Cinderella’s Wedding Wish

by Jessica Hart

  ‘I’d never be that wet,’ said Miranda tartly. ‘I’d rather tell everyone that I was bored with you.’

  ‘I’m not paying you twenty-five thousand quid to make me sound dull! That’s not the idea at all!’

  ‘Oh, well, if you’re going to be picky…’ She thought for a moment, getting into the idea in spite of herself. ‘I suppose I could say that I don’t want children, and that I got cold feet when I realised you were desperate to settle down and start a family.’

  ‘Now, that is a good idea,’ said Rafe cheerfully. ‘They’re bound to feel sorry for me when they hear that. Let’s agree on that.’

  ‘I haven’t agreed to any of it yet,’ Miranda reminded him sharply.

  ‘Don’t you want to be able to go to Whitestones?’

  ‘You know I do. It’s just…well, the whole idea is crazy!’

  ‘Think about it at least,’ said Rafe. ‘It might be crazy, but it might also be a way to get us both what we want most.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  M IRANDA did think about it as they drove past tower blocks and industrial estates and soulless shopping malls. It was an unattractive part of London, at least that bit of it that could be seen from the main road in the murky orange glow of the street lights. It was all right for Rafe, living in Mayfair with its imposing houses and elegant squares, but Rosie could only afford a tiny flat on the outskirts of London. Miranda hated the journey to and from the city centre where she worked, and longed for Whitestones, where the night was properly dark and the air was clean and where in place of traffic and sirens and jangling alarms all you could hear was the sea on the shingle.

  Now she could go.

  All she had to do in exchange was pretend to be in love with Rafe for a month.

  Why was she even hesitating? Miranda didn’t know. She just knew that the thought was enough to flutter the nerves just beneath her skin and make her stomach churn with a disturbing mixture of excitement and fear.

  Because, actually, she did know. She was afraid she might enjoy being with Rafe too much. She was afraid she might find it hard to resist him. That she might forget that she was only supposed to be pretending.

  But she could do it. She would just have to keep a cool head and keep remembering that it was just a pretence. Miranda had a nasty feeling that might be a lot more difficult than it sounded, but wouldn’t it be worth it for Whitestones? She would never get a better chance than this to make her dream come true. Was she really going to throw it away because she was afraid of the way Rafe made her feel?

  How wet of her that would be!

  ‘Well?’ Rafe pulled up outside Rosie’s flat and switched off the engine. ‘I know you’ve been thinking-could practically hear your mind working!-but have you come to any decision?’

  Miranda moistened her lips. ‘Twenty-five thousand pounds is a lot of money. What exactly would I have to do for that?’

  ‘Well, let’s see…’ Rafe undid his seat belt so that he could turn and study her face. ‘All we’d have to do is leak our engagement to a couple of gossip columns, and go out together a few times so people can see how in love we are.’

  His face was perfectly straight, but there was a familiar undercurrent of laughter in his voice. Miranda hated the way he could do that.

  ‘You’d have to act like a suitably besotted fiancée,’ he told her. ‘Do you think you could manage that?’

  Her chin went up. ‘Do I have to be besotted?’

  ‘For twenty-five thousand pounds?’ Rafe grinned. ‘I think besotted is the least you could be, don’t you?’

  ‘Well, what do besotted fiancées do?’ asked Miranda ungraciously. ‘I don’t want to spend a month looking adoringly at you! Your ego is quite big enough as it is!’

  Rafe’s mouth twitched appreciatively. ‘Imagine you’re in love with me, Miranda. How would you act with me then?’

  ‘Like I do now, probably,’ she said, getting out of the car and wishing she could get out of the conversation as easily.

  ‘You don’t think you would be a little more affectionate if you loved me?’ Rafe asked conversationally. ‘Everyone has got to think that behind that rather prim and proper exterior is a wild, exciting woman who only I can see. You might have to bring yourself to touch me.’ He had followed her to the door of the flat and a smile hovered around his mouth as he looked down at her. ‘You know, hold my hand occasionally, even kiss me. Somehow you’d need to give the impression that you can’t keep your hands off me.’

