Niall slid a large, flashy sapphire ring onto her finger.

“I can’t wear this thing!” Holly gasped.

“Sorry if it’s not to your taste, but it’s only for one night.”

Actually the ring was beautiful. Holly toyed with the sapphire.

“And the only reason you went along with this pretense,” Niall continued, “was because you wanted to prove to me that age had improved you beyond all recognition.”

Holly went scarlet. How could he know? This man got more detestable with each passing second. I must have been totally blind as well as besotted when I was a silly teenager, she concluded wrathfully….

KIM LAWRENCE lives on a farm in rural Wales. She runs two miles daily and finds this an excellent opportunity to unwind and seek inspiration for her writing! It also helps her keep up with her husband, two active sons and the various stray animals that have adopted them. Always a fanatical consumer of fiction, she is now equally enthusiastic about writing. She loves a happy ending!

The Engagement Deal
Kim Lawrence

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ONE

HOLLY pulled the pillow over her head and tried to ignore the strident peal of her sister’s doorbell. After several minutes of teeth-clenching determination to remain asleep, she rolled over onto her back and stuffed her fingers in her ears.

Whoever it was wasn’t going away. With a defeated sigh, she threw the pillow over her head. As luck would have it, the feather-filled item managed to ricochet off the wall and knock a porcelain pig off her sister’s cluttered dressing table.

Holly looked at the broken pieces and decided optimistically that with a bit of superglue it would be as good as new—always supposing it wasn’t actually antique and valuable. You never knew with Rowena; her up-in-the-clouds flat was filled with an eclectic mish-mash of tacky but fashionable rubbish and staggeringly expensive items.

She looked around briefly for a robe. Although she’d moved in a week ago, she still hadn’t had the opportunity to unpack her clothes. On reflection, she concluded that her pyjamas covered everything—if not more—that modesty demanded, and the style was unlikely to drive anyone on the doorstep mad with lust.

‘Yes!’ she snarled, opening the door a crack on its security chain.

‘I need to speak to Rowena.’

You and about every other male under ninety in the city, if my sister’s answering machine was anything to go by, Holly thought sourly. This was the first one that had got past the building’s tight security, though, so she assumed that under normal circumstances he was a welcome visitor.

Holly brushed a heavy hank of dark copper-red hair from her eyes. ‘Well, she isn’t…’ she began impatiently, wrinkling up her eyes against the light in the brightly illuminated communal hallway. ‘Oh, it’s you!’ Disbelief rushed through every inch of her, from her untidy red head to her curling bare toes.

This wasn’t how her dream went at all! A flicker of annoyance crossed her face as she brushed aside the inane thought.

Without thinking, she clicked free the bolt. Niall Wesley wasn’t the sort of man you left standing on a doorstep; neither, she reflected, was he the sort of man usually to be found on her doorstep. Beautiful men—and this adjective was fully justified, in Niall’s case—wearing dinner jackets didn’t as a rule come calling on her at eight o’clock in the morning.

‘Do I know…?’ The beautiful, disturbingly electric-blue eyes swept briefly over her diminutive figure, before illumination dawned in those azure depths. ‘Oh…Polly, isn’t it…?’ Long-legged, and elegant down to his fingertips, he walked past her into the bright open-plan living area.

I always knew I made a deep impression on him! And it did a girl’s confidence no end of good to have her suspicions confirmed, she decided wryly. She looked with steadily growing resentment at the impressive rear view of his broad-shouldered, lean-hipped figure silhouetted against the full-height windows that ran the entire length of one wall.

‘Holly,’ she corrected him coolly.

His smile was perfunctory and distinctly impatient as he glanced around the room. ‘Have you had an accident or something?’

She’d completely forgotten about that! Holly’s hand went automatically to her right eye. She winced and rushed over to a mirror; there were quite a few to choose from in the flat her sister called home.

She gulped. ‘Or something,’ she confirmed drily, surveying the damage. It could, she concluded with stubborn optimism, be a lot worse. Nothing too dramatic; a bit of make-up should disguise the worse of the damage.

‘When will Rowena be back?’ He glanced at the metal-banded watch on his wrist.

Some people might have registered the expensive brand of this accessory automatically, but Holly was much more aware of the fine dark hairs on his forearm briefly revealed by the impatient gesture. Her stomach gave an uncomfortable lurch. For heaven’s sake, she thought in exasperation, anyone would think I’m still a silly infatuated teenager!

She suddenly remembered that intense adolescent vow she’d made the last time she’d seen him in the flesh—far too much flesh, as it happened, for her fragile peace of mind at the time!

The next time she saw Niall Wesley, she’d vowed, she’d have no trace of teenage acne, no braces and her hair would no longer be a violent show-stopping shade of red. The first two criteria had been filled, and she’d made the surprising discovery since those far-off days that some people—of the male variety—actually liked red hair!

She seemed to have some hazy recall that he’d be struck dumb by her stunning beauty and witty eloquence. A black eye and pyjamas that didn’t even register on the seduction scale—and which, into the bargain, made her look like an undersized gnome—had not figured anywhere at all! This was what came of accepting hand-me-downs from a frugal parent who was too polite to tell his elderly aunt that his waistline had enlarged a little since he was sixteen!

At sixteen, Holly had nourished wild, foolish dreams, but she’d grown out of them; reality was far too challenging and exciting—not to mention exhausting! All the same, she knew that had she known she was going to see this man, she’d have made an effort to look at her best. Which means what? she pondered. A woman knew that even in the twenty-first century, she would ultimately be judged on her looks—was she vain? Either way, acknowledging that her adolescent desire to impress this man hadn’t entirely vanished made her frown with annoyance.

‘I said, when will Rowena be back?’

Holly closed her half-open mouth with a snap. None of the plagues she’d so viciously wished upon him had come to pass, either. He hadn’t grown short or fat and his head was still covered by a lustrous, nicely trimmed dark growth—the sort of hair a girl could really sink her fingers into! Her cheeks flamed hotly as she imagined herself in circumstances where sinking her fingers into his hair would be almost obligatory. Her imagination definitely needed a refresher course in obedience school!

‘In six months.’

‘What?’ he yelped, his dark brows forming a firm line of disapproval.

‘Don’t look at me like that.’ She sniffed. ‘It’s not my fault she didn’t tell you.’ She knew he had lovely manners; he was clever, witty, in a slightly cruel way. He walked into a room and people en masse fell under his spell. It only seems to be me, she thought, that can see past the high-voltage charisma and observe what a selfish, smug jerk he is. Although it seemed likely his ex-wife had caught on eventually, hence the ex!

‘God, just when I need her and she’s… Where is she?’

There he goes—me…me…me. The man’s so egotistical! She watched him slump down into one of the massive leather sofas with a small derisive smile. Her smile faded; she knew with gut certainty that he’d slumped there before! Was it the only thing he—they’d—done there? she found herself wondering.

‘New York.’ With a gulp, she drew a firm curtain over her lurid imaginings. What her sister got up to with this man—or any other—in the privacy of her own home was none of Holly’s business.

‘That’s it, then,’ he said with a grim finality. With one hand pulling at the tie around his neck, he sank his head into the deeply padded headrest and closed his eyes.

‘What’s it?’

His dark eyelashes lifted and from the expression in his eyes Holly had the distinct impression he’d forgotten that she was there. Either that or he was just hoping she’d gone away so he could indulge in a bout of self-pity.

‘I’m stitched up unless I can find a…’ He shot her a sudden hopeful glance; by the time his quick once-over had reached her toes, he was already shaking his head.

‘What are you doing here anyway, P…Holly?’ Why, he wondered, would a grown woman choose to wear those hideous stripy pyjamas?

‘The lease had run out on the flat I shared, and Rowena offered to let me hang my hat here until I get myself sorted.’ Her new contract was only for six months; afterwards, who knew where she’d be?

