Bride for Hire

Seth’s brows drew together at her facetiousness. ‘Naturally, Astra will be obtaining a divorce, but we’re still negotiating a pre-nuptial contract and for the moment we have to be extremely careful that our names aren’t linked at all. That’s where Dee came in. I need to be seen around with someone else to divert attention from my relationship with Astra. For the time being, I’ll only appear to meet her in large parties while the press think I’m involved with someone quite different—someone who’s prepared to act the part of a besotted girlfriend.

‘A friend of mine met Dee when he was over here last year and, when I mentioned the matter to him, he said she’d be ideal. I gather that she’s not much of an actress but she’s apparently stunning enough to be a likely girlfriend and, quite apart from being discreet, has the other undoubted advantage of being prepared to do anything for money.’

Seth paused and looked across at Daisy, who was listening with her wide, dark eyes and clear face. ‘Are you the kind of girl who’d be prepared to do anything for money, Daisy Deare?’

She looked wary. ‘Almost anything,’ she said and, to her consternation, the unsettling amusement chased across his face again, warming his eyes, lightening the fierce lines of his face and lifting the corners of his mouth in a way that made Daisy wonder desperately what he would look like if he really smiled. Astra would know.

‘Very wise,’ he said. ‘You’re obviously the cautious type. No doubt you appreciate now why you wouldn’t be an adequate substitute for the real Dee Pearce?’

Daisy saw her chance of finding Tom in the Caribbean slipping away from her. ‘I don’t see why,’ she said stubbornly. ‘It seems to me that all you want is someone to hang on your arm at a few parties. I could do that. If you’re going to marry Astra Bentingger it’s not as if you would want...you know...’

‘Sex?’ Seth was clearly not a man to waste time on euphemisms. ‘No, if I’d wanted a call-girl I could get one easily enough, but I’m not reduced to buying women yet.’

‘What’s the pre-nuptial contract about, then?’ asked Daisy tartly, irritated by his arrogance.

For a moment she wondered if she had gone too far. Seth’s eyes bored into hers and his mouth tightened ominously but, to her relief, he decided to let her unwise remark pass. ‘What I want is a girl who can put on a convincing performance,’ he said in a gritty voice. ‘I want a girl who can act as if she’s in love with me without getting prudish or involved in messy emotions. A girl who will take the money and disappear discreetly as soon as Astra’s divorce comes through in a couple of months. A girl who looks like the kind of girl I might fall in love with...and I wouldn’t have said that you’d fit into any of those categories.’

Was he being deliberately insulting or was he just naturally rude? ‘I’m only interested in the money,’ said Daisy with a frosty look. ‘I can assure you that I’m not in the least likely to fall in love with you myself, if that’s what you were worrying about.’

‘Why not? If it’s money you’re interested in I ought to be just your type.’

Really, the arrogance of the man was unbelievable! ‘I’ve already got a boyfriend,’ she said coldly, mentally crossing her fingers and thinking of the ever-hopeful Robert. ‘He’s much more my type than you are!’

Seth’s steel eyes had sharpened. ‘What does that mean?’

‘It means he’s kind and considerate and not so puffed up with his own importance that he thinks every girl he meets is going to fall in love with him!’ The words were out before Daisy could stop herself. Aghast, she cursed her quick temper but after one frozen moment, to her astonishment and intense relief, Seth threw back his head and laughed.

Daisy’s bones felt suddenly weak and she was glad that she was sitting down. Relief, she told herself firmly. Nothing whatsoever to do with the effect of his laugh or the way his cheeks creased when he smiled. Nothing to do with the whiteness of his teeth or the extraordinary way he had changed into someone younger, warmer and more approachable—someone disastrously attractive.

‘You’ve got a nerve, I’ll give you that,’ said Seth, speculation replacing the lingering amusement in his eyes. He got abruptly to his feet. ‘Stand up,’ he ordered.

If anything, Daisy was grateful to see the return of the old arrogance. It helped to remind her that Seth Carrington was not a good man to start finding attractive. Taking a firm hold on herself, she tilted her chin in unconscious hauteur.

He sighed. ‘Stand up, please.’

Daisy stood, relieved to find that her knees would hold her after all. Eyes narrowed, Seth walked round her as if she were a car he was considering buying. At any moment she expected him to ask her mileage or demand to see under her bonnet, and she couldn’t help stiffening under his critical inspection.

‘Maybe you’ve got some potential after all,’ he admitted grudgingly. ‘Properly dressed, we might be able to make something of you. Different from my usual style, of course, but that might be no bad thing.’ He came to a halt in front of her, studying her fine-boned faced with a frown. ‘Why are you so keen to do this?’ he asked brusquely.

Daisy considered telling him the truth, but she didn’t think that Seth Carrington would want to get involved in her family problems. He was the kind of man who only understood one thing. ‘I need the money,’ she said badly. It was true, anyway. She certainly couldn’t afford to get to the Caribbean any other way.

‘Hmm.’ Seth began his unnerving prowl once more. He even moved like a big cat, with that easy but somehow deliberate tread and the sense of a coiled strength which was liable to explode into action at any moment. ‘What about this boyfriend of yours? What’s he going to think when he sees pictures of you out with me?’

‘I’ll explain everything to him, of course. Naturally, once he knows that there’s no question of us sleeping together he’ll understand.’ Privately Daisy thought that Robert would be appalled at the very idea but, in spite of his years of dogged devotion, she had never given him any reason to think that she thought of him as anything other than an old friend.

