The Engagement Deal (6 page)

Feeling like a sophisticated woman of the world, Holly had offered to make her escort a coffee. The sophisticated feeling had lasted until they got as far as the sitting room and he’d pounced. What could only be termed an undignified struggle ensued and Holly panicked.

The struggle had come to an abrupt halt when a table lamp had been switched on. The fight had magically gone right out of her would-be seducer when Niall emerged sleepy-eyed, bare-chested and very irritably from his makeshift bed on the sofa. When he’d actually got to his feet, the boy had taken one look at Niall, all six foot plus of perfectly muscled manhood, and without a word had fled.

Holly had hardly noticed him go. She’d never been this close to an almost naked man before and it, or maybe the cider, was making her feel quite odd. She hadn’t known that men could be that beautiful, but Niall was.

He had sounded quite concerned when he asked her if she was all right. Holly had nodded mutely and tried to straighten her dishevelled clothes and mussed-up hair. Then, looking stern but kindly, Niall had begun to say a lot of things to her that her father already had. It was one thing to be read a lecture by her dad, quite another to be censured by the man of her youthful dreams! Holly had burned with humiliation—he was talking to her as if she were a kid.

‘Besides,’ Niall had said, coming to a light-hearted conclusion, ‘It was no loss. The groper didn’t look like he could kiss. I should wait until you find someone who—’

The condescension on top of her humiliation was just too much to take. Hands on her narrow hips, chin and chest thrust aggressively out, she blurted, ‘If you’re so good at it, why don’t
you
teach me how to kiss?’

Niall had looked at her in a way that made her feel about two inches tall and slightly grubby, to boot! That’s when he’d
really
laid into her, annihilating her character in blisteringly forthright terms.

Niall cleared his throat and looked, much to her amazement, self-consciously uncomfortable. If she hadn’t known he didn’t suffer from self-doubt, she might have suspected he had doubts himself about how he’d handled the situation he’d found himself thrust into. A situation which, she readily acknowledged, most young men would have found horrific.

‘It’s sometimes kinder to be cruel, and I’d call that kick you landed pretty vicious.’ Better to be accused of going over the top than not noticing a potentially dangerous situation that was staring him in the face. His expression grew bleak as his thoughts turned to his sister Jude.

‘It was a lucky shot,’ she told him, recalling how scared she’d been when, on the one and only time in her life she’d ever resorted to physical violence, the big strong man had sunk, winded and in obvious agony, to his knees. ‘And it wasn’t just cruel to call me a stupid little tart,’ she pointed out acidly, ‘it was untrue. I just hope for your son’s sake your ideas of enlightened child guidance have mellowed over the years.’

Niall’s angular jaw tightened at this scathing reference to his parenting skills. ‘I take it you’ve been harbouring a grudge all these years,’ he deduced with incredulous scorn. ‘It really has made your day, having the opportunity to knock me back. Or is the rejection meant to pique my interest?’

‘Your humility makes me feel humble. There’s a much simpler and more likely explanation, but I can see that’s too revolutionary so I’ll spell it out. I just don’t fancy you, Niall.’

He raised one irritatingly sceptical brow and repressed an uncivilised urge to make her eat her words. It would be a pleasure, he thought, examining the lush contours of her wilful mouth.

‘Your mouth’s saying one thing; those big hungry eyes are saying something quite different.’

The
smug
…The problem was, he was right. Her slender back felt exposed as a prickle of fear ran the length of her stiff spine. No matter how much she denied it, she knew she was sexually aware of Niall as a rampantly attractive male with every fibre of her hot sticky body. Holly hoped and prayed that all he could see in her eyes right now was sarcastic contempt. She wiped the palms of her sweaty hands nervously against her thighs.

‘If it makes you and your ego happier to think that, that’s fine by me.’

Niall laughed, there was arrogant confidence in the sound. Cheeks flaming, teeth grating, Holly decided to maintain a dignified but frigid silence for the rest of the journey.

He didn’t walk her into the building; she didn’t care about that, but after saving his skin you’d have thought he would have the common courtesy to thank her. Why am I surprised? she asked herself. He’s nothing but a rich spoilt playboy and Rowena and Tara are welcome to him!

