The Shock Engagement

‘Ready and raring,’ Harry insisted, his eyes crinkling down at her so beautifully she found it hard to bring herself to say the words.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, becoming engaged to Harry had been her dream. Since she was a little girl, playing with her Ken and Barbie dolls, listening to her Mum’s Barry Manilow records, she had always dreamed that one day this moment would come. But not quite like this. Never quite like this. She wondered if in proposing this charade to Harry she wasn’t once and for all giving up on her dream. But what could she do? Harry was in dire straits and it seemed she was the only one who could help him. She had no choice.

‘So what can we do to get me out of this thing?’ Harry asked.

‘Harry, you have to get yourself a fiancée.’

She waited for him to laugh, or blanch, or run for his life, but he merely watched her, closely, carefully, as he let the idea sink in. Then, after only a few moments, he began to nod.

‘If I am engaged, I am no longer eligible. Ha! You are brilliant!’ He reached out, grabbed her by the shoulders and planted a great smacking kiss on her cheek, but when he pulled away she saw the uncertainty in his eyes.

‘But who could I become engaged to at such short notice? Someone who wouldn’t get any ideas. Someone who could make it believable. At least until the whole shebang is over. At least until Saturday.’

His gaze skittered out into the distance, his hazel eyes lit gold by the sun shining off the ocean. Emma waited patiently for him to make the final leap to the other half of her plan. The scary half.

He still had a hold of her shoulders and finally his gaze swung back to land upon her. She watched as the idea came full circle. His Adam’s apple bounced in his throat and his gaze hungrily devoured her face, as though realising she was really there, sitting so close to him.

‘Em. Princess. I hate to ask, but do you think…?’

She couldn’t bear to see him struggling so. ‘Of course, you great lump, it’s the only thing that makes sense. Keely and Tahlia are prepared to go along with any story we concoct so it should be a breeze.’

‘So, you and me, hey?’

Emma nodded. ‘Until Saturday night, we will be affianced. If you are okay with it.’

Then Harry smiled. One of those radiant, happy ever after, lit from within smiles that turned her bones to butter and returned time and again in her daydreams. He pulled her to him and hugged her tight. ‘Thanks, Em. You have saved me. If there is anything I can ever do to return the favour…’

Enjoying the feel of his warmth wrapping itself about her like a blanket on an autumn night, Emma was loath to pull away. But there was more she had to say, more that she had not shared with her best friends, more that with Harry’s help they would never need to know.

With great effort she extricated herself from his heavenly embrace. ‘Well, now that you mention it…’

Harry’s smile shifted from radiant delight to insightful good spirits. ‘Okay. Here it goes. What’s your fee, princess? Money? Jewels? Foot rubs every day for a year?’

The foot rub idea almost won out! But Emma had to take Harry’s offer while it was on the table.

‘Nothing like that, Buchanan. It is something infinitely more delicate, and more important to me.’

Picking up on her tone, Harry’s business face slipped into place and she had his rapt attention at once.

‘I had a really odd conversation with my boss this morning,’ Emma began, ‘and I think that WWW Designs might be in trouble.’

‘Did she say as much?’

‘Not really, but Raquel is usually rather…abrupt and this morning she was almost giving me a kindly warning. It freaked me out more than her yelling ever would. Then I found some concrete evidence in the form of a legal letter. Raquel has brought some heavy problems down upon the business.’