Читать книгу Bride For A Year - Kathryn Ross, Kathryn Ross - Страница 6

CHAPTER ONE

THE last rays of sunshine were slanting across the Californian vineyard as Paige stopped work for the day. She stood up and dusted down her jeans as she surveyed her handiwork.

She was a slender woman of twenty-two, with long, dark hair, her delicate, feminine appearance totally at odds with her work clothes and the heavy toolbox she had been using. She wasn’t much good at DIY, but despite this she had made a reasonable job of fixing the fence. The only problem was that it had taken her so long.

It was the same with every task she had undertaken that day. She had started work at six in the morning and hadn’t stopped, yet she still had several jobs that had been on her list of things to do today. She sighed. The light was fading fast so she would just have to leave everything until the morning. Besides, she was too tired to continue. All she could dream about now was a long, luxurious bath in scented hot water.

The thought made her start to pack her work gear away with haste. She was just finishing when she heard the sound of a horse’s hooves on the hard, dusty driveway. She turned and her heart hammered crazily as she saw her neighbour, Brad Monroe, riding up towards her.

She had been expecting him for a while now; she knew what he had come to say. Apprehension knotted inside her.

‘Good evening, Paige.’ He reined in the powerful black stallion just beside her.

‘Evening.’ It took a supreme effort to sound indifferent to him.

‘How are things going?’

The casual question made her temper simmer. As if he cared! She turned and threw the last of her work things back in the box. ‘Not bad...considering,’ she muttered as she fastened the lid on the box.

He waited until she had finished. His horse pawed at the ground as if impatient with the delay, but Brad’s voice was very relaxed as he commented, ‘If you’d asked, I’d have sent someone over to help you with that fence.’

She Sicked him a disparaging look from glimmering blue eyes. ‘I don’t need any help from you.’

‘Hell, Paige, you are one stubborn woman.’ A note of impatience crept into his voice now.

She ignored that and bent to pick up the box of tools, her long, dark hair falling silkily over her face. The box was heavy but she put a determined effort into not showing it. Her slender body protested against the weight and she was forced to use both hands.

She heard the creak of the saddle leather as he dismounted.

She looked at him as he walked towards her. The final, dying rays of red sun slanted across him like a spotlight. He was tall, well over six feet, with thick, dark hair, a square jawline and eyes that were so dark they reminded her of burnt toffee. He was thirty seven, fifteen years older than she, and he looked like a movie star even in his faded jeans and denim shirt.

Paige felt her heart thud uncomfortably. She had always found Brad extremely attractive. From first laying eyes on him when she was thirteen she had imagined herself in love with him, had secretly dreamed that one day he would look at her and feel the same way. That had never happened. Just as well, she told herself fiercely now, because Brad Monroe was not the man she had built him up to be. Just a few months ago she had found out what kind of a person he really was and all her illusions had been swept away.

He reached to take the heavy box from her and his hand closed over hers. The touch of his skin against hers made tiny darts of awareness shoot through her, and heat flooded through her body.

Their eyes met for just a moment before she pulled away, allowing him to take the box from her.

‘I suppose you have come to give me an ultimatum: pay up the money I owe you or get out.’ Her voice wasn’t entirely steady and that annoyed her. She didn’t want him to know that she wasn’t perfectly in control around him.

‘I’m not your enemy, Paige,’ he said coolly. ‘I’ve only ever wanted to help you.’

‘You’ve only ever wanted to get your hands on this land,’ she corrected him cuttingly. ‘Forgive me for being blunt, Brad, but your caring neighbour act no longer impresses me. I know what your real motives are. You’re a vulture, and finally, after all these months of circling, you are about to swoop in for the pickings. I’ve been expecting you for weeks now.’

He shook his head. ‘I know you are still in shock after your father’s death. You are not seeing things clearly yet, but—’

‘The problem is I can see things too clearly,’ she interrupted him. ‘Now, if you will excuse me, I’ve had a long, tiring day and I want to go inside my house and relax.’ While she still had a house to relax in... The words remained unspoken at the back of her mind.