Niall could recall some mention of the sister being a student. In fact, Rowena had regaled a dinner party with quaint second-hand stories of student penury—he remembered thinking at the time that it probably wasn’t quite so amusing, up close—but all that had been a long time ago. There were lots of young people with good degrees who didn’t have a job. It sounded as if she was one of them.

He nodded without, she noticed indignantly, even pretending a scrap of interest in what she was doing in the present, future or for that matter what she had been doing since he’d last seen her almost ten years ago.

Ten years ago he’d been one of the select group of beautiful, brilliant people, including her sister, who had gravitated together at university. The charmed circle was how she’d always thought of them. Their glamorous lives had been equally charmed since they’d emerged to conquer the world, at least professionally—Niall wasn’t the only one of the charmed circle to be divorced, though his had been the most public and visible failure. Served him right for marrying his trophy girlfriend.

‘What’s Rowena doing in New York?’

‘The editor’s job here is hers when Annabel moves onwards and upwards in six months. They want Rowena to…’ Holly’s slim shoulders lifted. ‘I don’t know what they actually want her to do,’ she confessed. The inner workings of a glossy international fashion magazine were a closed book to her. ‘But they want her over there, and they didn’t hang around once they’d made up their mind.’ Which obviously accounted for Niall’s ignorance.

‘We probably passed each other mid-Atlantic,’ he mused. ‘Good for Rowena.’ Despite his words he still looked pretty gloomy about his friend’s—did ‘friend’ cover their relationship?—success. Obviously he was more concerned about how it would inconvenience him! Thank goodness I don’t have any friends like him, she decided with virtuous disapproval.

‘I’m sure she’d have refused if she’d known of your dire need.’

Her sweet voice was acid laced. Niall shot her a sharp look, and wasn’t fooled by the round-eyed innocence of the sarcastic little witch! Yes, there was something of the witchy woman about her, with those big dark eyes and that wild hair.

‘I’m very happy for Rowena. I know this is what she’s been working for.’ And scheming for, if he knew Rowena, he thought with affectionate admiration. She was a woman who knew exactly what she wanted from life and went for it. ‘I’m just more unhappy for myself.’

‘Yes, it must be so hard,’ Holly commiserated gently. His eyes swept over her face, half-query, half-irritation in their depths. ‘Being healthy…’ —and that was some understatement; the man simply oozed a restless vitality— ‘Rich, handsome…’ She didn’t even mention the stately pile and title that would be his when his father died.

Even though he was sitting down he managed to look down his nose at her, a distinctive masterful nose identical to those she’d seen on several of his ancestors’ portraits. She’d seen the paintings that covered the walls of his family’s ancestral home, Monksleigh Manor. She’d visited the house during its one open day a year—the one occasion mere mortals like herself were given the opportunity to drool over the accumulated wealth and history of the Wesley family.

‘Thank you.’ He smiled.

Holly felt suddenly less confident. On the whole, she preferred the snooty disdain to that heart-stopping grin.

‘For what?’ she wondered suspiciously.

‘Handsome…?’ One dark satanically slanted brow quirked.

Holly gave an exasperated sigh. ‘Like you had no idea.’

He gave a modest shrug of his shoulders, but behind the cynical amusement in his eyes she thought she glimpsed something that was more weary acceptance. Did he find it hard to be judged by most people on his startling good looks? Holly dismissed this revolutionary idea with a frown. Who wouldn’t like having conversations stop when they walked into a room?

‘What did you want Rowena for, anyway?’ She thought for a second he was going to tell her to mind her own business, but then his sensual lips twisted into a wry smile.

‘Why not?’ he said to nobody in particular. ‘I was going to ask her to be my fiancée tonight.’

The breath whooshed out of her lungs in one noisy gasp and Holly plonked herself down on the nearest chair. ‘You wanted to ask Rowena to marry you?’ Under the circumstances, he was allowed to look a little piqued—at the very least!

‘Did I say that?’

Holly, who had just started breathing again, felt her hackles rise when he looked at her as though she was incredibly dense. ‘You said you wanted her to be your fiancée.’

‘I’ve every intention of never getting married again. I only need a fiancée for tonight. The only halfway plausible reason for getting married, in my opinion, is to have a family—I’ve already got one, end of story.’

It was a plausible theory if you’d never seen the gorgeous Tara. ‘You can’t expect anyone to believe the only reason you married Tara was to have babies!’ she hooted. She was no expert on male mental processes, but no man she’d ever come across looked at a supermodel and thought about babies.

‘Although,’ he conceded, choosing to loftily ignore her snide little interjection. ‘Rowena is probably the only woman I’d even consider…’ Knowing Rowena’s opinion of the married state, he felt quite comfortable making a claim like this.

With shocked disgust, Holly recognised the knife twist in her guts as jealousy. She suddenly had a nauseating vision of herself in a dire frilly pink bridesmaid dress stumbling up the aisle behind the glowing vision of her sister. He might be an ex-fantasy figure, but she’d have to be a saint to be actually happy for her sister under these circumstances, and unhappily she was no saint.

‘You’re not making any sense.’ Except with the bit about Rowena being the only woman he’d marry—he was being very clear there.

Had he asked, and been turned down? she wondered, her imagination now working in top gear. Rowena had some very inflexible ideas about a career and marriage and she often said that a girl couldn’t have both if she wanted to succeed in either.

‘You’re just not listening. It’s quite simple. I wanted Rowena to pretend to be my fiancée for tonight.’ He carelessly flicked an invisible speck off his immaculate dark trousers.

‘Pretend?’ The man made it sound a completely normal suggestion. ‘Why…?’ She cleared her throat and continued before he could tell her it was none of her business. ‘Do you drop in many mornings and make requests like that?’

The blue eyes lifted once more to her face. ‘You did say…morning?’

‘So…?’ With a bolshy little glare, she got to her feet. The dignified action was spoilt somewhat by the fact she tripped over the overlong leg of her pyjama trousers. She half-expected to see him smirking when she shot him a dark warning glance, but he wasn’t.

It occurred to Niall for the first time that the pyjamas that totally swamped her diminutive figure belonged, in fact, to a man. Somewhat bizarrely, the idea that she might have been sharing the bed in the adjoining room with a man shocked him.

He supposed he still had her fitted into the niche in his brain marked Rowena’s baby sister, a funny intense little thing with braces. He checked…No, they were gone. There were other changes too, notably the clear creamy complexion. Niall suddenly felt depressingly past his prime.

‘It’s not morning.’

Disbelief showed in her heart-shaped face, closely followed by panic. He was in no position to judge; he’d had some pretty wild nights in his time, too.

‘What day is this?’ she asked after a small frozen pause.

Niall blinked. His hadn’t been that wild! ‘It’s Wednesday evening.’ He watched her sink weakly back down into the chair she’d just vacated.

‘Are you serious?’ she asked hoarsely.

‘What day did you think it was?’

‘I thought it was Tuesday morning.’

‘It must have been some party.’

Even though a stunned Holly was still coming to terms with the fact she’d slept around the clock, and then some, she couldn’t miss that definite austere note of disapproval in his deep voice.

‘You sound like my mother.’ It wasn’t parties that her mother disapproved of, it was the hours that her younger daughter—as a newly qualified junior doctor—was expected to work. The farewell party after a straight sixty hours on call in the busy casualty department had probably not been a good idea. She had meant it as a joke when she’d laughingly said she was going to spend her fort-night’s holiday sleeping!

‘I hope you’ll respect Rowena’s property while you’re staying here.’ Niall suddenly had alarming visions of this girl and her equally wild friends trashing the place. ‘Rowena does know you’re staying here?’

