Kim Lawrence - The Engagement Deal

“I can’t wear this thing!” Holly gasped.

“Sorry if it’s not to your taste, but it’s only for one night.”

Actually the ring was beautiful. Holly toyed with the sapphire.

“And the only reason you went along with this pretense,” Niall continued, “was because you wanted to prove to me that age had improved you beyond all recognition.”

Holly went scarlet. How could he know? This man got more detestable with each passing second. I must have been totally blind as well as besotted when I was a silly teenager, she concluded wrathfully….

KIM LAWRENCE lives on a farm in rural Wales. She runs two miles daily and finds this an excellent opportunity to unwind and seek inspiration for her writing! It also helps her keep up with her husband, two active sons and the various stray animals that have adopted them. Always a fanatical consumer of fiction, she is now equally enthusiastic about writing. She loves a happy ending!

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

HOLLY pulled the pillow over her head and tried to ignore the strident peal of her sister’s doorbell. After several minutes of teeth-clenching determination to remain asleep, she rolled over onto her back and stuffed her fingers in her ears.

Whoever it was wasn’t going away. With a defeated sigh, she threw the pillow over her head. As luck would have it, the feather-filled item managed to ricochet off the wall and knock a porcelain pig off her sister’s cluttered dressing table.

Holly looked at the broken pieces and decided optimistically that with a bit of superglue it would be as good as new—always supposing it wasn’t actually antique and valuable. You never knew with Rowena; her up-in-the-clouds flat was filled with an eclectic mish-mash of tacky but fashionable rubbish and staggeringly expensive items.

She looked around briefly for a robe. Although she’d moved in a week ago, she still hadn’t had the opportunity to unpack her clothes. On reflection, she concluded that her pyjamas covered everything—if not more—that modesty demanded, and the style was unlikely to drive anyone on the doorstep mad with lust.

‘Yes!’ she snarled, opening the door a crack on its security chain.

‘I need to speak to Rowena.’

You and about every other male under ninety in the city, if my sister’s answering machine was anything to go by, Holly thought sourly. This was the first one that had got past the building’s tight security, though, so she assumed that under normal circumstances he was a welcome visitor.

Holly brushed a heavy hank of dark copper-red hair from her eyes. ‘Well, she isn’t…’ she began impatiently, wrinkling up her eyes against the light in the brightly illuminated communal hallway. ‘Oh, it’s you!’ Disbelief rushed through every inch of her, from her untidy red head to her curling bare toes.

This wasn’t how her dream went at all! A flicker of annoyance crossed her face as she brushed aside the inane thought.

Without thinking, she clicked free the bolt. Niall Wesley wasn’t the sort of man you left standing on a doorstep; neither, she reflected, was he the sort of man usually to be found on her doorstep. Beautiful men—and this adjective was fully justified, in Niall’s case—wearing dinner jackets didn’t as a rule come calling on her at eight o’clock in the morning.

‘Do I know…?’ The beautiful, disturbingly electric-blue eyes swept briefly over her diminutive figure, before illumination dawned in those azure depths. ‘Oh…Polly, isn’t it…?’ Long-legged, and elegant down to his fingertips, he walked past her into the bright open-plan living area.

I always knew I made a deep impression on him! And it did a girl’s confidence no end of good to have her suspicions confirmed, she decided wryly. She looked with steadily growing resentment at the impressive rear view of his broad-shouldered, lean-hipped figure silhouetted against the full-height windows that ran the entire length of one wall.

‘Holly,’ she corrected him coolly.

His smile was perfunctory and distinctly impatient as he glanced around the room. ‘Have you had an accident or something?’

She’d completely forgotten about that! Holly’s hand went automatically to her right eye. She winced and rushed over to a mirror; there were quite a few to choose from in the flat her sister called home.

She gulped. ‘Or something,’ she confirmed drily, surveying the damage. It could, she concluded with stubborn optimism, be a lot worse. Nothing too dramatic; a bit of make-up should disguise the worse of the damage.

‘When will Rowena be back?’ He glanced at the metal-banded watch on his wrist.

Some people might have registered the expensive brand of this accessory automatically, but Holly was much more aware of the fine dark hairs on his forearm briefly revealed by the impatient gesture. Her stomach gave an uncomfortable lurch. For heaven’s sake, she thought in exasperation, anyone would think I’m still a silly infatuated teenager!

She suddenly remembered that intense adolescent vow she’d made the last time she’d seen him in the flesh—far too much flesh, as it happened, for her fragile peace of mind at the time!

The next time she saw Niall Wesley, she’d vowed, she’d have no trace of teenage acne, no braces and her hair would no longer be a violent show-stopping shade of red. The first two criteria had been filled, and she’d made the surprising discovery since those far-off days that some people—of the male variety—actually liked red hair!

She seemed to have some hazy recall that he’d be struck dumb by her stunning beauty and witty eloquence. A black eye and pyjamas that didn’t even register on the seduction scale—and which, into the bargain, made her look like an undersized gnome—had not figured anywhere at all! This was what came of accepting hand-me-downs from a frugal parent who was too polite to tell his elderly aunt that his waistline had enlarged a little since he was sixteen!

At sixteen, Holly had nourished wild, foolish dreams, but she’d grown out of them; reality was far too challenging and exciting—not to mention exhausting! All the same, she knew that had she known she was going to see this man, she’d have made an effort to look at her best. Which means what? she pondered. A woman knew that even in the twenty-first century, she would ultimately be judged on her looks—was she vain? Either way, acknowledging that her adolescent desire to impress this man hadn’t entirely vanished made her frown with annoyance.

‘I said, when will Rowena be back?’

Holly closed her half-open mouth with a snap. None of the plagues she’d so viciously wished upon him had come to pass, either. He hadn’t grown short or fat and his head was still covered by a lustrous, nicely trimmed dark growth—the sort of hair a girl could really sink her fingers into! Her cheeks flamed hotly as she imagined herself in circumstances where sinking her fingers into his hair would be almost obligatory. Her imagination definitely needed a refresher course in obedience school!