Husband By Arrangement

‘It’s a bit…over the top,’ Maddy said doubtfully, shocked by the brazen hussy in the mirror.

‘’Course it is. How else are you to be rejected point-blank? You said the Fitzgeralds were traditional-minded. Trust me. They’ll be appalled.’

Maddy began to smile. Her hopes rose.

‘I think they might!’ she conceded.

‘Now you’ve got to learn to do a come-hither walk,’ commanded Debbie. ‘Like this.’

Egged on by her giggling friend, Maddy leapt from the chair and followed Debbie, exaggerating the swing of her leather-clad hips till she felt her pelvis would break loose from its moorings.

‘It’s too ridiculous!’ she protested, as they fell in a heap of helpless laughter on her friend’s bed. ‘I could never walk like that in public!’

‘Duckie, you’ve got to overdo it if you’re to succeed. That’s why we bought the gaudiest clothes from the charity shop.’ Debbie’s face grew serious. ‘Look, you have no choice. Your grandfather’s been on and on at you for ages. He’s mad keen for you to marry this Dexter guy. This will definitely foil his plans.’

‘He wants me to be secure,’ she defended loyally. ‘He thinks I’m a hopeless case because I’m thirty. And I’m unemployed, now that the children’s home has closed. I’m going to miss working there,’ she sighed. ‘But you can understand his concern. He’s old and sick and worried what’ll happen when he dies.’

Debbie sniffed. ‘Personally, I’d tell my grandpa to stay out of my life.’ Her face softened and she hugged Maddy warmly. ‘Trouble is, being the kind, caring person you are, you’re trying not to upset him. So here you are, apparently submissive and on the brink of flying to Portugal to meet your eager bridegroom and—’

‘Hell-bent on behaving like a badly behaved gold-digger to put him off!’ Maddy giggled, batting her eyes like mad.

‘Brilliant! You can do it!’ crowed Debbie.

‘Can I?’

‘Sure! Psyche yourself up. Look at yourself!’ encouraged Debbie.

She dragged Maddy back to the mirror. Fiddling with her alarmingly low-cut top, Maddy thought of the prim and grim Sofia Fitzgerald, Dex’s grandmother. Sofia would loathe a money-grabbing vamp as a prospective bride for Dex—and from what she remembered of him, he’d want a docile, nicely dressed woman to be his wife, not a flighty-looking piece with a come-hither walk.

Maddy pushed back her uncertainties. It would be the act of a lifetime. But her grandfather had been almost apoplectic when she’d tried to tell him she didn’t want to go along with his marriage plans. If she wanted to stop her grandfather from having another heart attack, she had no choice. She’d appear to go along with his plan, but would make sure it failed. She took a deep breath and summoned up all her inner strength.

‘Then help me, Debs,’ she said decisively. ‘Teach me what to do.’

They practised being sensual, bold and assertive. Took a walk outside, drawing lustful glances. Amidst the laughter she shared with her friend, Maddy found herself gaining in confidence as the day wore on and she was being openly propositioned in the street.

Now she was the kind of woman that men picked up! It still felt very unnatural to her, but at least she could pretend to be a sex-siren, if only for a short while. She would appear to be totally unsuitable as a Fitzgerald bride. The marriage-making that had gone on between Maddy’s grandfather and the aristocratic Sofia would come to nothing.

‘Just don’t be your usual sweet self. You’re a sharp cookie, remember,’ Debbie warned as she finally drove Maddy to the airport.

‘Dex would hate that,’ Maddy mused. ‘I didn’t see him very often after his eighth birthday when he went to boarding-school in England, and I was only four at the time. But I remember he was very reclusive and aloof—’

‘With bottleglass specs and as thin as a reed,’ Debbie reminded her.

‘I’m sure he’s very nice,’ Maddy conceded kindly, twiddling a spiky piece of hair. ‘But I’d never marry someone I didn’t love.’

Her husband would have to be very understanding, she thought. Her restless hands stilled. Someone who didn’t mind that she couldn’t have children. She had come to terms with that a long time ago, after the infection had ruined her chances of motherhood, even though the inner ache, the wistful longing, would be with her always. What man would be content with just her, and no child to call his own?

