The Billionaire's Convenient Bride

by Liz Fielding

  He’d grabbed a notebook and was already scribbling down ideas.

  ‘A fabulous lunch after the wedding. An evening buffet and then perhaps a couple of hot dishes to serve later, risotto, pasta...’ she said, ticking the list off on her fingers. ‘A buffet breakfast and then individual picnic hampers for the lunchtime river trip. Suz will co-ordinate numbers, dietary requirements, et cetera.’

  As the days passed, the noise and mess were everywhere, there was no word from Kam, but at least the wedding plans were coming together.

  There was just one problem.

  The dress.

  ‘It’s hopeless, Agnès.’ Lily was a skilled needlewoman who’d made wedding dresses for both her daughters and several nieces. She’d offered to help refit the dress Agnès’s mother had worn but she was shaking her head. ‘Women were a different shape when this were made, and your mother was a lot shorter than you.’

  ‘I never realised,’ she said.

  ‘What you need is a modern interpretation of the dress.’

  ‘I don’t have time to have one made.’

  ‘If you get a ready-to-wear dress, something simple, strapless, with a little train, I could use the lace from your mother’s dress to make you a twenties-style overdress to cover your shoulders, just sliding off your arms. An open V to the waist, dropping in layers to somewhere around your knees. I saw something when I was making Lucy’s dress...’ She flicked through her phone, looking at photographs on a website. ‘Like this.’

  ‘Oh, my goodness,’ Suz said. ‘That is gorgeous. Can you really do that, Lily?’

  She just grinned. ‘Let’s go shopping.’

  There were no guests so the next morning Suz, Lily and Agnès caught the early train to London and returned, exhausted but giggly happy and laden with parcels, that evening to find Kam’s car parked by the front door.

  Lily whisked the dress off to the sewing room, Suz said she had to go to her room and change her shoes, leaving Agnès, heart in her mouth, to go and find Kam.

  She hadn’t reached the kitchen when there was an ear-piercing shriek from Suz’s room.

  She turned and went racing up the stairs, not sure what to expect, and found Suz embracing a girl who had to be her sister. Both of them were locked in the arms of a tall, slender woman who was the image of Suz.

  She looked up, eyes filled with tears. ‘I don’t believe it. My mother and my sister...’

  Kam. That was where he’d been...

  Agnès turned to see him standing in the doorway and her first instinct was to fling herself at him and kiss him. She hesitated, fatally, trying to read him and then, as she took a step towards him, he said, ‘Where were you?’

  His question, the edge in his voice, stopped her in her tracks leaving her torn between regret at her lack of courage to just go for it the way that the teenage girl she had once been had gone for it, no holds barred, and crushing disappointment that he hadn’t just stepped forward and swept her into his arms.

  Clearly she’d misread that bone-melting kiss. Had it, after all, been for the registrar or had she disappointed him...?

  Whatever, she wasn’t going to apologise for not sitting at home waiting for him to return.

  ‘If you’d called,’ she said, ‘or texted...’

  ‘I assumed you would be completely occupied with the renovations to the castle, the wedding arrangements. It never occurred to me that you wouldn’t be here.’

  ‘Today is the first time I’ve been anywhere since you left,’ she replied, barely able to stop herself from snapping.

  She’d spent every minute while he’d been away chasing builders, plumbers, carpenters to make sure everything would be ready on time. Glued to the phone until her ear was red-hot as she organised her ‘dream wedding’.

  After a kiss that had blown away so many of her doubts, his urging to create a wedding for herself rather than the media, she had begun to believe in it, choosing things for herself, rather than for style.

  Gone was the sophisticated burnt orange and lime green colour scheme. The chapel was to be filled with masses of wild foxgloves and cow parsley, the pew ends decorated with ribbons and roses from the garden. There was going to be a picnic in the grounds of the castle rather than a formal wedding breakfast, a million fairy lights, silent fireworks that wouldn’t frighten the animals...