Instead of leaving as she had hoped, he fell into step beside her as she walked up towards the house.

‘If it helps to blame me then go ahead,’ he said in a low tone. ‘But sooner rather than later you are going to have to face the truth. It’s two months since your father died. You can’t carry on here on your own for much longer. The vineyard is falling down around you, Paige. It is going to take a lot of money to put things right and you haven’t got it. Not only that, but you are vastly in debt.’

Paige didn’t want to hear his assessment of her problems. Her pride rebelled furiously against it, but she said nothing because deep down she knew that he was right.

‘Look, Paige, I haven’t come over here to upset you. I’ve come to offer some practical help. If you want, I’ll sit down with you, help you go through your accounts—’

She laughed at that. ‘So you can get some inside knowledge on how much you can steal my vineyard from me for? No, thanks. My accounts are my own business.’

Silence fell between them. Velvet darkness had enveloped the countryside. The air was hot and heavy with the tropical sound of cicadas. The smell of the parched earth was broken by the sweetness of the eucalyptus trees which shaded the white, colonial-style house that had been Paige’s home since she was thirteen.

She took a long, deep breath. She loved this place, with all its familiar sights and scents. She loved everything about it. But she knew that she had lost it...knew that her dream of holding onto it, of working on her own to save it, had been illogical in the extreme.

Brad put her box down on the porch that encircled the house. ‘Whatever you might think, I am concerned about you.’

‘You’re concerned because you’ve had to wait longer than you had envisioned to get your hands on this estate. All you can think about is extending your vineyard and your profits.’

He caught hold of her arm as she made to swing away from him. ‘I did not cause your father’s financial problems.’

‘Maybe not,’ she muttered tightly. ‘But you sure as hell speeded up his downfall.’

‘By lending him money when he most needed it?’ Brad’s voice was droll.

‘By demanding it back in an impossibly short time. You may not have started my father’s problems, but you certainly finished him.’ Paige’s eyes blazed into his. ‘You come here telling me that you are not the enemy, but in my eyes you are...and you always will be. You could have afforded to give my father longer to pay you back but you didn’t. You contributed to his death and I hate you for it.’

‘That’s vastly unreasonable, Paige.’ His voice was low with fury, but none-the-less very cutting. ‘Yes, all right, I could have afforded to let the loan ride longer, but I didn’t see the point. Your father was a fool who...’ He hesitated and she finished the words for him.

‘Who wasn’t as ruthless in business as he should have been?’ Her eyes shone with vivid, intense light at that. ‘At least he was honourable.’

‘And you think I’m not?’

‘I know what you are. I’ve seen the real you in action these last few months.’ She looked down at the hand he had on her arm her manner very cold. ‘Now let go of me.’

‘Paige, we need to talk and sort this out,’ he said harshly.

‘There’s nothing to discuss.’

‘Like hell there is.’ He pulled her closer to his body and the contact made her temperature rise dramatically. ‘We’ve been friends and neighbours for years. I won’t have you turning our familys’ friendship into some kind of dramatic vendetta... which is all in your mind. You were away at college when your father’s...financial problems got out of hand and he came to me for an extension of the time limit on his loan. You don’t know the real facts.’

‘I know what my father told me,’ she blazed furiously. ‘I know when I came home and went across to your house and asked you again, for my father, would you extend the time limit you more or less laughed in my face. Or are you going to try and tell me I imagined that as well?’

‘I gave you my reasons for not extending the time limit on the loan,’ he said calmly.

‘Yes, you did... Now, what did you say?’ She rolled her eyes disdainfully. ‘Oh, yes, it was for his own good.’ Her voice grated sarcastically. ‘Very helpful of you, I must say.’

‘Matt was in way over his head, Paige. You don’t fully understand the problem.’

‘Don’t patronise me, Brad.’ Her tone was brittle.

