“Is there something I can do for you?”
Jethro then made a minor production out of looking at his watch, as if counting the seconds he could spare her.
Allie made a huge effort to drag herself together. She squared her shoulders, sucked some air into her cramped lungs and managed to say coolly, “I need a favor, and I’m willing to pay handsomely for it.”
The only response to that was the slight upward drift of one sable brow. It incensed her.
“If you’re not interested, then please say so, and I won’t waste any more of your valuable time!”
“I’m curious to know what favor you’re willing to pay so highly for.”
“I need you to marry me,” she said.
DIANA HAMILTON is a true romantic and fell in love with her husband at first sight. They still live in the fairy-tale Tudor house in England where they raised their three children. Now the idyll is shared with eight rescued cats and a puppy. But despite an often chaotic lifestyle, ever since she learned to read and write Diana has had her nose in a book—either reading or writing one—and plans to go on doing just that for a very long time to come.
Books by Diana Hamilton
HARLEQUIN PRESENTS®
2072—THE FAITHFUL WIFE
2094—MISTRESS FOR A NIGHT
Diana Hamilton
BOUGHT: ONE HUSBAND
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER ONE
JETHRO COLE secured the aluminium extending ladder on the roof rack and stowed the bucket and window leathers in the back of the old van. Then he wiped the sweat from his brow with a tanned forearm and pushed the unruly fall of black hair out of the way with impatient fingers. Past time he got a haircut.
He expelled a slow, relaxing breath through even white teeth. The end of another long working day, clambering up and down ladders in the hot July sun, cleaning other people’s windows. At least he was beginning to get the hang of it now, and not collecting too many complaints about smears and missed corners.
He had collected a couple of propositions from bored housewives, though, which he had pretended not to understand in order to avoid giving offence and to keep their custom, and now he was getting loud and appreciative wolf whistles, by the sound of it!
Digging into the pockets of his battered jeans for the ignition key, he watched with barely concealed amusement as the perpetrators drew level. A brace of teenaged girls, arm in arm, with wildly permed hair, identical pairs of fake leather jeans and skimpy tops that left nothing whatsoever to the imagination.
‘You can peer through my windows any time, gorgeous!’ said the one with the nose-stud, while the other simply giggled through a mouthful of gum as they teetered away on mile-high heels in the direction of the High Street, obviously in search of whatever Shrewsbury offered in the way of night-life.
His self-inflicted lurch into the one-man window-cleaning business was showing him a slice of life never glimpsed in the sophisticated, air-conditioned, superficially polite world of mega-big financial wheeling and dealing, and his grin was rakish, his amber eyes glinting with humour as he slid behind the wheel and coaxed the reluctant engine into spluttering life.
He was driving around in a beat-up old van while his Jaguar XK8 convertible was gathering dust in a lock-up on the other side of town, wearing scuffed jeans and a faded T-shirt that should have been binned years ago while his designer casuals were folded away in a suitcase back at 182 Albert Terrace.
He’d stayed there a whole lot longer than he’d originally intended. In normal circumstances an overnight stop to catch up with his former nanny’s news was as long as it got.
But here he still was, cleaning windows instead of directing operations and steering his varied enterprises from one or other of his worldwide boardrooms. Or unwinding in his isolated cottage for a couple of weeks, as had been his intention.
Because when he’d stopped off to pay his respects to Nanny Briggs, as he always did en route to his country home—roughly every twelve months—his schedule had been turned on its head.
And, despite his original grit-your-teeth-and-get-on-with-it attitude, he was enjoying every minute! And he would, he reminded himself drily, be enjoying it a whole lot more if he were getting what he wanted, or at least getting close to it.
He was experiencing the type of excitement that usually came when he was close to finalising a fantastic deal, and which never before in his thirty-four years of living had been associated with a woman.
Women came easily.
But not this one. Not Alissa Brannan.
His pursuit of her delectable person wasn’t making much progress, he had to admit, but he’d get there. He always got what he wanted, didn’t he?
He wouldn’t have built up a massive business empire, practically from scratch, if he’d allowed failure a look-in, he reminded himself. Besides, pursuing a woman carried a rare excitement for a man who’d been relentlessly hunted since he was in his early twenties and notching up his second million.
His mood was reflective as he drew out into traffic. He had first seen Alissa Brannan around a year ago. She’d been performing on the catwalk at a showing of a talented Italian designer’s first collection, and he, Jethro, a connoisseur of beautiful women, had been impressed. Very impressed.
If he hadn’t been accompanying his woman of the moment he might have done something about it. But while his occasional affairs lasted he was loyal; it was part of his unwritten code.
That very evening, he remembered, that particular relationship had ended, with the customary gift of a piece of expensive jewellery and no recriminations on either side. Another part of the unwritten code.
Discreet enquiries had given him the information that Alissa Brannan, the exciting new clotheshorse all the top designers were suddenly frantic for, had the reputation of a recluse. Apparently she never dated and socialised rarely—charity functions were about the size of it.
