The Billionaire's Marriage Mission

‘That’s what I liked about it.’ He was looking at her in an uncomfortably speculative way and after a tense moment or two she added, ‘I haven’t been well recently. I wanted a complete change for a while.’

‘You can’t get more complete than Herb Cottage.’

Beth made no reply to this, finishing her wine and standing up quickly. ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll turn in now,’ she said awkwardly. ‘It was an awful journey earlier and I’m tired.’ She sounded boorish even to her own ears.

‘I can’t tempt you to some pudding?’ Travis said mildly. ‘There’s hazelnut pie or apple crumble.’

She shook her head. ‘No, thanks.’ She glanced at Harvey, who hadn’t moved so much as a paw. ‘Where do you want him to sleep?’

‘Oh, he’ll bed down with the girls,’ Travis said easily. ‘He seems to have settled in just fine.’

Too fine in her opinion. Considering Harvey had been protective to the point where it could have been a problem over the last few months, he now seemed to have abandoned her. Feeling ridiculously put out, Beth said tensely, ‘Well, thanks again. We’ll be out of your hair as soon as possible in the morning.’

‘There’s no rush.’

Oh, yes there was. He had stood up when she’d risen and he looked very big and very male. And attractive. Definitely attractive. Appalled by the direction her thoughts were taking, Beth told herself she was overtired. ‘Goodnight,’ she mumbled hastily and fled the kitchen before he even had a chance to reply.

CHAPTER TWO

THE BED WAS supremely comfortable, it was quiet and peaceful and she was as warm as toast. Beth turned over for the umpteenth time and asked herself why she couldn’t sleep. She was exhausted, there was no doubt about that, but her mind was buzzing. She groaned softly and buried her face in the pillow, getting more annoyed with herself with each passing moment.

She didn’t want to think about Keith and normally she could keep him very firmly at bay these days, so why was she raking up old wounds tonight? She’d thought she was past all that.

It was him—Travis Black. He reminded her of Keith. If she was being honest, however, she couldn’t think why. Certainly the two men were not alike physically. Keith was blond and blue-eyed with a warm boyish smile and a totally unthreatening masculinity which had nevertheless been very engaging. She had fallen head over heels in love with him the first moment they had met when he’d walked into the office. And he’d said he’d felt the same—had said he adored her, worshipped her.

Stupid. Beth sat up abruptly and ran her fingers through her rumpled hair. Really, really stupid. She should have known that a successful, handsome entrepreneur like Keith Wright would have more strings to his bow than a company of concert violinists. But she had trusted him. She had loved him and she’d trusted him, it was as simple as that. Biggest mistake of her life.

Come on, stop this. You’re over the worst, you don’t do post mortems on Keith any more. The admonition was there in her mind but tonight she couldn’t stem the memories flooding in.

They’d had a low-key wedding. Keith had wanted it that way and she had been so gloriously happy she’d have got married in sackcloth and ashes if he’d asked her to. As it was, she’d worn a powder-blue suit and large hat, and everyone had said she looked radiant.

Keith had whisked her off to the Bahamas for two weeks and they had returned to live in his modern apartment on the outskirts of London. The original plan had been to start looking for a house straight away, but as the weeks and months had slipped by it had never happened. Keith had said there was plenty of time and she had agreed with him. When they decided to start trying for a baby in the future, they would think about a house. Until then they were happy as they were.

And then one terrible night her sister and brother-in-law, Michael, had turned up at their apartment. White-faced and trembling from head to foot, Catherine had told her their beloved parents had been killed in a head-on collision. Two eighteen-year-old joyriders in a stolen car had veered across the motorway, causing a lorry to swerve to avoid them. In doing so, the lorry driver had lost control of his vehicle and her parents had ploughed into it. The lorry driver had cuts and bruises and the joyriders not a scratch. Neither had they any remorse. The case had attracted nationwide publicity, as much because one of the joyriders had a famous rock star brother as anything else.

A day or two after she and Keith and Catherine and Michael had been interviewed by the press on the steps of the courthouse at the finish of the trial, the joyriders having received the maximum sentence possible, she had returned home from work to find a young woman waiting outside the apartment.

The recent past, as she and Catherine had battled to come to terms with the sudden loss of their parents, had been bad enough, but nothing could have prepared her for what had followed. The young woman was Keith’s long-term partner. They had two children and had been living together for seven years. On the nights he had been ‘away’ on business he had, in fact, been on the other side of London with Anna. And there were girlfriends too, Anna had told her in a bitter rage. There always had been. Anna had turned a blind eye to Keith’s women because she loved him and he was the father of her little girls, but when she had seen him on the news with a wife… Only the day before he had left them all with hugs and kisses after spending the night in her arms. She’d had no idea he had actually married someone else.

