner that was redolent with frustration and impatience.

Sammy remained silent because, from all accounts, those were some pretty accurate accusations.

‘Well...’ she finally said. ‘I suppose there might be some truth in that. From everything I’ve heard, I mean, that’s to say...’

‘Please—’ Leo scowled darkly ‘—don’t let good manners stand in the way of saying what’s on your mind. I take it the rumours about me have come from my father?’

‘No!’

‘Do you three just sit around gossiping about my love life?’

‘No! You’ve got the wrong end of the stick.’

‘Have I? From the sounds of it, once my father has finished lamenting the fact that he’s been denied access to his “granddaughter,” he brings out the tea and biscuits and gets down to the gritty business of discussing my personal life!’

‘It’s not like that at all!’ Sammy was mortified at the picture he was painting. ‘Your dad mentioned ages ago that he wished he saw more of you and that you worked too hard. He worries about your health, that’s all.’

‘I’ve never had a day’s illness in my life.’

‘Working too hard can bring on all sorts of problems,’ Sammy said, fidgeting, her colour high. ‘Stress can be a killer. That’s what worries your dad.’

‘That being the case,’ Leo drawled, ‘he must know that I’m in no danger of collapsing from working too hard or being too stressed because I have my safety valves in the form of my very diverting playmates.’

Sammy’s breath caught in her throat, which was suddenly so dry that she could barely get her words out.

It struck Leo that those very diverting playmates were going to have to take a back seat, at least for the time being, and he was a little surprised that he didn’t feel more gutted at the prospect. He was a highly sexual man with a very energetic libido, but recently, beautiful and obliging women who were always willing to go the extra mile for him had left him dissatisfied.

His palate was jaded.

Perhaps now was a very good time to indulge in a fake engagement with a woman he had precisely nothing in common with. A couple of months pretending to be in love with someone who didn’t stand a chance of rousing his interest might be just the ticket. He would resume life with renewed vigour and things would be back to normal. And a bout of celibacy never killed anyone.

‘Which—’ he brought the conversation neatly back to the point at hand ‘—brings us back to the problem. I don’t, according to my father, make a credible guardian with my reputation, and I will be under scrutiny because I will be travelling to Melbourne to sort this situation out. Eyes will be on me. I need credibility—and here is where you come in. I need a fiancée to show my stability to the Melbourne courts and he’s suggested that you would be perfect for the part.’

Sammy stared at him. So that was what all of this was about. The ring. The proposal. It was so preposterous that she was torn between bursting into manic laughter and propelling him out of her flat.

She did neither. Instead, she said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding, right?’

‘As I’ve already told you, I have better things to do than show up here for a laugh. This is no joke, Samantha.’ He leaned forward and looked at her with utter seriousness. ‘My father refuses to accept that he may never see Adele. The fact that Sean was his stepson for a short period of time rather than his own flesh and blood and that any tenuous family connection they might have once had ended when he and Georgia divorced makes not a scrap of difference to him, but then he’s that kind of man, as I expect you already know. He sees this as his last chance to do something about the situation and he can’t understand any hesitancy on my part to leap aboard the plan.’

‘I’m not going to go with you to the other side of the world so that I can pretend to be your fiancée, Leo!’ Agitated, Sammy leapt to her feet and began pacing the room. Her thoughts were all over the place and her body was burning.

‘Why would you want me to be your fake fiancée, anyway?’ She spun round to look at him, hands on hips. ‘Why don’t you just pick one of those women from your little black book? You have enough to choose from! Every time I open a tabloid I seem to see you somewhere in the gossip columns with a glamour model hanging on to you for dear life.’

Leo’s eyebrows shot up and he gave her a slow, curling smile. ‘Follow me in the tabloids, do you?’

‘Trust you to put that spin on it,’ Sammy muttered under her breath, which seemed to amuse him further. ‘I won’t do it,’ she said flatly. ‘You can have your pick of any woman you want so go ahead and pick one of them.’

‘But none of them will do,’ Leo said smoothly and Sammy paused to frown.

‘Why not?’

He looked at her for a long while in perfect silence and it didn’t take her long to get the message.

‘Too glamorous,’ Sammy said slowly, while she pointlessly wished the ground would open and swallow her, disgorging her somewhere on the other side of the world. ‘You need someone plain and average, someone who would give the right image of a responsible other half, able to take on a young child.’

Accustomed to telling it like it was, Leo had the grace to flush. ‘The women I date would be inappropriate—’ he smoothed over the unvarnished bluntness of her statement ‘—it has nothing to do with looks.’

‘It has everything to do with looks,’ Sammy retorted, her voice shaking. ‘I want you to leave. Right now. I’d love to be able to help your father but I draw the line at being manipulated into playing the part of your dreary fiancée so that you can try and fool the authorities in Australia into believing that you’re a halfway decent guy with a few responsible bones in his body!’

Leo was outraged at the barrage of insults contained in that outburst. Halfway decent guy? A few responsible bones?

He stayed right where he was, a solid mass of sheer physical strength. He wasn’t going anywhere and she would be more than welcome to try and budge him if she wanted. She wouldn’t get far.

