Holly scowled, then coughed. Dust was the enemy of all fabrics, but it was death to the exquisite fabrics she tended to work with. So. What did she do first? Unpack the car? Make a cup of tea? Or make inroads into the neglect?
She half closed her eyes and tried to imagine just what the place would look like all decorated with big mirrors and fresh paint. Dramatic colours providing a rich foil for the snowy, showy gowns. But it was no good—for once her imagination stubbornly refused to work.
A dark shadow fell over her and Holly turned her head to see the man with the denim-blue eyes standing in the doorway. He stepped into the shop as if he had every right to.
He made the interior feel terribly claustrophobic. Holly found herself distracted by those endless legs, the dizzying width of his shoulders, and she felt a warm, unfamiliar tightening in her belly. He was, she noticed inconsequentially, carrying two cartons of milk, a box of chocolate biscuits and a newspaper. So—whoever he was—he certainly didn’t have much in the way of domestic routine!
‘Well, hello again,’ said Holly, and smiled into the denim-coloured eyes.
‘What in hell’s name are you doing in here?’
‘I’m admiring all the dust and cobwebs—what does it look like?’
‘That isn’t what I meant and you know it!’ he growled. ‘How did you get in here?’
Holly stared at him as if he’d gone completely mad. ‘How do you think I got in? By picking the lock?’
He shrugged his massive shoulders as if to say that nothing would surprise him. ‘Tell me.’
‘I used my key, of course!’
‘Your key?’
‘Yes,’ she defended, wondering if he always glared at people this much. She waved the offending item in front of him. ‘My key! See!’
‘And how did you get hold of a key?’
‘I clutched it between my fingers and thumb, just like everyone else does!’
‘Don’t be facetious!’
‘Well, what do you expect when you come over so heavy? How on earth do you think I got it? It’s mine. On loan. I’m renting.’
‘Renting?’
Her mouth twitched. ‘Do you know—you have a terrible habit of repeating everything I say and making it into a question?’
‘You’re renting the shop?’ he persisted in disbelief, as though she hadn’t spoken. ‘This shop?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Why?’
Holly smiled at his belligerence. ‘Well, you’ve barged in here as if you own the place, asking me questions as though I’m on the witness stand, so I suppose one more won’t make any difference. Why do people usually rent a shop? Because they want to sell something, perhaps? Like me—I’m a dress designer.’
He nodded. ‘Yes,’ he agreed slowly, and an ironic smile touched the corners of his mouth. ‘Yes, you look like a dress designer.’
Holly noted the disapproving look on his face and was glad she wasn’t opening an escort agency! ‘Is that supposed to be a compliment?’
‘No.’
‘I didn’t think so. I fit the stereotype, do I?’
He shrugged. ‘I guess you do.’ His eyes flickered to the gauzy shirt, where the stark outline of her nipples bore testimony to the cold weather. ‘You wear unsuitable clothes. You drive a hand-painted, beaten-up old car—I wasn’t for a minute labouring under the illusion that you were a bank clerk!’
‘Nothing wrong with bank clerks,’ Holly defended staunchly.
‘I didn’t say there was,’ came his soft reply. ‘So tell me why you’re renting this shop.’
‘To sell my designs.’
He frowned as he tried to picture the insubstantial and outrageous garments in which emaciated models sashayed up the catwalk. He tried to imagine Caroline or any other woman he knew wearing one. And the only one who could get away with it was the leggy beauty standing in front of him. ‘Think there’ll be a market for them around here, do you?’ he mocked. ‘It’s a pretty conservative kind of area.’
She ignored the sarcasm. ‘I certainly hope so! There’s always a market for bridal gowns—’
His dark eyebrows disappeared beneath the tawny hair. ‘Bridal gowns?’
‘There you go again,’ she murmured. ‘Yes. Bridal gowns. You know—the long white frocks that women wear on what is supposed to be the happiest day of their lives.’ She waited for him to say something about his wedding day, which was what people always did say. But he didn’t. And Holly was both alarmed and astonished at the great sensation of relief which flooded through her at his lack of reaction. He isn’t married! she found herself thinking with a feeling which was very close to elation, and then hoped she hadn’t given anything away in her expression.
