‘Anything. Just name it,’ she said, her eyes wide with anticipation.
He sighed and shook his head. ‘The thing is, I have a PA already. There wouldn’t be anything for you to do here at the office.’
‘At your house, then? I’m a great cleaner. Fast and totally reliable.’
‘Got a whole team of those.’
‘Then what do you need? There has to be something.’
And there it was.
The idea.
But he couldn’t suggest that.
Could he?
No.
He shouldn’t.
‘Please,’ she whispered in a broken voice, tears brimming in her eyes again.
‘What I need most right now is a wife,’ he said roughly, losing the grip on his restraint as the idea pushed harder at his brain and compassion loosened his tongue. ‘At least, I need to find a woman that’s prepared to get married in the next few weeks and stay married to me for a year.’ Catching the expression of shock on her face, he silently cursed himself for letting that slip out.
She must think he was a total loony.
‘Are you serious?’ she asked in a faltering voice.
He sighed, feeling tiredness wash through him. ‘Unfortunately, I am.’
‘Why do you need a wife so fast?’
‘Like I said, it’s complicated.’
She surprised him by perching on the edge of his desk and fixing him with an intent stare. ‘Well, you listened to my problems; let me hear yours.’
His pulse stuttered. ‘I don’t think it’s appropriate—’
She held up her hands in a halting motion. ‘Just tell me. Perhaps I can help.’
He frowned at her, taken aback by her unexpected forcefulness. ‘I very much doubt it.’
‘Look, I won’t say anything to anyone if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m good with secrets. Maybe it would help to say it all out loud. That’s what my dad used to do. He used me as a sounding board and often I didn’t need to say a word: he already had the answer; he was just having trouble accessing it.’
He took a moment to study her, trying to judge whether he could trust her not to blab to all and sundry once she’d left his office. The last thing he needed right now was for this to be circulated around social media or the Press. He was already taking enough risks talking to the women he’d approached so far and it could only be a matter of time before his luck ran out.
‘Go on. What harm can it do?’ she murmured, giving him a reassuring smile. There was something about her that encouraged confidences, he realised, and for some reason he felt, deep down, that he could trust her.
He sighed, deciding that he may as well tell her the whole sorry tale since she knew most of it already anyway. Plus, he didn’t really have anything more to lose at this point. And who knew, perhaps she could help in some way?
Stranger things had happened.
Getting up from his chair, he paced over to the window and stared out at the pleasure boats transporting tourists up and down the wide river. ‘My late great-aunt owned the house I live in at the moment.’ He swallowed past the dryness in his throat. ‘It’s the place I’ve considered to be my home for my entire life. It was meant to go to my father next, but he passed away a few years ago, so I’m next in line to inherit it,’ he said, glancing back to check she was listening.
She was. She gazed back at him with an open, interested expression, her hands folded neatly in her lap.
‘It’s been in my family since 1875, ever since it was built for my great-great-grandfather,’ he continued, turning back to look at the river again. ‘It’s the house where I spent all my holidays from boarding school and the home I intend to live in until I die.’ He paused for a moment, feeling his throat tighten as he remembered how he used to say it was the place where he and Harriet would always live, before—well, before his whole life was turned upside down.
Shaking off the tension this memory produced, he moved away from the window and sat back down on his chair.
‘In order to inherit the place, though, a covenant in the will states I have to be married within the next month.’ He tried not to grimace as he said it.
She nodded slowly. ‘Okay.’ Frowning now as if a little puzzled, she said, ‘Could I just ask—why the rush? Haven’t you known about this for a while?’
‘No. Apparently my great-aunt wrote it into her will a couple of years ago, but she was in a coma for eighteen months after suffering a massive stroke. I only found out about it three months ago when she passed away.’
He paused and swallowed, shaking his head as a wave of sadness at losing the woman he thought of as more of a mother figure than a great-aunt flooded through him. ‘I only inherit it if I’m married by my thirtieth birthday and remain married for at least a year, otherwise it gets passed on to my cousin, who is already married,’ he grimaced, ‘and the most immoral, wasteful, tasteless man I’ve ever met. He’d sell the place to the highest bidder in the blink of an eye.’
There was a heavy pause where he watched her eyes widen and her mouth twitch at the corner.
‘And before you ask, no, he wouldn’t sell it to me. We don’t exactly get on.’
‘I kind of gathered that from your description of him,’ she said with a smile.
He tried to smile back but he couldn’t quite muster the energy needed. Mirth was a hard response to summon when you were about to lose the only place in the world that really meant something to you. The place that held all your childhood memories and felt like an integral part of your history.
Your home.
He’d feel baseless without it, adrift, disenfranchised.
‘Well,’ she said, her eyes alive with what looked suspiciously like amusement, ‘that’s quite a conundrum you have there. It’s like something from a soap opera.’ Her mouth twitched. ‘And not a very good one.’
Rubbing his hand over his brow, he felt the tension this predicament had caused under his fingertips. ‘I’d have to agree with you.’
‘Your great-aunt sounds like a real character.’ Her eyes still sparkled with amusement but her smile was warm.