  Miranda’s cheeks felt as if they were on fire. ‘Why can’t you be the one who can’t keep your hands off me?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t see any problem about that,’ said Rafe, and smiled in a way that set her heart thudding. ‘No, no problem at all…’

  Reaching out, he ran a knuckle down the curve of her cheek. It was the gentlest of touches, but it seemed to sear her skin, and Miranda flinched back from it, drawing a sharp, unsteady breath.

  Rafe’s smile faded. ‘But maybe it is a problem for you,’ he said slowly. ‘I can see that you’re tense. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. Perhaps we’d better drop the whole idea?’

  ‘No!’ Miranda spoke without thinking. Her cheek was still burning where his finger had grazed the skin, and she was mortified at the way she had jerked back from his touch. What was wrong with her? Anyone would think she was a silly schoolgirl, instead of a sensible woman who had just been offered the chance of a lifetime!

  She could do this. She could do it for Whitestones. It wasn’t as if Rafe were suggesting anything illegal or even immoral. Neither of them were committed to anyone else. They would be acting out a lie, true, but nobody’s feelings would be hurt. Rafe wasn’t expecting her to sleep with him-at least, she didn’t think so. All she had to do was hold his hand occasionally. Of course she could do that.

  ‘No,’ she said again. ‘It won’t be a problem. I’m not a very huggy-kissy person, I suppose, but I can see that if we want to convince everyone that we really are engaged, I’d need to be a bit more demonstrative. I can do that.’

  ‘Really?’ Rafe was still looking doubtful.

  ‘Really,’ said Miranda.

  She was going to have to prove it to him, she realised. She was going to have to kiss him.

  Heat washed through her as her eyes rested on his mouth, and a feeling like a fist clenching deep inside her made her inhale slowly. Face it, Miranda, she told herself. Not only can you do it, you want to do it.

  ‘Would you like me to prove it?’ she asked, and without waiting for an answer she stepped forwards and rested her hands against his chest. Slowly, almost thoughtfully, she spread them so that she could run them up and over his powerful shoulders.

  Rafe smiled. ‘Why not?’ he said softly.

  Miranda deliberately didn’t hurry. She felt curiously calm. Having got this far, she wasn’t going to back down now. If Rafe thought she was going to be content with a hurried peck on the cheek, he was going to discover his mistake. So he thought she was tense, did he? He thought she was prim and proper? Well, this was her chance to show him just how wrong he was.

  He was standing very, very still, but there was an arrested expression in his eyes as she savoured the feel of his body beneath her hands. Only the pulse hammering in his cheek gave away his acute awareness of her, and suddenly Miranda was filled with a sense of her own power.

  Her mouth curving in a smile of its own, she leant in and pressed her lips to his throat below his ear for a long, breathless moment before she began to tease little kisses along his jaw line. His skin was warm and faintly prickled with stubble, and he smelt comfortingly of clean laundry. Miranda eased herself closer and slid her hands down to slip beneath his jacket. Suddenly it was easy.

  With a tiny sigh she reached the corner of his mouth at last. She felt it curve in response, but she kept her exploration soft and seductive, tasting his lips almost reflectively, giving herself up to the sheer bliss of being able to kiss him the way she realised she had wanted to
right from the start.

  Rafe felt as if he were about to explode. Unable to hold out any longer, he brought his hands up to grip her and yank her closer so that he could deepen the kiss, and Miranda clutched instinctively at his hard, gloriously solid body, anchoring herself against the swirl of sheer pleasure as she struggled to stay in control.

  This was her kiss. She could kiss him as deeply, as hungrily, as he could kiss her. But her blood was pounding, her whole being pulsing with a joyous excitement that sucked her down in spite of herself as they kissed and kissed and kissed again, spinning her round until she forgot there was a competition, forgot what she was trying to prove, forgot everything except Rafe’s mouth and the thrill of his hands hard on her and the feel of him.

  ‘Miranda…’

  He was kissing her throat, murmuring her name as he fumbled with the buttons of her blouse, and she gasped and tipped back her head, her fingers entwined in his dark hair. Vaguely she became aware of something sharp and solid digging into her back. It was enough to pull her back from the brink, and she flailed for a last shred of control. How had they ended up here? Had Rafe backed her against the door, or had she dragged him with her as she collapsed back onto it for support?

