Buch lesen: «Bridegrooms Required»

CHAPTER ONE

LUKE GOODWIN stood in front of the big, Georgian window and gave a sigh of satisfaction which not even the bleak November day could dispel. He stared at the unfamiliar landscape before him. It was a loveless time of year in England, once the last of the leaves had fallen.

The sky was as grey as slush and the clouds had an ominous bulge which spoke of heavy rains to come. It was as unlike the golden and blue African skies he had left behind as it was possible to be.

Yet the green chequerboard of fields which stretched as far as his eye could see was now his. As was this graceful old house with enough bedrooms to sleep a football team. His hard mouth softened into a smile as he tried to take it all in, but it was hard to believe that this, all this beauty, now belonged to him.

Oh, a different type of beauty from the one he was used to, that was for sure. His beauty had been searing heat and blazing cerulean skies. The scent of lemons and the puff of fragrant smoke wafting from the barbecue. There had been bare rooms where giant fans cast their flickering circles across bleached ceilings—so different from the elegant Georgian drawing room in which he now stood.

He had been here only eight hours and yet felt he knew the house as intimately as any lover. He had arnved in the middle of the night, but had walked the echoing floors in silence, examining each room and reacquainting himself with each chair, each moulding. Running his long fingers along their pure, clean surfaces with the awe of a mother studying her newborn.

His heart sang with possession—not for the house’s worth, but for its link with the past, and the future. Like a rudderless boat, Luke had finally found the mooring of his dreams.

He let his eyes grow accustomed to the view. Through an arched yew hedge was a clutch of thatched cottages, a pub, a few tasteful and essential shops—as well as the added bonus of a village green with accompanying duck pond. England at its most picture-perfect. His senses were stretched with fatigue, and the soft beauty of his childhood home had never seemed quite so poignant.

Next month Caroline would arrive from Africa, in time for Christmas. Caroline who, despite her associations with that country, was the epitome of an English rose. Caroline with her soft, understated beauty and her unflappability and her resourcefulness. Not his usual kind of woman at all...

Somehow, God only knew how, she had arranged for a woman to come and clean the house for him. She hadn’t let the matter of a few thousand miles affect her organisational skills!

He guessed it was yet another indication of how much his tastes had matured. Luke’s wild and rollicking adventuring days were over, and he was ready to take on all the responsibilities which his inheritance had brought. Sometimes your life changed and there wasn’t a damned thing you could do about it.

Luke smiled the contented smile of a man who had found what he was looking for.

Life, he decided, was just like a giant jigsaw puzzle, and the last piece had just slotted effortlessly into place.

Holly clicked off the ignition key just before the engine cut out of its own accord in the middle of the narrow village street. Number ninety-nine on her list of things to do, she thought with dark humour—change her car.

If only she didn’t love it so much! An ancient old Beetle which she had lovingly painted herself, because that was the kind of thing that students did. It was just that she wasn’t a student any more..

She slowly got out of the car and stood on the pavement, staring up at the empty building with eyes which half refused to believe that this shop was now hers.

Lovelace Brides. The place where every bride-to-be would want to buy the wedding outfit of her wildest and most wonderful dreams. Where she, Holly Lovelace, intended to transform each woman who set foot over that threshold into the most amazing bride imaginable!

Holly shivered. She should have worn her thermals. The November air had a really hungry bite to it and the gauzy shirt she was wearing would be better suited to a summer’s day.

Still, now was the time to open up the shop, and then just haul her stuff inside and unpack the basics—like vests and tea bags! She could risk moving the car later.

She was just fishing around in her shoulder bag for the great clump of keys which seemed to have got lost among all the clutter at the bottom, when she heard the sound of footsteps approaching.

Holly looked up sharply and her hair tumbled in copper-curled disarray all over her shoulders. She felt her mouth fall open in slow motion as she focussed on the man walking towards her, then blinked, as if her eyes were playing tricks on her. She blinked again. No, they weren’t. Holly stared, then swallowed.