Holly thought a little guiltily of the smashed pig. If only, she thought wistfully, he’d sounded this stuffy when I was sixteen, I’d never have lost a single night’s sleep. Mind you, there was a certain novelty value to being regarded as a dangerous person.

‘My secret’s out: I’m a squatter!’ She gave him a scathing look that would have shrivelled lesser mortals where they stood, or in this case sat. ‘I need a drink. Don’t worry, I mean coffee,’ she added acidly.

‘Feeling hung over?’

‘No!’ Holly glanced angrily over her shoulder.

She continued to futilely open cupboard doors in her search of a jar of coffee, aware that he followed her as if he was well used to treating the place like home. His next words confirmed his familiarity with his surroundings.

‘The coffee’s in here,’ he informed her, reaching into an eye-level cupboard—well, eye level for him, anyway; she’d have needed a step ladder. ‘Rowena always drinks the instant stuff.’

Holly, who had trouble finding time to eat, let alone brew proper coffee, snatched the jar from his unresisting hand. ‘I haven’t found my way around the kitchen yet. I’ve not actually been in that much.’

That he could believe. He watched as she filled a glass with water.

‘Alcohol sends your electrolytes up the chute. That’s why you’re so thirsty.’ Now I’ve started sounding like my father! Hell! What is it about this girl that brings out the stern parent in me? He hadn’t forgotten the last time he’d had to step in to save her from her own stupidity—nor what he had got for his troubles!

‘I don’t need a lecture on physiology,’ she told him drily. Even if she hadn’t read her books like the good student she had been, she’d had a wealth of practical evidence to back up the theory since she’d been working in Casualty. The gentle tap that had given her the black eye hadn’t been the first time a drunk had got physical with her! This one had taken exception to her efforts to suture up his head wound.

‘I take it black.’ Holly regarded him blankly. ‘Coffee: I take my coffee black, no sugar.’

‘You’re a very pushy person,’ she told him, spooning granules into a second mug. If anyone had told me twenty-four—no, make that forty-eight hours ago, she corrected, that I’d be making coffee for Niall Wesley…! ‘Why do you need a fiancée?’ she asked, her curiosity greater at that moment than the growing desire to visit the bathroom. ‘Just for the night.’

‘Tonight I’m going to dinner with a woman who wants to marry me.’

Holly bit her quivering lower lip. His doom-laden announcement made her want to laugh out loud. She felt a spurt of unholy glee to see the roles of predator and victim apparently so neatly reversed.

‘And you wanted to use Rowena as a shield.’ She could instantly see where he was going; her sister was so drop-dead gorgeous that most women would be suitably intimidated. Hadn’t she spent her entire adolescence being intimidated by her elder sister’s perfection? ‘How do you know she—this woman—wants to marry you?’ This could be the arrogant assumption of a man who knew himself to be irresistible to the opposite sex.

‘She told me.’

Holly’s eyebrows shot up. The amorous female was not an advocate of the subtle approach, then. ‘She might have been joking.’

Niall gave a dry laugh. ‘Believe me, she wasn’t,’ he told her heavily.

‘How can you be so…?’

‘It’s Tara.’

Holly dropped the milk carton and it spattered all over Rowena’s stainless steel splashback. ‘Not the same Tara…?’ she asked hoarsely.

Niall had taken over the task of making the coffee as Holly seemed to have lost interest. ‘The same one I married and divorced. The mother of my child…Yes, that’s the one.’

‘Gosh!’

‘A more socially acceptable way of phrasing that instantly springs to my mind, but definitely…Gosh.’

‘I thought she was living with that actor in—’

‘Was is the right word. Now she’s living wherever I happen to be,’ he announced, in the voice of a man whose patience was wearing thin. ‘I was in Paris, Tara appears; ditto in Los Angeles…’

‘I’m sure she travels a great deal. Models do.’

‘A book festival in Munich…?’

‘Perhaps not,’ Holly conceded.

‘There’s no perhaps about it.’

‘Wasn’t she the one who did the leaving?’

He nodded, noticing she’d seemed to relish reminding him of this fact. ‘She’s dripping remorse now. She wants to make it all up to me.’

He didn’t sound exactly overjoyed at the prospect, but Holly wondered if this wasn’t a matter of him protesting just a bit too much. She’d have thought the idea of Tara Steel, supermodel—she of the endless legs and gravity-defying ample bosom—making amends would have sent most males delirious with delight.

‘Why don’t you just tell her you don’t want to marry her…again?’ It seemed to her that he was creating problems where there weren’t any. Or perhaps this was all part of a token resistance.

‘I’ve tried, but she doesn’t believe me, and I don’t want to hurt her,’ he announced astonishingly. ‘The press gave the poor angel such a bad time when we split up, and when I got custody of Thomas they got really vicious.’ There was no mistaking the warmth towards his ex-wife in his voice. ‘Sugar?’ he enquired, spoon in hand.

Poor angel! Holly gaped at him incredulously. The way the tabloids had told it—and, yes, she had read every single word—his model wife had dumped him when he’d quit the glamorous Formula One circuit and left him literally holding the baby! Did this mean he was still in love with her…?

Heavens, she thought, aggravated by her fascination with the state of his emotions, what’s wrong with me? Two minutes ago, I had him in love with Rowena. Anyone would think I gave a damn.

He looked genuinely distracted as he absently stirred his coffee. For once, he seemed to have forsaken his habitual urbane poise. ‘Tara is a woman on a mission,’ he told her in a tone of deep foreboding. ‘She wants to rescue me from a lonely, aimless existence.’

‘Do you have a lonely, aimless existence?’ she asked unsympathetically. If he did, he only had himself to blame.

‘Being single equates with lonely and aimless in Tara’s eyes.’

‘My heart bleeds.’ She stopped short of smirking outright—but only just. She widened her eyes innocently when he shot a savage glare in her direction.

‘I enjoy my single state.’

‘Yes, I think I read something about that the other week in the newspaper my fish and chips were wrapped up in.’ He’d been enjoying his single state in the back of a limousine with a young actress barely wearing a stunning outfit.

Annoyance flickered in his eyes as he bent his dark head in acknowledgement of her sly words. ‘The awards ceremony debacle,’ he said grimly. ‘If I weren’t a gentleman, I’d say the same thing to you that I did to that photographer. For your information, that stunt was a put-up job.’ He ground his teeth as the little witch actually giggled.

‘Of course it was,’ she soothed. ‘Couldn’t you have asked—what was her name?—to help you out?’ Holly bit her trembling lower lip. ‘She looked to be a very obliging sort of girl,’ she choked.

‘No, I couldn’t!’ he bellowed. ‘I never intended to actually produce a woman. I thought Tara would accept it when I told her I’d fallen in love.’ He looked deeply frustrated by her lack of co-operation.

‘You mean she doesn’t take what you say at face value? How strange,’ Holly puzzled.

‘It just so happens I don’t lie to Tara.’

Holly lifted her brows expressively.

‘Normally,’ he ground out, with an expression which suggested that throttling his interrogator would offer him the greatest satisfaction. ‘I don’t lie, but this is for her own good.’

‘Not to mention yours.’

‘I said I’d produce this woman thinking Rowena would step into the breach. That was before she vanished off the face of the earth. Now…Now I’ve got about—’ he looked down at his watch ‘—about thirty minutes to find a stand-in lover.’

‘I’d have thought there would have been a whole flock of lovelies gagging to help you out.’

He raised guileless blue eyes to her face and mournfully nodded his agreement. ‘The problem is,’ he confided in a slow languid drawl that, had she known it, was pitched deliberately to aggravate her, ‘they wouldn’t all be as happy as Rowena to hand back the ring in the morning. I could well be jumping from the frying-pan into the fire.’

‘God, it must be tough being irresistible!’ Teeth clenched, she sighed sympathetically.