‘Y
OU’RE
staying for the weekend when you pick up Thomas.’ There was no hint of doubt in the confident voice on the other end of the line.

Niall sighed and gave a thumbs-up sign to his assistant, who was still awaiting his response to a question. The door closed behind the quietly efficient individual.

‘I
suppose
I could,’ he confirmed reluctantly. Giving his diary a quick mental review, he felt a stab of affectionate irritation. He was used to his mother’s interference but this didn’t alter the fact he hated being organised, and she knew it.

This was the longest time he’d ever spent without his son. He’d been eagerly looking forward to having Tom to himself when the boy got back from his Stateside holiday. Looking at it objectively—something he rarely did, where his son was concerned—he supposed that he was being selfish. His parents didn’t see as much of the boy as they liked.

‘And bring her with you.’

Niall stopped twirling the pen between his fingers. ‘Her who…?’ he enquired ungrammatically.

‘Her, your fiancée,’ came back the smooth response.

Niall dropped the pen on the floor. He hadn’t calculated for Tara talking to his mother—he ought to have! Silently he cursed himself for not noticing this giant flaw in his otherwise excellent plan.

‘What are you talking about, Mother?’

His bored tone didn’t have the desired effect on his mother—but it had been worth a try.

‘Don’t waste all that on me. I’ve been speaking to Tara. Really, Niall, if you want to keep a secret, she is the very worst person to confide in. She tells me this girl is very nice—but, as Tara could see some good in a mass murderer, I’m reserving judgement. As for all this nonsense about getting used to the situation!’ A scornful sound of disgust reached ears. ‘Since when did you get so precious?’ she demanded brusquely of her eldest born. ‘What’s wrong with the girl?’

‘I’m not sure if Holly can make it, Mother…’

‘I’m sure you can persuade her. I’m always hearing how persuasive women find you.’

Niall, who was used to his mother’s bracing sarcasm remained cheerfully unstressed by the savage witticism. His mother was always very forthright when it came to commenting on his character—though only, as she often said herself, in a
constructive
way.

‘I can’t make any promises…’

‘Nothing new there, then. You’re the most evasive man I’ve ever come across,’ Maeve Wesley continued as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘You know your father and I are going back with Chris and Jude to stay for a month, so it has to be this weekend. Unless you’d prefer me to come up to town to meet her? Is she living with you?’

‘We’ll see you this weekend, Mother.’ Some things in life were inevitable, he reflected philosophically. He put the phone down and immediately redialled. What time would it be in New York, right now?

Holly looped the dangling strap of her small backpack up over one shoulder and pulled down the rucked sleeve of her short denim jacket. She frowned at the dusty mark on the toe of one of her newly acquired ankle-length boots, and surreptitiously rubbed the mark against the curve of her shapely calf, covered at this moment by the ankle-length skirt she wore. While she was still slightly off balance, someone waved something large and glittery under her nose. The same ever so slightly tip-tilted nose twitched as it immediately recognised the very faint, very exclusive fragrance.

She lost the thread of the thought that had been debating the awkward choice between linguine and tagliatelle as her heart went from quiet amble to breathless sprint in the space of a single beat. The sensation of a fist tightening in her stomach was so powerful she almost doubled over to nurse the acute pain. She made no immediate effort to make contact with those mesmeric blue eyes; instead, she took several steadying breaths first and felt deeply disgusted with herself for this feeble display of lust.

‘What’s this?’ Holly knew perfectly well what it was. It was a ring, a sapphire ring, and she’d seen it before. She passed a hand swiftly over her mouth, blotting the light sheen of moisture along her upper lip. The skinny-rib top she wore clung damply to her spine.

At least she hadn’t said, ‘Who are you?’ Or possibly, Niall mused, examining the hostile light in the dark brown eyes fixed on his face, starting from scratch might have been more promising. Still, he’d been prepared for this reaction. Niall prided himself that he was prepared for most things. Or maybe not…He hadn’t been entirely prepared for the strength of the sexual tension that was buzzing around them.

