The Bride Wore Scarlet

The Bride Wore Scarlet
Diana Hamilton

Scarlet bride The first time Daniel Faber met Annie Kincaid he knew she was a danger to his bachelor status. Mistaking him for someone else, she'd thrown herself into his arms dressed provocatively in scarlet silk.The next time they met, Daniel was convinced that Annie was not only his brother's secretary, but also his mistress! Whisking her off to Italy, Daniel intended to persuade Annie to wear scarlet silk again - but this time as a wedding dress… .

Daniel’s feet froze to the paving slabs. (#u022d8081-e772-5902-830c-ffaf7e94687f)About the Author (#u2fe37681-3cb9-5b57-9a40-04439ebf767a)Title Page (#u6f9244a7-4821-5365-81cb-59ba387c05fc)PROLOGUE (#ub25f7609-f2db-5638-9d15-855ce528f1f0)CHAPTER ONE (#u221643be-b223-5e78-a568-b58f314c3731)CHAPTER TWO (#uc1e83f9f-20a0-5aea-af2d-e28476ec85a1)CHAPTER THREE (#litres_trial_promo)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)EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

Daniel’s feet froze to the paving slabs.

Briefly illuminated in the light from the French windows, Annie paused, the freshening wind catching the gossamer-fine short skirt of her dress, whisking it upward in a swirl of scarlet, displaying more of those endless, shapely legs.

Desire kicked fiercely deep in his abdomen.

Red for danger.

DIANA HAMILTON is a true romantic at heart, and fell in love with her husband at first sight. They still live in the fairy-tale Tudor house in England where they raised their three children. Now the idyll is shared with eight rescued cats and a puppy. But, despite an often chaotic lifestyle, ever since she learned to read and write Diana has had her nose in a book—either reading or writing one—and plans to go on doing just that for a very long time to come.

The Bride Wore Scarlet

Diana Hamilton

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

PROLOGUE

ANNIE KINCAID was dying for Rupert to take her home. She just couldn’t wait to get out of this place. Normally she loved parties, but this one was giving her a headache.

The level of noise was nothing like as raucous as some of the thrashes she’d been to, so that wasn’t the problem. It wasn’t the soft music—Vivaldi, she thought—or the thrum of conversation, the occasional ripple of well-modulated laughter that was making her temples pound.

She pushed ineffectually and despairingly at the thick tendrils of wheat-gold crinkly hair which had escaped the chignon she’d so painstakingly created and felt a few more pins slither out onto the gorgeous Persian carpet.

‘You should get it cut—one of those new short, sharp styles,’ Rupert had once said, ‘It’s much too wild, makes you look like a bimbo instead of a nineties career woman.’

Just one of the niggles that that had piled up, until last night the pile had become a mountain of monstrous proportions.

They’d been at his ultra-modern Marylebone apartment, all steel and leather furniture and waxed wooden floor-blocks. Sitting over the trendy Thaistyle supper he’d had delivered from the restaurant round the corner—he always refused to let her cook for him, which annoyed her because she was good at it—she’d casually mentioned children.

‘I’d love a huge family. Well,’ she’d amended, seeing his sudden frown. ‘Three, at least. I never had brothers or sisters, and after my parents died I was brought up by a maiden aunt—the only relative I had. Aunt Tilly thought children were meant to be rarely seen and never—and I mean never—heard!’ Her comment, glossing over the loneliness and lovelessness of her childhood, had been meant to be joky, to ease away that frown.

If anything, the scowl on his bluntly good-looking face had intensified. ‘Talk sense, Annie. What are you—twenty-four? You’ve got your career to think of—’

‘A secretary,’ she had interrupted, to his obvious displeasure. ‘That’s all I am.’

She didn’t want to be a career woman; she wanted to be a mum, the builder and holder-together of a sprawling, happy family.

‘You could advance,’ Rupert had pointed out. ‘If you tried. If you got away from that tinpot import lot you’re with. Move to a decent company, aim for personal assistant to a top man. As a matter of fact, there’s a secretarial position coming vacant in the research department at the bank. I could swing an interview, maybe even pull a few strings. I do have some clout, you know. Work hard, and it could lead to better things—much better things. The only thing that’s holding you back is your attitude.’

He’d poured more wine into her glass. Had he thought it would soften her up, make her more mellow?

‘With both of us working after we’re married we could afford a seriously decent lifestyle. I don’t intend to become the sole provider, missing out on the good life, worrying myself half to death over school fees and fodder bills. Think about it. The job with the bank, that is. As for the other—’ he’d shrugged, dismissing her needs, ‘—we’ve got another fifteen years ahead of us before we need even consider starting a family.’

He’d pushed the wine towards her over the glass top of the table with the tip of his finger. And smiled his charming smile. The smile that had stopped her in her tracks when she’d first encountered it a few months ago.