Niall gave her a long thoughtful look. ‘I’d ask you to step into the breach…’ He paused politely while she made a rude derogatory noise in her throat. ‘But I get the impression you don’t like me. Besides, you’re not exactly…’ With a pained expression he tactfully averted his eyes from her colourful striped pyjamas.

‘Not exactly what?’ she jumped in, bristling with suspicion. As if she needed to ask! He was implying, and not very subtly, that nobody would believe a man like him would want to marry a girl like her.

Holly’s firm chin went up to an aggressive angle. She might not be every man’s first choice, but to be deemed unworthy even to be the last choice of a desperate man…! Well, this wasn’t the same little girl who had been reduced to abject misery by a careless cruel comment, and Niall Wesley was about to find that out. She’d show him!

‘Not exactly dressed for the occasion.’

He was awfully glad he had dredged up a memory of Rowena saying that the best way to make her sister do anything was to tell her not to! ‘She’s so pig-headed it’s unbelievable!’ Rowena had informed him with affectionate irritation. She hadn’t mentioned the size sixteen chip on Holly’s size eight shoulder, though!

Holly wasn’t going to let him wriggle out of this that easily. If he thought she wasn’t good enough to be seen with him, he’d have to come out and say so!

‘I’ve got other clothes and some people,’ she taunted, ‘think I scrub up quite well.’

‘I’m sure they do,’ he soothed smoothly. The gleam in his eyes made Holly frown as she suddenly felt less certain of what she was doing. ‘Shouldn’t you hurry?’

‘Hurry?’

‘If we’re going to get to dinner on time.’

Holly’s mouth opened and she blinked. ‘Why would I want to help you? I didn’t say I’d—’

‘Well, if you don’t think you’re up to the task,’ he drawled understandingly.

By this point Holly was ninety-nine per cent certain that she’d been manipulated by an expert, but a combination of that one per cent uncertainty and a congenital stubborn inability to back down from a challenge made her respond immediately.

‘I draw the line at drooling over you.’

‘Don’t worry,’ he soothed, his dark head inclining graciously, ‘I can work around that.’

Stifling a grin, he watched her small stiff-backed figure retire to the bedroom, muttering ferociously under her breath.

Ten minutes later, as she emerged from a hot shower, Holly still wasn’t quite sure how she’d got herself into this mess. She was even less sure why she felt excited. Wearing nothing but a towel wrapped turban-like around her head, she stalked back into the bedroom with the unconsciously smooth, graceful stride of a cat. She then opened the two neatly packed suitcases which contained a large proportion of her worldly goods.

Lips pursed, she extracted a few items and her eyes travelled to the full-length view of herself in the cherub-decorated cheval mirror set just behind her. Not too bad, she conceded, staring critically at the firm gentle curves that were in pleasing proportion to her diminutive frame. Not great, but not bad, she decided, holding up a bias-cut dove-grey silk dress against her slightly damp body. The creases in the long flowing gown made her frown. A spark of mischief entered her dark eyes.

Standing behind the door, she opened it a crack and flung out the dress. ‘Be a lamb and iron it for me, if you don’t want to be late!’ she instructed loudly.

She closed the door with a firm click before he had an opportunity to reply. Well, I bet that’ll be a first. Niall Wesley, former pin-up of the racing circuit, present boss of the family publishing empire and future titled lord of Monksleigh and several thousand acres…ironing…? The man had spent his life surrounded by flunkies—it was likely he hadn’t learnt to tie his own shoelaces yet! She gave a small chuckle as she sat down to explore the Aladdin’s cave of cosmetics on her sister’s dressing table.

Her hair was still damp when, with a clever twist of her wrist, she secured the heavy copper swathe in a loose knot at the nape of her neck before pulling loose a few long soft curling tendrils to frame her face. She screwed up her nose in approval at the overall effect. Fortunately, the black eye had proved simple to disguise.

She sniffed at the neck of an interestingly shaped perfume spray before dousing her body in a generous mist of scent. All I need now, she thought, slipping on some underwear and then a pair of high-heeled mules, is the dress.

There was only pause enough between the light tap on the door and it swinging open for her to clamp her hands over her bare breasts and fix an indignant expression on her face.

Although she would have happily crawled out of her skin, pride made Holly stand immobile while his startling cerulean eyes travelled over her skimpily clad body from head to toe, pausing noticeably longer over some areas than others.

‘You were right.’

One nicely shaped brow rose in haughty enquiry as she tried to maintain the illusion that she felt perfectly at ease with this nerve-shredding situation. Actually, until that moment she’d have claimed she was quite relaxed about her own body, only suddenly…She shivered, even though her skin felt hot. She felt conscious of every centimetre.

Calm down, Holly, she told herself. Niall Wesley has seen more beautiful women naked than you’ve had hot dinners, and you’re only passable. Being passable didn’t stop a violent surge of feeling rushing through her, a feeling that was purely sexual.

‘You do scrub up well.’ His sardonic mask left his words open to any interpretation she wished to place upon them—no, better by far not to think too much, if at all, about what he might mean! ‘Here.’ He held out the dress—which was draped across one arm—towards her.

‘Thanks.’ Automatically, she began to stretch out one hand towards him before realising how exposed, quite literally, this gesture left her. She gave a dismayed gasp and retracted her hand, but not before the erect coral tip of her exposed breast had peeked out. ‘You’d better leave it on the bed,’ Her voice cracked as she made a desperate attempt to regain her composure. ‘Hurry up, will you?’ she snapped as he strolled slowly towards the bed…Had he slept in it with Rowena? ‘We don’t want to keep your wife waiting.’

He laid the soft garment on the bed and smoothed it with the flat of his hand. The gesture brought a searing image to her head of the same hand stroking bare flesh.

He straightened up. ‘Ex-wife,’ he reminded her softly. ‘And Tara’s never been on time for anything in her life—even her own wedding, as I recall…So don’t break your neck. There’s no big rush.’

‘Now he tells me.’ She had managed to slide on a robe of Rowena’s over her minuscule pants and hold-ups and she was able to sound more like herself.

That sensation had just been because she felt vulnerable—him being fully dressed and her being almost naked, she told herself comfortingly. Yes, that had a nice comfortingly logical sound to it, she decided, tying the sash of the pale green robe around her waist. If he’d been naked too he wouldn’t have had the upper hand at all; they’d have been on more of an equal footing.

As images of Niall Wesley’s well-built naked body flashed through her mind, her lovely little theory crumbled. Oh, God, she thought, as he turned to flash her the sort of smile that made her worry he had read her mind. I’ll be glad when this night is over!

CHAPTER TWO

‘THERE’S no time to think up a cover story so when we get there leave me to do most of the talking.’ Businesslike, Niall cast her an arrogantly stern look.

‘Laryngitis?’ Holly queried meekly. ‘Or am I meant to be struck dumb by my good fortune in landing you?’

He took her hand and, before she could protest, had slid a large flashy-looking sapphire ring on one finger. ‘It’s smart remarks like that I’m talking about,’ he said, observing the effect of the large sparkling gem on her small slim finger with a critical frown.

‘I can’t wear this thing!’ she gasped in tones of revulsion.

‘Sorry if it’s not to your taste, but it’s only for one night.’

Not to my taste? Actually, it was beautiful and probably scarily expensive. ‘It’s too big, I might lose it,’ she babbled, feeling her chest tighten as pure panic gripped her. It would probably have fitted Rowena like a glove—perhaps it had been made for her? This possibility made it even more imperative to rip it off her own finger.

‘The setting’s quite old-fashioned; Tara never wanted it. It was my grandmother’s,’ Niall announced casually.

Under the circumstances, it was perverse to feel as if she was wearing another woman’s cast-offs. It was even more perverse to mind—but she did.

‘I don’t think your Tara is going to swallow this, Niall,’ Holly remarked, staring at the heavy ring as if it were going to jump up and bite her.

