One Bridegroom Required!

Somehow, God only knew how, she had arranged for a woman to come and clean the house for him. She hadn’t let the matter of a few thousand miles affect her organisational skills!

He guessed it was yet another indication of how much his tastes had matured. Luke’s wild and rollicking adventuring days were over, and he was ready to take on all the responsibilities which his inheritance had brought. Sometimes your life changed and there wasn’t a damned thing you could do about it.

Luke smiled the contented smile of a man who had found what he was looking for.

Life, he decided, was just like a giant jigsaw puzzle, and the last piece had just slotted effortlessly into place.

Holly clicked off the ignition key just before the engine cut out of its own accord in the middle of the narrow village street. Number ninety-nine on her list of things to do, she thought with dark humour—change her car.

If only she didn’t love it so much! An ancient old Beetle which she had lovingly painted herself, because that was the kind of thing that students did. It was just that she wasn’t a student any more..

She slowly got out of the car and stood on the pavement, staring up at the empty building with eyes which half refused to believe that this shop was now hers.

Lovelace Brides. The place where every bride-to-be would want to buy the wedding outfit of her wildest and most wonderful dreams. Where she, Holly Lovelace, intended to transform each woman who set foot over that threshold into the most amazing bride imaginable!

Holly shivered. She should have worn her thermals. The November air had a really hungry bite to it and the gauzy shirt she was wearing would be better suited to a summer’s day.

Still, now was the time to open up the shop, and then just haul her stuff inside and unpack the basics—like vests and tea bags! She could risk moving the car later.

She was just fishing around in her shoulder bag for the great clump of keys which seemed to have got lost among all the clutter at the bottom, when she heard the sound of footsteps approaching.

Holly looked up sharply and her hair tumbled in copper-curled disarray all over her shoulders. She felt her mouth fall open in slow motion as she focussed on the man walking towards her, then blinked, as if her eyes were playing tricks on her. She blinked again. No, they weren’t. Holly stared, then swallowed.

He was quite the most gorgeous man she had ever seen, and yet somehow he looked kind of wrong walking down the sleepy village street. Holly frowned. It wasn’t just that he was tall, or tanned, or lean where it counted—though he was all of these, and more. Or that his broad shoulders and rugged frame spoke of a man you didn’t mess with. Holly looked a little closer. His hair was dark—dark as muscovado sugar—and the ends were tipped with gold.

He wore jeans, but proper, workmanlike jeans—faded by constant use and hard work, not from stone-washing in a factory. And they weren’t sprayed on so tightly that any movement looked an impossibility—with legs like his they wouldn’t need to be.

With his thick cream sweater and battered sheepskin jacket, he looked vital and vibrant—like a Technicolor image superimposed on an old black-and-white film. More real than real. He made the drizzly grey of the day seem even more insignificant and Holly found that she couldn’t drag her eyes away from him.

He came to a halt right in front of her, jeaned legs astride, returning her scrutiny with a mocking stare of his own.

Now she could see that his eyes were blue—bluer than the sea, even bluer than a summer’s sky. A dreamer’s eyes. An adventurer’s eyes.

Holly felt that if she didn’t speak she would do something unforgivable—like reach her hand out and touch the hard, tanned curve of his jaw. Just for the hell of it.

‘Hello,’ she smiled, thinking that if all the men in Woodhampton looked like this, then she was going to be very happy working here!

He stared back, at dark copper curls and white skin and green eyes, the colour of jealousy. For Luke it was like being stun-gunned—that was the only thing he could think of right then. Or hit, maybe. A physical blow might explain the sudden unbearable throbbing of his blood, the heated dilation of the veins in his face. He could feel his mouth roughen and dry and the beginning of an insistent ache in a certain part of his anatomy which filled him with sudden self-loathing.

The woman was a complete stranger—so how in hell had unwanted desire incapacitated him so completely and so mercilessly and so bloody suddenly?

Holly had to concentrate very hard to stop her knees from buckling, since her long legs seemed to have nothing to do with her all of a sudden. And why on earth was he staring at her like that?

‘Hello,’ she said again, only more coolly this time, because it wasn’t very flattering to be ignored. ‘Have we met before?’

His expression didn’t change, but his voice was impatient. ‘Don’t play games. You know damned well we haven’t.’ He treated her to a parody of a smile. ‘Or I think we would have remembered. Don’t you?’

