The Engagement Deal

Not to my taste? Actually, it was beautiful and probably scarily expensive. ‘It’s too big, I might lose it,’ she babbled, feeling her chest tighten as pure panic gripped her. It would probably have fitted Rowena like a glove—perhaps it had been made for her? This possibility made it even more imperative to rip it off her own finger.

‘The setting’s quite old-fashioned; Tara never wanted it. It was my grandmother’s,’ Niall announced casually.

Under the circumstances, it was perverse to feel as if she was wearing another woman’s cast-offs. It was even more perverse to mind—but she did.

‘I don’t think your Tara is going to swallow this, Niall,’ Holly remarked, staring at the heavy ring as if it were going to jump up and bite her.

‘So long as you can withstand the odd cryptic dig, she’ll believe it. Tara doesn’t have a suspicious bone in her body. I’ve never lied to her before, so she has no reason to believe I’ve begun now.’

Holly toyed with the uncomfortable band on her finger. ‘Never?’ she challenged sceptically.

‘Never,’ he confirmed firmly. ‘If you discount the odd occasion when I’ve said I’d like nothing better than to spend my afternoon sitting in the front row of a catwalk show.’

‘I’m just amazed this perfect, honest marriage ever broke up.’ Holly gave a disgruntled sniff. He was painting a picture of himself as a remarkably devoted husband.

‘It probably broke up when it did because it was so honest.’

For someone who accused her of making cryptic remarks, he produced the odd gem himself. ‘Are you saying marriages stand a better chance of survival with a liberal sprinkling of deceit?’

‘I’m saying I didn’t want to stay married to a woman who was in love with someone else.’

‘Oh!’ His frankness was extremely unsettling. He didn’t sound like a man whose ego had taken a beating, but perhaps that hard exterior was hiding a shattered heart? ‘She’s not in love with someone else now, though, is she?’

‘Your thinking is predictably female.’

‘I am female.’

‘In that dress there was never any question about it, but then that was the object of the exercise wasn’t it?’

‘Pardon…?’ Unfortunately he didn’t seem to find her tone of haughty detachment much of a deterrent—not if his cynical smirk was anything to go by. Looking into those deep blue, knowing eyes made Holly wish she hadn’t let vanity overcome her better judgement and agreed to go along with this silly scheme.

‘The only reason you went along with this was because you wanted to prove to me that age had improved you beyond all recognition.’

Holly went scarlet. How, how could he know? ‘That’s—’

‘Perfectly understandable for a person with an outsize chip on her shoulder.’

Holly gasped. This man got more detestable with each passing second. I must have been totally blind as well as besotted when I was a silly teenager she concluded wrathfully. ‘I have not—’

‘Whatever you say.’ He waved aside her choked denial with languid disinterest. ‘And actually, Tara is still in love with another man—the same man. Tara’s carrying around a burden of guilt about leaving me and Thomas. It’s that guilt that’s stopping her from finding happiness. I care a lot about Tara and I want her to be happy.’

‘Am I supposed to believe you’re some sort of altruistic saint?’

‘Frankly, I don’t give that—’ The pistol-crack of his long fingers indicated the depth of his disinterest ‘—about what you think about me. I’m just asking you to remember you’ve left your broomstick at home tonight.’

Broomstick? The cheek of the man! ‘I’ll be sweet and submissive, just the way you like it,’ Holly agreed, all humble co-operation and saccharine smile. She’d never let a man do the talking for her throughout her entire adult life, and she had no intention of starting now! She swivelled slightly to look directly up at the big man who sat beside her in the taxi.

He was straightening the dark tie set against the brown column of his strong neck. The subdued light emphasised the sharp angles and planes of his intimidatingly handsome face but, after her silly gobsmacked behaviour in the bedroom, Holly wasn’t about to be intimidated by his blue eyes and sexy mouth. She chose to ignore the sudden painful clenching of her disobedient stomach muscles.

