Kate Walker - Fiancee By Mistake

“An apology? For what?”

“For trying to seduce me!”

There, it was out. But Sean’s reaction was not at all what she had anticipated.

“For seducing you?” he echoed. “Oh, no, my darling Leah, I don’t apologize for anything that felt so right, so necessary. As a matter of fact, I would very much like to try it again some time.”

She glared at him furiously. “It’ll be a cold day in hell before I let you touch me again!”

“Is that a fact?” he drawled lazily. “Well, in that case I’d better make sure that I have a very cold shower instead of the hot one I had planned on. Are you sure I can’t persuade you to join me?”

KATE WALKER was born in Nottinghamshire, England, but as she grew up in Yorkshire, she has always felt that her roots were there. She met her husband at university and she originally worked as a children’s librarian but after the birth of her son she returned to her old childhood love of writing. When she’s not working, she divides her time between her family, their four cats and her interests of embroidery, antiques, film and theatre and, of course, reading.

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

SEAN GALLAGHER saw the car as soon as he rounded the corner into the quiet country lane. Saw it and recognised it as the one he had been looking for, fruitlessly, for the past couple of hours. A silver Renault, Pete had said, and here it was, right in front of him, just when he’d been about to give up.

‘Got you!’ he muttered, his voice rich with dark triumph. Little Miss Annie Elliot hadn’t escaped from him after all.

But the next moment his mood changed abruptly. As the wind stilled for a second, revealing what the swirling eddies of snow had hidden from him until now, he jammed on his brakes with a speed and force that were positively dangerous in the treacherous conditions.

‘Hell and damnation!’

Forcing his attention back to his driving, he controlled the powerful car with an effort, bringing it safely to the side of the road. The last thing he wanted was to join his quarry in the ditch.

It looked as if she had hit a patch of ice and skidded off the road. Hardly surprising, really, when you considered how the narrow lane twisted and turned, and how the snowstorm that had suddenly sprung up out of nowhere had rapidly developed into the worst blizzard in living memory.

Probably driving too fast in her eagerness to put plenty of space between herself and the mess she had left behind her, he decided cynically, getting out of the car and turning up his coat collar against the biting force of the wind. Her mind wouldn’t have been on what she was doing, but full of the new lover she had abandoned Pete for.

Well, her bad luck was very definitely his gain. Or, rather, Pete’s. Personally, he didn’t give a damn whether he found this woman or not. But a promise was a promise.

It was then that the silence, the total lack of movement inside the other car struck home to him, making him curse again, more violently this time. A promise was a promise, but this was a situation that neither he nor his brother had anticipated. What if the woman in the driving seat was badly injured, or worse?

With his head bent, his hair blown into wild disarray, he made his way towards the Renault as swiftly as he could, with his feet slipping and sliding over the frozen surface of the road.

‘Can I help you?’

They had to be the most wonderful words in the world, Leah thought hazily. The trouble was that with her mind still spinning from the panic of only moments before she couldn’t quite believe she had actually heard them.

Was it possible that they were not real, but only a figment of her imagination?

‘Can you…?’

As she echoed the question she didn’t dare to open her eyes, fearful that if she did she would discover that her deep-voiced rescuer didn’t exist.

‘Do you need help? Are you all right?’

The man’s tone—for it was unquestionably a masculine voice, dark and huskily sensual—sharpened noticeably on the question.

‘Are you hurt?’

‘Don’t think so.’

Mentally Leah checked herself over, carefully ticking off parts of her body on an invisible list.

Legs, two, intact. Arms, ditto, though one felt rather sore, as if badly bruised. Her shoulders ached miserably, and she felt as if she had jarred her back in the frantic effort to control the dangerous spin of the car, but it seemed she was still in one piece.

Unless…

Her closed lids flew open, violet eyes focusing swiftly on her own reflection in the car’s mirror.

No. Relief set in as she realised that the damp trail down her left cheek was not, as she had feared, the trickle of blood. Instead it had been caused by a single weak tear, probably the result of shock and disorientation. She hadn’t even been aware of having shed it.

Suddenly she was desperately, horribly cold. She was unable to decide whether the shiver that shook her was the result of delayed reaction to the danger she had been in or something else. Equally, it might have been a purely physical response to the icy wind that sneaked past the powerful frame of the man who held the car’s front door wide open.

‘Could you give me a definite answer?’

The voice was harsh now, jolting her out of her near dreamlike state and back into full awareness of the present. Of course, he must have seen her crash—seen her small car skid suddenly, veering right off the road and onto the rough verge at its edge. Naturally he was concerned.

‘I’m sorry…’

The words died in her throat, shrivelled into an unbelieving silence as she shifted in her seat, her eyes finally focusing on the rearview mirror. With her own head no longer blocking the view from the door, she caught her first glimpse of her rescuer, and couldn’t believe what she saw.

‘I…’

Dear God, perhaps she was hallucinating after all. It must be the after-effects of shock, or perhaps she had hit her head hard enough to scramble her wits. Knights on white chargers didn’t exist in reality, and they certainly did not appear in such a devastating physical form. She couldn’t be seeing what she thought was there.

‘Of course I can.’ This time she managed to get the words out, swivelling in her seat to face him as she spoke. ‘I—I’m fine.’ Oh, Lord, this was no better! In fact it was far worse. No matter how hard she forced herself to concentrate, her fuddled brain still registered exactly the same thing, confirming that what she had seen in the mirror was not the illusion she had believed, but actual fact.

The mirror image had softened the impact of hard, strongly carved cheekbones, a straight nose, a firm slash of a mouth, stunningly bright blue eyes and a shock of longish, rather wild black hair. The dramatic effect of that forceful profile etched against the darkness was matched by the imposing height and strength of the body that filled the open doorway, the man before her having to stoop quite considerably in order to look her in the eye.

But the impossible thing was that those features, that powerful frame, could only belong to one man. And it was his identity that made Leah doubt her sanity at this moment.

‘No!’

Weakly she shook her head, hoping to dispel the tormenting vision. Even in her wildest dreams she had never fantasised that she might meet up with Sean Gallagher. After all, he was the latest TV heart-throb, the man whose appearance in a hugely successful drama series had had the effect of bringing almost the entire female population of Great Britain to a complete halt every Thursday night.