Bridegrooms Required: One Bridegroom Required / One Wedding Required / One Husband Required. Sharon Kendrick

piled with apple-wood logs, which glowed like amber, with two squashy-looking chairs on either side.

      She sat down next to the fire and shook her damp hair out, watching while he began to boil up pasta and heat through a sauce.

      ‘Like a beer?’ he asked.

      ‘Love one.’

      He opened two bottles and handed her one, and she sipped it while he strained the pasta and stirred the sauce and pushed a bowl full of freshly grated Parmesan into the centre of the table.

      ‘You look like a man who knows his way round a kitchen,’ she observed slowly.

      He shrugged. ‘I’m used to fending for myself.’

      ‘I thought people had lots of help in Africa?’

      His smile was arcane. ‘Some people do. I chose not to—just help with the cleaning, same as here. A woman named Margaret starts in the morning—I guess I’d better warn her that I have company.’ He gave the sauce a final stir. ‘I always think that, if you don’t cook for yourself, then you lose touch with reality.’ He looked up to where she sat, looking at him intently, and he thought that reality seemed a long way away at this precise moment.

      Soon he had heaped two plates with pasta and sauce and they ate at the table in front of the fire.

      Forcing himself to eat, Luke struggled to free himself from his rather obsessive study of the way the firelight warmed her skin tones into soft apricot and cream, casting around for something to say. Something which might make him forget that she was a very beautiful woman. ‘So what were you doing before you came to Woodhampton?’

      She shot him a half-amused glance. ‘Just checking that you haven’t given refuge to some gun-toting maniac?’

      ‘We could always talk about the weather, if you prefer,’ he told her deliberately. ‘But we have a whole evening to get through.’

      So they did. Holly took a hasty sip of her beer. It was difficult to concentrate when those amazing blue eyes were fixed on her with such interest. ‘After school I went to art school, where I studied textile and design.’

      ‘And were you a model student?’ he mocked.

      Holly frowned. ‘Actually, I was, now you come to mention it. And I get a little fed up with people thinking that, just because a person is creative, they’re automatically a lazy slob—’

      ‘I doubt whether a lazy slob would go to the trouble of starting up their own business,’ he put in drily.

      ‘No, they wouldn’t.’ Feeling slightly mollified, Holly put her beer bottle back down on the table. ‘I got quite a good degree—’

      ‘And are you being modest now?’

      Her eyes threw him a challenge. ‘Mmm! I’m trying—’

      ‘Very trying,’ he agreed, deadpan.

      ‘After I left college I went to work for the same fashion house which had employed my mother, but I hated it.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Because I felt exactly like an employee, with little control over the entire design process—not really. I felt like I was working in a factory, and I didn’t want to be. I wanted to feel creatively free. So I entered the competition.’ A dreamy smile came over her face as she remembered. ‘And won.’

      ‘Tell me about it,’ he said, aware that his voice was unusually indulgent—but that kind of sweet enthusiasm would have melted the hardest heart.

      Holly finished a mouthful of tagliatelle and looked into his eyes. Such gorgeous eyes. ‘It was organised by one of the glossy bridal magazines to celebrate twenty-five years in publishing.’ She met his blank stare ‘You know the kind of thing.’

      ‘Not really,’ he demurred, and gave a sardonic shake of his golden-brown head. ‘Don’t forget I’ve been living in the wilds all these years—and bridal magazines are pretty thin on the ground!’

      Holly got a sudden and disturbingly attractive image of Luke Goodwin wearing a morning suit. ‘The idea was to create a wedding dress for the new century—’

      ‘So, let me guess—you did something wild and untraditional?’

      She shook her head slowly. ‘No, I didn’t, actually. Brides usually don’t want to be too wild and wacky. Most conform. In fact, I based the dress on an idea that my mother had.’ She saw his puzzled look. ‘She was a dress designer, too,’ she explained. ‘She created this most wonderful wedding dress when I was little—I’ve seen pictures of it.’

      ‘But if yours is almost the same as hers, isn’t that called copying—even stealing?’

      She shook her head. ‘There’s no such thing as originality in fashion—you must know that. What goes around comes around. My design was very similar to my mother’s but it wasn’t exactly the same. Unfortunately, Mum’s dress was sold, and we never saw it again.’

      Luke frowned. ‘Why would you expect to?’

      ‘Because she designed it for a very famous fashion house, and those types of garments don’t usually disappear without trace. They’re usually worth a lot of money.’

      ‘But this one did?’

      Holly nodded. ‘Someone bought it in a sale. My mother was disappointed it was reduced in price, but not surprised—’ Her face lit up with enthusiasm. ‘It was a very unusual design, and only an exceptionally thin woman could have worn it. And that was that. Funnily enough, an older Irish woman who cleaned in the store where it was sold—she bought it. After that it disappeared into thin air.’

      Luke was more interested in the things she didn’t say than in the things she did. ‘And where’s your mother now?’

      ‘Well, it’s November, so she’s probably in the Caribbean,’ replied Holly flippantly. ‘Either that, or on a cruise ship somewhere.’

      The bitterness in her tone didn’t escape him. ‘And why isn’t she here—helping her daughter get settled into her brand-new business venture?’

      ‘Because her latest disgusting rich old husband probably won’t let her,’ grimaced Holly.

      ‘Oh, it’s like that, is it?’ he queried softly.

      She threw him a look, a nonchalant expression which had become second nature to her. At school she had quickly learnt that if you learned to mock yourself, then no one else would bother. ‘Doesn’t everyone have a mother who uses a man as a meal ticket?’

      ‘You must hate it,’ he observed slowly.

      Holly shrugged. ‘I’m used to it—she’s used men all her life. But I’m not complaining—not really. Their money paid for my education, saw me through art school.’

      ‘And wasn’t there a father on the scene?’

      ‘No, I never knew my father—’ Holly met his curious stare with a proud uptilt to her chin, feeling oddly compelled to answer his questions. Maybe it was something to do with the penetrating clarity of his blue eyes. Or maybe it was just because he actually looked as though he cared.

      She ran a finger down the cold beer bottle. ‘And no, I’m afraid that it’s nothing heroic like an early death—I mean it literally. My mother didn’t know him either. According to her, he could have been one of two people and she didn’t care for either of them—so she never bothered to tell either of them that she was pregnant.’

      Luke expelled a slow breath of air ‘Hell,’ he said quietly, realising that he didn’t have the monopoly on unconventional childhoods.

      ‘I suppose I must be grateful that she saw fit to give birth to me.’ Her gaze was unblinking ‘Have I shocked you?’

      ‘A little,’ he admitted. ‘But that was part of your intention,