A Virgin For A Vow

How hard could it be?

* * *

Abby was trying to pull up her zip at the back of her ball gown when she heard Luke arrive at her flat the night of the ball. She gathered the back of her dress in one hand and shuffled out of her bedroom to answer the front door. She hadn’t seen Luke in black tie before. Even in casual clothes he was traffic-stopping gorgeous. But in formal attire he would have stopped air traffic. Possibly even a space shuttle. At take-off.

He was certainly stopping her breath. She had to swallow a couple of times to get her voice to work. ‘H...hi. I’m having some trouble with this zip. Do you think you could give me a hand?’

‘Sure.’ He stepped inside and closed the door. ‘Turn around.’

Abby held her breath as his fingers drew the zip up her back, the gentle brush of his knuckles on her bare skin sending a shiver shimmying down her spine and straight into her lady land. Secretly fizzing and smouldering there like an ignited wick. She could feel the tall frame of his body within half a step of hers, triggering her hormones like they had never been triggered before. It was as if her body recognised something in his—something deeply primal and elemental. Her senses were singing like a mezzo-soprano in the Royal Albert Hall. If she so much as leaned back she could be flush against his chest and hips and...other things.

Male things.

But the zip would only go to a certain point.

‘There’s a bit of fabric caught up in the mechanism,’ Luke said and continued working on it, bending over so his warm breath as well as his fingers brushed over her skin.

She suppressed a shiver and breathed in so he could gain better access, at the same time breathing in his aftershave, this time lemon and lime and a faint trace of bergamot with an understory of country leather. She couldn’t stop thinking of his hands going lower, dipping down to the curve of her bottom, caressing her, shaping her, slipping his fingers between her legs...

Finally the zip moved all the way up and Luke stepped back. ‘That’s done it.’

That’s done it all right. Abby hadn’t felt so turned on in her life. She turned around and hoped her wicked thoughts were not painted bright red on her face. But it certainly felt like it. If she didn’t stop blushing soon she’d be able to turn the heating down. Or off. ‘Erm... I have something else for you to do... I’ll just get it from my bedroom.’

Abby came back out with the fake diamond pendant she wanted to wear and handed it to him. It was a very good fake. You could hardly tell the difference. Hardly. ‘The catch is so tiny I can never do it up by myself.’

Luke trailed the fine chain over his fingers, his narrowed gaze examining the ‘diamond.’ ‘Who bought you this?’

‘You did.’

His brows came together. ‘When did I ever—?’

‘Not you as in you,’ Abby said. ‘You as in Mr Perfect. My fiancé.’

His expression seemed to suggest he thought a white van and a straitjacket might be handy right about now. ‘Are you serious? You actually buy stuff and pretend it’s from someone who doesn’t exist, other than in your imagination?’

‘So? It’s all for a good cause,’ Abby said. ‘I help people. It’s what I do. I help them have better love lives.’

‘While presumably having no love life of your own.’ There was a dry edge to his tone.

‘Like you can talk.’ Abby turned around rather than face his piercing gaze. She had her hair in an up-do that gave him free access to her neck but even so every fine hair reacted to the presence of his fingers with tingles and shivers that went straight to her core.

‘How do you know I don’t have a love life?’ she said, turning back around once the necklace was in place. ‘I might have dozens of secret lovers stashed away.’

‘None of whom you’ve managed to convince to take you to the ball.’ He shrugged at her beady look. ‘Just saying.’

Abby wasn’t going to go into the details of why she’d got to the age of twenty-three without having dated regularly or had sex with anyone. Even Ella didn’t know the full story. How could she tell her best friend her mother was a heroin-addicted prostitute? And that hearing her mother service her clients in the next room—and in the same room when she had been under three—had seriously messed with Abby’s sexual development? She had only been kissed a couple of times and had called a halt before anyone could get any closer. She even wondered if she was frigid.

‘I would have dated someone well before this but I got the job at the magazine, which, quite frankly, I didn’t expect in a million squillion years to get,’ Abby said. ‘I was the least qualified candidate but somehow they chose me. I wrote my first couple of columns about my childhood sweetheart and somehow the readers assumed he actually existed. And then because they loved hearing about him so much I had to keep running with it.’

‘How long have you worked at the magazine?’

‘Two and a half years.’

His frown hadn’t left his forehead but was now even deeper. ‘You’ve been pretending for two and a half years that you’re—?’

‘I know it sounds crazy. It probably is crazy but I wanted that job so much and I was prepared to do anything to get it.’

‘Anything?’

Abby did a little lip chew. ‘Well, maybe not anything, but pretending to be engaged to a guy who ticks all the boxes wasn’t that hard. I mean, guys like that must exist, right? People do get married and live happily-ever-after.’

‘Just as many end up in the divorce courts.’

‘Just because your parents went through a hideous divorce when you were a teenager doesn’t mean—’

‘If we don’t get going soon your two hours will be up before we even get to the ball,’ Luke said, tinkling his car keys, his look more forbidding than a Keep Out sign on an army-training minefield.

Abby picked up her wrap from the back of the sofa where she’d left it earlier. She wrapped it around her shoulders, refusing to be daunted by the boxed up set to his features. ‘If Kimberley hadn’t died would you two have got married?’

‘Abby.’ His voice was like a stop sign.

‘I’m sorry. Am I being pushy? I just wondered how long you dated.’

His lips were pressed almost flat. ‘Three years.’

‘Did you ever discuss it? Marriage, I mean?’

A muscle flickered near his mouth like a faulty switch during a power surge. ‘Look, do you want me to take you to this damn ball or not?’

Abby hadn’t worked in journalism for nothing. She had been known to get blood out of stones before. Whole litres of it. It was a trick of hers to get people talking about themselves so she didn’t have to share anything about herself. ‘Were you in love with her?’

He opened the front door and jerked his head towards the exit. ‘Out.’ His eyes were dark and brooding with bottled-up anger. Anger or something else...

Abby shifted her lips from side to side in a musing manner. ‘Are you angry with me or at life in general? Grief can do that to—’

‘Don’t play the amateur psychologist with me,’ he said. ‘Save it for those foolish enough to fall for it.’

‘I’m sensing a little resistance from you on the subject of your relationship with—’

‘I wasn’t in love with her, okay?’ He took a deep breath as if to calm himself, one of his hands rubbing over his face like he wanted to erase something. ‘And no, I wasn’t going to marry her.’

‘But you still miss her.’

He gave a movement of his lips that was closer to a grimace than anything near a smile. ‘She was a nice young woman. She didn’t deserve to have her life cut short.’

Abby touched his arm. ‘I’m sure she wouldn’t mind if you moved on with your life. You don’t have to grieve for her for ever.’

The way he looked at her made her insides suddenly quiver. ‘Are you offering yourself as a replacement?’