‘That wasn’t my intention. What I meant was that you were away at college, you didn’t see what was happening here—’

‘Now you are trying to tell me it was all my fault, because I haven’t been living at home for a few years.’ She shook her head. ‘You must be really desperate for this place. What’s the matter, Brad? Is your sojourn into the world of politics costing you more money than you’d thought? Are you seeking to extend your profit margins by stealing my land?’

‘The fact that I’m running for mayor has nothing to do with this. Except for the fact that I’d rather not have the hassle of you going around bad mouthing me.’

‘Frightened people might not vote for you if they knew how you’d treated my father?’ Her voice grated. ‘I’m not surprised you’re worried. The truth isn’t exactly good for the image you like to project, is it? That caring “I’m only doing this for the community” spiel rings very hollow next to the way you’ve treated your neighbour.’

He shook his head. ‘I can’t believe how you are twisting the facts.’

‘It’s the truth, Brad, and you know it.’

‘The truth as you see it. Blinkered and inaccurate.’

She shook her head. ‘I know the only reason you lent my father that money in the first place was the hope that he wouldn’t be able to pay you back, that it enabled you to get your hooks into this property. I’m sure when I put the place on the market you will be the one picking it up for next to nothing.’

‘Are you considering selling?’

‘Careful, Brad, your thirst for blood is showing.’ Her lips twisted, the fire inside her starting to die. ‘And, yes, of course I’m going to sell. I do know when I’m beaten. I shall put the estate on the open market next week. I’ve been advised that an auction is my best bet; then I can disappear into the wide blue yonder and start a new life.’

He frowned.

‘Oh, don’t worry. I’ll settle my debts with you out of the proceeds of the sale before I leave California,’ she assured him.

‘Where will you go?’ She felt his surprise, almost palpable in the air between them.

‘Depends how much money you deign to leave me with. I know that whoever buys it will get it at a knockdown price. It’s not in the best of conditions any longer.’

‘My fault again, I presume?’ he muttered dryly.

‘Your words, not mine.’ Her glance slanted away from him to where his horse was standing, idly munching at the greenery over the white picket fence that separated the garden from the vineyard. ‘And your horse certainly isn’t helping matters.’

‘It’s a conspiracy, no doubt,’ Brad said as he moved to catch hold of the animal’s bridle. ‘I’m out to ruin your life and I’ve told Buck to work his way through your garden.’ There was a gleam of humour in Brad’s dark eyes as he looked at her.

For just a second she wanted to smile with him. The memory of how relaxed she used to feel around him, of how he had always been able to make her laugh, was there very strongly in her heart.

‘We used to be friends, Paige,’ he said quietly as she continued just to stare at him.

Her heart thumped very unevenly. ‘Did we?’ She shook her head. ‘I can’t remember that.’

Then she turned away from him and hurried up the steps towards the front door, allowing the fly screen and the door to bang noisily behind her as she closed it.

She didn’t turn on the lights in the hallway immediately. Instead, she stood in the darkness, her back against the door, her breathing uneven.

‘We used to be friends...’ Brad’s words drummed through her and with them memories flicked like photographs through her mind.

From being a young girl she had looked up to Brad, respected him... loved him. At least he had never guessed at her true feelings for him; that would be too humiliating. To Brad she was just the girl next door, that was where his thoughts of friendship started and finished.

She remembered how, as a teenager, he had teased her mercilessly and yet always made her laugh...always melted her with one look from those incredible eyes of his.

She had yearned to be old enough to go out with him. had felt quite jealous of the succession of glamorous women in his life.

His mother had guessed the truth, though. Thinking about Elizabeth brought a lump to her throat.

Paige couldn’t remember her own mother, but Elizabeth was everything she would have wished her to be. Kind, amusing, open. Paige had felt able to talk to her...had enjoyed her company.

It had been Brad’s mother who had taught her to ride; she had talked to her about the land, about the grapevines; it had been she rather than her own father who had instilled a love of the land into her.

It was eighteen months since Elizabeth had died and Paige still missed her. Her hands curled into tight fists at her sides. Lord alone knew what she would make of this situation now.