‘So long as you can withstand the odd cryptic dig, she’ll believe it. Tara doesn’t have a suspicious bone in her body. I’ve never lied to her before, so she has no reason to believe I’ve begun now.’

Holly toyed with the uncomfortable band on her finger. ‘Never?’ she challenged sceptically.

‘Never,’ he confirmed firmly. ‘If you discount the odd occasion when I’ve said I’d like nothing better than to spend my afternoon sitting in the front row of a catwalk show.’

‘I’m just amazed this perfect, honest marriage ever broke up.’ Holly gave a disgruntled sniff. He was painting a picture of himself as a remarkably devoted husband.

‘It probably broke up when it did because it was so honest.’

For someone who accused her of making cryptic remarks, he produced the odd gem himself. ‘Are you saying marriages stand a better chance of survival with a liberal sprinkling of deceit?’

‘I’m saying I didn’t want to stay married to a woman who was in love with someone else.’

‘Oh!’ His frankness was extremely unsettling. He didn’t sound like a man whose ego had taken a beating, but perhaps that hard exterior was hiding a shattered heart? ‘She’s not in love with someone else now, though, is she?’

‘Your thinking is predictably female.’

‘I am female.’

‘In that dress there was never any question about it, but then that was the object of the exercise wasn’t it?’

‘Pardon…?’ Unfortunately he didn’t seem to find her tone of haughty detachment much of a deterrent—not if his cynical smirk was anything to go by. Looking into those deep blue, knowing eyes made Holly wish she hadn’t let vanity overcome her better judgement and agreed to go along with this silly scheme.

‘The only reason you went along with this was because you wanted to prove to me that age had improved you beyond all recognition.’

Holly went scarlet. How, how could he know? ‘That’s—’

‘Perfectly understandable for a person with an outsize chip on her shoulder.’

Holly gasped. This man got more detestable with each passing second. I must have been totally blind as well as besotted when I was a silly teenager she concluded wrathfully. ‘I have not—’

‘Whatever you say.’ He waved aside her choked denial with languid disinterest. ‘And actually, Tara is still in love with another man—the same man. Tara’s carrying around a burden of guilt about leaving me and Thomas. It’s that guilt that’s stopping her from finding happiness. I care a lot about Tara and I want her to be happy.’

‘Am I supposed to believe you’re some sort of altruistic saint?’

‘Frankly, I don’t give that—’ The pistol-crack of his long fingers indicated the depth of his disinterest ‘—about what you think about me. I’m just asking you to remember you’ve left your broomstick at home tonight.’

Broomstick? The cheek of the man! ‘I’ll be sweet and submissive, just the way you like it,’ Holly agreed, all humble co-operation and saccharine smile. She’d never let a man do the talking for her throughout her entire adult life, and she had no intention of starting now! She swivelled slightly to look directly up at the big man who sat beside her in the taxi.

He was straightening the dark tie set against the brown column of his strong neck. The subdued light emphasised the sharp angles and planes of his intimidatingly handsome face but, after her silly gobsmacked behaviour in the bedroom, Holly wasn’t about to be intimidated by his blue eyes and sexy mouth. She chose to ignore the sudden painful clenching of her disobedient stomach muscles.

Niall stopped what he was doing and slanted her a worryingly ambiguous look. ‘You’ve absolutely no idea about “the way I like it”.’ The sensual gleam in his eyes as they rested on her defiant face caused more damage to her nervous system than an electrical storm.

Stubbornly, she didn’t scuttle to the opposite corner of the taxi and hide her face in her hands like she wanted to. There ought to be a law about any one male wielding this much in-your-face masculine virility, she thought.

‘I’ll be hanging on your every word, darling,’ she promised insincerely, batting her lashes at him.

‘And for God’s sake,’ he warned, taking her provocative sarcasm in his stride, ‘don’t drink too much!’

Holly’s mouth tightened as he threw a ‘that’s all I need’ look in her direction. The righteous feeling of ill use swelled in her chest. He seemed to have conveniently forgotten that she, out of the goodness of her heart, was helping him out of a sticky situation.

‘You’re assuming I’m an indiscreet drunk.’ Did two white wines make her a drunk? The way she recalled it, drinking wine after an exhausting weekend on call had made her extremely sleepy not the life and soul of the party.

‘Well, if your eye is anything to go by, you’re definitely a clumsy drunk.’ He reached out towards her face but didn’t make contact.

Holly closed her eyes, wondering what he was making of her instinctive and embarrassingly dramatic recoil from his extended hand. The shivery hot flesh of her bare shoulder was reacting as though his fingers had made contact.

‘Actually, I didn’t fall over.’

‘Then how did you get it?’

‘I was slow to duck…’ His blank expression indicated Niall was a bit slow too…on the uptake, anyhow, so she casually elaborated. ‘A fist did the damage,’ she recalled ruefully.

He sat very still during the lengthy pause that followed her startling but matter of fact statement.

‘A man did that to you?’ There was icy distaste in his voice.

‘It wasn’t as bad as the last time,’ Holly continued cheerfully, blissfully ignorant in the dim light of the growing shocked revulsion in his eyes.

‘And you went back for more…?’ he asked with hoarse incredulity.

Holly gave a small wry grin. She hadn’t wanted to. Her first impression of emergency medicine had been far from favourable, but in the end she’d rather enjoyed the experience, though not the occasional physical intimidation.

‘Well, I didn’t actually have much choice,’ she began to tell him, only he jumped in, his deep voice vibrating condemnation before she had an opportunity to explain farther.

‘No choice! Good God, woman, you always have a choice not to stay in an abusive relationship,’ he told her contemptuously. ‘At sixteen I put your choice of boyfriend down to inexperience!’ Even amid this bewildering tirade of condemnation, his brief allusion to their last mortifying meeting made her blush. ‘But you obviously get some sort of perverted kick out of being knocked around.’

It finally dawned on a mystified Holly how he had interpreted her words. She opened her mouth to tell him just how wrong he was—it would be nice to see the smug, sanctimonious snake squirm a bit—when she stopped.

She didn’t owe Niall Wesley any explanations! How dare the man even think she was some sort of victim? Willing a cool mask of composure to obliterate the wrath that was almost choking her, she smiled with serene disinterest back up at him.

‘I had no idea that you were so…straight!’ she remarked with wide-eyed wonderment.

‘If by straight—’ grimly, he mimicked her derisive tone ‘—you mean I can’t abide men who consider a casual left hook an acceptable display of their affection, then I am just that. And if you think you can change him—forget it! Men like that don’t change.’ Ironically, in his present mood he looked far more daunting than any brutish drunk she’d ever had to deal with in the line of duty.

Part of Holly wanted to applaud his statement, but another part of her wanted to punish this man for having the temerity to think even for one second…!

‘Why, you old softie you,’ she pouted prettily up at him as she daringly placed an affectionate hand on his thigh.

Niall’s lips curled with distaste as he forcibly removed her gently curling fingers as though she were contagious, but not before she had been able to note that his muscular thighs were rock hard. There was a sickening lurch in the pit of her belly.

‘Don’t wind me up, Holly,’ he warned darkly.

Meeting the warning glimmer in his eyes, Holly felt even dizzier. ‘For a gentle soul,’ she told him, in a voice that emerged disastrously shaky, ‘you have a firm grip.’ She looked pointedly at her fingers crushed in his ruthless grasp. She despised herself for the unmistakable sensations the contact was sending through her tense body.

He released her with a selfconscious grimace. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t worry,’ she told him flexing her fingers to encourage the circulation. ‘I’m yours—why, hell! I’m anybody’s—to crush and maim.’ This time she wasn’t able to hide her simmering anger and he saw it too in the over-bright feverish glint of her dark, spikily fringed eyes.