He’d be the one to make her change her mind about dating. That was the promise he’d made himself. But he hadn’t been able to do a thing about it because his work had taken him overseas and kept him there for long stretches of time.
Any other woman, briefly fancied, would have quickly faded from his mind, forever forgotten in the larger importance of empire-building. But somehow those exquisitely lovely features, the grace of her willowy body, had stuck in his mind.
There hadn’t been another woman in the last twelve months, despite the offers. He’d told himself he was too busy jetting around the world from one boardroom to the other, that at the age of thirty-four his appetites were slowing down.
But meeting her again, in the backstreets of this quaint old medieval town, had told him that there was no danger of him slowing down—not in that department!
He negotiated a busy roundabout and took the exit that would lead him to the downmarket side of town, his mind totally occupied with thoughts of the beautiful, elusive creature who had somehow got right under his skin.
Meeting her had turned what had been a week of doing his duty by Nanny Briggs and her husband Harry into something else entirely. It had been too much of a coincidence to be anything other than fate.
He caught the thought and tossed it around. Fate? He didn’t believe in it. He was in control of his own destiny. He took life by the scruff of the neck and shook it until i
t fell into his preferred pattern.
So why was Alissa giving him the cold shoulder?
His black brows were pulled into a frown as he parked the van in front of 182 Albert Terrace. He swung his long legs out, slammed the door behind him and strode across the blistering pavement, his bleak mood dissipating when he discovered Nanny Briggs behind the dusty hedge, watering the pots of geraniums that brightened the narrow strip of front garden.
‘Good news, Master Jethro—Harry’s back on his feet again and ready for work.’ She smiled up at him, and at six-two he towered over her short, round person. To her he would always be Master Jethro, even when he was ninety. ‘And we can’t thank you enough for taking over. Harry was so worried. He was sure his clients would go elsewhere, the business being so new.’
It was barely six months old, started when the older man had been made redundant from the local factory. Harry had no intention of living off the state, not while he could work. Harry had his pride.
‘I was only too happy to do it, you know that.’ He watched as she watered the last of the pots. A week ago that hadn’t been true. He’d do anything for Nanny Briggs, but that didn’t mean that spending a week cleaning windows could be viewed as anything other than a pain. But he’d done what he’d seen as his duty, and duty obviously had its own rewards because he’d met Alissa again—or Allie, as he’d learned she preferred to be called.
‘You’ll be ready for a cup of tea. Wash your hands in the scullery while I make it.’ She headed into the house and Jethro followed. ‘Harry’s having his bath now. You can have yours before supper. I’ve made a shepherd’s pie. It always was one of your favourites.’
Jethro went to do as he was told. Some things would never change, and the dishing up of nursery food was one of them! But he grinned as he scrubbed up in the scullery, listening to the comforting rattle of china coming from the small but scrupulously clean kitchen.
She’d married Harry Ford when they were both in their fifties, but to him she would always be Nanny Briggs, the linchpin of his early years. The only mothering he’d ever had had come from her, his own mother having been too interested in enjoying herself to be bothered with either him or his younger sister Chloe.
He rubbed the moisture from his hands and face on a scratchy towel—Nanny Briggs didn’t believe in pampering—and walked back into the kitchen smelling of strong carbolic soap.
‘Drink your tea before it gets cold and tell me what your plans are,’ she invited. ‘I feel guilty enough as it is about breaking into your holiday, so I don’t want to hear you’re heading back to London, or Amsterdam or wherever. You work too hard.’
He pulled a chair out from the square scrubbed pine table and sat, long legs stretched out in front of him, smiling because she looked so stern. Then the smile faded because she looked something else, he thought with a pang: tired, careworn, more elderly than middle-aged.
His plans? Harry’s welcome recovery from a bout of summer flu left him free to go on his way, to get on with his life and to take that well-earned break at his cottage on the Shropshire/Welsh border, if he still wanted to.
He didn’t think he’d bother, because Harry’s recovery also left him free to step up his pursuit of the seemingly unwilling Allie. Unwittingly, he glowered at his empty cup. He also needed to do something more for Nanny Briggs and Harry. He had always thought of Nanny Briggs as being indestructible, but she wasn’t. It was time she started to take life more easily, and spent her remaining years free of financial worry.
‘I thought I might stay on with you for another couple of days, if that’s OK with you.’ He watched her closely as she reached for his empty cup and refilled it. ‘There’s a business proposition I’d like to put to Harry.’ And he’d figure out a way so it wouldn’t smell of charity.
Allie paid off the cab and stood on the pavement, staring up at her apartment block in a daze. She, who despised liars, had just told the biggest whopper in the history of the world!
Despite the cloud cover that blanketed London her skin felt as if it were on fire, perspiration beading her short upper lip, all her bones wobbling. She didn’t know how she was going to make it into the building.