Briskly she started to walk across the dark hallway. She didn’t want to think about the past; she was too tired, too tearful. She would go upstairs, have her bath and forget everything. Her thoughts broke off as she hit her foot quite violently against a solid, sharp object. She cried out instinctively as pain shot through her, then sank down on the floor to rub her injury, tears of anger and frustration in her eyes.

‘Damn, damn, damn,’ she muttered under her breath. She had forgotten that earlier today she had dragged some tea chests down from the attic and left them in the centre of the hall.

‘Paige, are you OK?’

Brad’s voice from outside the front door was very unwelcome.

‘Yes. Go away,’ she called out, wanting to be left alone.

He ignored her completely and she heard the door open. The next moment the overhead light flicked on.

He came quickly across to her, an expression of concern on the handsome features. ‘What the heck have you done?’

‘I was playing football and a tea chest fell on me,’ she muttered sarcastically.

‘You always were a bit of a tomboy,’ he grinned as he bent down and pushed up her jeans to have a look at her foot.

She winced with pain as his fingers touched her flesh. ‘You’ll live... You’ve just bruised yourself.’ He straightened and for a moment she thought he was just going to leave. Instead, he walked away in the direction of the kitchen. ‘I’ll get you some ice to put on it.’

‘There’s no need. I’ll manage on my own.’ She stood up and found her foot still throbbed too much to put her full weight on it, so she leaned against the chest.

He came back with a tea towel filled with ice cubes and knelt down beside her to put it against her foot.

For some reason his gentleness filled her with a feeling of acute sadness. She looked down at the darkness of his hair and for a moment was overcome by an irrational desire to touch him, to reach out a hand and stroke it through the soft thickness of that hair.

‘Feel any better?’ He looked up at her and she nodded.

‘Thank you.’ Her voice was husky.

He straightened and looked at her.

Paige could feel her anger against him evaporating in a wave of stronger emotion, a feeling that this was the man she had always loved...always looked up to. Sorrow filled her blue eyes, darkening them to the shade of deepest violet. If only her father hadn’t turned to Brad for financial help, she thought miserably. She didn’t want to think badly of Brad; she wanted to push all those thoughts away and turn to him as she had always felt able to turn to him in the past, trust him as she had always trusted him.

His eyes lingered gently on her face. ‘I hate to see you so sad, Paige; it tears me apart.’

She swallowed hard. She wouldn’t cry, she told herself staunchly. ‘You... you should have thought of that when my father asked you to extend your time limit.’ Her words held none of the accusing tones of before; now her voice was just filled with regret. ‘All we needed was a couple more months—’

He shook his head. His eyes moved around the hallway, taking in the large tea chests cluttering the area. ‘I never wanted it to come to this,’ he muttered grimly. ‘I certainly had no idea that you were already starting to pack things up. I had thought it would be a while yet before you came to that.’ He raked a distracted hand through his hair. ‘It will be a mammoth task packing everything from this house.’

She nodded. ‘Three generations of my family have lived here. It will take me some time to sort everything out.’

‘What will you do? Put it in storage?’

She shrugged. ‘The real-estate people have advised me to sell everything. But there are a number of things that are of great sentimental value so I’ll sort through and take what I can.’ She tried to sound practical, tried not to let him know that this was breaking her heart.

‘You love this place so much, don’t you?’ he asked softly.

She took a deep breath. ‘It’s my home...’

His eyes met hers. ‘No matter what you might think, this isn’t what I wanted,’ he said softly. ‘Just for the record, it was my mother who first lent your father the money he needed, not me,’ he said calmly. ‘And she did it out of a desire to help. She was very fond of you, Paige.’

The words stilled her. ‘I was fond of her, too.’ For a moment tears shimmered in the bright blue of her eyes. ‘And it was very kind of her,’ she admitted huskily.

‘Don’t cry, Paige.’

‘I’m not crying,’ she denied angrily, brushing away a tear as it dared to trickle over the smooth pallor of her skin.

He moved closer and folded her into the warmth of his arms. For a moment she leaned against him, breathing in the comfort of being held. Then she looked up at him and subtly the feelings of grief changed to an awareness of him and the way he was holding her.

