Marriage Bargain with His Innocent

by Cathy Williams

  ‘I couldn’t resist you,’ Matias said simply. ‘Somewhere along the line, on some level I didn’t consciously understand, I accepted that a change of wardrobe had nothing to do with the level of sexual pull you had over me. I don’t think there was a single minute I didn’t look at you without wanting to touch you. You have no idea what a big deal it was for me to make love to you that first time... You trusted me enough to gift me with your virginity and that wasn’t just a big deal to you. It was a big deal to me too, even if I didn’t appreciate just how big at the time. Didn’t appreciate,’ he tacked on roughly, ‘just how privileged I was.’

  Georgina tensed, reluctant to talk about it. She didn’t want her emotional vulnerability paraded. She looked around her at the trappings of independence. This was the woman she was now, she told herself. She couldn’t afford to succumb to the temptation of what he was saying.

  ‘But you still got scared when I mentioned that I might want to see what London held for me,’ she reminded him tautly.

  ‘I reacted predictably.’ Matias was honest. ‘Everything seemed to coalesce in my head all at once. The fake engagement...the trappings of domesticity that had somehow taken over, bit by bit...the situation that suddenly felt like the sort of slippery slope downwards I had always avoided.’

  Hot colour stung her cheeks. ‘I never meant to try and trap you,’ she said stiffly.

  ‘But you had anyway.’

  ‘How so, Matias...?’

  She was determined not to wear her heart on her sleeve—not for a second time—but she knew that her voice was betraying that good intention.

  ‘Somehow I’d managed to drift into a pattern of behaviour...commuting to and from London, coming down to Cornwall, taking my jacket off and slinging somewhere, accepting that you would do what you always did and pick it up, hang it up. And...’

  He gave her a crooked smile.

  ‘And tell me that I had more money than sense. I’m not sure when I started to accept that level of easy, cosy familiarity without automatically railing against it. I just know that something sparked inside me. Maybe it was the way I noticed you looking at that engagement ring, as though it was the real thing... Maybe it was when it struck me that I liked it—that I liked returning to your side, looked forward to seeing you...touching you...holding you...talking to you... But suddenly... I don’t know...the shutters slammed down. Old habits die hard. I’d become so accustomed to assuming that love was something other people did that I reacted instinctively. I had to break off the engagement, had to escape, and I told myself that it was for the best.’

  ‘You looked forward to seeing me? Talking to me?’

  ‘You’d managed to tame me, and I couldn’t even work out when it had happened. I just knew that it scared the living daylights out of me, and the only way I could cope with that realisation was to run away from it as fast as I could.’

  ‘I never knew...’ she murmured softly.

  Her heart was pounding, her pulses were racing and the time for games was over. He’d said so much, and now it was her turn to go the final mile and say what was in her heart.

  ‘Why would you? I barely knew myself,’ he said.

  ‘I...’ She took a deep breath. ‘I never, ever thought we would end up in bed together. When we did, it felt so good, Matias, so right. Only afterwards, when the dust had settled, it slowly dawned on me that the reason it felt so good—the reason I hadn’t had a moment’s doubt about losing my virginity to you—was because I loved you.’

  He moved to speak.

  ‘Please don’t say anything. Please let me get this off my chest and finish saying what I have to say. You’ve come this far to say your piece. Well, I might as well return the favour. Being engaged to you, even though I knew that it wasn’t a real engagement, felt like a dream come true. I didn’t like it that it did, but I couldn’t pretend otherwise. And then, somewhere along the line, I started thinking that we got along so well... I fantasised that you might realise that it was more than just the fact that we got along between the sheets. But the weird thing was that even though I knew it was all going to end in heartbreak for me, I never regretted a single second of what we had.’

  ‘And now here we are again.’

  ‘I can’t believe you’ve come all the way over here, but I’m glad you have.’ Glad that I’ve put my heart on the line, whatever the outcome. It felt as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

  ‘I had to. I’m in love with you.’

  Georgina had spun so many daydreams about Matias uttering those very words, and in all those daydreams she had squealed with delight and clapped her hands and smothered him in kisses. But actually, now that he had spoken them, what she felt was a spreading warmth, as though a candle had been lit inside her.

  He pulled her towards him, manoeuvred her so that she was sitting on his lap and kissed her—a soft, tender kiss that melted everything inside her...a kiss she never wanted to end.

  When, eventually, he drew back from her, she wished that she could bottle the loving expression in his eyes.

  ‘So will you marry me, Georgie?’

  ‘Do you even have to ask? Surely you must know the answer to that? Just try and stop me, Matias Silva.’ She linked her fingers behind his neck and smiled. ‘Don’t forget you’ve already bought me the engagement ring of my dreams...’