If she hadn’t known for sure that Niall Wesley was unacquainted with the emotion, she’d have thought that there was a flicker of uncertainty in the blue eyes that skimmed over her face.

‘You seem an intelligent girl…’

‘Why, thank you!’ she gushed insincerely. Did this man practise being patronising?

His lips thinned. ‘I know you’ve got some sort of chip on your shoulder, Holly…’

There he goes again with this chip thing, she fumed silently. He’s got me down as the original inadequate.

‘…and I appreciate that Rowena must be a hard act to follow…’

As if I need it spelled out that I’m never going to be able to hold a candle to Rowena!

‘But your self-esteem must be in a sorry state if you allow…’ He gritted his teeth as disgust threatened to overcome him at the thought of some guy… ‘You like to give the impression you’re something of a free spirit, but can’t you see there’s nothing particularly liberating about letting some bully push you around…?’

Holly inhaled sharply and her slight but shapely bosom inflated with wrath, a circumstance which unexpectedly distracted Niall.

‘Do go on,’ Holly urged him bitterly.

‘I don’t suppose it’s any of my business,’ he announced with the strained air of a man who realised he’d just been speculating how far down the loose bodice of her dress would come with one judicious tug.

The very brief glimpse he’d had of her small, sweet breasts had been a tantalising, persistent presence in the back of his mind ever since he’d walked in on her. Such sensual preoccupation wouldn’t have been so disturbing had the female involved not been pretty obviously screwed up, too young and the kid sister of one of his best friend’s to boot! You’ve got plenty of problems without adding that one, he reminded himself.

‘My word, but you catch on slowly.’ Smiling sourly, she met his brooding stare head on. For a man so firmly against violence, he looked about ready to strangle her.

‘Point taken.’ His voice carried a zero level of conviction but unexpectedly he seemed to want to let the subject drop. ‘We’ll be there in a minute. You are going to behave?’

He looked so suspicious that she couldn’t resist a naughty grin and a sing-song taunt, ‘That’s for me to know and you to—’

He bent forwards so suddenly that she didn’t have time to protest. Mouth closed, he pressed his lips firmly to hers and kissed her hard. Firmly enough to force her head back against the seat. Holly smelt his light cologne and the warm male fragrance that drifted off his body. Her fingers and toes curled tightly as she held herself painfully rigid and inhaled deeply. Somewhere deep down she knew for sure that if she relaxed even fractionally she’d just disintegrate.

Drawing back he murmured. ‘I was out of order.’

Ironically, she knew he wasn’t talking about the kiss; he seemed scarcely to have noticed he’d done it. Certainly his breathing hadn’t altered dramatically like her own and his skin tone wasn’t making any of the dramatic fluctuations hers was. I noticed all right—boy, oh boy, did I notice!

‘Your life is your own—’

‘So are my lips—’ A woman who was seduced by a kiss that said shut up, loud and clear, had serious problems.

He ignored her ironic interjection while he silently called himself all sorts of fool for giving into the stupid juvenile impulse. ‘…to mess up as you choose.’ He held up his hands in culpability as the taxi drew up outside the hotel.

Nice touch, she thought admiringly: I’m sorry, even if you’re wrong anyway. In less fraught circumstances, she might have managed a wry smile, but right at that second she didn’t feel much like smiles, wry or otherwise!

If he hadn’t stopped when he did…I was going to open my mouth…Wasn’t!…Was!…The dizzying squabble of admission and denial was going round and round in her spinning head. The odd achy sensation deep in the pit of her stomach just wouldn’t go away, any more than the distinctive male smell of him lingering in her nostrils would.

‘It would be a good idea if you turned down the aggravation level.’

It would be a better idea if she flung herself from the moving vehicle! ‘Is that an order?’

Without waiting for him to play the gallant—a role very much against his character—she slipped out of the taxi. Fresh air, that would do the trick she decided with more optimism than conviction. She hoped she sounded the sort of cool sophisticated female who didn’t fall to pieces when an amazingly handsome male casually kissed her.

It hadn’t helped her calm levels when she’d found he had been staring, rather obviously, at the silk-covered outline of her nipples which were so painfully engorged it would have taken several layers of arctic insulation, not just a bra—which she wasn’t wearing—to disguise the shameful fact.

‘Only if that’s what you want it to be,’ his voice followed her. ‘Actually, it was a request. Just try to keep in mind we are meant to be deeply in love!’ he added sardonically, as he paid the driver and re-joined her.

Walking into an expensive restaurant beside Niall Wesley had always been one of her more pleasurable fantasies—in retrospect, her fantasies had all been rather innocent. Dream fulfilment was a major let-down, she decided, as with a slightly mocking grin he stood to one side to let her enter the plush foyer before him. Oh, yes, he had nice manners now, after he’d ripped her character to shreds, lectured her and, to cap it all, kissed her in such a manner that left her wanting more. How she loathed Niall Wesley!

‘You’re late!’ The cloud of expensive perfume reached Holly but the shapely arms didn’t—they reached Niall.

Holly watched as Tara threw her arms around her ex-husband’s neck and kissed him warmly on the lips. Her glossy blonde hair was long enough to reach the hand he had automatically placed around her impossibly slender waist. Just looking at the cleavage revealed by her low-cut black sheath dress made Holly feel hopelessly inadequate.

Holly averted her eyes. She didn’t actually want to see if this kiss stayed as chaste as the one she’d received. One thing that had struck her before she’d looked away was that Tara Steel was indisputably more lovely in the flesh than she was on the covers of glossies!

‘You’ve got lipstick on you, darling,’ Tara clucked huskily, dabbing a tissue to the corner of Niall’s mouth. He accepted her ministrations, looking at her warmly from beneath the lazy droop of his heavy-lidded eyes. ‘And it’s not mine.’ This time there was a note of teasing disappointment mingled with the gentle reproach.

‘Hello.’ She looked at Holly with keen interest and then enquiringly at Niall. ‘He’s been so secretive, he didn’t even tell me your name. In fact, I was starting to think you were a figment of his fertile imagination. I’ve never known a man quite as imaginative as Niall.’ She shot Niall an intimate knowing look that made Holly feel quite queasy.

‘And have you known many? Men that is?’ The words were out before Holly could bite them back. Maybe I should let Niall do the talking, she thought.

Tara looked startled and then surprisingly she laughed. Holly wouldn’t have blamed her if she’d stormed off in a huff or thrown something at her. ‘Not half as many as the tabloids would have you believe…’

‘Holly,’ Niall supplied belatedly, in reply to Tara’s questioning look. He bent forwards to pull out a chair for Holly. ‘Don’t worry,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘Jealous is good.’

Holly felt the mortified blush swallow up her normal interesting pallor. ‘I didn’t mean to be…rude.’

‘That’s a first,’ Niall remarked, this time in a dry voice for everyone’s ears. He took his place at the table between the two women.

‘Don’t tease, Niall. No, Holly, you were just reminding me that I’m yesterday’s news which, under the circumstances, is fair enough.’ Holly responded to the dazzling smile and candid admission with a weak smile of her own. ‘You mustn’t mind me, Holly. I’ll always have a soft spot for this man.’

A soft spot at the very least, Holly surmised, startled by the genuine rapport that seemed to exist between the estranged couple. It might have been a trick of the light, but Holly thought she actually saw tears trembling on the end of those preposterously long lashes—they couldn’t be real!

God, I’m a cow, Holly thought, appalled by her mean thought. How on earth could Niall not want Tara back? she wondered. Tara wasn’t just incredibly sexy and lovely, she was nice!

‘If I’d known about you earlier, I’d never have made such a fool of myself trying to rekindle the old flame. But you mustn’t be jealous; from what Niall has told me he’s devoted to you.’

