A Husband Of Convenience

A Husband Of Convenience
JACQUELINE BAIRD

A father for her unborn baby… Josie's husband, Conan Zarcourt, was tall, dark and handsome.Yet Josie could only look, not touch, because theirs was a marriage in name alone. Conan had stepped in as father to his brother's child - the baby Josie was carrying.But when an accident left Josie with amnesia she naturally assumed that Conan was her husband, her lover and the father of her baby. And until she remembered the truth, Conan was more than happy to have Josie in his bed… .

“The best solution is that you and I get married as soon as possible.” (#u7ae9b0cb-530a-5e49-a380-b6f58532fef6)About the Author (#u425e0f07-b31a-5039-bbe7-605be60d8238)Title Page (#u4265d7c1-52bd-5968-9b18-db01144770b2)CHAPTER ONE (#u83514067-841b-5916-964f-04679ecdea9d)CHAPTER TWO (#u7d186247-9111-54dc-a7c8-c9e3c31d45d5)CHAPTER THREE (#u9170b13a-475e-5a55-ab4f-57718557f77b)CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

The best solution is that you and I get married as soon as possible.”

At the mention of marriage Josie’s mouth fell open. He looked so cool, as though he were discussing the weather—instead of asking an almost complete stranger to marry him.

“Marry you! You must be mad! ” Josie exclaimed. She could not believe what she was hearing. But Conan’s dark eyes trapped and held her own, and she knew he was deadly serious.

“Mad, no. Practical, yes,” he drawled hardily.

“No. Definitely not. Charles was—” Josie had been going to say he was the father of her unborn child, but Conan continued.

“You are to have a child. A Zarcourt. My father wants the child, and he usually gets what he wants. There is no way my father will allow his grandchild to be born out of wedlock....”

JACQUELINE BAIRD began writing as a hobby when her family objected to the smell of her oil painting, and immediately became hooked on the romantic genre. She loves traveling, and worked her way around the world from Europe to the Americas and Australia, returning to marry her teenage sweetheart. Jacqueline now lives in the North of England, with her husband, Jim, and they have two grown sons.

A Husband Of Convenience

Jacqueline Baird

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

CHAPTER ONE

‘I’M SORRY, Josie. But Charles is dead.’

‘But he can’t be. I’m pregnant!’ Josie exclaimed, tearing her gaze away from sinfully deep, assessing eyes to glance frantically around the room, unaware of the stunned silence her comment had caused. Her father was seated on the sofa, while Major Zarcourt was at his desk, but there was no sign of Charles Zarcourt. The look of shock on her father’s face registered and to her horror she realised she’d spoken out loud, before the sound of sardonic laughter broke the silence.

Her violet eyes swung back to the tall, dark man standing by the drinks cabinet. It was Conan Zarcourt who had delivered the thunderbolt. And, of course, it was Conan who’d laughed! She might have guessed; he must have a penchant for outrageous statements, she thought angrily.

Immaculate in a dark business suit and crisp blue shirt, Conan was leaning against the cabinet with a glass of amber liquid in his hand. As she watched he raised the glass to his mouth and drained it. Then he slammed the empty glass back down with unnecessary force, the expression on his ruggedly attractive face hard to define. He looked more than angry, Josie thought, he looked positively venomous, and for a second she saw a flash of what looked like anguish in his dark eyes. But she must have been mistaken, as he smiled a grim smile.

‘Let me get you a drink. You’re going to need one,’ he offered bluntly:

‘No. No alcohol for me. An orange juice.’ Even in her shocked state Josie still had the sense to realise she couldn’t drink in her condition.

‘As you wish.’ Conan’s mouth turned down in a wry grimace as he filled a glass with juice and then walked towards her.

He held the glass out to Josie. She looked down at his large hand and back up into his face. Was it only a couple of minutes ago that she’d walked into the study, and been stopped in her tracks by Conan’s outrageous response to her casual enquiry, “Has Charles arrived early?”

Her fingers brushed against Conan’s as she took the glass he offered, and her hand trembled slightly. What was it about Conan that even when he was at his most vile, cracking stupid jokes about his half-brother Charles, her body reacted alarmingly when he was around?

She stared up at the man towering over her. With thick black hair, broad forehead, a straight, rather large nose, and wide mouth and square jaw, Conan wasn’t conventionally handsome; his was a face too rough-hewn for that, but it was still strangely compelling. To her certain knowledge he had visited Beeches Manor only twice in the ten years Josie had lived in the area.