His eyes did a distracted once over—she was really tiny, with a bone structure to match her height. He was sure he could span that waist with his hands and still have plenty of room over. In that bohemian get-up, if he hadn’t known what an edible body dwelt beneath the layered look…Only, he did know. He didn’t frequent supermarkets much himself but he suspected that copulation in the aisles was pretty much frowned on.
Pity.

‘And what are you doing here?’ Her throat was bone dry.

‘Shopping?’ Niall suggested, looking intelligently at the neatly stacked shelves around them.

Holly’s sceptical gaze moved from her own laden trolley to his empty hands. ‘Let me give you a tip: they like you to carry a basket. Even now the store detective’s probably got you under surveillance as a suspicious character.’

Actually, in his beautifully cut designer suit, he was drawing a lot of attention—and all of it, predictably, was female.

She didn’t blame her fellow shoppers for goggling. Men like Niall didn’t often buy baked beans in supermarkets—they didn’t do anything so mundane! They were the sort of men you saw brooding dangerously in moodily lit black-and-white-ads for designer items. He was the rogue male stallion who’d strolled unexpectedly into the midst of a domestic herd, and his presence was creating a murmur of excitement—a loud murmur! She rolled her eyes, despising the fanciful analogy even as it popped into her head.

‘I hoped I’d bump into you.’ Words to gladden the heart of any lonely single shopper had they, unlike herself, not known what a snake in the grass he was.

‘
Hoped?
I got the distinct impression you couldn’t wait to see the back of me.’

‘That was my frustration speaking.’ Holly glared back with glacial indifference. ‘All right,’ he conceded, boosting the charm level of his winning smile by several hundred volts. ‘
Planned.
You were leaving the flat when I arrived, so I followed you.’

‘I’ve never been stalked before. I don’t think I like it.’

What the hell was he doing here? Her brain was working its way through a list of probabilities, which all on second examination proved unlikely.

Well, be realistic, Holly, he’s not about to tell you that not seeing your face is keeping him awake at nights! Although she was beside herself with curiosity, she’d have died before she’d admit this shameful fact to him.

‘I need your help.’

If her indiscriminate hormones didn’t transform her brain into mush every time she saw him, she’d already have worked this out for herself.

‘No!’
She turned her back on him and started to pile tins into her trolley.

The large hand on her shoulder was light, but it completely immobilised Holly. ‘You don’t know what I’m going to say.’

‘I don’t need to,’ she retorted. ‘The answer is still
no
!’

Niall could tell she had really enjoyed saying that. Never had he heard one syllable contain so much relish. He waited a moment before spoiling her pleasure.

‘Do you actually have a cat?’

Holly looked at the large pile of tins in her trolley. ‘No, not yet. I like to be prepared,’ she added weakly.

He didn’t ridicule this ludicrous explanation, so he must really be desperate, she reflected thoughtfully. Some vague notion of holding Niall Wesley’s fate in her hands flashed through her head—it was a nice, warm, comforting thought. Would he beg? She looked at his dark saturnine features and decided regretfully that this was doubtful; the man didn’t have a humble bone in his beautiful body.

‘We have cats at home.’

By ‘home’, she assumed he was talking about the ancestral pile, not his town house. ‘Nice for you.’

‘I’m sure you’d like them.’

Holly had had enough of his graceful dancing around the issue. ‘Will you just get to the point? I’ve not got all day.’

‘I need you to pretend to be my fiancée again…just for the weekend, this time. Tara’s been talking to my mother and she told her about you. The upshot of which is, they’ve invited us down for the weekend. My parents are going away next month. When they come back, we can have split up and by then Tara will have gone back to her man and it won’t matter.’

Not matter—oh, no, messing around with her life counted as zero in his list of priorities. Holly folded her arms and looked up at him incredulously. ‘You can’t imagine even for one second I’m going to agree to this.’

‘Not for me, no.’

‘What do you mean?’ she snapped.
‘Not for me?’

‘I was speaking to Rowena earlier. I explained the situation…She thought it was a hoot.’

Holly could almost hear her sister’s musical laughter. ‘And I thought I was the one with the warped sense of humour.’

