Bride Required

‘Why do you think?’ she retorted. She waved the two halves of the notes in front of his face, as he’d done to her earlier. ‘Anyway, you don’t look much like a homicidal maniac… So, assuming you’re not, what are you?’

He hesitated, his eyes narrowing as if he was testing her discretion.

‘You’re not an actor, are you?’ Dee speculated.

‘An actor?’ His tone dismissed the idea. ‘What makes you think that?’

‘Because you’re so good-looking, I suppose,’ she admitted quite frankly. Of course, she wouldn’t have done so had he been straight. But he wasn’t, so it didn’t count.

He was taken aback for a moment, then said, ‘Are you always so forthright with men?’

‘No, not with—’ Dee caught herself up, about to use the word ‘normal’. It was a minefield, trying to be politically correct. She switched to saying, ‘Not with some men. You know—macho types that interpret “hello” as an invitation to sleep with you.’

His brows rose before he commented, ‘I suppose I should be grateful you don’t class me in that category.’

‘No, well, you couldn’t be, could you?’ Dee continued to display a newly discovered tactless streak. She dismissed a prospective career in the diplomatic service and ran on, ‘Does that mean you’re not an actor?’

‘Sorry to disappoint you,’ he drawled back, ‘but I’m something a shade more pedestrian.’

She lifted a questioning brow.

‘Pedestrian—that means—’

‘Commonplace, ordinary, mundane… Yes, I know.’

‘Sorry, I thought—’

‘That “homeless” equated with “ignorant”,’ she cut in. ‘Well, don’t feel too bad. It’s a fairly universal reaction.’

Baxter found he didn’t feel bad so much as disconcerted. He was used to being in charge, the senior man in most situations. But he suspected this smart-mouthed girl would be no respecter of age or position.

He tried her out, saying, ‘Actually, I’m a doctor.’

He waited for her reaction. Usually people were over-impressed by his profession.

Dee gave a brief, surprised laugh. It was some coincidence.

‘Well, no one’s ever found it amusing before,’ he said with a slight edge to his voice.

She shrugged without apology. ‘You don’t look the part, though I suppose you’re a big hit with the female patients.’ Once more she forgot his sexual orientation.

‘And why do you think that?’ he enquired dryly.

Dee found herself colouring under his amused gaze before muttering, ‘As I said earlier, you’re very good-looking. I imagine you’d send a few hearts fluttering—whether you wanted to or not.’

‘Hearts fluttering?’ He raised a brow. ‘Who would have thought a romantic lay under such a cynical exterior?’

Dee realised he was taking the mickey, and said coldly, ‘I was being ironic. You know what I mean.’

‘Not personally, no,’ he denied. ‘Most of my patients are too busy dying on me to notice my physical appearance.’

He spoke so dryly Dee wondered if he was joking, but something in his eyes told her he wasn’t.

‘I used to work for an aid agency in Africa,’ he explained briefly.

It was Dee who pursued it. ‘In famine areas, that kind of thing?’

He nodded, but, though her interest was patent, he didn’t capitalise on it. Instead he turned to eating his meal.

Dee studied him surreptitiously across the table, wondering if it was true. She knew several doctors. Her father had been one—harassed and overworked, dedicated in the beginning, a burnt-out man in the end. Her stepfather was something else, a hospital consultant with expensive tastes and no real interest in medicine besides what it could earn him. Their doctor friends had been somewhere in between.

But this stranger was different. She couldn’t categorise him.

‘That must be challenging,’ she finally replied, and immediately realised what an inadequate word it was to use for such work.

He probably thought so too, from the brief, tight smile on his mouth, but he let it pass.

Before she could make a fool of herself again, Dee asked, ‘So what sort of job could you possibly want me to do, Doc?’

He pulled a face at the ‘Doc’. ‘I’ll tell you in a minute. First I want you to understand something. If you decide you don’t want a part of it, then I have to warn you. You shouldn’t waste your time going to the police or the newspapers or anyone else, because I’ll simply deny it all… And you know who people will believe?’

Not her, Dee acknowledged silently, and felt like kicking herself. It was illegal, this job of his. Of course it was. What had she expected?

She began to rise to her feet, and a hand shot out to keep her there. ‘Where are you going?’

‘Forget it.’ She thrust the two halves of money at him. ‘If it’s illegal, I’m out of here.’

‘It isn’t,’ Baxter lied without conscience, and felt relief as she subsided back in her chair. Then a thought occurred to him. ‘You aren’t already in trouble with the police, are you?’

‘No, I am not!’ she declared indignantly.

‘Okay, okay,’ he pacified her, although inwardly disputing her right to be outraged after the fare-dodging incident. ‘I was just checking. I don’t need any additional hassles…I assume you’re single, too?’

‘Single?’

‘As in unmarried.’

‘Of course.’ Dee laughed, conveying how little she thought of marriage. ‘—Why?’

Baxter hesitated, then finally decided to get round to the reason he’d approached this waif and stray.

He grimaced before relaying the information. ‘You can’t be married because that’s part of the job—getting married.’

Getting married? Dee repeated the words to herself, as if by doing so they might take on a new meaning, but they didn’t. Then she took to staring at him as if he were completely and utterly mad.

He wanted her to marry him and she didn’t even know his name!

CHAPTER TWO