Loe raamatut: «A Contract, A Wedding, A Wife?»

CHAPTER ONE

Risk—a game of strategy, conflict and diplomacy.

HE WAS NEVER going to find someone suitable to marry at this rate.

Xavier McQueen let out an exasperated sigh as the woman who had seemed like his best hope—on paper at least—gave a firm and very final no to his admittedly completely barmy-sounding proposal before putting the phone down on him.

Apparently only being married for a year before divorcing wouldn’t look good on her dating CV. She was under the impression it could put off real prospects in the future because they’d be worried about her coming with baggage from such a short previous marriage.

Closing his eyes, he slumped back in his chair.

Three months he’d been wasting his time with this ridiculous endeavour and now he only had six weeks left before the Hampstead mansion where he’d lived for the last four years—the home that had been in his family for the last hundred and fifty years—would pass to his money-grubbing clown of a cousin.

Damn his great-aunt and her jeopardous eccentricity.

He thought she’d loved him—certainly more than his parents ever had—but this bizarre stunt she’d pulled with her will had made him wonder about that.

Shoving a hand through his hair and trying not to pull it out in his frustration, he stared out of the floor-to-ceiling window of his office, barely registering his view of the majestic Tower Bridge stretching out across the fast-moving River Thames.

He’d not wanted to widely advertise exactly what he was looking for in case it brought out the crooks and the crazies but that meant he’d quickly run out of people to ask to help him out. The problem was, the chosen candidate needed to be someone he could trust, as well as someone he’d be able to get along with, but all his good female friends were already married and he didn’t fancy taking his chances with any of his exes. A year was a long time to live with someone who detested the very sight of you.

The other two women, who had also been put forward as possible candidates by his friend Russell—the only friend he’d trusted with his problem—hadn’t worked out either. Not being able to have sex for a year hadn’t appealed to either of them. They’d both been looking for the real deal. Soul mates. An ideal he had no faith in whatsoever any more, not after being left humiliated at the altar five years ago by the woman he’d thought he’d spend the rest of his life with. His disaster of a non-wedding, which he now liked to think of as a near miss, had put paid to that ridiculous notion.

Nope, it was short-term, uncomplicated relationships for him from here on in. Or a purely business one like this needed to be, thanks to the bizarre demands stipulated in Great-Aunt Faith’s will.

Just as he was reaching for the glass of water on his desk to relieve his parched throat, there was a loud knock on the door and a petite woman with bright blue eyes and a riot of blonde curls walked purposefully into his office and placed a small basket of assorted cakes on his desk with a flourish.

He frowned down at them, then up at her. ‘I didn’t order any cakes.’

‘I know. They’re an excuse to get some face-to-face time with you,’ she said, folding her arms and looking down at him with a determined expression that made his stomach sink.

‘I’ve been trying to get a meeting with you for weeks but your PA keeps fobbing me off,’ she went on before he had a chance to say anything. ‘So I’ve been forced to take drastic action. On the other hand, I’ve brought you some really fantastic cakes. I made them myself. So it’s actually a win for you.’ She flashed him a half-smile that didn’t entirely convince him she was as self-assured as her spirited speech had made her seem.

He leant back in his chair again and studied her in bemusement.

She looked young, maybe early-to-mid-twenties, with a sweetly pretty face. Her abundance of curly blonde hair, which she’d tried to tame with an Alice band, stuck out around her head, probably due to the windy day. She surveyed him back with intelligent eyes, her button nose, which was scattered with freckles, wrinkling a little under his gaze. She seemed to him to have the air of someone who could cause a great deal of mischief if she put her mind to it.

As he scrutinised her she shifted on the spot and visibly swallowed as if rapidly losing her nerve in the face of his silence. It seemed her blustery, confident entrance had all been an act to get past the temporary PA sitting outside his office. Soon to be his ex-temporary PA.

‘And you are?’ he said with a sigh. He really didn’t need this extra hassle today; his nerves were already strung as tightly as they’d go and he had an important meeting in ten minutes which he needed to have his head in the game for.

‘Solitaire Saunders. Soli for short. That’s what everyone ends up calling me, anyway. It’s a bit of a mouthful otherwise.’

His eyebrow twitched involuntarily upwards.

‘Solitaire? Like the diamond?’

She gave a self-conscious grin. ‘No, like the card game. My dad was a huge fan of games. He set up our board game café on Hampstead High Street—in the unit we rent from your company.’

Board game café?

He was surprised anyone could make a living from a business like that, though, judging by the increasingly irate letters he now remembered receiving from the woman running the place—presumably this woman—after they’d notified her of the upcoming rent raise, perhaps she didn’t.

Despite his reluctance to get into this with her right now, he knew he ought to nip the issue in the bud while she was here in front of him. His executive assistant was fed up with having to field her constant phone calls asking to speak to him directly and he’d never been one to shy away from a legitimate business conflict when it reared its head. Its pretty, curly blonde head in this instance.

‘The trouble is, Soli,’ he said, splaying his hands on the desktop, ‘the market’s moved on a lot since you last signed the rental agreement a couple of years ago—’

‘Four years ago,’ she butted in. ‘And it was my father who signed it. I’ve been running it without him for the last three of them.’

‘Okay, I don’t have the exact details to hand right now,’ he said, trying to remain patient, ‘but I do know that the market’s moved even more since then.’ He lifted his hands, palms towards her. ‘We’re not monsters here, we’ve actually held back on increasing the rent on a lot of our property because we know how hard it can be for small independent businesses to survive in London, but we have to move with the times.’

