The Hired Husband

But she was talking to the back of his head, and a moment later to empty air as the door slammed to behind him. Keir had walked out on her, rejecting her and her proposal outright, not even sparing her a backward glance. Closing her eyes in despair, her sigh a deep, helpless sound of defeat, Sienna sank down into the nearest chair.

So what did she do now? she asked herself, shaking her dark head despondently. There was nothing she could do. No answer presented itself. No fairy godmother appeared to wave her magic wand and put everything right. When she opened her eyes everything was the same as before, the future stretching ahead dark, bleak and with no light at the end of the tunnel.

It had been the worst year of her life so far, and it was still only July. First Dean, and then the loss of her job as an aromatherapist when the beauty salon in which she had worked had closed down. That had been followed by the discovery that her mother, who had clearly been unwell for some time, was in fact suffering from multiple sclerosis. And then, to cap it all, the landlord who owned the small flat she and her mother rented had informed them that he was selling the building. The new owners planned to turn it into a set of offices and they would have to move out—soon.

Oh, it wasn’t fair! Sienna slammed one fist into the palm of the other hand in a gesture of frustration and distress. Her mother had to have a home. Somewhere she could live in the comfort and security she needed. The perfect place was available—was hers for the asking. But only if she could meet the conditions laid down. And with Keir’s rejection of her proposal her last chance of doing that had been destroyed. She doubted if she would ever see him again.

She didn’t know how long she sat there, lost in her misery. She had no idea how much time had passed before the sound of the doorbell pealing through her flat jolted her out of her unhappy reverie. At first she was tempted to ignore it, but when it became obvious that whoever was outside had put their finger firmly on the button and intended keeping it there until they got a response, she forced herself to her feet, dashing down the stairs and wrenching open the door.

She couldn’t believe the sight that met her eyes. Keir Alexander stood on the doorstep, dark head held high, his jaw tight, every muscle in his tall, strong body taut with resistance.

‘All right,’ he said, his voice cold and hard as a sharpened knife. ‘Start talking—convince me.’

Sienna talked as she never had in her life before. She couldn’t believe that she’d been given a second chance, but she was going to grasp it with both hands, do everything she could—anything she could—to ensure it didn’t get away from her.

‘I know this isn’t the way either of us would have done this,’ she began, even as they were still climbing the stairs to the first floor where she and her mother lived. ‘Not in an ideal world, anyway. It’s certainly not the way I ever dreamed of marrying, but beggars can’t be choosers. It’s the only way I can think of for getting out of a very tight corner indeed, and if you don’t agree to help then there’s no one else I can turn to.’

She couldn’t look at him as she led him into the small sitting room that he had stormed out of such a short time before, painfully conscious of the fact that it was only a few short weeks since the first occasion on which he’d visited her home. Just two months or so since the party at which they’d met.

‘You know how ill my mother is—and that it can only get worse. I need to find somewhere for us to live so that I can look after her properly, so…’

‘So naturally you want your father’s house?’ Keir put in harshly.

‘Yes.’

Sienna’s voice was low and shaken, still carrying the echoes of the way she had felt when a solicitor had contacted her out of the blue. She had been stunned to discover that her father, the man who had abandoned her mother before Sienna had even been born, had had a belated attack of conscience and decided to acknowledge her as his daughter. As his wife had died some years before, and he had had no other children, he had left her everything he owned in his will. But there was a catch.

‘If my—if Andrew Nash hadn’t left me all that money, I don’t know what I’d have done. And if he hadn’t put in the condition, then I wouldn’t be forced to involve you in this.’

At last she turned to face Keir, her heart quailing as she saw the heavy lids that hooded his eyes, hiding his thoughts from her. His hands were pushed deep into the pockets of his dark trousers, his shoulders stiff, his very stance declaring hostility and opposition to everything she said.

‘The condition being that you have to be married, I presume?’

‘That’s right. In his letter he said that he’d lived his life wishing he’d chosen differently all those years ago. That he’d realised too late that the love my mother and I could have brought him as a family was more important than the wealth he kept by staying with his wife. And so he made it a prerequisite of my inheritance that I had to be married—happily married—before I could inherit.’

‘Happily married,’ Keir echoed cynically. ‘And who’s to be the judge of that?’