‘She said she was
sure
you’d be delighted to help out one of her best friends.’ He smiled as those big brown eyes staring up at him gradually filled with horror. ‘Let me see,’ he mused, tapping his forefinger against the bridge of his masterful nose. ‘The words “one favour deserves another” did come up at some point. Oh, I almost forgot. Rowena made me promise to ask you if you’re enjoying staying at the flat—rent free?’

Now he made her sound like a freeloader, when in actual fact she’d wanted to pay her way. It was her magnanimous big sister who’d insisted that Holly was doing her a favour by flat-sitting.

‘Are you telling me,’ Holly choked, her voice shaking with outrage, ‘that Rowena will throw me out of the flat if I don’t help you?’

‘I can’t see Rowena doing that, can you?’ he remonstrated gently. ‘No, Rowena might be
hurt
if you didn’t do a little favour for her friend, that’s all. There’s no obligation. She might be disappointed…’ he forecast tentatively.

No obligation—oh, no,
not much
! Her temper blazed into full flagrant life. ‘You’re a dirty, blackmailing rat!’ Her dark eyes sparkled with contempt. How she’d love to slap that smug smirk off his face! Her glare widened to encompass the girl at the delicatessen counter, who had giggled when Holly had given her rather loud assessment of his character.

‘Rowena felt sure you’d do the right thing. She tells me you’re very big on principles, personal honour and so forth.’ He made it sound amusingly quaint.

‘Much you’d know about it!’ she roared contemptuously, going extremely red in the face. ‘And how dare you discuss me with my sister?’

His slow provocative smile deepened. ‘Scared I know all your deep dark secrets?’ he taunted softly.

Holly shook her head and her short fat plait whipped around and caught her in the mouth. ‘I don’t have any dark secrets.’

He shook his head sympathetically. ‘Rowena said as much.’

Holly took a hopeless wrathful breath. When she saw her sister…! He had her trapped. He knew she wouldn’t let Rowena down; half the expensive medical books she possessed had been purchased courtesy of her big sister’s generosity. Their parents weren’t well off and Rowena’s financial help had made life much easier in Holly’s student days.

She gripped the handle of her trolley with both hands until her knuckles turned white.

‘When do you want me?’ she enquired with gloomy resignation. His dark brows shot up and she winced. ‘Don’t worry,’ she told him with icy dignity. ‘That wasn’t an offer.’

A slow, scary grin slashed his lean dark features. ‘Pity.’

Holly’s lips tightened as a sensual shiver slid down her spine. Was that supposed to keep alive her furtive fantasies for the duration? Actually, her furtive fantasies were surviving without any help!

‘Save the theatricals for our audience and don’t blame me if they smell a rat in the first five minutes.’ Her expression made it clear that the rat she was talking about stood six feet four in his bare feet!

‘We’ll just have to convince them, won’t we, Holly?’ He looked thoughtful. ‘Do you think we should have pet names for one another? To give some depth to this thing?’

‘What did you have in mind?’ She could think of one or two things she’d like to call him!

‘How about “poppet”? You look a poppet sort of girl to me.’

Holly gave a very unpoppet-like growl. ‘If you want to live, don’t ever call me that!’ she told him with deep sincerity.

Niall’s lips quivered. ‘Anything you say,’ he promised, as she strode off at a rattling pace guaranteed not to leave a single egg so meticulously ticked off her grocery list intact.

‘So your sister married an American and they live in Maine.’ Her brain was spinning from the information he’d been force-feeding her on the journey out of the city.

‘No, they live in New York. They have a summer house in Maine, which is where Thomas has been staying. They have a son a couple of years older than Tom, as well as a new baby. I’ve warned Mother that we want to break the news of our marriage to Tom in our own time, and as far as Tom’s concerned she’ll respect my wishes.’ He only wished this respect extended into other aspects of his life. ‘So there’s no worries there.’

When he talked this way, it felt almost as if the whole thing was real. Holly had caught herself at some points during the last hour, while she’d been memorising family details, feeling as if all this was for real and she actually was going to meet her future in-laws. Fortunately, the rational part of her brain kept her feet firmly rooted in reality.

‘It’s unusual, isn’t it?’