On the receiving end of Niall’s best devoted smile, Holly made an agonised sound in her throat. Fortunately, Tara seemed to interpret her inarticulate protest as a lover-like murmur, and she smiled benignly at the couple. Holly felt nauseous—she just wasn’t equipped to deal with this sort of prolonged deception! She wanted to leap to her feet and shriek, he doesn’t love me! He didn’t even remember my name!

‘Now I’ve seen you I can see why, and he tells me you love children…But then, Niall would never marry anyone who didn’t. Thomas is the centre of his world and I’m so glad he finally has someone to share the responsibility. He’s a marvellous father—which is just as well, as I’m such an awful mother.’

‘You know that’s rubbish,’ Niall denied immediately, his dark, strongly delineated brows drawing together in a straight line of disapproval. ‘Thomas is as proud as hell of his mother and always will be, and you can direct anyone who says different to me.’

Holly had never had a man announce he’d fight the world and his brother on her behalf. She felt decidedly surplus to requirements and, for some ridiculous reason, perilously close to tears in the midst of this mutual admiration.

Where was the vitriol, where was the tension? This matiness just wasn’t normal. How could you stay friends with someone you’d once been married to? Surely the feelings of betrayal and anger couldn’t just disappear overnight? She was pretty certain she couldn’t be so civilised if she found herself in the same position, but they seemed to agree on everything. So why, she wondered, had they ever broken up?

Tara misted up prettily and she bit her quivering lip. ‘You’ve been so good after all I did,’ she said huskily. ‘I’m so happy to see you’ve finally found someone of your own. It’s positively mystical.’ Tara’s warm mellow purr dropped to a wondering whisper.

‘Mystical?’ Niall queried warily.

Holly stared. If I’d said anything with half as much mockery potential, he’d have ripped me to shreds with that nasty tongue of his, she thought, studying his tolerant expression with disbelief.

‘It’s spooky. My astrologer told me the other day that this was going to happen to one of my dearest friends—I didn’t know at the time she was talking about you two.’

‘Astrologer?’ Holly echoed. Nice but nutty, she concluded, correcting her mental profile of the beautiful woman.

‘Yes, she’s incredible. I never make any major decisions without consulting her, do I, Niall?’

‘Indeed you don’t,’ Niall confirmed drily.

‘She only takes clients by recommendation, but I could introduce you if you like, Holly. She was incredibly helpful when we were splitting up…Not that I’m suggesting you two are going to…’

‘No thanks,’ Holly responded hastily. ‘I like to think I control my own fate.’

‘Oh I can see you’re a sceptic like Niall.’ She threw her ex-husband a tolerant smile. ‘Tell me, Holly, what do you think of Thomas? Isn’t he just the greatest kid?’

‘I…I haven’t met him yet.’ Holly crossed her fingers and hoped that she wasn’t contradicting anything Niall had said.

‘Really?’

Holly wasn’t surprised by Tara’s amazement. If Niall ever did remarry it sounded to her very much like his son, closely followed by his beautiful ex-wife, would have the final say. If the child gave the thumbs-down, then it was goodbye lover! She pitied the woman who would find herself in this situation.

‘How could she?’ Niall put in smoothly. ‘You know the boy’s been staying with Chris and Jude in Maine for the past four weeks. It was you who persuaded me to let him go, remember.’

‘Well, he and little Daniel get on so well, I thought it…’ She stopped, an arrested expression drifting over her flawless features. ‘You mean you’ve only known one another for a few weeks? I had the impression…Do your parents know, Niall?’

‘Only you know, Tara, and we’d like it to stay that way.’

Holly shot him a look of alarm. It better had, the explanations could get embarrassing if this ever got out.

‘Even though I’ve known Holly since she was a kid with braces, all this is new…’ He caught one of Holly’s hands between both of his and brought the tips of her fingers up to his mouth.

He had that part right, Holly reflected grimly. ‘Very new,’ she agreed drily, tucking the hand he’d released neatly under the table.

There was warning glitter in the blue eyes that rested on her face. ‘We’ve hardly got used to the idea ourselves,’ he told Tara frankly. ‘And don’t start with any horror stories about my parents. Holly is already scared stiff at the idea of meeting them, aren’t you, darling?’ He gazed lovingly into her eyes. The rat had missed his true vocation in life. What an actor! He recovered the hand which lay protectively in her lap and covered it with his before lifting it to softly brush the inside of her wrist against his lips.

Despite the fact that all her wary barriers were firmly in place, the soft contact sent a neat electrical current zinging through her body.

‘No,’ she contradicted firmly. She might be playing a part but there were limits. If he expected her to flutter her eyelashes and cling to his strong hand, he could think again! Scared, indeed! Wasn’t it fear of another kind that was making her heart pound? She pushed aside this inconvenient thought.

‘A little natural apprehension, possibly,’ she conceded firmly, trying to inconspicuously free the hand which Niall had appropriated.

Before Holly could give her order to the hovering drinks waiter, Niall spoke up for her—she so hated it when men did that!

‘Holly will have a mineral water, won’t you, darling?’ His malicious smile dared her to contradict him.

Holly’s nostrils flared and her dark eyes were filled with contempt, but she smiled back in a suitably besotted manner. ‘Whatever you say, sweetheart.’ It would seem that Tara watching this tender interchange, couldn’t detect sarcasm—even when it was ladled on with a trowel.

When the waiter had gone, Holly soon discovered just what the overimaginative Tara had been detecting from his overbearing manner and her meek submission.

‘You’re pregnant!’ She clapped her hands. ‘I should have guessed. This is marvellous,’ she enthused.

Holly looked at her blankly. Great, not only do I have his ex-wife’s blessing to marry him, I have her approval to reproduce, too. Is this situation off the scale of weird or is it just me?

Tara smiled warmly at Holly’s stunned face. ‘She’s got a definite glow about her, hasn’t she, Niall?’

Holly didn’t know about a glow but she did feel as though she might spontaneously combust any second from pure mortification. She sent a glance of desperate appeal to Niall, who seemed to be taking this suggestion in his stride. To add insult to injury, as he looked with interest at her pink cheeks and horrified eyes, he even seemed slightly amused.

‘I think Holly’s radiance lights up any room she walks into, but I’m a trifle biased. Sorry to disappoint you, Tara, but she’s not pregnant. There are other reasons for a person to request a soft drink.’ His voice dropped a sexy octave as he continued huskily, ‘And other reasons for a person to get married, too.’ At the last moment, he turned his riveting eyes, filled with lots of reasons—all erotic—directly towards Holly, reducing her to a frozen state of open-mouthed bemusement.

She bit her lower lip in an effort to tear her glance away from that callous, calculating seduction. She didn’t doubt for a second that he expected her, like every other female, to be reduced to a gibbering idiot. He knew all right about the power his blue eyes had over the opposite sex.

‘No…’ She cleared her throat and turned her attention to Tara. ‘He thinks I’ve got a drink problem,’ she confided with a gusty sigh.

Tara obviously didn’t know whether to take Holly’s words seriously or not. Uncertainly, she looked from Holly to a frozen-faced Niall and back again.

‘You’re joking…Right?’

‘Yes Tara, she’s joking.’ Finally, she’d pierced his sardonic cool. ‘Holly has a very warped sense of humour.’

Holly heard the controlled warning in his voice and stifled a grin. ‘I thought, darling—’ she raised her eyes guilelessly to his ‘—that you loved everything about me.’

At that moment, the waiter enquired if they were ready to give their order.

‘You order for me, darling.’ Holly produced her best helpless little woman look and received a murderous glare for her troubles. ‘I’m so hopeless at that sort of thing.’

‘Don’t squabble!’ Tara pleaded. ‘I can see you two enjoy it, but I just hate it!’

Holly shot the older woman a startled glance. They were enjoying it? Where did she get that crazy idea? She looked sideways and discovered that Niall was looking at her with an expression that suggested he was just as startled as she was by this preposterous notion.

