His Bid For A Bride

She personally hadn’t seen this man since that day over six years ago, but she knew that her father had continued to have a working relationship with the younger man until the time of the accident three years ago, that her father’s liking and respect for Falkner had deepened as he’d first fought his way back from his horrendous injuries, to move on to make a success of himself in another field.

Her father…

Pain shot through her like a knife just at the thought of him, once again closing her eyes, although she couldn’t manage to shut out the memories that had brought her to this point in time.

When had everything begun to go wrong for them? She had lain here this last week trying to make sense of it all.

There was no denying it had been a bad year for all the O’Hara family. Uncle Seamus’s wife had walked out on him after five years of marriage. Uncle Seamus had always been a little too fond of the family product, and his drinking bouts had become more frequent, usually ending in blazing rows, if not actually fisticuffs, with his younger brother, Connor. But with Skye’s help that situation had eventually calmed down, Uncle Seamus apologetic and shame-faced, the two men, to Skye’s relief, once again friends.

Only for something even more disastrous to follow.

Six months ago O’Hara Whiskey had been in serious financial difficulty, rumours quickly following of her father’s possible misconduct.

And then had come the worst blow of all. That fatal night a week ago…

It had been late at night as Skye and her father had driven back to their London hotel after yet another unsuccessful business meeting in the south of England, the rain beating blindingly against the windscreen, visibility almost nil. So much so that her father hadn’t seen the truck coming the other way, hadn’t realized it was driving on the wrong side of the road, either. Until it had been too late…

Her face was now as white as the pillow she lay back on, her eyes still haunted by those last terrible moments as she once again looked at Falkner. ‘Would you please just go away and leave me alone?’ she pleaded brokenly.

He reached out a hand to her, that hand dropping ineffectually onto the bed as she flinched away from him. ‘Skye, I know how it feels to be in pain. Who should know better than me?’ he rasped harshly. ‘But I—hell, I wish there was an easy way to say this, but ultimately I know that there isn’t.’ He shook his head impatiently. ‘You know they held the inquest three days ago?’

Skye nodded her head without turning. She had given her statement to the police several days ago—she couldn’t remember how many days, they all seemed to have merged into one big, painful blur—knew that a verdict of ‘accidental death’ had been decided upon.

‘Skye, your father’s funeral is arranged for the end of this week,’ Falkner told her gently.

No!

All the memories, those terrible final moments, fell in on top of her, her father’s warning cry as he’d swerved to avoid the oncoming truck, the terrible sound as the two vehicles had collided, the eerie silence that had followed.

Skye had regained consciousness as someone, a stranger, had pulled her from the car, the pain in her head and side so extreme that she’d thought she might faint again. Except…

‘My father,’ she had cried as she’d sat up. ‘You have to help my father.’

But even as she’d called out she had known it was already too late for her father, his side of the car completely crushed where he had swerved to avoid the collision, making it impossible to believe that anyone could have survived in such a tangled mess.

And no one had…

At the hospital there had been even more strangers to reassure her that her father’s death would have been instantaneous. That he wouldn’t have known anything about it. Finally, when it had become apparent that Skye’s grief was inconsolable, that his injuries had been such that it was a blessing he hadn’t survived.

A blessing.

How could it possibly be ‘a blessing’ that her father, the person she loved most in the whole world, had died so suddenly, so tragically?

And now Falkner Harrington, yet another stranger, had come to tell her that her father was to be buried in four days’ time…

Skye didn’t even glance at Falkner now. ‘Go away,’ she told him.

‘I can’t do that,’ he told her regretfully. ‘And one day you’ll thank me for not doing so—’

‘I doubt that very much,’ she snapped.

‘Skye, in four days’ time, at his own request, your father is being laid to rest beside your mother, and I’m here to take you home—’

‘I’m not going to any funeral, in four days, or any other time!’ She turned on him fiercely, eyes blazing deeply blue as she attempted to sit up, the pain in her head and side instantly pulling her back down again. ‘I’m not going, Falkner,’ she repeated flatly as she turned away.