‘You design bridal gowns?’
‘You sound surprised.’
‘Maybe that’s because I am. You aren’t exactly what most people have in mind when they think of wedding dresses.’
‘Too young?’ she guessed.
‘There’s that,’ he agreed. ‘And marriage is traditional...’ his eyes glimmered ‘...which you ain’t.’
‘I can be. I know how to be.’
Interesting. ‘And you’ll be living—?’
‘In the flat upstairs, of course.’ She smiled in response to his frowned reaction to that, and wiped a dusty hand down the side of her jeans before extending her hand. ‘I guess we’d better introduce ourselves. I’m Holly Lovelace of Lovelace Brides.’ She smiled disarmingly. ‘Who are you?’
‘Holly Lovelace?’ He started to laugh.
‘That’s right.’
‘Not your real name, right?’
‘Wrong. I’ve got my birth certificate somewhere, if you’d like to check.’
He looked down at the hand she was still holding out, and shook it, her narrow fingers seeming to get lost within the grasp of his big, rough palm. ‘I’m Luke Goodwin,’ he said deliberately, and waited.
‘Hello, Luke!’
There was another brief pause as he savoured a heady feeling of power. ‘You haven’t heard of me?’
‘You’re absolutely right. I haven’t.’
‘Well, I’m your new landlord.’
Holly was too busy blinking up at him to respond at first. Up this close he was even more divine. He had the kind of mouth that even the most hardened man-hater would have described as irresistible. She was just wondering what it would be like to be kissed by a mouth like that when his words seeped unwillingly into her consciousness.
‘But you can’t be my landlord!’ she protested. Landlords were pallid and wore pinstriped suits, not faded jeans and a golden tan which she suspected might be all over.
He slanted a look at her from between sultry azure eyes. ‘Oh? Says who?’
‘Says me! You’re not the person I signed the lease with!’
‘And who did you sign the lease with?’
‘I had to meet a man in Winchester—’
‘Called?’
‘Doug Something-or-Other...’ Holly frowned as she recalled the smoothie who had tried plying her with gin and tonics in the middle of the day and sat leering at her thighs. His oily attitude had had a lot to do with the speed with which she had signed the lease. ‘I know! Doug Reasdale, that was it.’
‘Doug’s the letting agent,’ he informed her. ‘He acted for my uncle.’
‘Well, he certainly didn’t mention that there was an absentee and highly hostile landlord!’ snapped Holly.
‘No longer absentee,’ he amended thoughtfully. ‘And Doug neglected to mention to me that he’d just rented out one of my properties to someone who doesn’t even look old enough to vote!’
‘I’m twenty-six, actually,’ she corrected him tightly. She was getting fed up with people thinking she was just a kid. Maybe it was time she started wearing a little make-up, maybe even cut her hair...
‘Twenty-six, huh?’ He looked at the wild tangle of her curls and her wide-spaced green eyes. Bare lips that excited...invited... Right at that moment sh
e looked like jail bait. ‘Well, maybe you should try acting it,’ he suggested softly.
Holly smirked. ‘Really? That’s neat, coming from you! You mean I should follow your shining example of adult behaviour and start throwing my weight around? I thought that dictatorships had gone out of fashion until I met you!’
‘But clearly a very ineffective dictatorship in this case,’ he observed, trying very hard not to laugh, ‘since I asked you to move your car, but it still seems to be taking up half the road!’
‘You didn’t ask me anything!’ she fumed. ‘You issued the kind of order that I haven’t heard since I was at school!’
‘Then you were obviously a very disobedient schoolgirl,’ he murmured, before realising that the conversation was in danger of sliding helplessly into sexual innuendo and that he was in very great danger of responding to it.