  * * *

  Georgina heard the sound of Matias’s car on the gravel outside and her heart leapt, as it always did at the sound of his arrival.

  She looked around, making sure everything was just right. Dimmed lights. Candles on the table. The smell of wonderful food.

  She had followed three of the fantastic recipes from the French cookery magazine on which she had worked. It had felt strange to look at the photos she had taken and attach them to the recipes she’d so diligently followed.

  Her stint in Paris felt like a lifetime ago, but then, as she’d reflected on more than one occasion, it would, wouldn’t it? Because so much had happened since then.

  On that dreamy morning after the night when every single wish she’d ever had and a million more she hadn’t even been aware of having had all come true, she’d woken up with Matias next to her in bed. In her wonderful apartment in Paris.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ he’d drawled, pulling her against him so that their warm, newly awoken bodies were pressed against each other. ‘You should stay here and finish what you’ve started. I have an office in Paris and, coincidentally, I also have an apartment. We could have some fun here together before we return to London.’

  They’d had a lot of fun. Her six-month secondment had been absolute bliss. She’d debated whether to remain in her own apartment, but in the end it had seemed silly because she’d spent so much of her time with Matias—who, in fairness, hadn’t objected when she’d wanted to go out with work colleagues on her own, and had always been willing to accompany her if she asked.

  They’d returned to London and the preparations for their big day had begun in earnest, with Rose having a lot of input—more than Georgie’s own mother, who had descended in a flurry of excitement only a month before the big day.

  Which, as it happened, had been just the right size sort of day. Friends, family, a handful of her work colleagues—including some of the people she had met in Paris, with whom she was determined to stay in contact. And some of Matias’s colleagues as well—a couple of whom had privately confessed to her that they’d never thought they’d see the day.

  Nor had he, she’d wanted to say.

  They were married in the local church in Cornwall, and then he’d whisked her away to the Maldives for their honeymoon.

  It was the first real holiday he had ever had as an adult. Which was just one of those incidental admissions that made her see how much he trusted her by confiding in her.

  And as soon as they’d returned the big decision ha
d begun as to where they would live.

  Not Cornwall, and Georgina was happy with that—especially after her stint in Paris, where she had tasted life in a big city, and not just in the capacity of tourist. She had made numerous connections while she had been out there.

  She’d told Matias she was happy to acquiesce to life in his London house, which was big enough to house a small battalion. But Matias had looked at her thoughtfully and suggested that perhaps London wasn’t quite the place for them.

  ‘At least, not central London,’ he had mused. ‘I think I’ve become accustomed quite quickly to having peaceful downtime with you. Without the sound of traffic outside my front window.’

  ‘You hardly live on a busy street over a parade of shops, Matias,’ Georgina had pointed out wryly, which had made him burst out laughing.

  In the end they had decided to move out towards Richmond. Close enough to the city for Matias to commute—although he was fast discovering the joys of flexible working hours which, as the guy who ran the whole show, he could take at the click of a finger.

  The house was enormous by London standards, with a sprawling garden, and the entire transaction had been completed in record time. Money talked.

  Now they had been living here for a little over four months and...

  Georgina looked around her. Looked at the beautiful kitchen table, the impeccable worktops, the flagstone tiles on the floor which they had chosen together.

  Every single little thing had been hand-picked. Having lived under her parents’ roof while they were on the other side of the world, Georgina had been able to bring precious little to the table, so Matias had insisted on starting from scratch.

  She looked up to see the man of her dreams standing in the doorway. He had shed his coat and was rolling up the sleeves of his white shirt, but he paused, eyebrows raised, taking in the table-setting.

  ‘Tell me I haven’t missed an important anniversary,’ he drawled, smiling and pulling her towards him so that he could kiss her—a long, lingering, loving kiss.

  Georgina breathed in his unique, woody smell, clean and musky at the same time, and as powerful an aphrodisiac as anyone could ever dream up. She wound her hands round his body and slipped her fingers under the waistband of his trousers.

  ‘Nope...’ she breathed a little unsteadily. ‘My birthday isn’t for another few weeks and there’s no anniversary yet.’

  ‘In that case...?’

  He nodded to the elaborate setting and she smiled and tugged him into the kitchen, fingers linked, where she poured him a glass of wine while he peered into the oven, sniffing the aroma appreciatively.

  ‘I just wanted the right mood board to tell you what I have to tell you.’

  ‘Which is...?’ He held her at arm’s length and looked her directly in the eye.