‘Leave!’ she snapped.

‘Sit,’ he returned.

‘How dare you come into my house and...and...?’

‘I’m not done with this conversation.’ Leo looked at her steadily and she gritted her teeth in impotent fury.

There was no way she could force him out. He was way too big and far too strong. And he knew it.

‘There’s nothing else to say,’ she told him in a frozen voice. ‘There’s no way you could persuade me to go along with your scheme.’ Those cruelly delivered words from when she was a teenager had rushed back towards her with the force of a freight train. As an awkward, self-conscious adolescent she hadn’t been his type and as a twenty-six-year-old woman she still wasn’t his type...

She didn’t care because, as it happened, he was no more her type than she was his, but it still hurt to have it shoved down her throat.

‘Sure about that?’

Sammy didn’t bother to answer. Her arms were still folded, her face was still a mask of resentment, her legs were still squarely apart as she continued to stare down at him.

He couldn’t have looked more relaxed.

She marvelled how someone who adored his father so much could actually be so odious, but then he was a high-flying businessman with no morals to speak of when it came to women so why was she surprised?

‘One hundred per cent sure,’ she threw at him.

‘Because I haven’t just popped along here to ask a favour without bringing something to the table...’

‘I don’t see what you could possibly bring to the table that could be of any interest to me.’

‘I like the moral high ground,’ he murmured in a voice that left her in no doubt that the moral high ground was the very last thing he liked. ‘But, in my experience, moral high grounds usually have their foundations built on sand. Why don’t you sit down and finish hearing me out? If, at the end of what I have to say, you’re still adamant that you want no part of this arrangement, then so be it. My father will be bitterly disappointed, but that’s life. He won’t be able to accuse me of not trying.’

Sammy hesitated. He wasn’t going anywhere. The wretched man was going to stay put until he had said what he had come to say—the whole speech and nothing but the whole speech.

Why waste time arguing?

She perched on the edge of the chair and waited for him to continue.

He was truly a beautiful human being, she thought. All raven-black hair and piercing black eyes and fantastically chiselled features. It was hardly the time to be thinking this, but she just couldn’t help herself.

Was it any wonder that there weren’t many women between the ages of twenty-one and ninety-one who wouldn’t have crashed into a lamp post to grab a second look?

She tried to imagine one of those women he dated trying to pass herself off as a suitable bride-to-be and, whilst it certainly worked from the gorgeous couple aspect, the whole thing fell apart the second a little girl was put in the equation.

‘Your mother hasn’t been well,’ Leo said quietly. ‘I’m sorry that this is the first time I’ve...commiserated.’

‘She’s going to be fine.’ Sammy tilted her chin at an angle but, as always when she thought about her mother, the tears were never very far away.

‘Yes. I’ve been told the chemotherapy has been successful and that the tumour has shrunk considerably. You must be relieved.’

‘I don’t understand what my mother has to do with any of this.’

‘Then I’ll come straight to the point.’ He hadn’t felt a single qualm when he had considered using money as leverage in this bartering process. This was the world he occupied. It was always a quid pro quo system.

Now, however, he was assailed by a sudden attack of conscience. Something about the way her eyes were glistening and the slight wobble of her full pink lips.

No wonder she and his father got on like a house on fire, he thought. They were equally sentimental.

It was yet another reason why the arrangement would work for them because her emotionalism was guaranteed to get on his nerves. There would be no chance of any lines between them getting blurred.

‘It would appear,’ he said heavily, ‘that there’s a problem with the mortgage repayments on the house your mother’s in.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘The same way you seem to have great insight into my personal life,’ he returned coolly. ‘Our respective parents seem to do an awful lot of confidence sharing. At any rate, the fact is that there is a real threat of the bank closing on the house if the late payments aren’t made soon.’

‘I’ve been to see the bank.’ Sammy’s skin burnt because she hated this sliver of her life being exposed. It was none of his business. ‘Mum’s had to give up her job, with all the treatment, and I’ve had to move to a different, more expensive place here because the landlord in my last place wanted to sell. Plus there’ve been all the additional costs of travelling back and forth every weekend, sometimes during the week, as well. I haven’t been able to contribute as much as I would have liked to the finances but they said they understood at the bank.’

‘Banks,’ Leo informed her kindly, ‘have never been noted for their understanding policies. They’re not charitable organisations. The most sympathetic bank manager, under instruction, will foreclose on a house with very little prior warning. I also appreciate that it costs you dearly to be working so far from your mother at a time when she needs you to be on hand.’

‘Your dad had no right to tell you all that stuff...’

‘Was any of it confidential information?’

Sammy didn’t reply. No, none of it was confidential, although sitting here right now and listening to him explain her life to her made her think that perhaps it ought to have been.

Naturally, he would never understand what it might be like to really have to count pennies and to struggle against all odds to meet the bills. He had been born into money and, even in the village, his name was legend as the guy who had built his own empire and turned it into a gold mine.

‘Didn’t think so. I know he offered to give your mother money to help her out of this little sticky patch but she refused.’

‘And I don’t blame her,’ Sammy said, her cheeks dully flushed. ‘There’s such a thing as pride.’

