Bride For A Year

‘I want to help you.’

‘Well, it’s too late.’ Her voice was anguished now. ‘And you know damned well it is.’

‘I can’t stand by and watch you go to the wall,’ he muttered.

‘At the risk of repeating myself, you were willing to stand by and do just that a few months ago.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Either you’ve got a massively guilty conscience or you’re a damn good actor.’

‘I don’t have a guilty conscience,’ he told her swiftly. ‘I had my reasons for refusing your father. They were good reasons.’

‘So good that I can’t understand them,’ she snapped. ‘Well, I’m not so unintelligent that I don’t see behind this charade of an offer now.’ She put one hand on her hip. ‘You are bothered about what people will think if I blab about the details of my father’s financial problems. A man who is running for mayor wouldn’t want this kind of blot on his copybook. So you come over here with the grand, charitable gesture of letting me off the hook a while longer.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t need or want your charity, Brad.’

‘I’m not offering you charity,’ he rasped dryly. ‘I’m extending the hand of a concerned neighbour—’

‘Oh, please!’ She cut across him with laughing disdain. ‘As you are well aware, Brad, it’s too little, too late. That’s the problem when you’re heading towards bankruptcy, you see...’ Her voice shook with derision. ‘It’s like a domino effect. You get behind with one debt then others pile up... Then someone demands their money immediately and one by one things start to collapse.’ She glared at him. ‘I’m the last domino standing in place and all I can do is sell up fast before I fall flat on my face. You offering, oh, so benevolently, to prop me up for a little while longer won’t make a scrap of difference now. I needed your support several months ago... It’s no damn good to me at all now.’

‘Things are that bad, then?’ he asked quietly.

She slanted him a dry look. ‘You were the one telling me how bad things were as we walked in from the vineyard.’

‘I didn’t realise that things had moved quite so quickly.’ He shook his head. ‘Have you spoken with the bank?’

She nodded and bent to lift the icepack from her foot. It had stopped throbbing now, maybe overshadowed by the greater pain inside. ‘They strongly urge me to go ahead with the auction...and not to waste a moment.’

‘Can’t you just sell off pieces of the property, without losing your house?’ he asked. ‘I’d be interested in acquiring some of your land.’

‘I’m sure you would.’ She flashed him a knowing look. ‘I knew that’s what you were angling for—’

‘That’s not what I want,’ he cut in tersely.

‘So which piece of land are you thinking of?’ she carried on swiftly, as if he hadn’t spoken.

He shrugged. ‘How about the slice that runs along the far back of my property?’

‘You mean the piece that contains the only water I have?’ Her voice trembled with fury. ‘This place won’t fetch very much on the open market, not in this rundown state, but without that water it will be virtually worthless.’

‘You can modernise. Install a new irrigation system in—’

‘Do you have any idea how much money you are talking about?’ she demanded fiercely.

‘Of course,’ he replied coolly.

‘Then you’ll know that even if I did sell you that land there wouldn’t be enough left over from paying back my debt to you and the others to install a bore hole, never mind anything else.’ She raked a hand through her hair. ‘No, I’ll have to sell the whole place... There’s no alternative.’

She swung away from him and walked over towards the kitchen to put the rapidly melting ice in the sink. For a moment her eyes moved over the rustic charm of the place. The dresser, the pine scrubbed table and the dried flowers on the farmhouse rack... Her home. Her heart twisted painfully.

‘So where will you go?’

Brad’s voice in the doorway behind her made her turn and look at him.

She shrugged. Tve got friends that I made when I was away at college. I’ve had letters of condolence and an offer that I can share a friend’s flat while I look around for a job.’

‘A male friend?’ Brad asked, a caustic note in his voice.

She frowned. The offer had been from a girlfriend, but she wasn’t about to enlighten him. ‘That’s none of your damned business,’ she grated with annoyance. ‘The fact remains that I have very little option but to move away from this area altogether. I need to get myself a job, start again.’

‘There are always other options.’

‘Such as?’

‘We could become partners,’ he said quietly.

She was so surprised she could hardly say anything for a moment ‘You mean you would write off my loan and straighten out all my other debts if I made you a sleeping partner in the vineyard?’

‘In a roundabout way... yes.’

She was incredulous now. ‘You do want the vineyard, then?’

He shrugged. ‘I’m more in need of the partner than I am of the vineyard.’

When she continued to stare at him, perplexed, he smiled. ‘I need a wife.’

‘A wife?’ She looked at him blankly. ‘I’m sorry, Brad, I don’t understand.’

‘I’m asking you to marry me,’ he said quietly.

She stared at him. This had to be some kind of a joke! Her lips curved and she found herself laughing. She couldn’t help herself. It was the nerve-tingling absurdity of the suggestion. ‘You can’t possibly be serious!’

‘I’m not talking about a lifelong commitment. I’m talking about twelve months.’

‘It sounds like a jail sentence.’ Paige was rewarded by a momentary expression of anger on his face. It gave her a certain amount of pleasure to strike through that cool, smug exterior of his. What on earth was he playing at? she wondered grimly. She had no illusions about his feelings for her... They might have been friends in the past, but he had never given her any indication that he wanted that friendship to deepen, no matter how much she had secretly yearned for it.

‘You want me for twelve months... What do I get?’ she asked derisively. ‘A purple heart for living with the enemy?’

‘You get this place. I’ll build it up for you, stick it back together and write off your loans.’ His voice was tight.

‘That’s a pretty expensive package.’ Her heart thundered against her breast. ‘And you’d be willing to do that to have me as your wife for twelve months?’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t understand this at all. Why a year? What’s in it for you?’

His lips curved in a mirthless smile. ‘I want a dutiful wife... Someone who will look up at me adoringly.’

Suddenly it clicked with her. ‘This is all because you are running for mayor here, isn’t it? You want the right image? The loving husband, a family man—’

‘Hold on there.’ He cut across her swiftly. ‘I’m not looking to start a family with you... Children are not part of the equation.’

Heat licked through her at the insulting undertone of that statement, but before she could coherently formulate a cutting reply he continued, ‘But yes, it has been suggested that I will find it easier to get elected if I’m married.’

‘And when we part... How would that look to your precious image?’

He laughed. ‘I’ll tell everyone you married me for my money... It won’t be so far from the truth, will it? I’ll probably be voted in again out of sympathy.’