Husband By Arrangement

And there on the top of it all he noticed a book entitled How to Catch Your Man. Beneath that chilling title were the words and Make Him Marry You.

His stomach muscles clenched with horror and any passing interest in Maddy suddenly ceased.

‘This way,’ he growled, intent on getting rid of the threat to his freedom as fast as possible.

She beamed. ‘Right. Take me to your leader. I can’t wait to meet him!’

He grunted. Blithely Maddy sashayed along beside him. Dexter quickly realised that the whole airport was grinding to a halt around her. People were grinning, staring, commenting. Men openly lusted. Women looked sour and made catty comments behind their hands.

And she swayed on regardless, her walk uncomfortably reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe in Some Like it Hot.

Dexter surreptitiously ran a finger around his collar, thinking that the temperature had certainly risen a few degrees since she’d arrived.

‘You know, you look a bit like Dexter,’ she ventured. He started, and she must have thought he was insulted by the comparison, because she said with a placatory haste, ‘Only fleetingly. Just something about the eyes. I doubt he’s as—er—well-built as you. Do you work for the Fitzgerald family?’ she asked breathily, apparently mesmerised by the sooty streaks across his chest.

Presumably she was finding it hard to breathe because she was having difficulty keeping up. For some reason, his stride seemed to have increased to a half-jog.

Easing up, he tried a noncommittal, ‘Uh,’ still toying with the idea of pretending to be someone else.

‘You haven’t told me your name,’ she encouraged.

‘Nope.’

She waited but he didn’t elaborate. He wanted to keep conversation to a minimum. That way he could hang on to his dignity and not start panting like a dog on heat.

Stealing a sideways glance at Maddy, he saw that some of the bounce had gone out of her—though he doubted that had anything to do with him. A woman who was this confident wouldn’t be bothered in the least if she was snubbed by a grubby driver in a cinder-stained T-shirt and torn jeans.

Gloom settled over him again. He was filthy because he was working night and day, eating on the run and even occasionally crashing out in the smoking ruins of the Quinta.

Whenever he closed his eyes, all he saw were the charred timbers and scorched earth. His mind constantly raced with the thousand and one things he had to do. When he slept he dreamed of fire consuming whole forests. When he woke the images of desolation became reality.

His head was perpetually filled with the consequences of the disaster. The disruption to his life. His enforced return to Portugal. The destruction of thousands of valuable stock plants in the nursery and the knowledge that he was the only person who could build the business up again.

The forest fire had devoured several thousand acres of eucalyptus trees around the Fitzgerald estate. It had swept on to the eighteenth century manor house, the Quinta, which had been in its path. The majority of their land had been laid to waste and his distraught grandmother had summoned him from Brazil to recreate the farm and the nursery-garden business from the ashes.

Of course he’d agreed to come. Whatever had divided them before, his grandmama was elderly and she needed him.

But he felt trapped. Missed his travels. The joy of plant hunting, obtaining permissions for propagation and seed collection, organising production and despatch. A life of freedom and independence. The life he had chosen when his beloved mother had deserted him for Maddy’s father, Jim Cook, when his safe haven had suddenly become cold and unwelcoming.

Wretched with grief after the terrible accident had wiped out his parents and Maddy’s, he’d turned his back on everything he’d once loved. He didn’t miss his macho, authoritarian father, who’d made it no secret that a reserved, myopic son had been a disappointment. But his mother had loved him for his kind heart and his passion for plants. Until Jim Cook had turned her head.

If it hadn’t been for the fire, he wouldn’t be here. His grandmother wouldn’t have nagged him about producing an heir. And he wouldn’t be fending off the avaricious daughter of the man who’d seduced his mother and enticed her away…

He stopped himself from thinking further. Too painful.

Anger surged through him. His jaw tightened and his dark eyes glittered with loathing. The last person on earth he’d marry was the daughter of Jim Cook.

Even before he’d met her, he’d decided to make her feel completely unwelcome. Ensure that her stay was unpleasant. And he knew just how he could do that. By the time he’d finished with her she’d be hitching a lift back to the airport and taking the next plane home.

He wasn’t going to marry anyone from the Cook family. Especially a gold-digger. More important, he wasn’t ever going to marry again. Full stop.

CHAPTER THREE

GRIMLY plotting mayhem, Dexter lobbed Maddy’s luggage with studied carelessness into the back of the pick-up, on top of the equipment he’d collected from the builders’ yard.

‘Gosh,’ she said, with an appealingly infectious giggle. ‘You could get work as a baggage handler any day.’

Dex met her amused glance with a blank stare. Privately he’d expected Maddy to have changed—but not this much! Maddy had rarely spoken unless given permission by her bullying grandfather.

Old man Cook had ruled his family like a dictator. For the first time it occurred to him that this might be why Maddy’s gentle, plant-loving father might have wanted to escape the evil old tyrant’s influence.

‘Get in,’ he said curtly.

Just in time, he remembered not to open the door for her, or to offer to help her up the high step. He had to give her the maximum of aggravation. And in that skirt she had a serious handicap, he thought with malicious satisfaction.

‘This’ll be fun. I’ve never been in a pick-up before!’ she declared enthusiastically. ‘Right.’ She took a deep breath that threatened the fragile construction of her straining top. ‘Here we go. Avert your eyes.’

He did nothing of the kind. Sourly he watched while she hitched up her soft leather skirt to eye-blinking heights, slipped off her spiky shoes and hauled herself onto the first step.

Perfect thighs. Toned and firm and clearly the result of high-maintenance work-outs in the gym. Cynically he saw her wrench open the buckled door a few inches and virtually limbo-dance her way in through its reluctant gap.

He couldn’t believe that Maddy could be so uninhibited. Or assertive. But he steeled himself not to show his grudging admiration.

‘Crikey! It’s very dirty in here,’ she commented, when he clambered into the driver’s seat beside her.

Illogically it annoyed him that she was stating a fact and didn’t seem in the least bit put out by the mode of transport, or its ramshackle nature.

‘Been too close to a fire,’ was all he offered, starting up the engine.

‘Oh. Camp?’

‘No. I’m straight,’ he replied, deliberately misinterpreting her.

She gave a little gurgle of laughter.

‘I mean was it a camp fire?’

‘Forest.’

‘Were you in it?’

‘The forest or truck?’ he drawled, annoyed to be enjoying the exchange.

‘Truck!’ She laughed in delight.

‘No.’

‘Lucky for you,’ she said, sounding surprisingly heart-felt.