A Contract, A Wedding, A Wife?

‘Okay. Fine,’ he said resignedly when he saw a glint of tears in her eyes. ‘You win the “complicated” competition.’ He made a placating gesture. ‘But only just—believe me. My life isn’t exactly easy right now either.’

‘Look, is there some sort of arrangement we could come to here?’ she asked desperately, blinking back her tears and looking a little embarrassed about losing her cool. ‘Any sort of deal we could make which would give me a bit more time to try and turn the fortunes of the café around and make the money we need to afford the rent hike? I can’t lose the place. Not after all the love and hard graft my father put into it. It’s all we have left of him now.’ Despite her efforts, a single tear ran down her cheek.

He looked hurriedly away, frowning down at his desk. ‘I’ve already held back on rolling out the new rent and if I do it for you I’ll have to—’

‘Please. Have a heart,’ she broke in hoarsely, clearly aware she was losing the battle but seemingly not prepared to accept it. ‘I’ll do anything. I’ll come and work here for you when I’m not working at the café. I can type and make coffee, file things. Documents. Tidy up! I’ll do whatever it takes to keep our café running.’

The ring of hope in her voice clawed at his chest. He had to give her credit, she was certainly determined.

Or maybe just desperate.

His heart gave a hard thump. He knew what desperate felt like and he wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

‘Whatever it takes?’ he asked slowly, meeting her eyes again now. He wasn’t sure where he was going with this, but he had the strangest feeling there could be a solution here that he hadn’t quite hit upon yet.

‘Anything. Just name it,’ she said, her eyes wide with anticipation.

He sighed and shook his head. ‘The thing is, I have a PA already. There wouldn’t be anything for you to do here at the office.’

‘At your house, then? I’m a great cleaner. Fast and totally reliable.’

‘Got a whole team of those.’

‘Then what do you need? There has to be something.’

And there it was.

The idea.

But he couldn’t suggest that.

Could he?

No.

He shouldn’t.

‘Please,’ she whispered in a broken voice, tears brimming in her eyes again.

‘What I need most right now is a wife,’ he said roughly, losing the grip on his restraint as the idea pushed harder at his brain and compassion loosened his tongue. ‘At least, I need to find a woman that’s prepared to get married in the next few weeks and stay married to me for a year.’ Catching the expression of shock on her face, he silently cursed himself for letting that slip out.

She must think he was a total loony.

‘Are you serious?’ she asked in a faltering voice.

He sighed, feeling tiredness wash through him. ‘Unfortunately, I am.’

‘Why do you need a wife so fast?’

‘Like I said, it’s complicated.’

She surprised him by perching on the edge of his desk and fixing him with an intent stare. ‘Well, you listened to my problems; let me hear yours.’

His pulse stuttered. ‘I don’t think it’s appropriate—’

She held up her hands in a halting motion. ‘Just tell me. Perhaps I can help.’

He frowned at her, taken aback by her unexpected forcefulness. ‘I very much doubt it.’

‘Look, I won’t say anything to anyone if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m good with secrets. Maybe it would help to say it all out loud. That’s what my dad used to do. He used me as a sounding board and often I didn’t need to say a word: he already had the answer; he was just having trouble accessing it.’

He took a moment to study her, trying to judge whether he could trust her not to blab to all and sundry once she’d left his office. The last thing he needed right now was for this to be circulated around social media or the Press. He was already taking enough risks talking to the women he’d approached so far and it could only be a matter of time before his luck ran out.

‘Go on. What harm can it do?’ she murmured, giving him a reassuring smile. There was something about her that encouraged confidences, he realised, and for some reason he felt, deep down, that he could trust her.

He sighed, deciding that he may as well tell her the whole sorry tale since she knew most of it already anyway. Plus, he didn’t really have anything more to lose at this point. And who knew, perhaps she could help in some way?

Stranger things had happened.

Getting up from his chair, he paced over to the window and stared out at the pleasure boats transporting tourists up and down the wide river. ‘My late great-aunt owned the house I live in at the moment.’ He swallowed past the dryness in his throat. ‘It’s the place I’ve considered to be my home for my entire life. It was meant to go to my father next, but he passed away a few years ago, so I’m next in line to inherit it,’ he said, glancing back to check she was listening.

She was. She gazed back at him with an open, interested expression, her hands folded neatly in her lap.

‘It’s been in my family since 1875, ever since it was built for my great-great-grandfather,’ he continued, turning back to look at the river again. ‘It’s the house where I spent all my holidays from boarding school and the home I intend to live in until I die.’ He paused for a moment, feeling his throat tighten as he remembered how he used to say it was the place where he and Harriet would always live, before—well, before his whole life was turned upside down.

Shaking off the tension this memory produced, he moved away from the window and sat back down on his chair.

‘In order to inherit the place, though, a covenant in the will states I have to be married within the next month.’ He tried not to grimace as he said it.

She nodded slowly. ‘Okay.’ Frowning now as if a little puzzled, she said, ‘Could I just ask—why the rush? Haven’t you known about this for a while?’

‘No. Apparently my great-aunt wrote it into her will a couple of years ago, but she was in a coma for eighteen months after suffering a massive stroke. I only found out about it three months ago when she passed away.’

He paused and swallowed, shaking his head as a wave of sadness at losing the woman he thought of as more of a mother figure than a great-aunt flooded through him. ‘I only inherit it if I’m married by my thirtieth birthday and remain married for at least a year, otherwise it gets passed on to my cousin, who is already married,’ he grimaced, ‘and the most immoral, wasteful, tasteless man I’ve ever met. He’d sell the place to the highest bidder in the blink of an eye.’

There was a heavy pause where he watched her eyes widen and her mouth twitch at the corner.

‘And before you ask, no, he wouldn’t sell it to me. We don’t exactly get on.’

‘I kind of gathered that from your description of him,’ she said with a smile.

He tried to smile back but he couldn’t quite muster the energy needed. Mirth was a hard response to summon when you were about to lose the only place in the world that really meant something to you. The place that held all your childhood memories and felt like an integral part of your history.

Your home.

He’d feel baseless without it, adrift, disenfranchised.

‘Well,’ she said, her eyes alive with what looked suspiciously like amusement, ‘that’s quite a conundrum you have there. It’s like something from a soap opera.’ Her mouth twitched. ‘And not a very good one.’