‘She was a little eccentric, yes.’
Crossing her arms, she peered down at him. ‘And I’m guessing no one you’ve asked so far has said yes to this rather unusual proposal?’
‘Correct. Not that there have been many suitable candidates.’ He leant back in his chair and mirrored her by crossing his own arms. ‘The fact we’d have to live together to make it look like we’re a real couple—apparently a solicitor will be deployed at random times to check on this,’ he added by way of explanation, ‘but not have a real relationship hasn’t exactly caught the attention of the women I’ve approached so far. I’m really only interested in getting married as a business arrangement; I’m not looking for true love.’
Her brow furrowed at this. ‘You don’t want to fall in love?’
‘No.’
There was a small pause before she asked, ‘Why not?’
He shrugged. ‘It’s just not for me, that’s all. Despite my great-aunt’s insistence that it was the best thing that ever happened to her, I don’t believe falling in love with someone can really make you happy.’ He sat up in his chair. ‘In fact, I think it does the opposite. It didn’t work out for my parents, or for a large population of the country, and I intend to learn from their mistakes.’
Not to mention his own near miss—though he wasn’t about to tell her about that humiliating experience.
‘Just out of interest, what does your temporary bride get out of this arrangement?’ she asked in a faltering voice, jerking him out of his scrambled thoughts.
There was a tense pause where they looked at each other and he weighed up what he’d be prepared to offer her if she meant what he thought she meant by that.
‘The can
didate would be able to keep the rental cost on their property the same for the next five years,’ he replied slowly.
‘And would there be some sort of pay-out as soon as she’d signed the marriage register?’ she asked, her gaze intent on his now.
‘There could be, if it was a reasonable request.’
‘But she’d have to live with you,’ she appeared to swallow, ‘in your house?’
Noting the renewed flush of her skin, he could guess what she actually meant by that.
‘It would be a purely business arrangement,’ he reassured her, ‘which would mean she’d sleep in her own bedroom. There wouldn’t be any conjugal expectations. In fact, it would be a totally platonic relationship, to avoid any complications.’
‘I see,’ she said, her shoulders seeming to relax a little.
Despite his wish to keep sex out of the deal, he couldn’t help but feel a little miffed by her apparent horror at the idea of sleeping with him. Was it really that off-putting an idea? He shook off his irritation, telling himself not to be an idiot. The woman didn’t know him from the next man, so of course she’d be nervous about the idea of any expected intimacy between them.
‘We’d also both have to agree not to have any sexual relationships outside the marriage, again, to avoid complications.’
‘Okay,’ she said without expression, not giving him any clues about her feelings on that one. Would that be a deal-breaker for her? She was an attractive, sparky woman and he guessed she must get plenty of male attention. There was something really appealing about her, especially when she smiled.
‘One of the other stipulations would be that she’d need to take my surname for the duration of the marriage,’ he said, pulling his attention back to the matter at hand. ‘It would just be for appearances and she could change it back again afterwards, of course.’
‘Afterwards?’
‘After the divorce. There’ll be a pre-nuptial agreement to sign so she won’t be able to petition for money or property during the legal severance of the marriage.’
There was a pause in which the air seemed to vibrate between them.
‘Oka-a-ay,’ she said slowly, her voice sounding a little breathy now.
He frowned, panicking for moment that she might be stringing him along for a laugh.
Before he could start to backpedal, though, she fixed him with a steady gaze, her lips quirking into a wide smile—triggering a warm, lifting sensation of hope in his chest—then took an audible breath and said, ‘I’ll do it. I’ll be your wife.’
CHAPTER TWO
Monopoly—move around the board for the chance to collect money and new property.
SOLITAIRE SAUNDERS HEARD her father’s voice in her head as she gazed anxiously back at the man who had the power to turn the course of her and her family’s lives around with a mere nod.
‘Your tendency to run headlong into things without thinking is going to get you in serious trouble some day, Soli,’ her father’s voice warned her.
He wasn’t wrong.
She knew that.
But you’re not here any more, Dad, and I’m doing the best I can.
There was a chance, of course, that she was actually dreaming all this and would wake up at any moment in bed with her heart racing and her palms as sweaty as they felt right now.
But she really hoped that wasn’t the case.
In fact, she knew it wasn’t possible because when she’d actually rolled out of bed this morning, and been unable to eat her breakfast because her stomach was jumping around so badly with nerves and worry, she’d never felt so awake—and afraid. The pressure of her mum and sister relying on her to stop both their home and livelihoods from being swept out from under them weighed heavily on her.
So she was hyper-aware, sitting there now in her smartest clothes with her wild hair as neat as she’d been able to get it, that how well she performed in this meeting could change all their lives for ever, one way or another. What she hadn’t expected when she turned up here was to be confronted with such an unusual and nerve-racking way to do it.
This—this incredible stroke of luck—could be the answer to all her problems.
If she could handle it, that was.
As far as she could see, the most challenging thing about it would be having to see Xavier McQueen, property baron and high-society mover and shaker every day for the next year.
And be his wife.
The thought of living with this powerful, domineering stranger made her heart thump harder in her chest.