‘Tell me, Holly, what do you do?’

‘Drives me to distraction, mostly,’ Niall forestalled her reply.

Obviously, she brooded darkly, he had concluded that whatever she did for a living wouldn’t be good enough for the prospective wife of a powerful and influential figure like himself. As it happened, a junior doctor who didn’t have a minute to call her own probably was about as unsuitable as you could get.

‘Did I mention that Holly is Rowena Parish’s sister?’

‘Really, I’d never have guessed! You know, Niall,’ Tara mused thoughtfully, ‘I thought that if you ever married again it would be Rowena. Actually, Holly,’ she added in a wry aside, ‘when we were first married I was rather jealous of your sister and all their blood-brother pals act. If you know what I mean.’

Holly, who could identify completely with this comment, nodded.

‘It’s ironic, isn’t it?’ Tara laughed.

‘You never told me that!’ Niall exclaimed in a shocked voice. There was a dark band of colour across the slanting sweep of his high cheekbones.

Guilty conscience? Holly wondered uncharitably. Well, she couldn’t see a single reason why she should give Niall the benefit of the doubt.

‘Well, I wouldn’t, would I, silly.’

The loud sound of a chair being pushed over made them and every other diner in the restaurant turn around.

‘Oh, help, please, someone!’ An attractive woman was down on her knees beside the figure of a prone middle-aged man. ‘I don’t think he’s breathing!’ she wailed.

Holly wasn’t very far behind Niall as he moved towards the traumatised woman. He was feeling the man’s neck for a pulse when she dropped down on her knees.

‘Nothing,’ he said shaking his head. He started to loosen the tie around the portly man’s neck and the anxious companion began to wail in earnest, throwing herself bodily on top of the man.

‘Let me…’ Holly began.

‘Will you look after the woman?’ Niall curtly cut her off. ‘Has someone called an ambulance?’

‘I have, sir,’ the maître d’ confirmed, materialising at their side. He took the distraught woman by the arm and pulled her to one side. He looked on doubtfully as Niall struck the man sharply on the chest and tilted his head back in readiness to begin mouth-to-mouth. ‘Don’t you think, sir, we should wait until a doctor arrives?’

CHAPTER THREE

‘I AM a doctor,’ Holly said, sparing him a brief glance before she began chest compressions. ‘One, two…’ She began to count out loud.

Briefly her eyes met Niall’s. ‘Game, set and match, you witch,’ he conceded.

‘Save your breath,’ Holly advised. ‘He needs it.’

The man had, much to her relief, started breathing before the paramedics had arrived. Holly was glad to see a familiar face. She gave a brief concise history to the big hunky paramedic, who listened and nodded as he gave the patient a quick assessment.

‘Just can’t keep away from me, can you, Doc Parish?’ He winked broadly at her. ‘Nice one,’ he added approvingly, nodding toward the figure on the stretcher. ‘We’ll take over now.’

‘Thank you, Paul.’

‘No, thank you, my sweet.’ He smiled warmly over his shoulder as they whisked the man off to the waiting ambulance. ‘We miss you already, Holly!’

Niall had watched this interchange through narrowed eyes and wondered if he looked as much of a fool as he felt—probably not. He felt extremely foolish!

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he demanded.

Holly inclined her head up towards the tall, grim-faced figure beside her. ‘Why didn’t you ask?’

Several people called out congratulatory comments as she made her way back to the table, where a shaken-looking Tara was drinking a large brandy. Tara got to her feet and enfolded Holly in a warm fragrant embrace.

‘You were so marvellous! Wasn’t she, Niall? I don’t know how you stayed so calm. I’m shaking like a leaf.’ She released Holly and held out a hand to demonstrate. ‘Well, now I know what you do.’

Holly, whose nails were kept conveniently short, envied the beautifully polished perfect set of nails the other woman had.

‘I shake, too—inside, at least.’

‘It must be marvellous knowing you can help people.’

‘It’s lucky she doesn’t live in a litigious country where she has to think twice about helping someone,’ Niall contributed wryly.

Thinking of Tara’s breathless sentiments, Holly nodded a little selfconsciously. With her friends and colleagues, she might have responded with a facetious remark which would have had them all laughing. Perhaps one day she’d develop the veneer of cynicism that many of her colleagues had, but deep down she agreed with Tara: she was lucky to be doing something she enjoyed so much.

‘It’s also extremely tiring,’ she responded lightly. ‘The hours are not exactly conducive to a social life either.’

‘I can imagine,’ Tara, who knew all about long gruelling hours, agreed.

Holly’s eyes twinkled as she gave a naughty smile. ‘But there are fringe benefits. Did you notice him…?’ she asked, her tongue firmly inserted in her cheek.

‘He was hard to miss,’ Tara responded immediately. ‘There’s something about a man in uniform…’ she mused with a twinkle.

‘Isn’t there just,’ Holly agreed with lascivious fervour.

‘Shall I leave?’ Despite his languid tone, Holly had the impression Niall wasn’t over the moon about their conversation.

‘Don’t tell me a bit of girlie talk is making you of all people feel insecure, Niall?’ Tara teased.

‘I wouldn’t like to be responsible for cramping your style, ladies.’

‘You won’t,’ Holly promised with a sweetly malicious smile.

‘Seriously, Holly, I know it’s hard to juggle a career and a marriage, but with a supportive partner anything’s possible.’ Tara, sitting beside her ex-partner, seemed genuinely unaware of any irony in her statement.

‘There aren’t many partners that supportive,’ Holly responded cynically. She’d seen marriages stretched to the limit break under the strain.

‘Well, you don’t have to look, do you? Because you’ve found one.’ She looked across the table at Niall and smiled warmly. ‘You know I’m so glad he’s marrying you and not Rowena. I’m sure she’s a very nice person,’ she added anxiously as Holly shot her a quizzical look. ‘But you two look sort of right together. And just look how well you worked together just now.’

There hadn’t been time to wonder during the panic, but now a disturbed and squirming Holly could recall how, bizzarely, Niall had seemed to know what she wanted him to do before she asked him when they had worked in unison to save the man’s life. If he anticipated a woman’s—or, more specifically, her—needs that well in other, more pleasurable, situations, it would be quite something, she reflected.

For several dreamy seconds, she let her mind dwell speculatively on the steamy sensual images that floated into her head.

‘Sure, we’re soul mates from way back.’

The blistering sarcasm in his voice made Tara look at him with shocked disapproval and woke Holly from the erotic permutations she’d been spinning around the general bedroom theme. Her eyes opened wide with dismay as a horrified fractured sigh emerged from her dry lips.

‘You’re tired,’ Niall observed, noticing her sigh, but fortunately not knowing the cause.

He sounded concerned, if a little cross, as though she’d got tired just to irritate him, but the tender lover was all part of the act, she reminded herself, burying her nose in a balloon of brandy that Tara had pushed into her hands to avoid looking directly at him.

All this talk of supportive, understanding partners was making her feel all soft and sentimental, not to mention just a mite wistful. Then she’d made the criminally stupid mistake of imagining what sort of lover Niall would make.

Pretending that she didn’t find him wildly attractive wasn’t going to get her anywhere, she told herself with stern pragmatism. What she had to do was keep her imagination on a strict rein. She was grown up; she didn’t have to go broadcasting the fact she was privately lusting after his body. And it is just his body, it’s that superficial, she told herself firmly. I don’t even like the man, for goodness’ sake!

She knew there were a lot of women in Niall Wesley’s life and, even if he had displayed any interest in her, Holly had no wish to join the ranks of his mistresses. There seemed to be two very important women his life—Niall’s beautiful ex-wife and her own sister. A wise woman knew when not to compete. No, her relationship with Niall was going to stay safely in the realms of make-believe!

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