But she managed it somehow, feeling distinctly queasy as the lift whisked her up to her floor, and practically hysterical when it took her a good two minutes to fit her key into the lock.
Which served her right for telling the solicitor such a barefaced lie!
Tottering into her small, minimally furnished sitting room, she told herself to calm down, and fast. She had very little time to turn the lie into truth, and getting hysterical was wasting it.
Walking out of her high-heeled pumps, she headed for the bedroom, releasing her shimmering blonde hair from the pins that had held it in a sophisticated coil at the nape of her long, elegant neck.
Out of the classy suit she’d worn for the meeting, she pulled on a pair of old blue jeans and a baggy T-shirt. Now she felt more like herself and less like a super-model, and that helped the calming down process.
Cleaning off her make-up, she reviewed the situation objectively, recalling her initial mild curiosity when she’d complied with her late uncle’s solicitor’s request for a meeting.
‘Perhaps he left you something in his will?’ Laura, her mother, had suggested. She never said her brother-in-law’s name; ‘Fabian’ was a word that hadn’t crossed her lips since what had happened several years ago. ‘Maybe towards the end he felt guilty.’ Her voice hadn’t carried much conviction.
‘Pigs might fly!’ Allie had smiled into her mother’s deep blue eyes, so like her own. ‘Knowing him, he’s probably left me a shovel to dig my grave with!’
So, only mildly curious, she’d broken into the long summer break she’d given herself in order to spend time with Laura, whose deepening depression was worrying her, combining the meeting with Uncle Fabian’s solicitor with an overnight stay at her modest London apartment and a working dinner with her agent.
Leaving the cramped terraced house on the outskirts of Shrewsbury, which Laura now shared with her sister Fran, Allie had caught the connecting train to Euston and spent the journey doing sums in her head.
A year ago she’d been on the point of giving up a modelling career that had seemed to be going nowhere when she’d suddenly hit the big time. Since that day she’d been saving hard, and now she had enough to put a hefty deposit on a home in the country for Laura and Fran to share.
Close enough to town for Fran to commute to her job in the council offices, with a large enough garden for Laura to indulge the passion for plants that had developed during the years they’d spent at Studley, when she’d transformed the neglected gardens into paradise. Her mother would never be remotely happy living in town; she needed open spaces and birdsong.
So, providing the high-paying assignments continued to come her way—and at just twenty-two she still had a few good years ahead of her—she could take on a mortgage and make her mother a generous allowance. She hated having to see her taking on any cleaning work she could get just to pay her way.
Which was why she’d taken this break from international catwalks and photographic studios. Apart from recouping her energies after a year of unremitting hard work, she knew she would need time to persuade her mother to accept the money. Only last night, after Fran had gone to bed, she’d broached the subject.
‘I refuse to let you spend your money on me. It’s sweet of you, darling, but I can’t let you do it.’ Laura’s eyes had misted with the tears that now never seemed far away, but Allie had insisted.
‘The money wouldn’t be wasted; property’s a good investment. And as for the allowance—what else have I got to spend my money on?’
Apart from the rental on her small flat, and a few decent clothes for public appearances, she needed very little. Unlike most of her colleagues, she rarely socialised, and wasn’t interested in expensive holidays or status symbol cars.
She’d pressed her point home. ‘I only decided to g
o for a modelling career to earn money fast, so that I could do this for you. For years I thought the big bucks wouldn’t come, but now they have I don’t expect you to go all mulish on me! I know how happy you were at Studley, and that even after Dad died you’d have gone back like a shot had it been possible. I can’t give you Studley back—I wish I could—but I can give you a country cottage. It will be up to you to put the roses round the door!’
As soon as she’d seen her mother’s mouth begin to quiver she regretted having mentioned Studley. Laura had been devoted to the place. Still was. All her happy memories were there.
So, Allie’s mind had been occupied with worrying about the way her mother seemed to be going downhill, with racking her brains for the right tack to take to persuade her to accept what Allie could offer her, right up until the moment when the solicitor had seen her seated and told her, ‘Your late uncle, Fabian Brannan left his entire estate to the nation. Apart from the property known as Studley Manor, and its contents, which goes to you.’
He glanced at her, pushing his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose. ‘There is, however, one condition.’ He raised one eyebrow and permitted himself an almost imperceptible shrug. ‘That you are married at the time of his death, or within one month of it.’
Allie stared into his bland brown eyes, stunned. Her stomach churned sickeningly. She wanted to scream.
Her initial reaction to the first part of his statement had been a huge upsurge of elation. Fabian, at the end, had made amends. Studley Manor, the lovely old house where she’d spent the first fifteen years of her life, the place where her mother yearned to be, where her most treasured memories were, was within her gift.
Laura would be happy there, after years of drudgery. She would have her memories of better times, would be at last content, finding peace working in the beautiful gardens she had created out of a virtual wilderness.
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