Alison Fraser - Bride Required

‘Sorry?’ She’d lost him again.

‘It’s what some gay men do,’ she ran on. ‘Marry, have kids even, then, hey presto, they hit mid-life crisis and leave their wives for another man.’

‘You’re an authority on this, are you?’ he enquired dryly.

‘Not especially,’ she denied. ‘I just had a schoolfriend whose father did it… They were all devastated,’ she recalled matter-of-factly.

‘Do you know anyone with happy, uncomplicated lives?’ he asked when she’d finished this gloomy tale.

‘No—do you?’ she flipped back.

Her tone said she didn’t believe in happiness. Baxter wondered what had made her so cynical.

‘Actually, yes,’ he responded. ‘My sister, Catriona, and her husband have a marriage that seems reasonably close to perfect.’

‘Seems being the operative word,’ Dee couldn’t resist commenting. From her own experience she knew so-called perfect marriages could hide cracks the size of the San Andreas fault line. Take her mother and stepfather. The world had always seen them as the perfect couple. Come to that, the world probably still did—the perfect couple cursed only by a bad lot of a daughter.

Dee had no illusions. It was what people had thought of her. A bad lot that would come to a worse end.

‘Well, you’ll be able to judge for yourself.’ His voice broke into her thoughts once more.

‘Judge what?’

‘If it’s real, their happiness… But I’m warning you now. They do a great deal of laughing and smiling, and even kissing. So it may be hard for a world-weary cynic like yourself to take.’

He was laughing, too. At her, in this case. Dee tried to take offence, but there was something disarming about the smile he slanted her.

‘I haven’t agreed to anything,’ she said instead, then realised it wasn’t quite positive enough. ‘I mean, I can’t possibly do what you’re suggesting.’

‘Why not?’

Why not? Dee repeated to herself, and didn’t immediately find an answer. A smile touched his lips as he detected her weakening.

She shook her head. ‘You expect me to go up to the wilds of Scotland—’

‘We live about fifteen miles from the centre of Edinburgh,’ he interjected. ‘Almost civilisation, in fact.’

‘Okay, but then there’s the time.’ She raised a new objection. ‘Or are you planning for me to go up on one train, play blushing bride for a day, then take the next train home? I doubt that’ll convince anyone.’

‘No, you’d obviously have to commit to longer. Let’s say a year’s contract.’

‘A year!’

‘At the very most.’ He nodded. ‘But if things go well I’d release you earlier.’

‘Release me?’ she echoed. ‘This is beginning to sound like a prison sentence.’

‘Not quite. You won’t be on bread and water, or sewing mailbags,’ he assured her in dry tones. ‘Basically, you’ll have your own room, three square meals a day and a moderate allowance. Will that be so bad?’

‘Sounds wonderful,’ she said, but gave a visible shudder as she ran on. ‘Going quietly out of my head, playing the little woman at home.’

Baxter laughed in response. Not very wise at this stage of the negotiation, but it was just too absurd.

‘You? The little woman? Apart from looking totally unlike the part, I somehow doubt you’d be that good an actress.’

‘Thanks.’ She pulled a face. ‘So why ask me?’

Good question, Baxter had to agree. ‘There wasn’t exactly a wide choice of candidates.’

‘And beggars can’t be choosers?’ Dee threw his earlier words back at him.

‘Something like that.’ He didn’t deny it.

‘You’re crazy,’ Dee said aloud, then silently to herself. For she had to be crazy, too, listening to this.

He said nothing, but took out a pen and chequebook from the inside pocket of his jacket. Dee watched as he wrote in it, then stared in disbelief as he held the cheque in front of her face.

‘That’s what you’ll get on the day of the wedding,’ he relayed to her, ‘and then the same at the end of twelve months, or whenever I release you.’

Five thousand pounds. Double that by the end. She read and reread it, wondering if she was hallucinating and seeing too many noughts.

‘You’re kidding!’ she scoffed.

‘Scotsmen don’t kid about money.’ He placed the cheque on the table before her. ‘Don’t you know that?’

He smiled, as if it might still turn out to be a joke, but his eyes said different. This was business.

It was Dee who shook her head. This was fantasy. ‘You’ll pay me ten thousand pounds just to marry you?’

‘You think that’s too much?’ he returned.

Dee’s lips formed the word ‘Yes’ but she didn’t utter it aloud. Did she really want to talk the price down?

‘Make no mistake. It’s up to a year of your life—and that’s a long time at your age,’ he warned, eyes resting on her as if assessing just how young she was.

‘How old are you?’ Dee threw back at him.

‘Thirty-four.’ He watched her screw up her face and added, ‘Virtually geriatric to you, I imagine.’

That wasn’t actually what Dee had been thinking. ‘Have you considered what other people are going to make of the age gap? I mean there’s not much point in hiring me for a respectable front if my appearance is going to result in the opposite.’

‘For ten thousand pounds, I expect you could modify your appearance,’ he suggested, without going into details.

He didn’t have to. His gaze went from her earrings in triplicate to her close-cropped haircut.

Dee knew how she looked, with her hair and her combat jacket and her laced up Doc Martens—like a tough neopunk who could take care of herself. It was exactly how she wanted to look. When her hair had been longer and her clothes more feminine, she’d had to fend off the pimps and perverts who preyed on girls in her situation.

‘I expect I could,’ Dee echoed, ‘if I was mad enough to go along with you. But let’s get real. You think anybody—your family or friends—is going to believe we’re each other’s types?’

Not in a million years, Baxter had to agree. His sister might have spent the last decade trying to marry him off, but even she would balk at this girl. Colleagues would imagine he was having a mid-life crisis. And male friends, unable to see any other virtue, would assume she was great in bed. Still, none of that really mattered.

‘Attraction of opposites?’ he suggested, with a smile of pure irony. ‘Don’t worry about it. It won’t be a problem… Just try and tone down a little before you come north of the border. I can give you an advance for clothes if necessary.’

‘Tweed skirts and twinsets?’ she commented dryly, but did wonder what image she was meant to cultivate.

‘Up to you.’ He shrugged, as if it was a small issue.

And Dee, realising he was being serious about the rest, finally found herself considering it. What did she have to lose?

‘Well, how about it?’ He was hardly pressurising her into it.

‘I don’t know.’ She was clearly wavering.

‘Look, if you’re concerned about being able to marry someone else in the future,’ he added, ‘then don’t be. I’ll finance the divorce, too.’

‘That isn’t an issue. I won’t be getting married. Not for real, anyway,’ she amended.

‘Ever?’ He raised a brow.

‘Ever,’ she echoed with utter conviction.

‘Don’t tell me—you’re off men for life.’ He clearly didn’t take her seriously.

‘Not all men—and just marriage.’

‘A woman who doesn’t automatically hear wedding bells. Where have you been all my life?’

He was joking. She realised that. But still it seemed an odd thing for him to say.