Beth had stared at the distraught young woman as her world had come crashing down about her ears. She had believed Anna instantly. Later she’d questioned why and had come to the conclusion that as Anna had spoken a thousand and one little things had suddenly come into sharp focus, starting with their quiet no-fuss wedding twelve months before. And a couple of days before Christmas he had supposedly had to fly up to Scotland on business and had been unable to make it back to her before Boxing Day. Of course he had spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with Anna and his children. Wheels within wheels and so cunning.

The more she and Anna had spoken, the more she had realised just how devious Keith had been. He had walked in on them some time later and if ever she’d needed confirmation that Anna was speaking the truth, the look of horror on Keith’s face was it.

She had walked out that same night and had never gone back except to pick up a few personal belongings with Catherine when Keith had been at work. She had refused to see or speak to him and once he had realised she was deadly serious he had not contested the divorce. But then he couldn’t have, not with her evidence.

Catherine and Michael had been wonderful, insisting she stay with them, but as Catherine was pregnant with their first child she had only stayed a short while. As soon as she was able she had found a small one-bedroom flat and bought it outright with her half of the inheritance from her parents’ estate. It had taken every last penny but she had needed to know she had her own home. The day after she’d moved in Catherine and Michael had turned up on the doorstep with Harvey, who had been nothing more than a bundle of fluff with outsize paws and a pink tongue.

‘A housewarming present,’ Catherine had announced. ‘And now I’ve left work I can look after him on the days when you’re in the office. You need company at night. OK?’

She had protested she didn’t want a dog and that it wouldn’t be practical, but she knew Catherine was worried to death about her and convinced she’d sink into a bog of despair once she was alone and it had been that which had persuaded her to take Harvey. As it was, it had turned out that Catherine was absolutely right. She didn’t know how she would have got through the last tortuous eighteen months without him. And there was something immensely reassuring in having Harvey with her at night and taking him to some of the more isolated sites she had to visit. He was so fiercely protective of her. He was also as good as gold with Catherine and the baby on the days she was confined to the office.

And so, with Harvey’s help, she had battled on until a few weeks ago when the combined pressure of grief over the loss of her parents, Keith’s betrayal and the breakdown of her marriage, plus the fact she’d been working too hard since the divorce had finally caught up with her. According to the doctor, she had suffered some kind of mini breakdown and needed a complete rest.

She had flatly refused to take the medication he’d prescribed but had acknowledged an extended holiday would be no bad thing. Somewhere totally quiet and isolated, she’d decided. A step out of time. Somewhere she could learn to sleep properly again and regain her appetite, where she didn’t have to see a soul if she didn’t want to. She’d put her requirements with several estate agents and when Herb Cottage had come to her attention she had known she’d found her little piece of English heaven.

English heaven! Beth snorted out loud, swinging her feet out of bed and walking into the en suite bathroom, where she poured herself a glass of water. It hadn’t seemed like heaven tonight, standing in the wind and cold. Once she was back in the cottage tomorrow she would go and get an extra key cut in the nearest town and hide it in the garden so there was never a repeat performance of this travesty. She still couldn’t believe she’d been so stupid.

She drank the water and climbed back into bed, leaving the bedside lamp on. This was a beautiful room. She glanced about her before sliding back under the duvet and determinedly shutting her eyes. It was a beautiful house altogether. Did Travis Black often bring his girlfriends here for a romantic weekend? No doubt he had plenty of women to choose from; he was that kind of man. They’d be queueing up in their droves.

In the shadowed darkness her lip curled. She bet he knew all the right things to say, like Keith had. Men always knew what to say to get what they wanted but they weren’t to be trusted. They said one thing and meant another. At least a certain type of man did, and very often ones who had an extra something that was hard to define but which was very real.

She turned over in bed, bringing the pillow over her head as though she could shut out her thoughts that way. And it was like that, virtually buried in the downy softness, that she finally went to sleep, but not before the first rays of morning were beginning to streak across a charcoal sky.

Beth was woken the next morning by a loud scratching at the bedroom door followed by a sharp knock. She sat bolt upright, her heart pounding and momentarily disorientated until in the next moment she remembered. She’d been locked out; this was Travis Black’s house. Her heart pounded even harder.

When the knock came again she pulled herself together, making sure the duvet was up round her chin—in spite of having slept in the jogging bottoms and T-shirt—as she called, ‘Come in.’

‘Hi.’ As the door opened she was conscious of Travis’s voice but it was Harvey jumping on to the bed that took all her attention. The big dog plonked his massive paws on her shoulders and proceeded to lick her face anxiously in spite of her protests. When she finally managed to push him away it was to see Travis at the side of the bed with a tray. His voice amused, he said, ‘Harvey’s been whining and pacing the kitchen for the last hour. I think he thought you’d run off and left him.’

