Buying His Bride Of Convenience. Michelle Smart

all the women he’d dated throughout the years. He estimated that of those who were still unmarried, approximately one hundred per cent of them would high-tail it to a wedding dress shop before he’d even finished proposing.

      And then he thought of his last date. The only date he’d been on that hadn’t ended in the bedroom.

      Unthinkingly, he touched his bruised nose. The steri-strips Eva had so carefully put on him were still there, the wound healing nicely. He remembered the distaste that flashed in her crystal-clear blue eyes whenever she looked at him.

      She’d acted as a translator for him on his first trip to Caballeros a month ago. On an island surrounded by so much destruction, the prevalent colour brown with all the churned-up mud, she’d shone like a beacon in the gloom. Or her scarlet hair had, which she wore in a girlish ponytail. It was a shade of red that could only have come from a bottle and contrasted with her alabaster skin—she must lather herself in factor fifty sun cream on an hourly basis to keep it so colour free—so beautifully he couldn’t see how any other colour, not even that which nature had given her, could suit her so well.

      Despite dressing only in scruffy jeans and an official Blue Train Aid Agency T-shirt, Eva Bergen was possibly the most beautiful and definitely the sexiest woman he’d met in his entire thirty-three years. And she hated his guts.

      Daniele looked at his sister’s worried face and gave a half-smile. ‘Yes,’ he said with a nod. ‘I know the perfect woman to marry.’

      When he left the apartment an hour later, he reflected that whatever else happened, at least his mother would finally be happy with a choice he’d made.

      * * *

      Eva queued patiently at the staff shower block, playing a game on her phone to pass the time. There was limited fresh water at the camp and the staff rationed their own use zealously. She’d become an expert at showering in sixty seconds of tepid water every three days. Like the rest of the staff, she experienced both guilt and relief when she took her leave, which was every third weekend, and she had the luxury of flying over to Aguadilla and checking into a basic hotel. There, at her own expense, she would laze for hours in sweet-smelling, bubbly, limitless water, dye her hair, do her nails and cleanse her skin, all the while trying to smother the guilt at all the displaced people at the camp who couldn’t take a few days off to pamper themselves.

      One thing that wasn’t in short supply at the camp was mobile phones. It seemed that everyone had one, even the tiny kids who barely had a change of clothes to their name. The current craze was for a free game that involved blasting multiplying colourful balls. A technology whizz had linked all the camp players together, refugees and staff alike, to compete against each other directly. Eva had become as addicted to it as everyone else and right then was on track to beat her high score and crack the top one hundred players. At that moment, playing as she waited for her turn in the skinny showers, she had three teenagers at her side, pretending to be cool while they watched her avidly.

      When her phone vibrated in her hand she ignored it.

      ‘You should answer that,’ Odney, the oldest of the teenagers, said with a wicked grin. Odney was currently ranked ninety-ninth in the camp league for the game.

      ‘They’ll call back,’ Eva dismissed, mock-scowling at him.

      With an even wickeder grin, Odney snatched the phone from her hand, pressed the answer button and put it to his ear. ‘This is Eva’s phone,’ he said. ‘How may I direct your call?’

      His friends cackled loudly, Eva found herself smothering her own laughter.

      ‘English?’ Odney suggested to the caller, who clearly didn’t speak Spanish. ‘I speak little. You want Eva?’

      Eva held her hand out and fixed him with a stare.

      Glee alight on his face, Odney gave her the phone back. ‘Your game didn’t save,’ he said smugly to more cackles of laughter.

      Merriment in her voice—how she adored the camp’s children, toddlers and teenagers alike—Eva finally spoke to her caller. ‘Hello?’

      ‘Eva? Is that you?’

      All the jollity of the moment dived out of her.

      ‘Yes. Who is this?’

      She knew who it was. The deep, rich tones and heavy accent of Daniele Pellegrini were unmistakable.

      ‘It’s Daniele Pellegrini. I need to see you.’

      ‘Speak to my secretary and arrange an appointment.’ She didn’t have a secretary and he knew it.

      ‘It’s important.’

      ‘I don’t care. I don’t want to see you.’

      ‘You will when you know why I need to see you.’

      ‘No, I won’t. You’re a—’

      ‘A man with a proposal that will benefit your refugee camp,’ he cut in.

      ‘What do you mean?’ she asked suspiciously.

      ‘Meet me and find out for yourself. I promise it will be worth your and your camp’s while.’

      ‘My next weekend off is—’

      ‘I’m on my way to Aguadilla. I’ll have you brought to me.’

      ‘When?’

      ‘Tonight. I’ll have someone with you in two hours.’

      And then he hung up.

       CHAPTER TWO

      EVA’S HEART SANK at the sight of the plush hotel at the end of the long driveway Daniele’s driver was taking her down. It was the same hotel Daniele had tricked her into dining with him in at on their ‘date’. She supposed anywhere else would be beneath him. The Eden Hotel was the most luxurious hotel in Aguadilla and catered to the filthy rich. She was wearing her only pair of clean jeans and a black shirt she’d been unable to iron thanks to a power cut at the camp. She couldn’t justify using the power that came from the emergency generators to iron clothing when it was needed to feed thousands of people.

      When Daniele had driven her—he’d actually deigned to get behind the wheel himself then—into the hotel’s grounds the first time her hackles had immediately risen. She’d turned sharply to him. ‘You said this was an informal discussion about the hospital.’ She’d thought they would dine in one of the numerous beachside restaurants Aguadilla was famed for that served cheap, excellent food, upbeat music and had an atmosphere where anyone and everyone was welcomed.

      ‘And so it is,’ he’d replied smoothly, which had only served to raise her hackles further. They’d walked past guests dressed to the nines in their finest, most expensive wear. She’d been as out of place as a lemming in a pigpen.

      Dining in the restaurant had been a humiliating experience the first time around but this time she at least had that experience to fall back on, and it served to steel her spine as she walked into the hotel’s atrium with her head held high. She wouldn’t allow herself to feel inferior even if she did look like a ragamuffin, despite her sixty-second shower.

      A hotel employee headed straight for her. At close sight she saw the title of ‘General Manager’ under his name on the gold pin worn on his lapel.

      ‘Ms Bergen?’ he enquired politely, too well trained to even wrinkle his nose at her.

      She nodded. She guessed she’d been easy to describe. Just look for the scarlet-haired woman who doesn’t fit in.

      ‘Come with me, please.’

      Like a docile sheep, she followed him past an enormous waterfall, past the restaurant she’d dined in a month ago, past boutiques and further restaurants and into an elevator that came complete with its own bellboy. It was only when the manager pressed the button for the top