Gwen flinched as the truth in his words cut her to her core. Yes, Steve had abandoned her, but worse, Declan was right. With Steve she’d thought she could be safe. After all, wasn’t that what had attracted her to him in the first place? No crazy emotions living on the surface of their life. No wild declarations of burning passion. He’d been a biddable man. Someone she could rely on, or so she’d thought. A man who would be a reliable father and a supportive partner. A man who sounds about as exciting as a well-made foundation garment, a little voice taunted from the back of her mind.
Gwen gathered what was left of her dignity. “Look, I’ll tell Libby the truth when everyone is gone. She’ll help me call around, cancel the wedding. It was only going to be small. It won’t take long.”
A vise clamped around her chest. What the heck was she going to do then? Thanks to Steve, she didn’t even have enough left in her account to buy groceries—let alone meet the demands of the loan now secured against the house that had been part of her family for generations. A swell of nausea rocked her. She was going to lose her home—her one bastion of security since the day her mother had shucked her off like last year’s fashion.
Declan interrupted her misery. “So don’t cancel.”
Gwen reached deep to draw the courage she needed to answer him. “Give me one good reason why I should want to pretend to be engaged to you.”
“There’s no pretend about it. We will get married. Under New Zealand law we have just enough time to make your original wedding date, too.”
“Did you slip and bang your head or something?” Gwen leaned back slightly, deliberately ignoring the contact of her hips against his lower body, and looked hard in his eyes. “There’s no way I’m marrying you.”
“Yes, you are. Look, it’s certainly not my idea of the ideal solution, either, but right now it’s the only way you’re going to get your money back. As your husband, I can make sure of that.”
Gwen was lost for words. Even though the reality of Steve’s defection had only just begun to sink in, some glimmer of hope still clung to the thought that she’d get the money back from him, somehow.
“The way I see it,” Declan continued, “we both stand to benefit from a wedding.”
“No—”
“Hear me out. Once Crenshaw’s found, I will find a way to get the money back, you can count on it. But in the meantime his actions have put me in a very difficult position. You’ve heard about the Sellers tender?”
Gwen nodded. She’d more than heard about it. She’d been eagerly awaiting the outcome of the sale tender for the Art Deco hotel in the hope it would be redeveloped in keeping with its distinctive history. Then she could put in a proposal of her own to subcontract to the successful company. With her expertise in the restoration of old furnishings, and her skill in sourcing the materials required to redecorate to suit the period of the properties she’d worked on, she was in high demand. But a contract like the Sellers Hotel—that would launch her into an entirely new sphere altogether.
“I’ve put a bid together to purchase the property, but no thanks to Steve’s creative accounting I’ll have to withdraw from the tender unless I have the funds to continue the development—unless I can get my hands on a hefty sum of money. Now, I have that money at my disposal, but the only way I can access it is to marry. And that’s where you come in.” He dipped his head closer to hers, his dark eyes boring into her own. For all intents and purposes, to the guests whose buzz of conversation filtered in muffled snatches through the glass door to the balcony, they looked like a couple in love. The length of his legs seared through the fabric of her skirt. The outline of his muscled thighs and the weight of his hips pressed against her. Logic demanded she pull back, loose herself from his grasp and denounce his crazy idea for the fraud it was. To get the wild beat of her heart back under control.
“You have to marry? That’s archaic,” Gwen protested.
“It’s the way it is. My mother was a traditionalist and wanted to see all her boys settled before accessing our trust funds.”
A trust fund he’d already have had access to if she hadn’t let Renata talk her into attempting that cliff face when it was way beyond Gwen’s experience. But she couldn’t let her guilt at Renata’s death drive her into making yet another mistake. “And how would this advantage me? All I can see is a win-win for you here. Getting married isn’t just something you do to access a trust fund, for goodness sakes! No, it’s too important. I can’t—I won’t do it.”
“I’ll repay the money Steve stole from you.”
Gwen pulled out of his arms and walked across the balcony until she could go no farther from him. Declan felt the loss of her form against his body as if she’d been carved from him. As much as he denied it, they fit well together. Too well. In the evening darkness he studied her face carefully, watching as emotions chased across its surface until an implacable calm replaced the confusion. “C’mon, Gwen. What do you say?”
“I don’t want to do this.”
“It’s gone beyond what we want to do, Crenshaw’s seen to that. We need to make a decision, Gwen. Tonight.”
“Why do we have to do all this? Why can’t you just take out a business loan?” Light from a streetlamp caressed her white-blond hair and silhouetted her slender shape against the darkness like a sculptor’s loving touch.
“Because I wouldn’t get the loan.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Cavaliere Developments is one of the most successful and fastest-growing companies in the industry. Even I know that.”
Declan clenched his fists at his sides, then released his fingers, one by one. He had to convince Gwen, and the only way out was the truth, no matter how much it hurt. “When Renata died I had to keep busy, keep moving, keep working. I didn’t have the necessary capital then to expand at the rate I wanted to for the company to gain a foothold in the marketplace, nor did I want to spend the time I needed on the business end of things. All I wanted was to be so dog tired by the end of each day that I couldn’t even think any more.” He rubbed a hand across his eyes. The pain of that time still as raw in his memory as the day he’d laid Renata’s broken body to rest. He drew in a ragged breath and pressed on. “The old man stepped in, offered to act as guarantor for me and help run things from the administration side, if I gave him a voting position on the board. It was only supposed to be for a limited time.”