He breathed her name in a whisper-soft way that made her skin prickle with consciousness. She wanted him to kiss her; the desire that flared inside her was so strong it was overwhelming.

Then his head lowered and she felt his lips against the cool salt of her tears, caressing warmth back to her body, stirring feelings of desire and need alive with vivid intensity.

For years she had secretly dreamed that one day he would kiss her. She had imagined that it would be passionate, but she hadn’t been prepared for the storm of desire it unleashed.

When he moved back from her she was breathless. She stared wordlessly up into the darkness of his eyes.

Then reality crashed around her. She thought about her father, thought about the broken words he had murmured to her, the words of hate against Brad Monroe. ‘Cold, hard, ruthless’, he had called him. The words drummed through her mind like a reproach and she felt heavy with guilt, her passion for Brad somehow seeming a vast disloyalty to her father’s memory.

She pushed him away from her. ‘I don’t know why that happened, but it was a big mistake.’

One dark eyebrow lifted. ‘I thought it was quite enjoyable myself,’ he murmured flippantly.

‘I don’t suppose your girlfriend would be quite so amused,’ Paige said tersely.

‘I don’t have a girlfriend,’ Brad retorted. ‘So it’s nobody’s business but my own.’

Paige frowned. She knew for a fact that Brad was dating Carolyn Murphy. He had been seeing her for the last six months and most people were expecting the sound of wedding bells. ‘So what about Carolyn?’ she enquired.

‘Carolyn and I have split up.’

‘But I thought... Everyone thought that you two were, well, going to get married.’

His eyebrows rose even further at that. ‘Everyone takes a lot for granted around here,’ he muttered dryly. ‘But no, it’s all over between Carolyn and me.’

‘Oh!’ She stared at him, really startled by this news. ‘Are you upset?’

Brad’s lips twisted. ‘Why, do you want to comfort me?’ he drawled sardonically. ‘A few more kisses like that one and I might start to feel a heck of a lot better.’

‘Don’t be absurd.’ Her heart missed several beats. It didn’t matter whom he was involved with, how free he might be, she told herself fiercely. She wasn’t interested. And yet a small part of her was remembering that kiss...remembering how good it had felt to be in his arms.

She turned away from him. ‘I think you should go now.’

‘If that’s what you want.’ Silence fell between them. ‘I hope you’ll believe me, Paige, when I tell you that I never intended to ruin your father.’

She didn’t say anything to that...didn’t know what to think any more. She was bewildered and scared and had never felt more alone in her life.

‘If it will help, I want you to know that I can wait for the money you owe me. It doesn’t matter when you pay it back.’

She spun around at that. ‘I can’t believe you!’ she said with a stunned shake of her head. ‘Just a few months ago I begged you to extend our time limit. You refused point-blank. Now my father is dead and you have the audacity to calmly tell me it doesn’t matter when I pay you back.’

‘I want to help you.’

‘Well, it’s too late.’ Her voice was anguished now. ‘And you know damned well it is.’

‘I can’t stand by and watch you go to the wall,’ he muttered.

‘At the risk of repeating myself, you were willing to stand by and do just that a few months ago.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Either you’ve got a massively guilty conscience or you’re a damn good actor.’

‘I don’t have a guilty conscience,’ he told her swiftly. ‘I had my reasons for refusing your father. They were good reasons.’

‘So good that I can’t understand them,’ she snapped. ‘Well, I’m not so unintelligent that I don’t see behind this charade of an offer now.’ She put one hand on her hip. ‘You are bothered about what people will think if I blab about the details of my father’s financial problems. A man who is running for mayor wouldn’t want this kind of blot on his copybook. So you come over here with the grand, charitable gesture of letting me off the hook a while longer.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t need or want your charity, Brad.’