Niall stopped what he was doing and slanted her a worryingly ambiguous look. ‘You’ve absolutely no idea about “the way I like it”.’ The sensual gleam in his eyes as they rested on her defiant face caused more damage to her nervous system than an electrical storm.

Stubbornly, she didn’t scuttle to the opposite corner of the taxi and hide her face in her hands like she wanted to. There ought to be a law about any one male wielding this much in-your-face masculine virility, she thought.

‘I’ll be hanging on your every word, darling,’ she promised insincerely, batting her lashes at him.

‘And for God’s sake,’ he warned, taking her provocative sarcasm in his stride, ‘don’t drink too much!’

Holly’s mouth tightened as he threw a ‘that’s all I need’ look in her direction. The righteous feeling of ill use swelled in her chest. He seemed to have conveniently forgotten that she, out of the goodness of her heart, was helping him out of a sticky situation.

‘You’re assuming I’m an indiscreet drunk.’ Did two white wines make her a drunk? The way she recalled it, drinking wine after an exhausting weekend on call had made her extremely sleepy not the life and soul of the party.

‘Well, if your eye is anything to go by, you’re definitely a clumsy drunk.’ He reached out towards her face but didn’t make contact.

Holly closed her eyes, wondering what he was making of her instinctive and embarrassingly dramatic recoil from his extended hand. The shivery hot flesh of her bare shoulder was reacting as though his fingers had made contact.

‘Actually, I didn’t fall over.’

‘Then how did you get it?’

‘I was slow to duck…’ His blank expression indicated Niall was a bit slow too…on the uptake, anyhow, so she casually elaborated. ‘A fist did the damage,’ she recalled ruefully.

He sat very still during the lengthy pause that followed her startling but matter of fact statement.

‘A man did that to you?’ There was icy distaste in his voice.

‘It wasn’t as bad as the last time,’ Holly continued cheerfully, blissfully ignorant in the dim light of the growing shocked revulsion in his eyes.

‘And you went back for more…?’ he asked with hoarse incredulity.

Holly gave a small wry grin. She hadn’t wanted to. Her first impression of emergency medicine had been far from favourable, but in the end she’d rather enjoyed the experience, though not the occasional physical intimidation.

‘Well, I didn’t actually have much choice,’ she began to tell him, only he jumped in, his deep voice vibrating condemnation before she had an opportunity to explain farther.

‘No choice! Good God, woman, you always have a choice not to stay in an abusive relationship,’ he told her contemptuously. ‘At sixteen I put your choice of boyfriend down to inexperience!’ Even amid this bewildering tirade of condemnation, his brief allusion to their last mortifying meeting made her blush. ‘But you obviously get some sort of perverted kick out of being knocked around.’

It finally dawned on a mystified Holly how he had interpreted her words. She opened her mouth to tell him just how wrong he was—it would be nice to see the smug, sanctimonious snake squirm a bit—when she stopped.

She didn’t owe Niall Wesley any explanations! How dare the man even think she was some sort of victim? Willing a cool mask of composure to obliterate the wrath that was almost choking her, she smiled with serene disinterest back up at him.

‘I had no idea that you were so…straight!’ she remarked with wide-eyed wonderment.

‘If by straight—’ grimly, he mimicked her derisive tone ‘—you mean I can’t abide men who consider a casual left hook an acceptable display of their affection, then I am just that. And if you think you can change him—forget it! Men like that don’t change.’ Ironically, in his present mood he looked far more daunting than any brutish drunk she’d ever had to deal with in the line of duty.

Part of Holly wanted to applaud his statement, but another part of her wanted to punish this man for having the temerity to think even for one second…!

‘Why, you old softie you,’ she pouted prettily up at him as she daringly placed an affectionate hand on his thigh.

Niall’s lips curled with distaste as he forcibly removed her gently curling fingers as though she were contagious, but not before she had been able to note that his muscular thighs were rock hard. There was a sickening lurch in the pit of her belly.