“I don’t understand. Why would that stop your company from getting the contract?” Gwen’s question hung in the air, her confusion evident in her tone.
“Because he’s already made it clear he’ll veto any application for funds for a project this size. He likes to control people. He likes to think he can control me.”
“And if you have the trust fund?” she prompted.
“I can bankroll the whole project myself.” Please don’t let her say no.
“I see. I imagine there are a lot of jobs riding on this, too.”
“Yes, there are.”
Her shoulders sagged as if all the air had been drawn out of her.
“All right.” Her reply was a mere ripple of sound in the night air.
“You’ll do it?” Hope leaped in his chest.
“Yes, but only on certain conditions.”
“What sort of conditions?”
She paced the width of the balcony before coming to a halt in front of him again. “You contract me to work on the Sellers building for the duration of the refit.”
He could live with that. In fact he was more than happy with the agreement. She’d made her mark in domestic restorations but with her skill she could only benefit his operation. Despite how he felt about Gwen, he was enough of a businessman to recognise an advantage when he saw it.
“Done. We’ll sort out the nuts and bolts of your contract with Connor tomorrow and get this tied up legally. Don’t worry about him knowing, he can be trusted to keep our arrangement confidential. Anything else?”
“No sex.”
Declan arched one
eyebrow. “Do you mean with anybody else, or just with each other?”
“With anybody. I mean it,” she reiterated fiercely, wrapping her arms about her body like armour. “Absolutely no sex. I won’t be made a fool of. If this marriage is to look real, then you can’t see anyone else.”
Yeah, well, he could live with that, too. In fact, he was more than happy to live with that. The one time…no, it didn’t bear thinking about. It was enough that she had agreed to go along with this crazy scheme. “Fine by me. But we have to look like a married couple when we’re around other people, be comfortable together, you know—physically. Especially around the rest of my family. They might accept this sudden engagement, but they’ll suspect a sham if we don’t behave like a newly wed couple, and if my dad suspects a sham, I can kiss that trust fund goodbye.”
“Won’t they ask questions anyway?”
“Probably. But that’s my problem. I’ll handle it.” He sighed. “Anything else?”
“About the financial terms of the contract…”
Declan had had enough. “It’ll be worth your while—I promise.”
“It had better be.” Her eyes were opaque pools of emptiness. What was going on in that head of hers?
“It’s a deal, then?” He had to be certain she wasn’t going to back out of this.
“One more thing.”
He bit back an expletive. She had him between a rock and a hard place, and he hated it. Hated being beholden to her. “What is it?” Amazingly the words sounded civil.
“The length of our marriage—three months, tops.”
“Three months! That’s ridiculous. Twelve or my father will definitely smell a rat.”
“That’s far too long. Six, then.”
“Six months?” Declan considered it for a moment—that would work, just. He nodded sharply.
Gwen extended her hand to him and he took it, noting this was the first time she’d voluntarily reached out and touched him, tonight anyway. Laughter from inside penetrated the glass, reminding him they were in full view of the party going on inside. He turned her hand slightly, noting the tracery of blue veins beneath the silver-pale skin at her wrist. He bent forward and lifted her wrist to his lips, pressing them against satin skin where her pulse beat frantically, like a captured butterfly. She clearly wasn’t as unmoved as she tried to project.
“Just keeping up appearances,” he smiled grimly when she yanked her hand away as though his touch had burned her. “Oh, and Gwen?”
“What?”
“Thank you. You won’t regret it.”
“Regret it?” Gwen gave a sharp laugh as she turned to go inside. “I already do.”
Three
“Well, this certainly is an interesting turn of events.” Libby spoke from behind, her voice making Gwen jump. She needed to get a grip on these jitters. She was as skittish as a first time buyer at an auction.
“Don’t tease, Libby, it isn’t kind.”
“So, come on, how long has this been going on?” her friend drawled with a wink.
“Not long. It kind of took us both by surprise.” She clenched her hands at her sides, hoping Libby wouldn’t press her further. From the corner of her eye she saw Declan come back into the room—his presence effortlessly dominating the gathering.
Despite the way he’d treated her since Renata’s death, her gaze was continually drawn to him like metal filings to a magnet. The sensation of his lips still throbbed against her wrist. Unfortunately it was proving a great deal more difficult than she wanted to return her heartbeat to a regular rhythm. She couldn’t believe she’d agreed to go ahead with this. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the whole situation wouldn’t work. There was still too much that lay between them. Forget the frying pan. She was jumping straight into the fire.
Libby pursed her lips and let out a low whistle, “He’s welcome to take me by surprise any day of the week. No objections here, chickie!”
Gwen forced a laugh through her lips, although her face felt as if it would crack if she tried any harder. All at once the tension of the day became unbearable and exhaustion struck her in waves.