‘I’m not offering you charity,’ he rasped dryly. ‘I’m extending the hand of a concerned neighbour—’

‘Oh, please!’ She cut across him with laughing disdain. ‘As you are well aware, Brad, it’s too little, too late. That’s the problem when you’re heading towards bankruptcy, you see...’ Her voice shook with derision. ‘It’s like a domino effect. You get behind with one debt then others pile up... Then someone demands their money immediately and one by one things start to collapse.’ She glared at him. ‘I’m the last domino standing in place and all I can do is sell up fast before I fall flat on my face. You offering, oh, so benevolently, to prop me up for a little while longer won’t make a scrap of difference now. I needed your support several months ago... It’s no damn good to me at all now.’

‘Things are that bad, then?’ he asked quietly.

She slanted him a dry look. ‘You were the one telling me how bad things were as we walked in from the vineyard.’

‘I didn’t realise that things had moved quite so quickly.’ He shook his head. ‘Have you spoken with the bank?’

She nodded and bent to lift the icepack from her foot. It had stopped throbbing now, maybe overshadowed by the greater pain inside. ‘They strongly urge me to go ahead with the auction...and not to waste a moment.’

‘Can’t you just sell off pieces of the property, without losing your house?’ he asked. ‘I’d be interested in acquiring some of your land.’

‘I’m sure you would.’ She flashed him a knowing look. ‘I knew that’s what you were angling for—’

‘That’s not what I want,’ he cut in tersely.

‘So which piece of land are you thinking of?’ she carried on swiftly, as if he hadn’t spoken.

He shrugged. ‘How about the slice that runs along the far back of my property?’

‘You mean the piece that contains the only water I have?’ Her voice trembled with fury. ‘This place won’t fetch very much on the open market, not in this rundown state, but without that water it will be virtually worthless.’

‘You can modernise. Install a new irrigation system in—’

‘Do you have any idea how much money you are talking about?’ she demanded fiercely.

‘Of course,’ he replied coolly.

‘Then you’ll know that even if I did sell you that land there wouldn’t be enough left over from paying back my debt to you and the others to install a bore hole, never mind anything else.’ She raked a hand through her hair. ‘No, I’ll have to sell the whole place... There’s no alternative.’

She swung away from him and walked over towards the kitchen to put the rapidly melting ice in the sink. For a moment her eyes moved over the rustic charm of the place. The dresser, the pine scrubbed table and the dried flowers on the farmhouse rack... Her home. Her heart twisted painfully.

‘So where will you go?’

Brad’s voice in the doorway behind her made her turn and look at him.

She shrugged. Tve got friends that I made when I was away at college. I’ve had letters of condolence and an offer that I can share a friend’s flat while I look around for a job.’

‘A male friend?’ Brad asked, a caustic note in his voice.

She frowned. The offer had been from a girlfriend, but she wasn’t about to enlighten him. ‘That’s none of your damned business,’ she grated with annoyance. ‘The fact remains that I have very little option but to move away from this area altogether. I need to get myself a job, start again.’

‘There are always other options.’

‘Such as?’

‘We could become partners,’ he said quietly.

She was so surprised she could hardly say anything for a moment ‘You mean you would write off my loan and straighten out all my other debts if I made you a sleeping partner in the vineyard?’

‘In a roundabout way... yes.’

She was incredulous now. ‘You do want the vineyard, then?’

He shrugged. ‘I’m more in need of the partner than I am of the vineyard.’

When she continued to stare at him, perplexed, he smiled. ‘I need a wife.’

‘A wife?’ She looked at him blankly. ‘I’m sorry, Brad, I don’t understand.’

‘I’m asking you to marry me,’ he said quietly.

She stared at him. This had to be some kind of a joke! Her lips curved and she found herself laughing. She couldn’t help herself. It was the nerve-tingling absurdity of the suggestion. ‘You can’t possibly be serious!’

‘I’m not talking about a lifelong commitment. I’m talking about twelve months.’

‘It sounds like a jail sentence.’ Paige was rewarded by a momentary expression of anger on his face. It gave her a certain amount of pleasure to strike through that cool, smug exterior of his. What on earth was he playing at? she wondered grimly. She had no illusions about his feelings for her... They might have been friends in the past, but he had never given her any indication that he wanted that friendship to deepen, no matter how much she had secretly yearned for it.