‘You’re pretty tough, aren’t you? Even though you might seem quiet and submissive to people who don’t know you,’ Debbie said admiringly. ‘I don’t know how you’ve coped, being head cook and bottle-washer to your grandfather all these years. He’s a bit of a tyrant, isn’t he?’

‘He needed me,’ Maddy said simply. ‘And I learnt to keep quiet and get on with things when the business he started up over here failed and we lost all our money.’

‘Rotten for you.’

‘Worse for him.’ She remembered how hard it had been for her grandfather to be poor. The Fitzgeralds had settled a large sum on him in exchange for his share of the plant nursery in Portugal. But all of that money had been swallowed up by debts. ‘If only Grandpa didn’t feel such a violent resentment towards the Fitzgerald family!’ she sighed. ‘He thinks that half of Dex’s inheritance should rightly be mine. That’s why he’s so determined that the two of us should marry.’

Debbie looked puzzled. ‘Why does he resent the Fitzgerald millions?’

Maddy fell silent for a moment. ‘He blames them for the car accident that caused the deaths of my parents and Dex’s,’ she explained sadly. ‘Our two families shared the same rambling farmhouse in Portugal. Apparently Dex’s mother flung herself at my father. If she hadn’t, Grandpa says, there would have been no accident whatsoever. We’d be wealthy, both sets of parents would be alive and we’d all still live in Portugal.’

‘Can’t dwell in the past,’ Debbie said, matter-of-fact as ever. ‘You’ve got a future to plan. Almost there. Remember: stay in character. Do things that are socially unacceptable.’

Squaring her shoulders, Maddy resolutely faced up to the challenge ahead.

‘Like slurping my soup?’ she suggested.

The car rolled to a stop. ‘Perfect. Or do the cancan on the table. Eat spaghetti with your fingers. Anything. Just come back single!’

Maddy slid out, moving carefully to keep her balance in the gold killer heels. Two male passers-by leapt over to help her with her luggage and she beamed her thanks at them. Their eyes glazed over and she saw Debbie giving her a conspiratorial wink.

‘Go for it,’ her friend said fondly, hugging her. ‘Show time! Have fun.’

‘I will!’

Maddy felt excited. She’d quickly scotch any ideas of a loveless marriage and then demand to hear the Fitzgeralds’ version of the events leading to the fatal car accident.

However hard she’d probed, her grandfather had refused to explain why her loving father had run off with Dex’s mother without saying goodbye. There had to be a good reason—and this was her opportunity to discover it.

Her eyes sparkled. For once in her life, she had a wonderful sense of taking control of her own life. It was exhilarating to feel so free.

With a wave to her approving friend, she graciously allowed one of the young men to push the luggage trolley and set off after him, her hips swinging exuberantly in the tight leather skirt.

This was an adventure, she thought. And she was determined to enjoy it.

CHAPTER TWO

DEXTER’S manic schedule meant that he’d come to the airport grimy and unshaven. Sourly he waited as the passengers from the London flight filed past, though he barely saw them, not even the admiring glances from women as they passed.

His mind was elsewhere: on the charred ruins of the Quinta, that had once been the Fitzgerald home.

He didn’t want to be here. Hell, he didn’t even want to be in the country.

Seeing a plump, timid-looking woman in ill-fitting clothes, he raised his placard with exhausted resignation. She caught his eye, brightened and then looked at the hastily felt-tipped name: Maddy Cook. Looking disappointed, the woman continued dolefully on her way through Faro Airport. Not her, then.

The last stragglers wandered out and he was on his own. It seemed that Maddy wasn’t coming to the Algarve after all, and he felt such a huge sense of relief that he might have burst into song if he hadn’t been so dog-tired and disinclined for anything remotely resembling merriment.

Then, just as he turned to leave, his attention was caught by a crowd of chattering, laughing men who’d surged through from Customs. Dexter saw that they were rugby players on tour, complete with team kit, coach, acolytes and, he noted appreciatively, a team mascot.

The mascot’s burgundy head bobbed up and down amid the ruck, almost lost under the welter of burly arms and giant hands. But between the mountainous shoulders and tree-trunk thighs Dex had glimpsed her dazzling grin and stunning legs. For the first time in a week his stony face cracked with the faint hint of a smile.