Great. After cheerfully waving her off to goodness knew where the night before, Harvey had finally remembered his obligations at a time when her hair looked like a bird’s nest and her face hadn’t woken up. Of course it wouldn’t have mattered if it had just been Harvey finding her but he’d had to go and bring Travis Black too! Talk about adding insult to injury.

Beth nerved herself to glance at Travis. He was wearing jeans and an open-necked cream shirt. He was freshly shaved and the black hair was still damp from the shower. Narrow-waisted and lean-hipped with shoulders broad enough for even the most picky female, his aura of maleness was overwhelming. She felt at such a disadvantage that speech seemed to have deserted her. She swallowed hard, wishing she was a natural wit.

Travis didn’t seem to have noticed. Or maybe he thought she was always this gormless. Beth tried to think of something to say and failed miserably.

‘I wasn’t sure if you took tea or coffee first thing.’ Travis nodded to the contents of the tray. There was a mug of both along with sugar, milk and a small plate of plain biscuits. ‘Breakfast will be ready in half an hour, OK?’

‘Oh, please, don’t go to any trouble. I’ll just phone the agent guy if you give me his number and get out of your hair. I’ve imposed on you enough.’ Aware she was babbling, Beth came to an abrupt halt. From not getting started, now she couldn’t stop. He must be wondering what he’d taken on.

Deep grey eyes surveyed her unblinkingly. ‘I’ve already talked to John and he’s meeting us at the cottage at eleven. Hash browns or sauté potatoes with your cooked breakfast?’

‘What?’ He was close enough for her to scent his male warmth and the faintest tang of delicious aftershave. It was doing crazy things to her hormones. ‘Oh, hash browns, please,’ she managed weakly. Control. This was all about control.

He nodded, placing the tray on the bedside cabinet before walking to the door. Harvey trotted along with him. Clearly the big dog had decided that as she was alive and well he’d rather get back to his canine companions while the going was good.

Once the door had closed behind the pair of them, Beth leapt out of bed and inspected her reflection in the bathroom mirror. She groaned. The man was forever destined to see her looking as though she had been pulled through a hedge backwards.

Not that it mattered, she told herself firmly in the next moment. Of course it didn’t. Travis Black was nothing to her and after today she would probably only catch a glimpse of his car, if anything, as it passed in the lane outside Herb Cottage. It was just that in spite of her life being a shambles she still had her self-respect and pride in her appearance.

She grimaced at the face in the mirror and turned away, walking back into the bedroom and drinking her coffee at the bedroom window. The room was situated at the back of the house and the view outside was tremendous. The grounds belonging to Travis were extensive and well cared for, smooth green lawns and mature trees and shrubs competing with large flowerbeds which were a riot of colour in the bright sunlight. But beyond the dry stone wall which bordered the property there was a rolling vista of trees, fields and hedges which stretched for miles, hills and valleys losing their separate identity as they stretched into infinity.

‘Gorgeous.’ Beth breathed out the word, her eyes focusing on a little flock of long-tailed tits flitting delicately in the branches of one of the beech trees close to the house. There was all the peace and tranquillity you could ever wish for. Which made it all the more surprising somehow that Travis lived here, albeit only part-time. He gave the impression of being a man who would always want to keep his finger on the pulse and be where the action was.

And then she frowned to herself. She didn’t usually make assumptions about people and yet she couldn’t seem to stop where Travis was concerned. Mentally shaking the unsettling feeling away, she finished the coffee and went into the bathroom for a shower. She’d feel better when she looked human again.

Twenty minutes later she made her way downstairs, her hair a shining curtain either side of her face and smelling of apple blossom from the shampoo she’d found in the bathroom cabinet. Without any perfume or even so much as a lip gloss in the way of make-up, it was the best she could do, she thought ruefully. In fact she felt remarkably bohemian with bare feet and a bare face, not to mention her lack of under-clothes under the jogging bottoms and T-shirt. She always dressed very smartly for work, even when she was going on site—donning wellington boots and the big shapeless cagoule she kept in the car, she made sure the clothes beneath were immaculate.

Power dressing, Keith had used to call it. Not exactly in a nasty way but with some amusement. She had countered this by insisting that in the male dominated world of her profession the image she projected was all important. Her blonde hair, blue eyes and feminine curves were enough to cause some men to doubt her brain power—she wasn’t going to dress girly-girly to give them more ammunition. Not that they ever made the same mistake twice, she thought grimly. Not by the time she’d finished with them.