‘You want me for twelve months... What do I get?’ she asked derisively. ‘A purple heart for living with the enemy?’

‘You get this place. I’ll build it up for you, stick it back together and write off your loans.’ His voice was tight.

‘That’s a pretty expensive package.’ Her heart thundered against her breast. ‘And you’d be willing to do that to have me as your wife for twelve months?’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t understand this at all. Why a year? What’s in it for you?’

His lips curved in a mirthless smile. ‘I want a dutiful wife... Someone who will look up at me adoringly.’

Suddenly it clicked with her. ‘This is all because you are running for mayor here, isn’t it? You want the right image? The loving husband, a family man—’

‘Hold on there.’ He cut across her swiftly. ‘I’m not looking to start a family with you... Children are not part of the equation.’

Heat licked through her at the insulting undertone of that statement, but before she could coherently formulate a cutting reply he continued, ‘But yes, it has been suggested that I will find it easier to get elected if I’m married.’

‘And when we part... How would that look to your precious image?’

He laughed. ‘I’ll tell everyone you married me for my money... It won’t be so far from the truth, will it? I’ll probably be voted in again out of sympathy.’

She shook her head. ‘So why me?’

‘Why not you? You’re attractive. You know the score up front. We can draw up a business agreement and know where we stand.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m not really the marrying kind. I like my freedom. However, twelve months doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.’

It was such a preposterous idea that she just stared at him. ‘A marriage of convenience...a business deal,’ she muttered finally. ‘You get a partner to stand next to you on platforms and say the right things at civic functions, I get the vineyard back in a year?’

He nodded. ‘We’d be sleeping partners for a year.’ The gleam of humour in his eyes made her hands curl into tight fists at her sides.

‘You mean a marriage in name only?’

He didn’t answer her immediately. His eyes moved over her, looking at the curves of her figure, the luxuriant fall of her hair around the young face.

‘No, I know my limitations. You do have a fabulous body and I have a very healthy appetite. I’d want you in my bed, Paige.’

For just a moment she was so shocked that she couldn’t speak.

‘It’s not such a repulsive idea...is it, Paige?’ he enquired genuinely. ‘I know you are a good deal younger than I, but when we kissed a few moments ago it was very pleasurable; you can’t deny that. In fact I’m sure I tasted desire on your lips. It made me wonder why I had never kissed you before.’

Her skin burned with furious fires of humiliation and anger. The fact that he was right just served to infuriate her further. Her pride would never admit to the fact that she found him attractive...never. She shook her head. ‘That’s in your imagination. You tasted surprise, shock, nothing else.’

One dark eyebrow lifted. ‘Are you sure? There was a time when I wondered if you might have a crush on me.’

The arrogance of that remark really stung. ‘How far back are you going?’ She kept her equilibrium with difficulty. ‘You’re not going to remind me of the time I invited you to be my date for my high-school prom, are you?’ She forced herself to laugh. She knew very well that this was one of the few times she had braved showing her feelings to Brad, had allowed herself to flirt. ‘Heavens! If I remember rightly you laughed, told me that people would accuse you of robbing the cradle, and you were right, it was absurd.’ She added flippantly, ‘I must just have been into older men at the time.’

He shrugged. ‘You were very young.’

‘The same fifteen years are still between us,’ she said, quietly now.

‘I haven’t forgotten.’ His voice was heavy, very serious for a moment. Then his eyes moved over the slender lines of her figure. ‘But you are twenty-two now and it’s different.’

For just a second Paige gained the impression that he was trying to convince himself of this fact more than her.

‘I’m fair game to be exploited for a year, you mean?’ she snapped, her nerves stretching beyond endurance. ‘I’d rather sell my soul to the devil.’ Her voice trembled.

‘I wouldn’t call being pulled from the brink of bankruptcy exploitation.’ He laughed at that. ‘And I think you will agree to my proposal... because it will be the most profitable move of your life.’ He turned and walked towards the door. ‘Think it over.’