  Either way, she had to stop this…now, Miranda told herself, even as she shivered and arched beneath the wickedly delicious drift of his lips.

  Now, while she still could. Before Rafe peeled her blouse from her shoulders, before she tugged his shirt from his trousers and was unbuckling his belt. Before they stumbled upstairs, shedding clothes as they went, and fell onto her bed together.

  From somewhere, Miranda found the strength to disentangle her fingers from his hair and press her palms against his chest to push him away an inch.

  ‘Wait,’ she croaked.

  Rafe stilled for a moment, and then, very slowly, he levered himself away from her and dropped his hands.

  Miranda moistened her lips. She was trembling, and the bones in her legs seemed to have dissolved, leaving only a fizzy sensation to keep her upright.

  ‘I…I think that’s made the point,’ she said unevenly.

  Her lips were swollen, her face flushed, her eyes dark and dazed, and Rafe had to shake his head to clear it.

  ‘I take it all back,’ he managed, more shaken than he wanted to admit. He was having trouble with his breathing still. ‘There was nothing prim and proper about that kiss.’

  ‘I told you I could do it.’

  ‘You did, and you were right. No one watching you kiss like that would have the slightest difficulty in understanding why I’d want to marry you!’

  ‘I don’t think it will be necessary to repeat it,’ said Miranda, retreating behind her most prickly manner. ‘We’d hardly be likely to kiss in public. At least, not like that.’

  ‘No, perhaps it’s better if we don’t,’ agreed Rafe. ‘We’re liable to get ourselves arrested if we do!’ He smiled down at her. ‘I take it, then, that you’ll pretend to be my fiancée?’

  ‘It will just be for a month?’ Her legs were still very unsteady, but at least her voice sounded like her own again.

  ‘A month,’ he confirmed ‘At the end of which time, you have to find a way to break off our engagement. In return, I’ll give you a cheque for twenty-five thousand pounds. Does that seem fair?’

  It was more than fair, Miranda thought.

  ‘I’ll do it,” she told him.

  ‘What about this one?’

  Rafe picked up a ring with an eye-popping emerald set in a cluster of diamonds, each one of which would have made a spectacular ring on its own. He handed it to Miranda, who slid it reluctantly onto her finger.

  It felt awkward and heavy, and looked completely out of place on her hand. Except, of course, it wasn’t the ring that was out of place. It was her.

  What was she doing here in this exclusive jeweller’s, trying on engagement rings? Miranda was beginning to wonder what had possessed her to agree to Rafe’s crazy plan. Nobody in their right minds would ever believe that he would seriously consider marrying someone like her!

  But Rafe seemed confident. He had immediately started making plans, and insisted on buying her a ring, sweeping aside her objections that it wasn’t necessary.

  ‘Of course you have to have a ring,’ he had told her. ‘You won’t look like a fiancée without a socking great diamond on your finger.’

  If it had been left to him, they would have been at the jeweller’s the very next day, but Miranda had pointed out that it was Friday, and that she had to go to work, even if he didn’t.

  ‘They’re expecting me. I can’t just not turn up.’

  ‘Oh, very well, we’ll do it on Saturday then,’ Rafe had grumbled. ‘When does this assignment end?’

  ‘Tomorrow’s my last day.’

  ‘Then you’ll be free next week?’

  But Miranda had dug in her heels about that, too. ‘Not if the agency can find me a job. I’m not giving up work just to sit around and wait for you to go out in the evenings.’

  Rafe regarded her with frustration. ‘But you won’t need to work,’ he said. ‘That’s why I’m paying you twenty-five thousand pounds!’

  ‘Yes, and how long will that last if I have to live in London on no salary?’ Miranda retorted. ‘That money is for Whitestones. I’m not wasting it. No, I’m going to keep working until I’m ready to go to Whitestones and not before.’

  Rafe had sighed. ‘Has anyone ever told you you’re a very stubborn woman, Miranda Fairchild? You’d better come back and work at Knighton’s, then. Ginny can ring the agency and request you for another temporary assignment.’