‘Oh, yes, you are,’ he told her firmly as he stood up to tower over her. ‘You know, as well as I do, that it was always your father’s wish to be buried beside your mother in Windsor. Skye,’ he groaned as she looked even more stricken as he once again mentioned the childhood loss of her mother, ‘I admit, I can’t even begin to take in the enormity of how you feel at the moment—my own parents are, thankfully, still both very much alive and living in Florida. But I have lost a very dear friend, a friend that I’m going to miss very much,’ he murmured huskily. ‘I also know that dear friend would have wanted me to look after his daughter,’ he added softly.

Skye’s expression was scathing as she turned to him. ‘If you’re such a “friend”, then where were you this last six months, when my father so obviously needed all the friends he had?’

Falkner straightened, his expression enigmatically unreadable. ‘I was there, Skye—’

‘I didn’t see you,’ she scorned.

‘But I saw you,’ he assured her quietly.

Her eyes widened incredulously. ‘When? Where?’

He shook his head. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he dismissed. ‘What matters right now is that I get you out of here with the minimum amount of fuss. There are still reporters hanging around at the front of the hospital, so I suggest—’

‘Falkner, I believe I’ve made my feelings more than clear on this subject, but just in case I haven’t—’

‘You have,’ he assured her dryly. ‘But that doesn’t change the fact that you are well enough to be discharged—more than well enough, if the specialist is to be believed,’ he added derisively. ‘Skye, they need the bed—you don’t,’ he added impatiently as she would have argued with him once again. ‘So let’s get you dressed—’

‘I don’t have any clothes,’ she cut in flatly. ‘What I was wearing—’ She swallowed hard. ‘What I was wearing was in such a mess once they had cut if off me that I told them to incinerate it.’

‘It doesn’t matter; I have the things with me that you left at the hotel,’ Falkner dismissed easily, turning to pick up the suitcase Skye hadn’t noticed him place just inside the door when he’d come in, swinging it up awkwardly onto the bottom of the bed to open up the lid.

Skye gasped as she easily recognized her own clothes neatly folded inside. And just as easily guessed who must have taken them out of the drawers and wardrobe at the hotel before folding them so neatly and putting them inside the suitcase.

She shook her head dazedly. ‘Falkner, don’t you think you’ve taken rather a lot on yourself by getting involved in this way? I take it it was you who—who organized the funeral, too?’ she accused.

His head snapped up challengingly. ‘Who else was going to do it?’ he rasped. ‘You? Somehow I don’t think so. Your uncle Seamus?’

He shook his head grimly. ‘Skye, last weekend, after your uncle Seamus was informed of the accident, he went on the bender to end all benders. Your father’s housekeeper found him at the bottom of the stairs the next morning, still blind drunk. Which was perhaps as well, because it turned out he had broken his leg when he fell down the stairs!’ he concluded disgustedly.

Skye stared at him. She had been expecting her uncle Seamus to arrive all week. Although part of her was relieved when he hadn’t, knowing she would have found it hard to cope with his grief as well as her own. But listening to Falkner’s explanation of exactly why her uncle hadn’t come to England following the accident…

‘I know.’ Falkner sighed ruefully at her slightly dazed expression. ‘If it wasn’t so damned tragic, it would be laughable!’

He was right, it would. In fact, Skye was having trouble not laughing, hysterically, anyway.

Falkner shook his head before turning his attention back to the contents of her suitcase. ‘They should be letting him out of hospital too by the end of the week,’ he informed her distractedly.

But not time enough for him to attend her father’s funeral in England, Skye realized…

‘Here, let me do that.’ She dismissed Falkner’s attempts to choose something for her to wear from the contents of the suitcase; he might, through necessity, have packed these things for her at the hotel, but there was something not quite right about watching him handle her silky underwear. ‘Perhaps if you would like to wait outside…?’ she suggested huskily as she moved gingerly to sit up on the side of the bed, not quite able to look at Falkner as she was struck by a sudden—unaccustomed—shyness.

She was twenty-four years old, had spent all of her childhood and most of her adult life, too, surrounded by men; her father, her grandfather, Uncle Seamus, the grooms at the stable, the majority of workers at O’Hara Whiskey having been men too. But because she had accompanied her father since she was a very young child, she had always been treated by them all as ‘one of the boys’; certainly none of them had ever made her completely aware of her own femininity. In the way that Falkner had six years ago. And, amazingly, still did…