Holly had never met a man she found as physically attractive as the one standing in front of her, and maybe his allure was responsible for what she did next. She tried to tell herself that it was purely an instinctive reaction to that suggestive velvet whisper, but, whatever the reason, she found herself slanting her eyes at him like a courtesan. ‘Why?’ she murmured provocatively, and put her hands on her hips. ‘Have you got a thing about schoolgirls?’
Luke froze. When she leaned back like that it was easy to see that she wasn’t wearing a bra, that her lush breasts were free and unfettered. He saw the way her lips were parted into a smile and he knew for certain that, if he tried to kiss her right then, she would melt into his arms in the way that so many women had done before. But no more. His mouth hardened.
‘I’ll tell you what I have a “thing” about,’ he said carefully. ‘And that’s people who take on more than they’re obviously capable of—’
‘Meaning me?’
‘Meaning you,’ he agreed evenly, as he fought to keep his feelings under control. ‘You clearly can’t tell your left from your right, judging by your parking—so heaven only knows how you intend to run a thriving business! Or maybe that’s why you enjoy flirting with me so outrageously. Maybe you suspect that you’re destined to fail? Perhaps you like to have a little something to fall back on, huh? So that if your business goes bust, then the landlord might be lenient with you.’
Holly stared at him, first in horror, then in disbelief. Then with an irresistible desire to giggle. ‘My God, you’re actually being serious, aren’t you? Are you really from planet Earth, or have aliens just dropped you here? Or do you honestly think that I’d leap into bed with you if I didn’t have enough money to pay the rent?’
Luke knew that he had two choices. If he allowed her to think that he had actually meant that outrageous suggestion, then she would seriously underestimate his critical judgement—and Luke didn’t like being underestimated by anyone. If she underestimated him then she wouldn’t respect him either, and for some reason the thought of that disturbed him. Then he thought of Caroline, and swallowed. Maybe, under the circumstances, that would be the best of the two options.
Alternatively, if he laughed it off—then some of this rapidly building tension might dissolve...
He relaxed and let his blue eyes crinkle at the corners. It was a calculated move because he knew only too well the effect that particular look had. It worked on everyone—men, women, children, animals. It was a charm he had in abundance, but he had never used it quite as deliberately as he did right now. ‘Don’t be absurd,’ he denied softly. ‘It was just a joke.’
‘Pretty poor taste joke, commented Holly, but it was impossible not to thaw when confronted by that melting blue gaze.
‘Listen, why don’t I help you unload your roof-rack so that you can move your car more easily?’ He smiled at her properly then, and Holly honestly couldn’t think of a single objection.
CHAPTER TWO
‘UNLESS,’ Luke queried, blue eyes narrowing, ‘you have someone else to help you?’
Holly shook her head. ‘Nope. Just me. All on my own.’
‘Well, then. Show me what needs doing.’
She looked into his eyes, confused by this sudden softening of his attitude towards her. One minute he was Mr Mean, the next he was laying on the charm with a trowel, and—surprise, surprise—he was very good at that! ‘What’s the catch?’
‘No catch.’
‘Well, that’s very sweet of you—’ she began, but he shook his head firmly.
‘No, not sweet,’ he corrected. ‘I am never sweet, Holly.’
‘What, then?’ She wrinkled her nose at him. ‘Let’s go on what we know about you already. Kind? Polite? Gentlemanly?’
He laughed, and even that felt like a brief betrayal, until he told himself that he was being stupid. Men could be friends with women, couldn’t they? Or, if not actually friends, then friendly. Just because you had a laugh and a joke with a woman, it didn’t mean that the two of you automatically wanted to start tearing each other’s clothes off.
‘Let’s just say that it wouldn’t rest very easily on my conscience if I walked away knowing that I had left you to deal with that outrageous amount of luggage. I’m kind of old-fashioned like that.’
Holly regarded him steadily, but her heart was beating fast. She wasn’t used to men coming out with ruggedly masculine statements like that last one. ‘You mean that I’m too much of a delicate female to be able to manoeuvre a couple of suitcases off the roof-rack?’