Last night it hadn’t worked. It hadn’t really worked for weeks, come to think of it. And that was responsible for her headache tonight, the way she couldn’t be bothered to mingle, enjoy getting to know new people the way she usually did.

Sighing, she remembered the way she had exploded. Told him she didn’t want to work in a stuffy merchant bank until she was forty. And said that if he generously allowed her to have a child when she’d reached that venerable age then she’d be drawing her old-age pension before he or she had finished full-time education.

She didn’t want to be a career woman with a short, sharp hairstyle, thanks all the same!

She’d called him a selfish chauvinist, and a load of other unflattering names she hadn’t been aware she’d known, and stumped out

And she wouldn’t be with him at the party tonight, only he’d phoned her at work—her despised work, she reminded herself—and practically re-invented himself.

‘About last night, well, Annie, I apologise. I shouldn’t try to force my opinions on you. I love you just as you are, even when you’re at your most contrary! I suggest we talk things through, properly. We can go back to my place after the party and discuss everything sensibly.’

With being mad at him, and wondering if their engagement was a huge mistake, she had forgotten about the party his head of department was throwing to mark his imminent retirement.

She’d been wondering if he would have bothered to get in touch with her today if the party hadn’t been happening, and was sure of it when he went on, ‘Edward has invited the entire staff—at executive level, of course—and their partners. Wives, mostly. It wouldn’t do my career prospects much good if I failed to turn up. And they all know of our engagement so they’ll expect you to be there. The chief exec is very strong on stable marriages, and I guess that goes for engagements, too.’

She didn’t care what the stuffy old chief executive, whoever he was, thought. But she did care about Rupert, and even if they decided that their engagement had been a mistake she wouldn’t do a thing to harm him, or his career prospects. She knew how important his career was to him.

So she’d bitten her tongue and ignored his hackle-raising parting comments about taking the afternoon off, visiting a good hairdresser and buying a new dress.

‘Something sophisticated rather than the startling things you usually wear. Something that does justice to your figure, of course, but without being blatant’

So, for his sake, she’d agreed to be ready at eight, when he would call for her at the flat in Earl’s Court she shared with her best friend Cathy, and now she was wishing she had never come. Or at least that Rupert would collect her now, right this minute, and take her home.

Nobody was talking to her and most of the guests looked decidedly stuffy, and some of the women were giving her disapproving looks. She wanted to sit down with Rupert and discuss their future in privacy.

Disorientated by her moments of introspection, she absent-mindedly took another glass of white wine from one of the circulating white-coated waiters. Rupert had abandoned her shortly after their arrival, obviously preferring to talk shop with his colleagues rather than circulate with her.

Or perhaps it had something to do with the dress she was wearing? The choice had been a small rebellion, but important to her. She’d already had her coat on when he’d picked her up, and he had probably been too flattered by her unusual punctuality, thinking she was being careful not to annoy him, to ask if she was wearing something he considered suitable.

Was her stubborn determination to wear what pleased her and not what he wanted her to wear responsible for the way he was ignoring her?

She enjoyed wearing the scarlet silk; it was her favourite. Usually it gave her bags of self-confidence. The halter top dipped low between her full breasts, without exposing too much naked flesh but giving the impression that at any moment it might, and the short, full skirt gave her a feeling of freedom that the svelte little black sheaths all the other women seemed to be wearing like a uniform never could.

And the deep shade of scarlet flattered her unusual colouring, the rich gold hair and her contrasting purply-coloured eyes framed by entirely natural dark lashes and brows.

Besides, to give herself her due, she had struggled for hours to tame her hair. Cut it she would not, not for Rupert or anyone else, and now it was intent on escaping the battery of pins she and—eventually—Cathy had fenced it in with.

Rare melancholy tugged her spirits down. She drank her fresh wine, partly for something to do and partly to console herself. It went straight to her head, reminding her that she’d had nothing to eat since a light salad lunch.

Where in the world had Rupert got to?

She scanned the crowd that filled the impressively large living room of the Hampstead home of the retiring head of department for Rupert’s tall, wideshouldered figure. Most of the men looked alike, in dark dinner jackets, some fatter, some shorter, but none taller.

It was difficult to see, anyway—the smoke-filled atmosphere, the tight knots of guests who broke away from each other, dispersing only to form another knot somewhere else with other people—and her eyes didn’t seem to be functioning too well. Everything seemed suddenly out of focus, which didn’t help locate her lost fiancé.

Either she needed to see an optician, or the lights were too dim, or the glasses of wine she had so heedlessly swallowed had been too strong. Whatever, she suddenly desperately wanted to find him, make it up—wanted to recapture that sense of joy in being really needed by someone which she’d experienced when he’d asked her to marry him.