‘My…’

Sienna couldn’t get her tongue round the word ‘uncle’. After twenty-five years of believing she had no family at all, it was too much to accept that she now had an uncle, particularly one who held her future so securely in his hands.

‘His brother, Francis Nash, is to have the final say in seeing that his wishes are carried out. But he knows nothing about me. He’s never even seen me. It shouldn’t be too hard to—to convince him that…that…’

‘That you and I are madly in love and desperate to get married?’ Keir finished for her when she couldn’t complete the sentence.

‘That’s right.’ It was barely more than a whisper and once more her eyes skittered away from the coldly assessing stare that fixed her like a specimen on a laboratory slide, awaiting analysis. ’W-would you like a drink? There’s wine…’

‘I think I’d better keep a clear head for this,’ Keir returned dismissively. ‘I wouldn’t want anything to muddle my thinking.’

Did that mean he was actually considering the idea? Sienna didn’t dare to allow the thought to enter her mind.

‘So you want me to play the devoted groom?’

He made it sound like the most repellent task possible. As if he would rather put a gun to his head—anything other than what she had asked of him.

‘To lie? Don’t you know that lies have a nasty habit of breeding more lies? Before you’ve time to think you’re tangled up in them so tightly that you can’t get free and they’re dragging you down…’

‘But we’re not going to lie! Not really. People already know us as a couple. We’ve been seen out together often enough. It wouldn’t be all that different from what we have now. It wouldn’t!’ she declared vehemently when he expressed his disagreement in a harsh sound of disbelief. ‘You’re here almost every night as it is. What if I’d asked you to move in with me?’

‘I’d think you were taking a lot for granted, lady.’

‘Keir, it’s only supposition!’ Desperately Sienna tried to make up the ground she realised she’d lost. ‘We both know that our relationship isn’t on that sort of footing—that it will probably never be. But we’re the only ones who know that. And what we do have is good, isn’t it?’

Keir’s stony face gave her no encouragement and it was all that she could do not to give up in despair.

‘If we decided to say, after a year, that we knew it wasn’t working, then we could split—both go our own ways—and it wouldn’t matter. There’d be no frayed ends, no regrets, no complications.’

‘But this arrangement comes weighed down with complications,’ Keir pointed out with cold reason. ‘It can’t not do that. A marriage certificate complicates things, darling.’

‘But it’s only a temporary solution, you must see that!’ she pleaded with him. ‘It won’t mean anything to either of us, so you needn’t worry about getting trapped in something you don’t want! There’ll be no commitment beyond that one year—just a twelve month period and then we’ll go our separate ways.’

‘You make it sound so simple…’

‘It is simple! It couldn’t be anything else. After all, it’s not as if you’re madly in love with me, or vice versa. And…’

Her voice faded into silence as Keir snatched his hand away from her and moved to stare out of the window, affecting an intent interest in the cars going by in the street.

‘It might work,’ he said slowly.

Was it possible that he was going to agree? Sienna was past knowing whether she hoped for his agreement or feared it dreadfully. She was so caught up in her own disturbed thoughts at the prospect that she jumped like a startled cat when he suddenly whirled round to face her.

‘And what, exactly, would I get out of the deal? Because I presume you were going to offer me something—some remuneration for my co-operation, some compensation for the loss of my freedom by entering into this agreement.’

‘Of course.’

Sienna swallowed hard. She had expected this. Had known it must come inevitably. But she hadn’t thought he would be quite so cold-blooded about it.

You fool! her heart reproached her. What had she expected? That he would declare that of course he would do it, that he would do whatever she wanted and not expect anything in return?

Of course not. She had known she would have to offer Keir something in exchange for his agreement to help her out. It was just that she hadn’t been prepared for the way his demand made her feel that it was that compensation that mattered and not her.

‘So?’ Keir prompted harshly when she couldn’t find the voice to answer him.

‘You—you remember what you told me about the shares in Alexander’s?’

She had been frankly surprised that he had opened up about so much of his life to her. Keir was the sort of man who kept things very much to himself, limiting the conversation only to uncomplicated, unemotional topics that didn’t call for much involvement on either part.

But just three nights earlier he had revealed something of the problems he had been having with the haulage and transportation company of which he was part owner and managing director. Problems that had been caused by his stepmother, his late father’s second wife.