  And then she thought about Kam. How he must have felt when he arrived back, clearly exhausted, with this wonderful gift and it had fallen flat.

  ‘I’m really sorry that we weren’t here when you arrived, Kam. I had a bit of a dress drama.’

  ‘I thought the dress was the one thing you had sorted.’

  ‘I thought so, too, but I hadn’t taken into account the fact that I’m a lot taller than my mother. What should have reached my ankles stopped halfway up my calves.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘It’s sorted.’

  He shook his head, dragged a hand through hair that was still damp from the shower. ‘No. I’m sorry I was so sharp. Sorry I left you to deal with everything.’

  She smiled. ‘I’m not. What you’ve done is far more important.’ While she’d been dreaming, he’d been moving mountains. ‘Thank you...’ Her breath caught in her throat. ‘Just...thank you.’ She dashed away a tear. ‘Dammit, you are always making me cry.’

  ‘As long as they are always tears of happiness,’ he said, gravely, then held out a hand. ‘We aren’t needed here and I want to breathe some fresh creek air.’

  ‘You need to sleep.’

  ‘Later,’ he said.

  She took his hand and held it for a moment, trying to put everything she was feeling into that small contact.

  ‘When did you get back?’

  ‘Early this morning, but there were formalities to be gone through. A ton of paperwork. We arrived here about an hour ago. Maryam and Hani were understandably upset when Suz wasn’t here. Pam thought it would be a good idea to take them up to her room so that they could be reassured by seeing her things. Sandra, bless her, made them mint tea and did her best to make them feel welcome.’ His grip tightened on her hand. ‘You have good people here.’

  ‘I am unbelievably lucky to have found them.’

  ‘As they are you.’

  She gave an awkward little shrug. ‘I’m guessing you didn’t tell me where you were going in case it didn’t happen.’

  ‘There’s always the possibility that things will go wrong at the last moment. Some family member or local official with a bee in his bonnet.’

  ‘Is Suzanna’s mother able to stay? I’m surprised her husband let her leave.’

  ‘Her husband died a few months ago. Pneumonia at a guess. If I’d left her behind she would have had to rely on his brothers to take care of her. And Hani needs her mother.’

  ‘How much did you have to pay to let them both go?’

  He gave her a wry smile. ‘That’s a very unattractive cynical streak you have there, Miss Prideaux.’

  ‘It’s a very hard world, Mr Faulkner. How much?’

  ‘Not much by First World standards,’ he said. ‘Nowhere near enough for such joy.’

  ‘Not just for them,’ she said. ‘Nothing you could have done would have made me happier.’

  ‘Even saving the castle from Pierre Prideaux?’ When she didn’t answer, he said, ‘We’re going to be married, have a child together, Agnès. I have to know what happened.’

  ‘I know. And I will tell you,’ she promised, ‘but right now I want to hear how you became involved in rescuing Suz’s sister.’

  ‘Before the wedding,’ he insisted, looking at her for a moment to impress on her that this was only a pause in that conversation.

  She nodded and, apparently satisfied, he said, ‘Suz broke down that evening you spent on the island and spilled it all out.’

  ‘J
ust like that?’ Suz was very careful who she talked to. People weren’t always as supportive as you’d hope. ‘Jamie knows her story. Lily and Sandra helped me take care of Suz after I found her half dead on the beach, but they don’t talk about it.’

  Kam called Dora and Henry. They came bounding out of her office and out of the door, circling them excitedly before racing away along the path to the creek, so it was a moment before he said, ‘She caught me in your office looking for the catering contract.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I explained that I was trying to help. She wasn’t a pushover but eventually she gave me the contract to copy. I remembered you telling me about her sister and asked how it was going. The next minute she was weeping all over me.’

  ‘You do seem to have that effect on women.’

  ‘I’m working on getting them to smile,’ he said. ‘How am I doing?’