His voice was deep and dark, his accent impossible to define, and yet his words were mocking. Made her question into a meaningless little platitude. Yet he was right. She would have remembered. This was a man you would never forget. He would stamp his presence indelibly on your heart and mind and eyes.

Holly gave him a sideways look. ‘Perhaps I would.’ She shrugged quietly. ‘I’ve certainly had better greetings in my life.’

‘Oh, I bet you have, sweetheart,’ he agreed softly, and managed to make the words sound like an insult. ‘I bet you have.’

Suddenly Holly wished she were wearing some neat little boxy suit and a pair of tights, with shoes you could see your face in, instead of a faded pair of denims and a too-thin shirt. Maybe then he’d wipe that hungry, mean-looking expression off his face and show her a little respect. Though respect you had to earn, and she wasn’t sure she’d care to earn anything from him...

‘So what do you want?’ she asked, not caring if it sounded abrupt. ‘You must want something, the way you’re staring at me like you’ve just seen a ghost—un—less I have a smudge on my nose, or something?’

Staring at the pure lines of her lips, which were untouched by lipstick, Luke felt fingers of fantasy enmeshing him in their grasp. ‘You haven’t,’ he told her huskily. ‘And as to what I want, well, that rather depends—’

‘On?’

He bit back the crude, unaccustomed sexual request he was tempted to make and channelled it instead into indignation, clipping out his words like bullets as he pointed to her Beetle. ‘On whether that rust bucket of a car happens to belong to you, or not?’

‘And if it does?’ She tipped her head back and narrowed her eyes, and her hair swung in a copper curtain all the way down her back.

‘If it does, then it’s the worst piece of parking I’ve seen in my life!’ he drawled.

Holly saw the light of combat sparking in the depth of unforgettable blue eyes and wondered what was causing this definite overreaction. Bad experience? ‘Oh, dear. Have you got a thing about women drivers?’ she asked him sweetly.

‘Not at all. Just bad drivers.’ His mouth flattened into a hard line. ‘Though most women seem to need a space the size of an airstrip to park.’

Holly almost laughed until she saw that he meant it. She shook her head slowly. ‘Heavens!’ she murmured. ‘I can’t believe that anyone would come out with an outdated sexist remark like that, not when we’re almost into the millennium—talk about a gross generalisation!’

Luke found himself mesmerised by her eyes. Too green, he thought suddenly. Too wide and too deep. For the first time in his life he understood the expression ‘eyes you could drown in’. Tension caused his throat to tighten up. ‘Really?’ he drawled huskily. ‘Not even if it happens to be true? That’s usually how generalisations come into being.’

Holly’s mouth twitched. Very clever; but not clever enough. She wasn’t going to let him get away with that. ‘You’ve done comparative research on male and female parking behaviour, have you?’

‘I don’t need to, sweetheart. I base my opinions on my own experience.’

‘And your experience of women is extensive, no doubt?’

‘Pretty much.’ His gaze was cool as it flicked over her, and then suddenly not so cool. ‘But you still haven’t told me whether it’s your car, or not?’

He knew damn well it was! Holly held her palms up in supplication. ‘Okay, I admit it, Officer,’ she told him mockingly, and then dangled the keys from her finger provocatively. ‘The car is mine!’

It had been a long time since a woman had made fun of him quite so audaciously. ‘Then might I suggest you move it?’ he suggested softly.

Her eyes narrowed at the unfriendliness in his tone. ‘Why the hell should I?’

‘Because not only is it an eyesore—it’s dangerous!’

It occurred to her briefly that if it had been anyone else talking to her in this way, then she would have asked them to show her a little courtesy. So why let him get away with it? Because he looked like her every fantasy come to life? Every other woman’s fantasy, come to that.

A voice in her head told her that she was playing with fire, but she didn’t listen to it, and afterwards she would cringe when she remembered what she said next. And the way she said it. ‘Only if you ask me nicely,’ she pouted.

Luke drew in a deep breath of outrage and desire, his mind dizzy with the scent of her, his eyes dazzled by the slim, pale column of her neck, the ringlets which floated down over her ripe, pointed breasts.

She looked like a student, he thought hungrily, with her well-worn denims and that gauzy-looking top, which was much too cold for winter weather and made the tips of her breasts thrust towards him. He forced himself to avert his eyes because he’d known plenty of women like this one. Foxy. Easy. Too easy. Women like this were put on this earth with no purpose other than to tempt.