He was quite the most gorgeous man she had ever seen, and yet somehow he looked kind of wrong walking down the sleepy village street. Holly frowned. It wasn’t just that he was tall, or tanned, or lean where it counted—though he was all of these, and more. Or that his broad shoulders and rugged frame spoke of a man you didn’t mess with. Holly looked a little closer. His hair was dark—dark as muscovado sugar—and the ends were tipped with gold.

He wore jeans, but proper, workmanlike jeans—faded by constant use and hard work, not from stone-washing in a factory. And they weren’t sprayed on so tightly that any movement looked an impossibility—with legs like his they wouldn’t need to be.

With his thick cream sweater and battered sheepskin jacket, he looked vital and vibrant—like a Technicolor image superimposed on an old black-and-white film. More real than real. He made the drizzly grey of the day seem even more insignificant and Holly found that she couldn’t drag her eyes away from him.

He came to a halt right in front of her, jeaned legs astride, returning her scrutiny with a mocking stare of his own.

Now she could see that his eyes were blue—bluer than the sea, even bluer than a summer’s sky. A dreamer’s eyes. An adventurer’s eyes.

Holly felt that if she didn’t speak she would do something unforgivable—like reach her hand out and touch the hard, tanned curve of his jaw. Just for the hell of it.

‘Hello,’ she smiled, thinking that if all the men in Woodhampton looked like this, then she was going to be very happy working here!

He stared back, at dark copper curls and white skin and green eyes, the colour of jealousy. For Luke it was like being stun-gunned—that was the only thing he could think of right then. Or hit, maybe. A physical blow might explain the sudden unbearable throbbing of his blood, the heated dilation of the veins in his face. He could feel his mouth roughen and dry and the beginning of an insistent ache in a certain part of his anatomy which filled him with sudden self-loathing.

The woman was a complete stranger—so how in hell had unwanted desire incapacitated him so completely and so mercilessly and so bloody suddenly?

Holly had to concentrate very hard to stop her knees from buckling, since her long legs seemed to have nothing to do with her all of a sudden. And why on earth was he staring at her like that?

‘Hello,’ she said again, only more coolly this time, because it wasn’t very flattering to be ignored. ‘Have we met before?’

His expression didn’t change, but his voice was impatient. ‘Don’t play games. You know damned well we haven’t.’ He treated her to a parody of a smile. ‘Or I think we would have remembered. Don’t you?’

His voice was deep and dark, his accent impossible to define, and yet his words were mocking. Made her question into a meaningless little platitude. Yet he was right. She would have remembered. This was a man you would never forget. He would stamp his presence indelibly on your heart and mind and eyes.

Holly gave him a sideways look. ‘Perhaps I would.’ She shrugged quietly. ‘I’ve certainly had better greetings in my life.’

‘Oh, I bet you have, sweetheart,’ he agreed softly, and managed to make the words sound like an insult. ‘I bet you have.’

Suddenly Holly wished she were wearing some neat little boxy suit and a pair of tights, with shoes you could see your face in, instead of a faded pair of denims and a too-thin shirt. Maybe then he’d wipe that hungry, mean-looking expression off his face and show her a little respect. Though respect you had to earn, and she wasn’t sure she’d care to earn anything from him...

‘So what do you want?’ she asked, not caring if it sounded abrupt. ‘You must want something, the way you’re staring at me like you’ve just seen a ghost—un—less I have a smudge on my nose, or something?’

Staring at the pure lines of her lips, which were untouched by lipstick, Luke felt fingers of fantasy enmeshing him in their grasp. ‘You haven’t,’ he told her huskily. ‘And as to what I want, well, that rather depends—’

‘On?’

He bit back the crude, unaccustomed sexual request he was tempted to make and channelled it instead into indignation, clipping out his words like bullets as he pointed to her Beetle. ‘On whether that rust bucket of a car happens to belong to you, or not?’

‘And if it does?’ She tipped her head back and narrowed her eyes, and her hair swung in a copper curtain all the way down her back.

‘If it does, then it’s the worst piece of parking I’ve seen in my life!’ he drawled.

Holly saw the light of combat sparking in the depth of unforgettable blue eyes and wondered what was causing this definite overreaction. Bad experience? ‘Oh, dear. Have you got a thing about women drivers?’ she asked him sweetly.