‘You know how hard it is to run a struggling business, do you?’ she shot back. ‘How utterly heartbreaking it is when a once thriving business starts to fail? How demoralising that can be?’ Her voice rose on each question. She glanced pointedly around his plush office with its high-end furniture and enviable London view then fixed him with a challenging look, her cheeks flushed a deep shade of pink but the expression in her eyes unwavering.

He experienced a shiver of guilt, but knew he couldn’t let it get to him. Everyone he came across these days seemed to have a sob story to tell him so that he’d agree to charge them less money for the property they rented from his company. He couldn’t let his personal feelings get in the way. This was business.

‘We live above the café,’ she said before he could form his careful reply. ‘If we can’t afford to keep the business going we’ll lose our home as well, but then I don’t expect you’d know how a threat like that feels either!’

If only that were the case.

He began to shake his head, but she took a step closer to his desk and put her hands over her heart, her cute little nose wrinkling again in a way that made something twist uncomfortably in his chest.

‘Is there any way I can persuade you to hold off for a little while longer?’ she asked in a voice wobbly with emotion. ‘Please. Just give me a chance to get a bit more business in.’

‘How do you intend to do that?’ he asked, genuinely interested. ‘Aren’t there a lot of other café options on Hampstead High Street?’

Her bold stance deflated a little. ‘Yes. Unfortunately there are. But they’re all chains owned by big corporations.’ She waved a dismissive hand. ‘We offer a more local, family-run atmosphere. And board games! Who doesn’t love playing board games?’

He shuffled a little in his chair. ‘Can’t say I’m a huge fan of them.’

‘You just haven’t played the right ones yet,’ she persisted. ‘If you come in you’ll see how much fun they can be. We have four hundred games to choose from. Something for everyone. We’ll even teach you how to play them.’

He shook his head, holding back the smile that was pushing at the corners of his mouth. Learning to play board games was the last thing he could imagine wanting to do with his precious time off. ‘As appealing as that sounds,’ he said, trying to keep the irony out of his voice, ‘that doesn’t tell me how you’re going to start making enough profit to pay your rent.’

‘I’m working on it,’ she stated, but her gaze wasn’t meeting his now; instead she was staring out towards the river, her hands clenched at her sides as if she was fighting to keep her composure. ‘I just need to find some time to do a bit of local advertising, update the website and post to the social media sites we’re on,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘Trouble is, I work long hours. I have a cleaning job at a gastro pub from seven thirty till ten, then I have to make the cakes and prepare the sandwiches we sell at the café, then we’re open from eleven till three. When we close I have to go shopping for supplies for both the café and the family and take care of anything my mum needs and then the café’s open again from five till ten pm. So there’s not been a lot of time for developing a high-concept business strategy.’

More guilt tried to shoulder its way in as she looked back at him with tired eyes.

He shook it off. This wasn’t his problem. He couldn’t allow it to become his problem either. He had enough of his own troubles to deal with right now.

‘Look, Soli, things are complicated for me at the moment and I’m afraid I don’t have time to deal with this today. I have an important meeting in a few minutes, so if you leave your contact details with my PA—’

She flinched at the hard edge he’d given his voice now, but didn’t move from where she stood.

‘Complicated? You think your life’s complicated? Beat this, buster.’ She pointed her finger at him. ‘I’m desperately trying to save the business my late father built from scratch, our family’s legacy, so I can afford to get my mother, who’s suffering with Parkinson’s disease, the care she needs whilst also trying to scrape together enough money to support my younger sister, who’s a brilliant mathematician with an offer from Oxford University, but who can’t afford to take the place there. And you’re making it even harder for me to do all that by raising our already extortionate rent. That’s complicated!’

The ensuing silence rang out loudly in the still air of his office.

‘Okay. Fine,’ he said resignedly when he saw a glint of tears in her eyes. ‘You win the “complicated” competition.’ He made a placating gesture. ‘But only just—believe me. My life isn’t exactly easy right now either.’

‘Look, is there some sort of arrangement we could come to here?’ she asked desperately, blinking back her tears and looking a little embarrassed about losing her cool. ‘Any sort of deal we could make which would give me a bit more time to try and turn the fortunes of the café around and make the money we need to afford the rent hike? I can’t lose the place. Not after all the love and hard graft my father put into it. It’s all we have left of him now.’ Despite her efforts, a single tear ran down her cheek.

He looked hurriedly away, frowning down at his desk. ‘I’ve already held back on rolling out the new rent and if I do it for you I’ll have to—’

‘Please. Have a heart,’ she broke in hoarsely, clearly aware she was losing the battle but seemingly not prepared to accept it. ‘I’ll do anything. I’ll come and work here for you when I’m not working at the café. I can type and make coffee, file things. Documents. Tidy up! I’ll do whatever it takes to keep our café running.’

The ring of hope in her voice clawed at his chest. He had to give her credit, she was certainly determined.

Or maybe just desperate.

His heart gave a hard thump. He knew what desperate felt like and he wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

‘Whatever it takes?’ he asked slowly, meeting her eyes again now. He wasn’t sure where he was going with this, but he had the strangest feeling there could be a solution here that he hadn’t quite hit upon yet.

‘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 candidate 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.’