  She laughed, shook her head. ‘Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it.’ The path narrowed, and it was either walk single file or walk closer. She chose closer and, slipping her hand under his arm, said, ‘Tell me more.’

  ‘She’d had a call from her mother. It seems her uncle had accepted a dowry for Hani. Time was running out, but you had so many worries that she didn’t want to burden you.’

  Her legs were brushing against his thighs, her arm was pressed against his ribs so that she could feel his heart thumping and her body was drumming out this, this, this with every step.

  If she stopped, turned to him so that her breasts were touching his sweater, her body pressed against his, would he kiss her again? What on earth had possessed her to impose a ‘no sex’ rule?

  ‘I don’t understand how you could fix things so quickly,’ she said. ‘I’ve spent months dealing with people whose job involves pushing paper around in a circle until it falls down a hole.’

  His shrug sent a current of awareness rippling through her and she stumbled like an idiot.

  ‘I did the Foreign Secretary a favour when I was in India last year, so I gave him a call.’

  At that she did stop but not to hurl herself at him. ‘You did the Foreign Secretary a favour? The Foreign Secretary? What favour?’

  ‘I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you,’ he said, brushing off her curiosity with a joke, but clearly it had been something sensitive and she didn’t push it. ‘He spoke to diplomats on the ground, who said they would handle it, but it was no longer just about paperwork. There would be compensation to be paid to her uncle or the man who wanted a ten-year-old wife. I wanted to be sure nothing went wrong.’

  ‘And did it? Go wrong?’

  ‘Nothing that I couldn’t handle.’ He glanced at her as they moved on. ‘Did you get everything you wanted today?’

  ‘Everything and considerably more. Suz and Pam are a bad influence.’

  ‘As long as you enjoyed yourself.’

  ‘You may not say that when you see how much I’ve spent since you’ve been away.’

  ‘Money means nothing unless it’s serving a useful purpose.’

  ‘I’m not sure wedding shoes can be described as useful.’

  ‘On the contrary. They will carry you down the aisle to me. I can’t think of anything more useful than that. How are things going with that? Are you sticking to the dream?’

  ‘I had a little hiccup’ she confessed, ‘but Lily, and a pair of pink shoes, straightened me out.’

  ‘Pink shoes?’

  ‘With peep toes and bows. They might not be traditional but I’m afraid it was love at first sight. I changed my entire colour scheme to fit around them.’

  ‘Lucky shoes,’ he said.

  They’d reached the beach.

  Kam had changed into trainers and jeans after his shower but Agnès, still in city shoes, paused to step out of them and he watched as she put them on a rock out of harm’s way before joining him on the sand.

  She’d fallen in love with a pair of shoes? Built her wedding around them?

  He’d been living on the memory of a kiss, believing that things had moved on, imagined Agnès throwing herself into his arms as he returned with Suz’s family.

  Maybe if he hadn’t been left to stew in impatience for an hour he wouldn’t have hesitated to sweep her up into her arms and give her the kiss he’d been dreaming about. But he’d seen her hesitation...

  They crossed to a fallen tree, silvered with age and worn smooth by people using it as a seat.

  ‘I love this spot,’ Kam said, letting the silence seep into his bones along with a dozen scents and sounds that were part of the creek. Wet sand, the hint of ozone drifting up the creek from the ocean beyond, the clank of rigging against yachts, the chitter of a tern.

  Even at six years old Agnès had known how to sit quietly and just listen until the soft buzz of the woods, the creek resolved into individual sounds so that you could pick out each bird call, the scuffle of squirrels as they leapt through the trees, the stealthy swish of a fox moving through the undergrowth.

  ‘The trees on the island need attention,’ she said.

  ‘It’ll be a project I can work on with the youngsters who come here,’ he said. ‘They won’t be able to resist the chance of being let loose with a chainsaw.’

  ‘You’re going to hand them chainsaws?’

  He grinned, reached for her hand, loving that he could still catch her out, and without warning she was blushing, flustered as the little girl who’d been caught trailing after him.

