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‘Is that true? Plenty of brides all over the world only meet their husband on their wedding days.’
‘Yes. If they’re having an arranged marriage.’ She glowered at him.
‘But we are.’ He smiled a smile that made her wish that his chair would open up and swallow him whole. ‘And I’m arranging it.’
Daisy felt her skin grow warm; her head was spinning. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You’re not arranging anything,’ she snapped. ‘Look, you can’t want to marry me, so why are you pretending you do?’ She stared at him doubtfully. ‘Is it your idea of a joke? Some way to punish me for...?’
Looking up at him, she felt her words falter in her mouth. For an endless moment he studied her in silence and then, leaning forward, he fixed his eyes on hers with an intentness that seared her skin.
‘If I wanted to punish you, I’d think of something a lot more...diverting.’
Her stomach clenched, and a tingling excitement swept through her like fire through a forest as he smiled slowly.
‘For both of us.’
A hot shiver ran up her spine and she stared at him mutely, her body stilling even as chaos raged inside. Her heart was beating too fast and too loud, and a dark ache was swirling over her skin like a riptide. In an effort to break the spell of his gaze, she pressed her nails hard into the palms of her hands.
‘You can’t just tell someone you’re marrying them,’ she said carefully. ‘It doesn’t work like that.’
The tension in the room quivered, as though she had somehow pressed her foot onto an accelerator pedal, and her eyes flickered involuntarily across to where Rollo sat, examining her with detached curiosity.
‘It does if you want your brother to keep his job. And, more important, to stay out of prison.’
She was out of her seat and leaning across his desk before she had even realised she was moving, her whole body shaking with shock and anger.
‘You unspeakable pig!’ Her voice rose. ‘That’s blackmail—’
‘Yes, it is.’
He wasn’t even embarrassed! Furiously, she glanced around for something blunt and heavy.
‘Why are you getting so bent out of shape about this?’ He stared at her calmly.
‘Why? Why? Maybe because it’s weird and wrong.’ Heat was blistering her skin. She couldn’t keep the shake out of her voice. ‘You’re cynically exploiting this situation for your own ends.’
He frowned. ‘You’re being melodramatic. You and I marrying will be mutually beneficial. As to the morality of blackmailing a thief and a liar, I’m not sure we have time to tackle that right now, so why don’t you just calm down and sit down?’
He lifted his arms behind his head and stretched out his shoulders.
‘Sit down,’ he said again, and this time there was no mistaking the authority in his voice. ‘I didn’t explain myself properly. I need to marry you, but in essence you’ll just be playing the part of my wife.’
She felt a rush of hope. ‘You mean like in an advert or something? For your business?’ He stared at her in silence.
‘No. Not like an advert. We’re going to have to marry legally.’
Daisy searched his face, looking for answers, for a way to escape the certainty in his voice. ‘Why can’t we just pretend?’
He shook his head slowly. ‘That won’t work. It can’t just loo
k like we’re married. It has to be legal.’
‘But no one needs a wife that badly,’ she said almost viciously. ‘Not at two o’clock in the morning.’
He shrugged. ‘I do.’
‘But why?’
‘That doesn’t concern you.’ The certainty in his voice had hardened to granite.