The first time she’d met him she had been looking after the jumble stall at the church summer fair. Charles was supposed to be helping her, but had gone to get her a cold drink when a man impeccably dressed in a three-piece suit had appeared.

‘The only thing here that would fit me...is you.’ His deep, sexy drawl had shivered along Josie’s nerves, giving her goosebumps, and her startled gaze had locked with his for a second, before his eyes had swept over her body in blatant male scrutiny. ‘Tell me, are you for sale?’ Josie had fought back a chuckle at his cheek, but before she could respond Charles had returned.

‘No chatting up the local girls,’ Charles had told the stranger, and much to Josie’s surprise he’d slipped an arm around her waist, adding, ‘And certainly not mine.’

‘I might have guessed,’ the man had murmured, and he’d walked away.

‘You know him?’ Josie had asked Charles.

‘You could say that. But never mind him; how about having dinner with me tonight?’

Josie had had a crush on Charles Zarcourt for years, and the disturbing stranger had been forgotten as she’d jumped at the chance of a date with Charles.

Forgotten until the second time she’d seen Conan, when she had almost died of embarrassment.

She dismissed the disturbing memory with a shake of her small head. She could not think about that now. She needed to discover why Conan was here. But then why not? Technically it was his home, she supposed. Conan was right about her needing a drink. Today had been the worst day of her life so far, and she had a horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach that it wasn’t going to improve.

She’d taken the afternoon off work and driven from Cheltenham to Oxford to visit the clinic attached to the hospital there, and had her worst fear confirmed. She was pregnant. She had returned home to Low Beeches farmhouse to find an urgent message asking her to go to the Manor House. She had naturally presumed her unofficial fiancé, Charles, had returned from active service in the Army a day early. But looking at the grim faces around her she’d begun to wonder.

Josie took a great gulp of the juice and almost choked as it went down the wrong way, so her father’s words barely registered.

‘You have to be brave, Josie.’

‘Brave,’ she murmured. She glanced around again but there was no sign of Charles. Josie blinked and rubbed one damp palm against her thigh. She hadn’t eaten all day and was feeling light-headed. Her puzzled gaze sought Conan’s. He looked angry and deadly serious, but he couldn’t be...

‘If this is another one of your outrageous comments masquerading as a joke, Conan, I don’t find it funny!’ she said curtly.

‘No joke. It’s true. There’s been an accident. Charles is dead,’ he affirmed, his glittering dark eyes holding her own.

She stared at him in disbelief, all the colour draining from her face. ‘An accident?’ Josie repeated parrot fashion. There certainly had been an accident, and she was carrying it. Nervously she licked her dry lips. Charles dead! It was unthinkable and, raising the glass to her mouth, she downed the rest of her juice.

She hardly noticed Major Zarcourt’s, ‘Thank God for small mercies,’ before darkness enveloped her, and for the first time in her life she fainted.

Her eyes fluttered open minutes later; she wasn’t sure where she was, or what had happened, only aware of the strong arm around her shoulders and the comforting feel of the broad chest her head rested upon.

Then her memory flooded back. Someone had said Charles was dead. But he couldn’t be; she was pregnant with his child. She stiffened guiltily. Horrified at her purely selfish thought and raising her head, she jerked out of Conan’s protective hold to sit tensely on the edge of the sofa, her hands clasped tightly together in her lap. She glanced at her father sitting beside her, his elbows resting on his knees, head in hands. She turned back to Conan. She did not need to ask the question. The answer was there in the compassion that was evident in his dark eyes.

‘Is it true?’ she demanded unevenly.

Conan covered her hands with his own large hand and squeezed lightly as he replied. ‘I’m sorry, Josie, so sorry, but yes.’

She wanted to cry—she should cry—but the tears would not come, not yet...

How did it happen?’ she managed to ask almost normally, and, shrugging his hand away, she sat up straighter, amazed at her own control.

‘Don’t think about it now, Josie. Are you all right? That’s the important thing,’ he prompted.

‘Yes. Yes, I’m fine, but please, I want to know,’ she demanded, her glance sliding from one man to the other in her agitation. Major Zarcourt was sitting in the hard-backed chair behind his desk, while Conan, her father, and herself were seated in a row on the sofa—like the Three Stooges, she thought wildly, before her eyes were drawn back to Conan’s face, waiting for his answer.

‘I think I should let my father explain. I’m sure he can tell you the correct story much better than I,’ Conan drawled cynically, lounging back against the arm-rest, his long body angled towards her, dark eyes ranging slowly over her small face and down over her slender body perched on the edge of the seat.