“You know, I would never have picked you for his type,” Libby continued.
Gwen felt an unexpected pang. Didn’t her friend think she was up to the job? “Really?” Her voice was glacial.
Remorse chased across Libby’s face as she realised how her words had sounded. “Oh, heck, Gwen. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it the way that came out. But you know he certainly hasn’t been short of female company in the past few years.”
“It’s okay.”
But deep inside, Libby’s words struck home. Gwen had been the antithesis of Renata—cool and controlled when her friend had been full of fire and unpredictable. Since that dreadful night, after Renata’s funeral, he’d made it clear he wanted her the hell out of his life. As time had gone by Declan had been surrounded by female admirers of all ages and marital persuasions. So why ask her when he must have any number of eager candidates to help him access his trust fund? Unless it was because he knew he’d never make the mistake of falling in love with her. Somehow, the realization only made her feel worse.
“Are you okay, Gwen? You look all done in.”
“It’s been a heck of a day. I’ll be fine after a good night’s sleep.” Gwen crossed her fingers in the wild hope that it might be so simple. “I think I’d better head off, thanks for tonight.”
“I’ll see you home.” The two women wheeled at the sound of Declan’s voice. Before she could object, they’d said their goodnights and the warm, firm pressure of his hand at the small of her back was herding her out the door and down the carpeted corridor to the elevator bank.
As soon as the elevator arrived Gwen stepped in, distancing herself from the steady warmth emanating from Declan’s body. In the aftermath of tonight it would have been so easy to simply lean back against his strength, but Gwen had learned her lesson, and learned it the hard way. She couldn’t rely on any man, especially Declan Knight.
“I have my car here, you know,” she said as she moved away from the console of push buttons, leaving him to depress the ground floor button. “I can see myself home.”
“We’ll collect it tomorrow. Besides, you’re my fiancée. People would wonder why we didn’t go home together, especially tonight.” His tone was mildly teasing, but did nothing to relax her.
The ride to the ground floor was mercifully brief. Gwen stepped into the apartment building foyer anxious to clear her lungs of the subtle, yet enticing, fragrance he wore. A scent that made her want to bury her face at the base of his throat and inhale, deeply. To stroke the hollow at the base of his neck with the tip of her tongue and see if he tasted as good as he smelled—as good as she remembered. Hold it right there! she admonished swiftly. Don’t let him invade your mind like that.
“So, where are you parked?” Her voice echoed, a brittle sound in the empty lobby.
“In the basement.”
“Then why have we stopped at the ground floor?” Gwen went to get back in the lift.
Declan hooked one arm across her shoulders and steered her to the front door. “I thought we’d both benefit from a walk along the beach.”
“It’s late,” she protested.
“Yeah, I know. And you need your beauty sleep. But you need to unwind more. C’mon, this’ll only take a few minutes. Think of it as training for when we meet up with the rest of my family.”
Smarting slightly from the beauty sleep remark, Gwen let him guide her across the road and through the grassy reserve on the other side. Once they reached the sandy width of beach she bent to slip off her shoes and suddenly wished she hadn’t. Declan loomed over her, no mean feat when she topped five ten herself.
She felt small. Feminine. Vulnerable.
Despite the activity on the sidewalk, they were alone on the beach—entirely too intimate for comfort. Gwen jogged lightly to the water’s edge, letting the iridescent foam lick over her toes and
wash up to her ankles, taking refuge in the sudden chill on her heated skin. The late summer night air was gentle, laden with the combination of scents from the ocean in front of her and the restaurants that lined the road parallel to the beach. A warm breeze caressed her hair and lifted the long strands to dance flirtatiously across her cheeks and against her lips.
“What makes you think we can make this work?” she asked, her voice carrying on the night breeze. She jumped as he replied from right behind her.
“We will. We have to.”
The grim determination in his voice was daunting. He was right. Somehow, despite the past, they had to make this work. But at what price? A small rogue wave threatened to soak them both. He effortlessly swung her away, out of its path. There was that feeling again. Feminine. Vulnerable.
The breath whooshed from her lungs in a soft ‘poof’ as her breasts pressed softly against his chest and, irrationally, she wished she could be closer. Her pulse jumped like water on a hot skillet as the flats of his palms stoked across and down her long spine and over her hips. Flames of heat licked about her body where he’d touched, defying every instinctive warning in her mind. Without realising it her body melted against the hardness of his, moulding to every plane as if it belonged there even though nothing could be further from the truth.
Declan’s hands whipped to her upper arms and he set her away from him, an indistinct oath barely emerging from his mouth.
“You okay?” His voice was a rumble from deep in his throat.
“I’m fine, thank you.” She was a little breathless and a warm tide of blood had rushed to her cheeks at the sensation of his unyielding body against her softer curves. Her body had moulded to his as if they’d never been apart, as if they’d never betrayed Renata’s memory—as if they, and not he and Renata, had belonged together. She turned away and walked carefully through the soft sand. Anything to create some distance from him and the decimating memories being with him evoked.
The CEO's Contract Bride Page 3