Sharon Kendrick - Bridegrooms Required - One Bridegroom Required / One Wedding Required / One Husband Required

Because even worse than the pain of his deceit was the pain of knowing why he had pushed her away, and why he had stayed out of her life in the days since that frustrating encounter. For he wasn’t hers, and he never would be. Holly had finally met a man she would change her life for, but he belonged to somebody else.

But businesswomen couldn’t hurl themselves to the ground and drum their feet in anger and frustration, which was what she felt like doing! There wasn’t even a packet of biscuits to defiantly plough her way through—not that she really wanted to start comfort eating at this stage in her life.

Instead, she spent the afternoon sewing her first full order—a gown for a Christmas wedding, with a full white taffeta skirt and a buttoned bodice in deep forest-green velvet The tiny bridesmaids’ dresses had the pattern reversed, with velvet skirts and taffeta bodices, and Michelle was going to make mistletoe and holly coronets.

She was undisturbed for the most part, with just two customers wandering in. Young women who said that they wanted to browse. They also wanted to enter the free draw for the prize-winning dress, which Holly suspected was their main reason for coming into the shop!

They filled out their cards respectively, and dropped them into the slightly garish red satin box which Holly had provided.

‘When’s it being drawn?’ asked one.

‘New Year’s Day,’ answered Holly with a faint smile.

‘At the stroke of midnight?’ asked the other hopefully.

‘Like Cinderella, you mean?’ Holly smiled properly then. Your emotional world could collapse around you, and yet romance never seemed to die. Thank heavens. ‘Why not?’ She shrugged.

The rest of the afternoon dragged like Christmas Eve to a child. At four o‘clock she was longing to shut up shop and go upstairs. There were accounts which needed to be sorted out and she could put the finishing touches to the green velvet wedding dress in comfort. Enough to keep her busy for the rest of the evening, anyway. That was if she could resist the temptation to crawl beneath the duvet and just wish that the world would go away.

She was just tucking a frilly blue garter to the back of a drawer when the shop bell rang and she looked up, her words dying on her lips when she saw who it was.

Her first thought was that it didn’t really look like Luke at all, since he was wearing an unfamiliar deep blue suit and a silk tie of palest blue. A tie! Luke! She would never have imagined him wearing such fine wool and silk, though it came as no surprise to see how well the formal clothes fitted his rugged frame. But the impeccably cut outfit had the effect of distancing him, making him look like some cool and devastating stranger.

Luke quietly closed the door behind him and then locked it, and something about his face and the rigid set of his shoulders made Holly run her tongue over her lips and say nervously, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

‘What does it look like? I’m locking the door.’

‘But we’re still open!’ she objected, her pulse picking up speed like a racehorse. ‘You can’t do that.’

‘Oh, can’t I?’ He turned round then, and the shadowed fury which darkened his features made Holly freeze with apprehension.

‘Just watch me, sweetheart,’ he drawled, and he began to walk towards her.

Holly correctly read the menace and determination in that walk, and some mad, unthinking part of her wanted to run away from him. She found herself looking frantically from side to side, as though a trapdoor would suddenly appear and she would be able to make her escape.

Luke could see her anxiety, but he felt not a jot of pity for her, only the anger which had burned through his veins all afternoon and which was threatening to consume him.

He was directly in front of her now, and Holly saw that he was controlling his breathing only with great difficulty.

‘What are you doing here?’ she whispered, her voice sounding like a husky croak.

It was the wrong thing to say. His mouth curved into a thin parody of a smile which chilled her.

‘You know damn well what I’m doing here.’

‘I d-don’t.’

He drew a breath as though he were taking in poison. ‘What exactly did you tell Caroline?’

‘You mean your fiancée?’ she bit back.

‘Answer me, you little bitch!’

The insult first rocked her, then filled her with the fury to fight him back.

‘I told her the truth!’

‘You’re lying, Holly.’ He was itching to grab her by the shoulders, to haul her up against his chest and extract every raw, painful word of what she had actually told Caroline. And then?

‘You weren’t there,’ she pointed out.

‘I didn’t need to be.’

‘Well, then.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s her word against mine—whatever she’s told you.’

Her audacity momentarily stunned him. ‘I’ll tell you what she told me, sweetheart. That you and I apparently slept together.’ He gave a cold, empty laugh. ‘Strange, that—the earth can’t have moved for either of us, since I don’t actually remember doing it.’

Doing it. Holly felt the hot rush of excitement and prayed for it to pass. She shook her head in an effort to distract herself. ‘I didn’t tell her that I slept with you,’ she contradicted. ‘That was her accusation.’ Her lashes lowered by a fraction to partially conceal her eyes, but she was certain that he had read the longing there ‘An accusation which she found impossible not to believe was true.’

‘Particularly as you refused to deny it?’ he suggested, with icy calm.

Holly shrugged. ‘There was no point in denying it. Since Caroline—’ she spat the word out, appalled at herself for doing so and yet unable to prevent the anger which was still distorting her voice ‘—had already made her mind up. And she seemed to find it unbelievable that you and I had managed to remain under one roof for a fortnight without having sex!’

He found it pretty unbelievable himself, come to think of it, but that was beside the point. ‘What right do you think you have to start meddling in my life?’ he demanded. ‘How dare you let Caroline believe that we had been intimate?’

Holly had had enough. He was acting as if there had been nothing between them—as if the camaraderie which had grown up between them had not existed! ‘But we were intimate! You know we were!’

His mouth twisted. ‘I’m sorry? Have we been existing in parallel universes, or is there something I have missed? Just when are we supposed to have been intimate?’

She felt as if she was floundering in a dark, cold pool of misunderstanding. She remembered the touch of his hand on her ankle, the way she had drawn in a breath and looked down at him. Their gazes had locked the instant before they’d kissed, and something momentous had happened—surely he wasn’t going to deny that?

‘You touched me!’ she protested throatily. ‘You know you did!’

‘I touched you?’ he echoed in disbelief. ‘And you think that gives you carte blanche to try to take control of my life by implying that there had been so much more than that? What right do you have to do that, Holly?’

She shook her head distractedly, copper curls spilling like corkscrews over her shoulders. ‘But there are other kinds of intimacies, too—the little, unspoken ones. We grew close when I stayed with you, Luke—you know we did! You even admitted it! If you’d been honest with me then, and told me about Caroline, there would have been a completely different atmosphere between us! An atmosphere which would not have given rise to that kiss.’ She drew a deep shuddering breath. ‘So why didn’t you tell me, Luke? Just answer me that?’

He gave an arrogant smile. ‘You didn’t ask.’ But that wasn’t the full story, and he knew it. He hadn’t wanted to tell her, hadn’t wanted to say the words out loud because that would have meant acknowledging reality, and it had been sweet indeed to pretend that reality didn’t exist. It had been wonderful having Holly around. He had been enjoying the warmth of her company, and that was a fact. Enjoying the easy atmosphere coupled with the excitement of knowing that he couldn’t have her...