The Hired Husband. Kate Walker

round inside Sienna’s head as she lingered over a glass of wine on the terrace of the villa, enjoying the cool of the evening after the warmth of the day. Above her head, swallows swooped through the air in pursuit of midges, the swish of their wings the only sound in the silence that surrounded her.

      ‘We do what everyone else does, sweetheart. We go on honeymoon.’

      She had been frankly stunned by her own reaction to Keir’s declaration. It had been the last thing she had expected. The nature of their arrangement was so businesslike and unemotional that she had never even dreamed there would be any place in it for of the conventional pleasures that were supposed to follow immediately after the celebration of a wedding.

      So the realisation that they were actually to have a honeymoon had left her quite breathless and surprisingly excited. Somehow the thought of such a holiday had made her feel like a bride.

      A real bride, she corrected when hard common sense had reminded her that she was actually Keir’s bride, even if it was only a pretence at a love match.

      ‘On honeymoon!’ she exclaimed, looking up into Keir’s dark face in wide-eyed surprise. ‘But where…? What…?’

      A strong finger laid across her lips silenced her effectively.

      ‘That’s my secret,’ Keir told her with a grin. ‘Isn’t that what the groom’s supposed to do? Organise everything and keep the destination a mystery until the last minute?’

      It was more usual that the bride and groom chose the honeymoon together, poring over brochures and travel articles before deciding on some place they both wanted to visit, Sienna reflected, something of the euphoria that had lifted her spirits fading slightly. Of course there would be nothing like that for herself and Keir.

      Discretion warned her that it would be best to make no comment about that. It would only spoil the new warmth that had developed between them. A warmth she very much needed. The last remnants of her earlier panic still lingered in her thoughts, clinging like sticky cobwebs to the corners of her mind, and she wanted desperately to drive them away.

      ‘I didn’t think we were having a honeymoon. If I’m honest, it never even crossed my mind.’

      ‘A proper wedding, I said,’ Keir reminded her. ‘One with all the trimmings.’

      ‘Yes, but this… I mean, can you afford it?’

      Big mistake! Bad mistake. It was obvious that he didn’t like what she’d said at all. The curve to his lips vanished at once, his face hardening ominously. The dark brown eyes took on a dangerous glint that warned her she had over-stepped some invisible but firmly defined line that he had drawn around his private affairs.

      Swinging away from her, he moved to stare broodingly out of the window into the spectacular garden beyond.

      ‘I may have been forced to into needing a temporary injection of funds in order to meet Lucille’s unreasonable demands, but I am still very far from penniless,’ he snapped out, so sharply that Sienna found herself taking an involuntary step backwards, away from him. ‘And even if I am only a temporary husband, hired for the period of our contract, I trust I know what my duties are—’

      ‘Keir, don’t! I didn’t mean that the way it sounded!’

      ‘Why not?’ he flung over his shoulder at her. ‘We both know you wouldn’t have proposed marriage to me if you hadn’t been desperate.’

      ‘And you wouldn’t have accepted if it hadn’t suited your business plans!’

      ‘Exactly.’

      ‘You make it sound so sordid—so cold-blooded!’

      With an abrupt, savage laugh Keir turned back to face her again, hands pushed deep into his trouser pockets, one black brow raised in taunting mockery.

      ‘That’s what business deals are, my lovely,’ he told her harshly. ‘Rational, hard-headed, and as cold-blooded as possible.’

      If only that were really true, he reflected bitterly. If only he could have made this decision as coolly and unemotionally as he handled every other problem that he came up against in his working life.

      But in this situation his natural control had totally deserted him. And the reasons for that were twofold. Both female. When it came to dealing with either Lucille or the woman now standing before him, the woman he had just made his wife, it seemed that common sense or rational thought went straight out of the window, leaving him uncharacteristically unsure of which way to turn.

      As a result he had acted on the sort of impulse that he would have thought was totally alien to him, deciding to act before thinking things through to their logical conclusion. Only time would tell whether that decision would prove to be the best or the worst of his life.

      ‘Why do you look so shocked?’ he went on, seeing her big sea-coloured eyes darken in distress. ‘You know I’m only speaking the truth. Those are the facts, so why should it worry you to hear them put into words?’

      ‘I…’ Sienna could only shake her head, unable to find an answer.

      She couldn’t deny the truth of what he had said. But it still disturbed her to have it stated so baldly, in the flat, emotionless voice Keir had used to deliver them.

      ‘Conscience problems, sweetheart?’ he questioned softly. ‘Does it trouble you to discover that you might be every bit as cold-blooded and demanding as I am after all? That when you see something you really want you go for it with all the determination and ruthlessness you can muster up? And that in pursuit of your dream you can drive a harder bargain than anyone?’

      His cynical words caught Sienna her on the raw, taking her breath away and making her want to lash out unthinkingly.

      ‘If that was the case then you wouldn’t be here right now!’ she flashed at him. ‘Believe me, if I could have what I really want, you wouldn’t be the man with a wedding ring on his finger! And if I was to achieve a dream, then I would have married—’

      ‘I know. Your precious Dean. The man whose shoes I couldn’t possibly fill.’

      The temperature in the small room suddenly seemed to have plummeted dramatically, making Sienna shiver convulsively in spite of the late August sun streaming in through the windows. She felt as if Keir’s snarled words had been formed in freezing blocks of ice that had fallen brutally onto her delicate skin, chilling her where they landed.