  ‘When I showed up on your doorstep and informed you that you were going to be my loving boyfriend,’ she said seriously, which made his eyebrows shoot up with rampant amusement, ‘I never thought that a year later I would be wearing your ring on my finger and I’d have gone from pretend loved-up girlfriend to wife for real...’

  ‘Tell me about it... One minute I was dispatching a blonde because watching paint dry was turning out to be more fun than being with her, and the next minute my life was being turned upside down by a girl who’d been holding me to account from the day she’d learned to speak her first word...’

  Georgina grinned, then stepped towards him and stroked the side of his cheek with the back of her hand. ‘Someone had to hold you to account, Matias Silva. But now that we’re happily married it seems a little selfish to keep you all to myself, so I’ve decided to share you.’

  ‘With...?’

  ‘Gender to be decided. I should tell you that for the first couple of years conversation might be a little limited, but I can guarantee that you’ll be in love with him. Or her.’

  She patted her still flat stomach gently and then smiled when she saw his reaction, because it was everything she could have hoped for and more.

  ‘My darling...’ Matias breathed huskily. ‘I love you so much.’ He covered her hand with his. ‘I don’t know how I ever survived before you stormed into my life and took charge, even if you didn’t know you were doing it...’

  He grinned and nuzzled the side of her neck, and when their eyes met his were so full of love that the breath hitched in her throat and her eyes welled up—which was crazy.

  ‘I’m going to be the best husband it’s possible to be, Georgie, and the best father. And now...’ He looked over her shoulder to the impeccably laid table. ‘I think the food can wait for a bit, because I can think of a few more inventive ways for us to celebrate...’

  * * *

  If you enjoyed Marriage Bargain with His Innocent you’re sure to enjoy these other stories by Cathy Williams!

  A Diamond Deal with Her Boss

  The Italian’s One-Night Consequence

  The Tycoon’s Ultimate Conquest

  Contracted for the Spaniard’s Heir

  Available now!

  Keep reading for an excerpt from Billionaire’s Mediterranean Proposal by Julia James.

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  Billionaire’s Mediterranean Proposal

  by Julia James

  CHAPTER ONE

  TARA SASHAYED INTO the opulent function room at the prestigious West End hotel along with the rest of the models fresh off the catwalk. They were still gowned in their couture evening dresses, and their purpose now was to show them off up close to the private fashion show’s wealthy guests.

  As she passed the sumptuous buffet she felt her stomach rumble, but ignored it. Like it or not—and she didn’t—modelling required gruelling calorie restriction to keep her body racehorse-slender. Eating normally again would be one of the first joys of chucking in her career and finally moving to the countryside, as she was longing to do. And that dream of escape was getting closer and closer—escape to the chocolate-box, roses-round-the-door thatched cottage in deepest Dorset that had belonged to her grandparents and now, since their deaths, belonged to her.

  In her grandparents’ day it had been the only home she’d ever really had. With her parents in the armed forces, serving abroad, and herself packed off to boarding school at the age of eight, it had been her grandparents who had provided the home comforts and stability that her parents had not been in a position to provide. Now, determined to make it her own ‘for ever’ home, she was spending
every penny she earned in undertaking the essential repairs and restoration that were required for such an old house—from a new thatched roof, to new drains...it all had to be done.

  And now it nearly was. It only lacked a new kitchen and bathroom to replace the very ancient and decrepit units and sanitary ware and she could move in! All she needed was another ten thousand pounds to cover the cost.

  That was why she was taking on all the modelling assignments she could—including this evening one now—squirrelling away every penny she could to get the cottage ready for moving in to.

  She could hardly wait for that day. The glamour of being a fashion model had worn off long ago, and now it was only tiring and tedious. Besides, she had increasingly come to resent being constantly on show, all too often attracting the attention of men she had learned were only interested in her because she was a model.

  She sheered her mind away from her thoughts. Jules had been a long time ago, and she was long over him. She’d been young and stupid and had believed that it was herself he’d cared for—when all along she’d simply been a trophy female to be wheeled out to impress his mates...

  It had taught her a lesson though and had made her wary. She didn’t want to be any man’s trophy.

  Her wariness gave her a degree of edginess towards men which she knew could put men off, however striking her looks. Sometimes she welcomed it. She wasn’t one to put up with any hassle. Maybe something of her parents’ emotional distance had rubbed off on her, she sometimes thought. They’d always taught her to stand up for herself, not to be cowed, overawed or over-impressed by anyone.

  She certainly wasn’t going to be overawed by the kind of people here tonight, knocking back champagne and snapping up couture clothes as if they were as cheap as chips! Just because they were stinking rich it didn’t make them better than her in any way whatsoever—no way was anyone going to look down on her as some kind of walking clotheshorse!