‘Not at all. Just bad drivers.’ His mouth flattened into a hard line. ‘Though most women seem to need a space the size of an airstrip to park.’

Holly almost laughed until she saw that he meant it. She shook her head slowly. ‘Heavens!’ she murmured. ‘I can’t believe that anyone would come out with an outdated sexist remark like that, not when we’re almost into the millennium—talk about a gross generalisation!’

Luke found himself mesmerised by her eyes. Too green, he thought suddenly. Too wide and too deep. For the first time in his life he understood the expression ‘eyes you could drown in’. Tension caused his throat to tighten up. ‘Really?’ he drawled huskily. ‘Not even if it happens to be true? That’s usually how generalisations come into being.’

Holly’s mouth twitched. Very clever; but not clever enough. She wasn’t going to let him get away with that. ‘You’ve done comparative research on male and female parking behaviour, have you?’

‘I don’t need to, sweetheart. I base my opinions on my own experience.’

‘And your experience of women is extensive, no doubt?’

‘Pretty much.’ His gaze was cool as it flicked over her, and then suddenly not so cool. ‘But you still haven’t told me whether it’s your car, or not?’

He knew damn well it was! Holly held her palms up in supplication. ‘Okay, I admit it, Officer,’ she told him mockingly, and then dangled the keys from her finger provocatively. ‘The car is mine!’

It had been a long time since a woman had made fun of him quite so audaciously. ‘Then might I suggest you move it?’ he suggested softly.

Her eyes narrowed at the unfriendliness in his tone. ‘Why the hell should I?’

‘Because not only is it an eyesore—it’s dangerous!’

It occurred to her briefly that if it had been anyone else talking to her in this way, then she would have asked them to show her a little courtesy. So why let him get away with it? Because he looked like her every fantasy come to life? Every other woman’s fantasy, come to that.

A voice in her head told her that she was playing with fire, but she didn’t listen to it, and afterwards she would cringe when she remembered what she said next. And the way she said it. ‘Only if you ask me nicely,’ she pouted.

Luke drew in a deep breath of outrage and desire, his mind dizzy with the scent of her, his eyes dazzled by the slim, pale column of her neck, the ringlets which floated down over her ripe, pointed breasts.

She looked like a student, he thought hungrily, with her well-worn denims and that gauzy-looking top, which was much too cold for winter weather and made the tips of her breasts thrust towards him. He forced himself to avert his eyes because he’d known plenty of women like this one. Foxy. Easy. Too easy. Women like this were put on this earth with no purpose other than to tempt.

And he was through with women like that.

He thought of Caroline, and swallowed down his guilt and his lust. ‘Just do it, will you?’ he told her dismissively. And he walked on without another look or glance—even though he could feel her eyes burning indignantly into his back.

Holly hadn’t felt so mad for years, but then she couldn’t ever remember being spoken to like that by a man. Not ever. The men she had met at college were ‘in touch’ with their feminine sides—strong on respect, weak on sex appeal. Not like him.

She stared at his retreating form and winced, wondering how she could have been so cloying and so obvious. Pouting at him like the school tease. But then sometimes you found yourself reacting in inexplicable ways to certain people—and she suspected that he was the type of man who provoked strong reactions.

Still. Men were a fact of life—even irascible ones. No, especially irascible ones! And she was a businesswoman now—she simply couldn’t afford to let herself get uptight just because someone had got out of the wrong side of bed that morning. She watched him push open the door to the general store at the end of the street, telling herself that she was glad to see the back of him.

She unlocked the shop door and stepped over a stack of old mail and circulars. She hadn’t been here since the summer, on one of the most beautiful, golden days of the year, when she had taken the lease on, and she found herself wondering what the shop would lopk like in this cold and meagre November light.

Inside it was so gloomy that Holly could barely see. She clicked on the light switch and then blinked while her eyes accustomed themselves to the glare thrown off by the naked lightbulb, and her heart fell It obviously hadn’t been touched since the day she had signed the lease.

The air wasn’t just thick with dust—it was clogged with it, and cobwebs were looped from the ceiling like ghostly necklaces, giving the interior of the shop the appearance of an outdated horror movie. It might have been funny if it hadn’t been her livelihood at stake.

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 she 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.’