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

He shrugged his massive shoulders as if to say that nothing would surprise him. ‘Tell me.’

‘I used my key, of course!’

‘Your key?’

‘Yes,’ she defended, wondering if he always glared at people this much. She waved the offending item in front of him. ‘My key! See!’

‘And how did you get hold of a key?’

‘I clutched it between my fingers and thumb, just like everyone else does!’

‘Don’t be facetious!’

‘Well, what do you expect when you come over so heavy? How on earth do you think I got it? It’s mine. On loan. I’m renting.’

‘Renting?’

Her mouth twitched. ‘Do you know—you have a terrible habit of repeating everything I say and making it into a question?’

‘You’re renting the shop?’ he persisted in disbelief, as though she hadn’t spoken. ‘This shop?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Why?’

Holly smiled at his belligerence. ‘Well, you’ve barged in here as if you own the place, asking me questions as though I’m on the witness stand, so I suppose one more won’t make any difference. Why do people usually rent a shop? Because they want to sell something, perhaps? Like me—I’m a dress designer.’

He nodded. ‘Yes,’ he agreed slowly, and an ironic smile touched the corners of his mouth. ‘Yes, you look like a dress designer.’

Holly noted the disapproving look on his face and was glad she wasn’t opening an escort agency! ‘Is that supposed to be a compliment?’

‘No.’

‘I didn’t think so. I fit the stereotype, do I?’

He shrugged. ‘I guess you do.’ His eyes flickered to the gauzy shirt, where the stark outline of her nipples bore testimony to the cold weather. ‘You wear unsuitable clothes. You drive a hand-painted, beaten-up old car—I wasn’t for a minute labouring under the illusion that you were a bank clerk!’

‘Nothing wrong with bank clerks,’ Holly defended staunchly.

‘I didn’t say there was,’ came his soft reply. ‘So tell me why you’re renting this shop.’

‘To sell my designs.’

He frowned as he tried to picture the insubstantial and outrageous garments in which emaciated models sashayed up the catwalk. He tried to imagine Caroline or any other woman he knew wearing one. And the only one who could get away with it was the leggy beauty standing in front of him. ‘Think there’ll be a market for them around here, do you?’ he mocked. ‘It’s a pretty conservative kind of area.’

She ignored the sarcasm. ‘I certainly hope so! There’s always a market for bridal gowns—’

His dark eyebrows disappeared beneath the tawny hair. ‘Bridal gowns?’

‘There you go again,’ she murmured. ‘Yes. Bridal gowns. You know—the long white frocks that women wear on what is supposed to be the happiest day of their lives.’ She waited for him to say something about his wedding day, which was what people always did say. But he didn’t. And Holly was both alarmed and astonished at the great sensation of relief which flooded through her at his lack of reaction. He isn’t married! she found herself thinking with a feeling which was very close to elation, and then hoped she hadn’t given anything away in her expression.

‘You design bridal gowns?’

‘You sound surprised.’

‘Maybe that’s because I am. You aren’t exactly what most people have in mind when they think of wedding dresses.’

‘Too young?’ she guessed.

‘There’s that,’ he agreed. ‘And marriage is traditional...’ his eyes glimmered ‘...which you ain’t.’

‘I can be. I know how to be.’

Interesting. ‘And you’ll be living—?’

‘In the flat upstairs, of course.’ She smiled in response to his frowned reaction to that, and wiped a dusty hand down the side of her jeans before extending her hand. ‘I guess we’d better introduce ourselves. I’m Holly Lovelace of Lovelace Brides.’ She smiled disarmingly. ‘Who are you?’

‘Holly Lovelace?’ He started to laugh.

‘That’s right.’

‘Not your real name, right?’

‘Wrong. I’ve got my birth certificate somewhere, if you’d like to check.’

He looked down at the hand she was still holding out, and shook it, her narrow fingers seeming to get lost within the grasp of his big, rough palm. ‘I’m Luke Goodwin,’ he said deliberately, and waited.

‘Hello, Luke!’

There was another brief pause as he savoured a heady feeling of power. ‘You haven’t heard of me?’

‘You’re absolutely right. I haven’t.’

‘Well, I’m your new landlord.’

Holly was too busy blinking up at him to respond at first. Up this close he was even more divine. He had the kind of mouth that even the most hardened man-hater would have described as irresistible. She was just wondering what it would be like to be kissed by a mouth like that when his words seeped unwillingly into her consciousness.

‘But you can’t be my landlord!’ she protested. Landlords were pallid and wore pinstriped suits, not faded jeans and a golden tan which she suspected might be all over.

He slanted a look at her from between sultry azure eyes. ‘Oh? Says who?’

‘Says me! You’re not the person I signed the lease with!’

‘And who did you sign the lease with?’

‘I had to meet a man in Winchester—’

‘Called?’