Bridegrooms Required: One Bridegroom Required / One Wedding Required / One Husband Required

It was the wrong thing to say. His mouth curved into a thin parody of a smile which chilled her.

‘You know damn well what I’m doing here.’

‘I d-don’t.’

He drew a breath as though he were taking in poison. ‘What exactly did you tell Caroline?’

‘You mean your fiancée?’ she bit back.

‘Answer me, you little bitch!’

The insult first rocked her, then filled her with the fury to fight him back.

‘I told her the truth!’

‘You’re lying, Holly.’ He was itching to grab her by the shoulders, to haul her up against his chest and extract every raw, painful word of what she had actually told Caroline. And then?

‘You weren’t there,’ she pointed out.

‘I didn’t need to be.’

‘Well, then.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s her word against mine—whatever she’s told you.’

Her audacity momentarily stunned him. ‘I’ll tell you what she told me, sweetheart. That you and I apparently slept together.’ He gave a cold, empty laugh. ‘Strange, that—the earth can’t have moved for either of us, since I don’t actually remember doing it.’

Doing it. Holly felt the hot rush of excitement and prayed for it to pass. She shook her head in an effort to distract herself. ‘I didn’t tell her that I slept with you,’ she contradicted. ‘That was her accusation.’ Her lashes lowered by a fraction to partially conceal her eyes, but she was certain that he had read the longing there ‘An accusation which she found impossible not to believe was true.’

‘Particularly as you refused to deny it?’ he suggested, with icy calm.

Holly shrugged. ‘There was no point in denying it. Since Caroline—’ she spat the word out, appalled at herself for doing so and yet unable to prevent the anger which was still distorting her voice ‘—had already made her mind up. And she seemed to find it unbelievable that you and I had managed to remain under one roof for a fortnight without having sex!’

He found it pretty unbelievable himself, come to think of it, but that was beside the point. ‘What right do you think you have to start meddling in my life?’ he demanded. ‘How dare you let Caroline believe that we had been intimate?’

Holly had had enough. He was acting as if there had been nothing between them—as if the camaraderie which had grown up between them had not existed! ‘But we were intimate! You know we were!’

His mouth twisted. ‘I’m sorry? Have we been existing in parallel universes, or is there something I have missed? Just when are we supposed to have been intimate?’

She felt as if she was floundering in a dark, cold pool of misunderstanding. She remembered the touch of his hand on her ankle, the way she had drawn in a breath and looked down at him. Their gazes had locked the instant before they’d kissed, and something momentous had happened—surely he wasn’t going to deny that?

‘You touched me!’ she protested throatily. ‘You know you did!’

‘I touched you?’ he echoed in disbelief. ‘And you think that gives you carte blanche to try to take control of my life by implying that there had been so much more than that? What right do you have to do that, Holly?’

She shook her head distractedly, copper curls spilling like corkscrews over her shoulders. ‘But there are other kinds of intimacies, too—the little, unspoken ones. We grew close when I stayed with you, Luke—you know we did! You even admitted it! If you’d been honest with me then, and told me about Caroline, there would have been a completely different atmosphere between us! An atmosphere which would not have given rise to that kiss.’ She drew a deep shuddering breath. ‘So why didn’t you tell me, Luke? Just answer me that?’

He gave an arrogant smile. ‘You didn’t ask.’ But that wasn’t the full story, and he knew it. He hadn’t wanted to tell her, hadn’t wanted to say the words out loud because that would have meant acknowledging reality, and it had been sweet indeed to pretend that reality didn’t exist. It had been wonderful having Holly around. He had been enjoying the warmth of her company, and that was a fact. Enjoying the easy atmosphere coupled with the excitement of knowing that he couldn’t have her...

‘I can’t believe you didn’t even mention a girlfriend!’

His eyes glittered in legitimate challenge. ‘Well, maybe you should have asked me.’

‘That’s not fair and you know it!’ she objected hotly.

‘Isn’t it?’ His eyes were azure spotlights which fixed her in their glare. ‘Then let’s just say that I didn’t want to stray into the dangerous waters of the deeply personal.’

‘But you told me all about your mother—and you can’t get more personal than that!’

‘That’s different!’ he snarled, remembering her gentle questions, the careless way she had shrugged at his reluctance to answer, so that—perversely—he had wanted to tell her. And then the way that it had all seemed to come pouring out of him, like the bursting of a dam. Disturbing. And especially disturbing for a man like Luke who had grown up with no one to confide in, who had convinced himself that it was better like that. That feelings should be locked out of sight and out of harm’s way. When you were the only motherless boy in an English boarding-school, it was easier like that...

Holly gave a bitter laugh as she saw the shuttered look which had given him the face of a dark, beautiful statue. ‘I used to wonder why you hadn’t jumped on me like most men try to—’

‘Did that disappoint you, then?’ he enquired silkily. ‘Do you like being jumped on, Holly?’

She ignored the crude taunt. ‘I thought it was because you were a gentleman and that you respected me, but now I see I couldn’t have been more wrong! You’re a bastard, Luke Goodwin—to make a promise to one woman, and then to flirt like crazy with another!’

A pulse began to flicker ominously in his cheek. ‘If I had flirted like crazy, then you would have known all about it, sweetheart,’ he ground out. ‘And the bottom line is that we kissed. Nothing more. Like you said yourself at the time, as I recall.’ His mouth twisted with agonised desire. ‘Though, quite frankly, if you wear skirts as short as the one you had on that day then—’

‘Then I can expect men to lose all control?’ she put in. ‘Is that what you were about to say, Luke? That I was asking for it?’

‘But I didn’t lose control, did I?’ he retorted. ‘I stopped at a kiss, though God knows how, since you weren’t just asking for it, Holly, you were simply begging for it—’

That did it! ‘You bastard!’ There was a loud crack as her palm connected with his cheek, and they both looked at one another, aware that an unbreachable line had just been crossed.

Luke felt desire and anger bubbling up in a heady cocktail inside him as he slowly rubbed his reddening cheek. ‘So that’s the way you want it, is it, sweetheart?’

Holly looked at him, powerless to resist the primitive emotions which were swirling so powerfully in the air around them. ‘Luke...’ she began, but he shook his head, and something in his eyes silenced her words, though he could do nothing to still the shuddering of her breath.

He moved to within a step away, his mouth a grim, forbidding line, the blue eyes dark as sapphires. ‘Why did you let her think that I’d slept with you, Holly? Why did you let Caroline believe a lie like that?’

She pushed the feelings of guilt away. He was the one guilty of deceit. ‘Haven’t you stopped to ask just why she believed me? There doesn’t seem much hope for a relationship if your fiancée is so willing to think that you’d be unfaithful at the first opportunity. Or maybe in the past you have been? Maybe she’s judging you on past experience?’

‘You think that of me?’

She heard the outrage and the surprise in his voice and shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ she told him tiredly. Her head was spinning so much she didn’t seem to know anything any more.

‘Well, I’d hate to disappoint you, sweetheart,’ he drawled. ‘So let me be the bastard of your dreams instead...’

She should have anticipated what was coming next from the heat which burned in the depths of his eyes, and the husky note which had deepened his voice to rich, dark velvet. But she had thought that he might be restrained by the fact that they were standing in the middle of the shop, for all the world to see, reflected three times over by the vast mirrors which lined the walls, with the chandelier spilling golden nuggets of light onto their heads.

‘Luke—’ she whispered again, but he pulled her into his arms and roughly, brutally, almost punishingly began to kiss her. ‘Luke, no!’