The guy was seriously attractive, with a lean but muscular physique which she imagined he kept looking that fit with regular trips to the gym. His face was angular, with high cheekbones and a strong jaw, and he had light green, almond-shaped eyes, framed with dark lashes, which gave him a nerve-jangling look of stark intensity. And he had really good hair. Thick and shiny and the colour of melted chocolate. It sat neatly against his scalp as if it had been styled deliberately to do that by a master hairdresser at a top salon. Which, she mused, it probably had. Her fingers twitched at her sides as she fought a powerful urge to reach out and touch the soft waves, to see if it was as soft and smooth as it looked.
‘I have some non-negotiable demands if I’m going to do this,’ she said, a little more loudly than she’d meant to out of nerves.
‘I thought you might have,’ Xavier replied, with an ironic tinge to his voice. He had to be the most sardonic person she’d ever met. Throughout all their exchanges it had seemed as though he’d been having trouble taking anything she’d said seriously.
Still, he wasn’t exactly laughing now. In fact, despite his sarcasm, he was actually looking at her as if she might be the answer to all his problems.
‘Okay. If I’m going to be your wife for a year I need to know that my mother is being taken care of properly, so I’ll need to have a live-in carer provided for her while I’m away. She’ll be mostly okay during the day, but she’ll definitely need someone there overnight to help her get ready for bed and to get up when my sister’s not there. Which leads me on to the next stipulation. I also want you to pay for my sister’s tuition fees at university. She’ll get a job to cover her living expenses, but it won’t go any way towards the fees.’ Her heart was racing as she laid all this out, wondering whether he’d just tell her to get up and get out because she was being too greedy.
But he needs you, a voice in the back of her head told her, so front it out.
There was a long pause while he looked at her with such an intense gaze she felt it right down to her toes.
‘Okay, so let me get this straight,’ he said eventually; ‘you want a full-time carer for your mother, tuition fees paid for your sister, a stay on the rent on the café for the next five years and an as yet undisclosed sum of money as soon as we’re married?’
She swallowed hard, but held her nerve. ‘Yes.’
‘And how much were you thinking of for your lump sum?’
Shakily, she said an amount that she thought would cover the wages at the café for the next year as well as giving her some spending money which she could use for marketing or renovations to the café once they were divorced.
He surveyed her for a moment, his right eyebrow twitching upwards by a couple of degrees.
Soli held her breath, aware of her pulse throbbing in her head.
Had she blown it by asking for too much?
‘Okay. It’s a deal,’ he said finally. ‘But, considering you’ll be losing your wage from the cleaning job and you’ll have to employ someone to cover your position in the café, I’m prepared to give you an additional twenty per cent on top of that.’
Soli swallowed hard, his unexpected generosity bringing tears to her eyes.
‘As long as you agree to marry to me within the next month and spend the majority of your time in my home,’ he added quickly.
‘I don’t mind you visiting your mother and working part-time at the café, perhaps one or two days a week so you can keep an eye on it, but it needs to look as though the majority of your time is spent living there with me. Particularly in the evenings.’
‘So I can only work during the day?’
‘Yes. I’d like it if you were able to attend any work or social events at the drop of a hat. For that, I need you focused on your life with me as much as possible.’
She suspected that what he wasn’t saying out loud was that he wasn’t the sort of man to have the owner of a board game café for a wife and he didn’t want to have to explain himself to anyone.
‘So what will I do for the rest of the time?’ she asked as indignation rippled through her. What was wrong with working in a board game café? She really enjoyed it. It was sociable and kept her fit because she was on her feet all day.
He frowned, momentarily stumped by her question. ‘Perhaps you could work on that “high-concept business strategy” you haven’t had time for?’ He waved a hand. ‘I’m sure you’ll find plenty of things to do with your day.’
‘And what do you want me to tell people when they ask what I do for a living?’ she asked, still riled by her suspicion that he didn’t value her choice of livelihood. ‘What do the kind of women you normally date do for a job?’ she added, perhaps a little tetchily.
He rubbed a hand over his forehead, looking taken aback by the directness of her question. ‘Most of the women I’ve dated have either had a media job or been a doctor or solicitor.’
‘Well, I don’t think I’m going to convince anyone I’m a doctor or lawyer,’ Soli said, raising a wry eyebrow. ‘My sister got all the brains in the family.’
He frowned, apparently a little bemused by her now. ‘Okay, well, if you want to choose a different career for yourself, go right ahead. What would you have done if you hadn’t taken over the café? Do you have any burning ambitions?’
His question stumped her for a second. It had been a long time since she’d thought about doing anything but running the café. ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t exactly focused at school so I never expected to have a high-flying career. I liked designing clothes, but I did that in my spare time. My dad pressganged me into taking academic subjects to “give me a better chance in life”.’ She put this in air quotes, remembering with a sting of shame how she’d rallied against this notion, thinking it would bore her to tears to have a professional job in the future. All she’d wanted when she was in her mid-teens was to have a family of her own and perhaps make a living in some sort of arty career.
A Contract, a Wedding, a Wife? Page 2
