Jessica Hart - Bride for Hire

‘I was thinking of Jim,’ said Daisy, crouching down beside her mother’s chair. ‘I know it sounds unusual, Mum, but it’s just a job. He’s not interested in me at all.’

‘So he says!’

‘He wants to marry someone else—that’s the whole point,’ said Daisy patiently. ‘Really, he couldn’t have made it clearer that I’m not his type and he’s definitely not mine!’ Treacherously her mind veered to that terrible kiss before she managed to wrench it firmly away. ‘It’s a business arrangement, that’s all, and it’s the only chance I’ve got to get to the Caribbean and look for Tom. Think what it would mean to Jim if I could persuade him to come home?’

Ellen Johnson twisted her hands together in her lap. ‘If only you could! But Tom never accepted me. I’m sure that’s why he left. He wouldn’t want to come back, knowing that I was here.’

‘He might have resented you at first, but you weren’t the reason he and Jim argued,’ said Daisy stoutly, as she had said so many times before. ‘They were both too stubborn to give in and admit that they needed each other. I’m sure Tom would come back at once if he knew how ill Jim was. That’s why I’ve got to track him down somehow. I know things are busy in the flower shop at the moment, but Lisa can cope if you just keep an eye on things.’

‘But what if this girl Dee Pearce turns up?’ worried Ellen, still unconvinced by Daisy’s breezy assurance that she had found herself a job that would take her to the Caribbean. ‘She might tell this man that you’re not friends at all, and then what will he think?’

‘She won’t turn up,’ Daisy assured her confidently. ‘I told you, Mum. As soon as I realised that the letter wasn’t addressed to me at all I took it round to her house to explain why I’d opened it. I rang the bell, but a neighbour told me that Dee had gone away. That’s why the whole thing just seemed like fate.’

‘You took a terrible risk,’ her mother reproached her.

‘If it had been some sort of shady deal I’d have just walked out,’ she pointed out, more confident now than she had been when the idea had first occurred to her. ‘As it is, it’s a perfectly straightforward job. It shouldn’t be too hard to hang around and look dumb at a few parties, and in return Seth Carrington will take me out to the Caribbean and give me enough money to find Tom. Easy.’ Daisy had forgotten her doubts on the bus and was bent on convincing her mother that she had found the perfect solution.

‘Seth Carrington?’ Ellen looked at her daughter with new foreboding. ‘Not the Seth Carrington?’

‘I’d hate to think that there were two of him,’ said Daisy wryly. ‘Why?’

‘I was just reading about him on my way to the hospital,’ said Ellen, getting up to look through the evening newspaper and fold back a page at last to show Daisy an article. ‘He doesn’t sound like the kind of man you want to get involved with.’

She handed the paper to Daisy, who glanced through the article. The first section reported Seth’s arrival in London, reviewing the ruthlessness of his reputation and the phenomenal success of his vast business empire. The second was headed ONE OF THE WORLD’S MOST ELIGIBLE BACHELORS and made much of the way Seth managed to combine financial success with a jet-setting lifestyle. It contained a whole list of beautiful women who had tried and failed to secure a permanent place in his life. Daisy’s lips tightened as she read it.

Still determinedly unmarried at thirty-eight, Seth Carrington had obviously made a career of not committing himself. Right at the end there was some gossipy speculation about his relationship with Astra Bentingger (‘currently the fourth Mrs Klissalikos’); perhaps they hadn’t been as discreet as Seth had claimed.

Daisy lowered the paper with a sinking feeling at the pit of her stomach, but she refused to be intimidated. She wasn’t going to give up her plan at this stage. ‘I’m not going to get involved with him,’ she told her mother with a not entirely convincing air of confidence. ‘I’m going to look for Tom. Seth Carrington is merely incidental.’

In spite of her brave words, Daisy couldn’t help feeling more than a little nervous as she took the lift back up to the penthouse suite. Was it only that afternoon that she had stood right there and wondered what Seth Carrington would be like? In a few short minutes he had impressed himself on her consciousness so utterly that it was impossible now to remember a time when his forbidding features hadn’t dominated her thoughts.

Daisy tugged at the neckline of her dress and pulled a face at the mirror. She had done her best to look smart, but no amount of brushing could make her curls lie neatly and her make-up was limited to lipstick and an inexpert stroke of blusher. Somehow she didn’t think that Seth Carrington was going to be very impressed.

He wasn’t. ‘Is that the best you could do?’ he greeted her, opening the door of the suite himself. He was formally dressed in an immaculate dinner jacket and bow-tie, and looked so unnervingly, unfairly attractive that Daisy felt quite weak at the knees.

She quelled the feeling sternly. ‘Good evening,’ she said brightly. ‘Yes, I’m fine, thank you. Yes, I would like to come in.’

Seth scowled, but stood back to let her into the suite. Maria had gone—no doubt with relief, thought Daisy sourly. Spending a whole day putting up with Seth Carrington’s rudeness would be enough to try anybody. ‘I thought I told you to wear something smart?’ he accused her, shutting the door with a snap.

‘What’s wrong with my dress?’ said Daisy, a little offended. She had expected him to criticise her face, but she had blown her meagre savings on this dress in last summer’s end-of-season sales where it had been reduced from some exorbitant price. Everyone had said it had been worth it, though. The dusky blue colour with its pattern of tiny stars suited her dark hair and pale skin, and Daisy had always felt rather good in it... until now.

‘It looks as if you’ve picked it up off some bargain rail,’ said Seth dismissively, and her lips tightened.

‘Are you always this charming?’

‘I can’t afford to waste my time tiptoeing around your finer feelings,’ he said irritably.

‘I can’t imagine you tiptoeing around anyone’s feelings,’ grumbled Daisy, finding it easier to squabble than to notice how devastatingly attractive Seth looked in his dinner jacket. She avoided looking at the sofa where they had kissed, but it kept catching annoyingly at the corner of her eye. ‘I’ve never met anyone so inconsiderate.’

Seth looked nettled. ‘I’m perfectly considerate when I need to be but, as I keep having to remind you, you’re here to do a job.’

‘Yes, and I might find it easier if you weren’t quite so unpleasant!’

It was obvious that Seth Carrington wasn’t used to being answered back. He glowered at Daisy for a moment and then gave a short, exasperated sigh, not entirely unmixed with amusement. ‘Are you always this argumentative?’

‘Only when provoked,’ said Daisy, assuming a demure expression that didn’t fool Seth for a minute.

‘Look, I’m merely trying to point out that you don’t exactly fit my image.’ He eyed her moodily. ‘It’s not just that the dress looks cheap. It’s a good girl’s dress—makes you look too unsophisticated. It’s well known that my taste is for women with a little more glamour. We’ll just have to get you some decent clothes tomorrow.’

Daisy’s mind went back to the article her mother had shown her. Seth’s name had been linked with any number of famous women, and it had to be said that none of them would have been described as good girls. ‘Why can’t we convince them that you’ve changed your image and fallen for a nice girl for a change?’