‘Will he?’ Seth’s expression was saturnine. ‘I wouldn’t let a girl of mine go out with another man, no matter what she told me.’

‘Given that your girl is currently married to another man, I hardly think that puts you in a position to criticise Robert,’ flashed Daisy, and Seth’s eyes narrowed dangerously once more.

‘If you want this job you’re going to have to learn to hold that tongue of yours,’ he said softly. ‘Do you want it?’

Daisy decided that she had said quite enough. She nodded.

‘If it wasn’t for the fact that I haven’t the time to start chasing over London for someone more suitable I’d be tempted to tell you what you and your paragon of a boyfriend could do together,’ he went on in the same menacingly quiet voice. ‘Unfortunately your need and mine seem to coincide, so it looks as if I’m going to have to make the best of a bad job.’ He scowled at the thought and sat on the arm of the sofa. ‘Are you sure you can act?’

She was going to get away with it! He was going to take her to the Caribbean after all! Giddy relief lit up Daisy’s face. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said breezily.

Seth didn’t appear entirely convinced. ‘Well, let’s have an audition, shall we?’

‘An audition?’ Daisy’s grin faltered. ‘What sort of audition?’

‘You haven’t been giving a very good impression of a girl in love so far, have you?’ he pointed out caustically. ‘I want to know if you can convince other people that you’ve only got eyes for me.’

‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked warily.

He shrugged. ‘Pretend there’s someone else in the room. How would you show that you were in love with me?’

‘I probably wouldn’t if there was someone else in the room!’

‘You’re going to have to do better than that, Daisy,’ he snorted. ‘I’m not going to pay you to stand around being all English and repressed. Pretend that you don’t know anyone else is watching if that makes it any easier!’

‘Oh, all right!’ Grumbling, Daisy walked over to where he was still sitting on the arm of the sofa. It was easier without him towering over her, but when she got close to him her nerve failed her. She stopped. Seth folded his arms and looked blandly back at her.

‘Well?’

She was going to have to do something. Daisy edged a little closer and reached out a hand to touch his face. His skin was warm and brown, slightly rough, and her fingers tingled so much at the feel of it that she withdrew her hand sharply.

‘Is that it?’ Seth’s acid question jerked her back to herself and she was conscious of a spurt of anger. He was making this deliberately difficult so that she would give up the whole idea! Well, she wasn’t gong to! She was going to go out to the Caribbean and she was going to find Tom, and if it meant kissing Seth Carrington then that’s what she would do!

With an abrupt movement, Daisy placed herself firmly between his knees and put her hands on Seth’s shoulders. She could feel the strength of his muscles and the warmth of his skin through the fine cotton of his shirt. Propped against the sofa arm as he was, his head was almost on a level with hers. For a long moment blue eyes looked into inscrutable grey and then, before her courage failed her again, she leant slowly forward and touched her lips to the pulse that beat at the angle of his jaw and throat.

CHAPTER TWO

DAISY’S lips were soft against the firmness of Seth’s jaw and she could smell the clean, masculine scent of his skin with its faintly expensive tang of aftershave. Without intending to, Daisy found her mouth lingering against him. There was something irresistibly solid about him—something magnetising, something tantalising—something that made her drift her lips in feather-light kisses below his ear.

Seth’s arms were still folded in front of him and he stayed utterly still beneath her touch, his very lack of response a provocation. Piqued, Daisy began to press slow, enticing kisses along his jaw instead. She had forgotten her intention to withdraw after that first token touch to his throat. She had forgotten that she hardly knew this man; forgotten that what she did know she didn’t like; forgotten everything but the feel of his skin like tempered steel beneath her lips and her determination to make him acknowledge the simmering awareness in her kisses.

Slowly, slowly, she worked her way along his jaw, but it wasn’t until she reached the tantalising corner of his mouth that she felt his lips begin to curl upwards in an equally slow smile. ‘Go on,’ he said, but the steadiness in his voice made Daisy pause. She made as if to withdraw but he had unfolded his arms at last and his hands were at her waist, drawing her back against him, and suddenly it seemed the most natural thing in the world to melt into him and feel his lips part beneath hers.

They fitted against each other perfectly. Somehow she had expected Seth’s mouth to feel as cold and calculating as it looked, but it wasn’t. It was warm, warmer than Daisy would have believed possible as they kissed and then kissed again. A gathering excitement looped around them, tightening its coils around them until the only thing to do was to relax into it and slide her arms from his shoulders around his neck to stop herself being swept away altogether.

She was bewitched, intoxicated by the sweet persuasion of his lips and the unyielding hardness of his body as he held her against him, and when his hands slid beneath her T-shirt to spread possessively over her skin Daisy’s only response was to murmur low in her throat and arch her back into his touch. His fingers were searing, making her gasp as they explored her slenderness and drifted insistently upwards to curve around her breast.

It was that sharp intake of breath at the jolt of electric excitement that broke the kiss. Daisy found herself staring down into unreadable grey eyes, her own dazed and very blue, and then Seth slid his hands back to her waist to put her from him with something which might have been reluctance.

‘That was very good, Daisy Deare,’ he said, his breathing still slightly ragged. ‘That was really very good indeed. It seems that you can act, after all.’

Daisy was so shaken that she could hardly stand. Her legs felt insubstantial, as if she were held up by no more than the frantic flutter of a thousand butterfly wings. She couldn’t believe what she had done. Had that really been she, arching beneath the touch of a perfect stranger; sinking into his kiss; abandoning herself to the shivery thrill of his lips and his hands? Appalled at herself, she swallowed hard and fought to steady her own voice.