  How had he not realised that he loved her? Wasting time in London, in India, anywhere but here.

  The kiss he’d stolen after their visit to the registrar had left him weak with longing. He’d pulled over into a layby as soon as he was clear of the town, not trusting himself on the motorway until he’d stopped shaking.

  ‘I owed you that one,’ he said, then, suddenly aware that the beach was empty, ‘Where are the dogs?’

  CHAPTER TEN

  Wedding plans are proceeding. Not quite as I had imagined, but Kam is home with Suzanna’s family and all should be smooth sailing, but there are always last-minute hiccups, bruised egos and some very real bruises.

  Agnès Prideaux’s Journal

  KAM STOOD UP, called Henry and the dog poked his head up over the dinghy’s hull.

  ‘He’s in the boat.’ He turned back and grinned at her. ‘How did you manage that?’

  ‘Since their first encounter Henry has fallen under Dora’s spell. He follows her everywhere. And Dora loves nothing better than to be rowed across the creek. I hoped that when he saw her jump in, he might follow.’

  ‘It was that easy?’

  ‘No, Kam. I had to do it every day for a week before Henry cracked and followed her. He whined pitifully the first time but she lay beside him and now he’s fine. You can stay on the island whenever you like now.’

  ‘The island?’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry, that deserves a kiss.’

  ‘That would be nice.’ She angled her head to meet it, closing her eyes, her mouth fluttering like a nervous butterfly as his lips touched her, desperately hoping that this was going to be it, the kiss that would make the years disappear. Make the future a possibility. Instead he cradled her head in her hands and kissed her forehead as if she were his sister.

  Which answered any question she cared to ask about the kiss outside the register office. He’d been putting on a show. And what a show it had been. She had been totally convinced.

  Forget the turkey-baster baby. She didn’t have a lot of experience to go on but she could recognise a turkey-baster kiss when it was at home.

  ‘Do you want to walk along to the quay?’ Kam asked. ‘We could call in at the Ferryside and you can tell me everything that’s been happening. Maybe have something to eat?’

  ‘I need to get back,’ she said, standin
g up and taking a step in the direction of the rock where she had left her shoes, needing to put some distance between them. ‘I have to sort out somewhere for Maryam and Hani to sleep.’

  Sort out what was going on in her head.

  ‘Can’t Sandra...?’ His moment of frustration was quickly controlled. ‘I’m sorry, of course you’ll want to do that yourself.’

  ‘Are you coming?’ she asked.

  ‘I need to walk off the flight. Or maybe I’ll just take Henry for a trip around the island. If you can spare Dora?’

  ‘Just try and leave her behind.’

  ‘They are an improbable pair.’

  There was, she thought, a lot of it about.

  ‘If you need something to eat, Jamie is catering the wedding and has taken up more or less permanent residence in the kitchen.’

  ‘He’s still here? Didn’t the catering company offer him another job?’ His poker face failed him for once. He was not happy.

  ‘Was that part of the deal?’ she asked.

  ‘Deal?’

  ‘I imagine I have you to thank for the fact that they decided to pull out of the Orangery contract.’

  He shrugged. ‘I offered them a choice. An audit of their books or the chance to walk away with the profits.’ He said it as if it were nothing. ‘I knew you were concerned about Jamie, so I added a job for him to the agreement.’

  ‘They stuck to the terms of your deal, but he didn’t want to leave Castle Creek and I’ve asked him to take over the running of the Orangery when it reopens.’

  He made no comment, just walked across to the boat before, as if it were an afterthought, saying, ‘If you have time, I’d like a tour of the works in the morning. Is nine too early?’

  ‘Nine will be perfect. I have a meeting in the chapel at eight-thirty. You’ll find me there.’

  She didn’t wait for an answer but brushed the sand from her feet, slipped on her shoes and walked quickly back to the castle. She’d rowed her hands raw to get his stupid dog to sit in a boat and he’d kissed her forehead!