‘Delicate?’ Luke looked her over very thoroughly, telling himself that she had asked the question, and therefore he needed to give it careful consideration.
She was getting on for six feet—tall for a woman—with correspondingly long limbs. She had legs like a thoroughbred, he thought, then wished he hadn‘t—long and supple legs that seemed to go all the way up to her armpits. She was slim and narrow-hipped, but not skinny in the way that tall women very often could be. And her breasts were almost shocking in their fullness—they looked curiously and beautifully at odds with her boyish figure. ‘No,’ he growled. ‘I wouldn’t call you delicate.’
She wondered if he had noticed that she was blushing. Maybe not. He hadn’t exactly been concentrating on her face, now, had he? There had been something almost anatomical in the way he had looked at her. If any other man had stared at her body quite so blatantly, she suspected that she would have asked them to leave. But she didn’t feel a bit like asking Luke to leave. With Luke she just wanted him to carry on looking at her like that all day long.
‘So do you want my help, or not?’
Holly swallowed, wishing that everything he said didn’t sound like a loaded and very sexy question. And the decision was really very simple—if she wanted to be totally independent and self-sufficient then she should decline his offer and do it all herself.
But a sensible person wouldn’t do that, would they? After all, she knew no one here, not a soul. Was she, the great risk-taker, really tying herself up in knots over a simple offer of assistance just because it happened to come from a man she found overwhelmingly attractive? Wasn’t that a form of sexism in itself?
‘Thanks very much! You can start bringing the stuff in from the car, if you like,’ she told him, trying to sound brisk and workmanlike, ‘while I go and see how habitable it is upstairs. I just hope it’s more promising than down here.’ But her voice didn’t hold out much hope. ‘Unless you happen to have been up there lately?’
He shook his head. ‘I’ve never set foot inside the place before.’
Holly frowned. ‘But I thought you said you were the landlord?’
‘I did. And I am—but an extremely new landlord. It’s a long story.’ He shrugged, in answer to the questioning look in her eyes. In the dim winter light shining through the shop window he became acutely conscious of how pale her skin looked, how bright her green eyes. With the deep copper ringlets tumbling unfettered around her shoulders, she could have stepped straight out of a pre-Raphaelite painting, jeans or no jeans, and he suddenly felt icy with a foreboding of unknown source.
‘Do you have any on you?’
‘Well, no,’ he admitted reluctantly. ‘But the lesson is surely that I could be absolutely anyone—’
‘The impostor landlord?’ She hammed it up. ‘About to hurl me to the floor and have your wicked way with me?’
The air crackled with tension. ‘That isn’t funny,’ he said heavily.
‘No,’ she agreed, and her throat seemed to constrict as their gazes clashed. ‘It isn’t.’
‘In fact, it’s a pretty dumb thing to do—to put yourself in such a vulnerable situation,’ he growled.
Independent and self-sufficient—huh! She had fallen headlong at the first hurdle. ‘Okay. Okay. Lesson received and understood.’
He was still frowning. ‘You’d better give me the keys,’ he instructed tersely. ‘And I’ll move your car when I’ve unloaded all the stuff.’
Holly hesitated. ‘Er—you might find she’s a little temperamental in cold weather—like all cars of that age.’
‘I should have guessed!’ His voice was tinged with both irritation and concern—though he didn’t stop to ask himself why. How was she hoping to get a business up and running if she was this disorganised? ‘Why the hell don’t you buy yourself a decent car?’ he drawled. ‘Didn’t it occur to you that you might need something more reliable?’
His sentiments were no different from her own, but it was one thing deciding that she needed a newer car for herself—quite another for a complete stranger to bossily interrogate her on why she hadn’t bought one!
‘Of course it occurred to me,’ she agreed. ‘But reliable usually means boring. And expensive. To get an interesting car that you can count on costs a lot more money than I’m prepared or able to spend at the moment.’ She gave him a reassuring smile. ‘But don’t worry if she won’t start first time. A little coaxing usually works wonders.’
One Bridegroom Required! Page 2