  ‘But that’s ridiculous!’

  ‘No more ridiculous than the fiancée of one of the richest men in the country insisting on doing some tedious office job,’ he pointed out.

  ‘It’s not ridiculous to want to work for a living,’ said Miranda, exasperated by him. ‘Obviously I’d give up working in the evenings,’ she told him. ‘I’ll need to be available to go out so people can see us together.’

  ‘Big of you,’ said Rafe, who was feeling oddly disgruntled. ‘I was beginning to wonder whether you’d insist on keeping that job, too!’

  Infuriatingly, Miranda refused to rise. ‘Being seen out with you at social events was part of the deal,’ she said coolly. ‘Giving up my day job wasn’t.’

  ‘I’m hardly going to see you if you’re not at Knighton’s,’ he grumbled. ‘Perhaps you’d better move in with me. At least we might spend more than five minutes together then.’

  In fact, that was an excellent idea, he decided. He should have thought of that before.

  Miranda clearly didn’t think it was such a good idea.

  ‘Move in with you? What on earth for?’

  ‘This is the twenty-first century, Miranda. Nobody is going to believe I would marry someone I wasn’t sleeping with.’

  ‘Who said anything about sleeping with you?’ she demanded, glaring at him. ‘That wasn’t part of our agreement either!’

  Rafe looked at her flushed face, and found himself remembering that kiss with an intensity that took him unawares. He had sensed the warmth and passion simmering beneath her cool surface, but the reality had been so much more exciting than even he had imagined. And if she kissed like that, what would it be like to make love to her?

  ‘Perhaps we should renegotiate,’ he suggested, but Miranda wasn’t having that.

  ‘Perhaps we should stick to what was agreed,’ she said crisply. ‘You wanted me to turn up to a few events on your arm and look suitably besotted, and that’s all I agreed to!’

  ‘You agreed that you would do your best to convince people that we were really engaged. What kind of engagement are they going to think we have if it gets out that I’m driving you chastely home every night?’

  Rafe dragged a hand through his hair. Why was nothing ever easy with Miranda?

  ‘Look, you can have your own room,’ he offered. ‘I’m not suggesting that we spend every night maki
ng mad, passionate love!’

  He had thought about it, though, hadn’t he? He pushed the thought aside.

  ‘It’s not as if I’m short of space,’ he went on, thinking about the house he had inherited along with the company from his father. ‘My housekeeper is very discreet. Nobody else need know that we’re not actually sleeping together.’

  Miranda hesitated. The thought of living with Rafe was enough to set her prickling with nerves, but, having got her way about working, it was her turn to compromise. Besides, it made a kind of sense.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll move in-on condition that I have my own room.’

  ‘Since we’re talking about conditions…’ said Rafe, surprised at how triumphant he felt at having convinced Miranda to come and live with him. It wasn’t even as if they were going to be sleeping together! He must be losing his touch.

  She looked at him suspiciously. ‘What?’

  ‘You need to do something about your clothes. Octavia can take you shopping after we’ve bought a ring.’

  ‘What’s wrong with my clothes?’ Miranda bristled immediately.

  ‘We’re going to be going out in the evenings a lot and you can’t wear those awful suits you insist on,’ he told her. ‘Or your waitressing outfit, come to that,’ he said before she could suggest it. ‘Unless you’d like to wear that cat suit again?’ The dark eyes gleamed with the memory of how revealingly it had clung to her figure. ‘That would get you noticed!’

  Faint colour tinged Miranda’s cheekbones. ‘I couldn’t possibly wear that again,’ she said. ‘The tail was so last season!’

  Mentally, she reviewed her limited wardrobe. She had never been much of one for clothes, even before Fairchild’s had collapsed. Belinda and Octavia had always been obsessed with fashion, but Miranda had stubbornly resisted all their attempts to smarten her up. She wore suits for work, and the rest of the time she was happy in jeans and a T-shirt. They were fine for going to a film, or having a drink with Rosie, but she might have to make more of an effort for the kind of occasions Rafe clearly had in mind.