‘Yes. It usually comes before a fall. No matter. I get it. But the fact remains that you are both facing considerable financial challenges, so here is my proposal.’ He allowed anticipation to settle before continuing. ‘In return for your services, so to speak, I will settle all outstanding money owing on your mother’s house.’ He raised one hand as though she had interrupted although, in fact, she couldn’t have uttered a word if she’d wanted to. She was mesmerised by him. By the movement of his mouth as he spoke, by the steady flex of muscle discernible under his clothing, by the elegance of his gestures and the commanding timbre of his voice.

‘Furthermore,’ he continued, ‘I understand that your dream is to work freelance. Your degree was in graphic art and, whilst you do as much freelance work as you can get your hands on, it’s impossible to make the jump because you need to have a steady income.’

Sammy paled. ‘Now that,’ she burst out, ‘definitely was confidential!’

‘Is that some of your work over there?’ Leo nodded to a desk by the window and the layers of stiff board piled to one side. Without giving her time to answer, far less swoop to the rescue of the job she was currently trying to find the time to work on, he began rifling through the illustrations she had so far completed while she remained frozen to the spot, mouth open.

‘They’re good.’ Leo turned to face her. He was genuinely impressed. ‘Don’t glare at me as though I’ve exposed state secrets,’ he said drily. ‘This is the second part of my proposition. Not only am I willing to settle the debt on your mother’s house but I will also get builders in to construct a suitable extension at the back of the property.’

‘A suitable extension?’ Sammy said faintly.

‘To accommodate this—’ he gestured to the desk and the artwork he had just been rifling through ‘—you setting up your own business where your mother is. No more commuting. No more wasting money on rent you can barely afford. And not only that, Sammy, but I will immediately instigate a steady income that will cover the transition period between you giving up your teaching post here and establishing yourself in your field.’

Sammy was beginning to sympathise with anyone unfortunate enough to have been run over by a steamroller. ‘It’s a ridiculous suggestion...’ she protested, but she could hear telltale signs of weakness in her voice. ‘Go to Melbourne...? Pretend to be engaged to you...? It’s crazy.’

‘Perhaps if you just had yourself to consider,’ Leo pointed out with inexorable, irrefutable logic, ‘you could spend the next hour talking about your pride or maybe just chuck me out of here immediately, but this isn’t just about you. Your mother’s future is involved here, as well.’

‘And it’s not fair of you to drag her into this.’

‘Who said that life was fair? If life was fair, that harridan wouldn’t be trying to hang on to a granddaughter she probably doesn’t even want for the sake of what she thinks she might be able to coerce out of me. Agree to my proposal and I could have builders at the house first thing in the morning to ascertain what needs to be done. All you would have to do is hand your notice in and look forward to a life of no stress, close to your mother.’

Sammy thought of the amount of time she had spent trying to get the books to balance and trying to work out how many more hours she could put into her illustrations so that more income could be generated.

‘What happens if you get custody of the little girl?’ she questioned eventually, forcibly tearing herself away from that stress-free vision he had been dangling in front of her.

‘I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. I can afford the very best day care, the very best schools and during the holidays there will be the option of spending time by the sea with my father.’

Sammy’s brow pleated and Leo felt he should jump in before she began testing the moral high ground once again.

‘I’m going to give you forty-eight hours to think about my proposition. Time for you to work out the nitty-gritty details and break the glad tidings to your mother, although there’s a fair to middling chance that she already knows that I’m here with you right now, thanks to my father. I’ll leave the engagement ring here. Try not to misplace it.’ He told her how much it had cost and her mouth fell open. ‘No point getting something cheap and nasty. You’d be surprised what a nosy reporter can spot through a telephoto lens. If you agree to this, no one must think that it’s anything but genuine.’

‘I may not agree to anything.’

‘Your call.’ He shrugged. ‘Just think about the trade-off.’ He stood up and glanced at his watch to find that far more time had gone by than he’d expected. ‘One more thing to consider...’

Sammy had scrambled to her feet but she was still keeping her distance. She wasn’t going to touch this offer with a bargepole. Was she? It smacked of blackmail and surely any form of deceit, however well intended, was a bad thing...

‘What’s that?’ She eyed him warily.

‘You asked why you’re perfect for this...arrangement.’ He kept his eyes fixed on her face as he began putting on his coat. ‘You understand the rules. I don’t mean the rules that involve pretending—I mean the rules that dictate that this isn’t for real. You’re not one of my women who might get it into their heads that a fake engagement might turn into a real engagement.’

‘No. I’m not.’ Because there was no way he would ever consider getting engaged for real to someone like her. She’d never wanted to slap someone as much as she had spent the past couple of hours wanting to slap him.

‘So we’re on the same page,’ Leo drawled, tilting his head at her. ‘Always a good thing. I’ll be in touch for your decision.’

‘You’re going to traipse all the way back here...?’

‘Oh, no. I’ll call you. And no need to give me your mobile number. I already have it.’ He allowed himself a mocking half smile. ‘I look forward to talking to you soon...my wife-to-be.’

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