Sara Craven - The Marriage Proposition

Nor should she have allowed herself to be sweet-talked into taking her current job. She’d been happy where she was. She’d had a life. Whereas now all she seemed to be doing was sorting out one mess after another.

That was two strikes, she reminded herself grimly. She’d have to make damned sure there wasn’t a third.

Sighing, Paige turned on to her back and stared up at the ceiling.

She needed to get back into control, and fast. But it was the sheer unexpectedness of the thing that had thrown her. Looking up—and seeing Nick’s face in the crowd.

Reminding her, painfully, of the first time she’d ever seen him. It was one of the memories she’d tried so hard to suppress, she thought wretchedly, yet there it was, taunting her. As vivid in her brain as if it had happened yesterday. Or even—tonight.

It had been a hen party. One of the girls on the magazine had just got engaged, and a few of them had arranged to meet in a local wine bar to celebrate the august event. Paige had had some work to finish, so she’d arrived last to find the other three well ahead of her on champagne, flushed, slightly rowdy, and looking for mischief.

‘We’re scoring the local talent out of ten,’ Becky declared loudly. ‘So far none of them have risen above two.’ She giggled. ‘And half of them look as if they couldn’t rise at all.’

Paige groaned inwardly. This was clearly not going to be her kind of evening, but she was there, and for Lindsay’s sake she was going to make the best of it.

Already their corner table was attracting a certain amount of attention from the bar’s predominantly male clientele—some amused, some predatory, and some definitely contemptuous.

And, of those, one in particular stood out. He was at the long bar counter with another man. He was tall, and very dark, impeccable in his City suit. An interesting face, too, all planes and angles, with a cool sardonic mouth. Yet it wasn’t his looks, Paige thought, touching the tip of her tongue to suddenly dry lips. Not altogether. There was something about him, not easily defined, which would always draw the eye wherever he was. A sense of power. Of a control that was almost tangible even across the crowded room.

None of which took into account the evident disdain in the hooded glance being aimed at Paige and her companions. But even as she registered what was going on his gaze switched suddenly, making her momentarily the sole focus of his attention, then, as she felt her throat muscles tightening involuntarily, he looked away, his entire stance registering complete and utter indifference.

As she choked back a gasp, Paige felt a nudge from Becky. ‘Who’s your haughty friend?’

Paige shrugged. ‘You tell me.’ She made a business of picking up her glass and sipping from it.

‘Well, he’s the best of a bad bunch.’ Becky pulled a face. ‘God, what a deathly place.’

‘Let’s lighten it up, then.’ Rhona, blonde and chirpy, filled all their flutes to the brim again. ‘On the count of three we empty our glasses, and the last one to finish does a forfeit. How’s that?’

Paige groaned inwardly. She couldn’t even drink water at speed, so she was bound to lose, but it was clear that if she objected she’d be the only dissenting voice. Easier to go with the flow, she thought resignedly, picking up her glass and waiting for the signal.

Just as she’d expected, she finished last, amid giggles and barracking.

‘So what’s her forfeit going to be?’ Lindsay demanded eagerly. ‘Walk round the room without touching the floor? Mime a full strip?’

‘Better than that.’ Becky’s smile was calculating. ‘She’s going over to Mr Snooty at the bar there, and offer him a tenner for a kiss. That’ll teach him to look down his nose at us.’

‘Oh, come on,’ Paige began, alarmed.

‘You have to do it,’ Rhona warned, laughing. ‘Or we’ll make you strip for real.’

Slowly, Paige reached down and extracted a ten-pound note from her bag. Gulping down that champagne had been bad news, she thought detachedly. She was feeling lightheaded, and the pulse in her throat seemed to be beating a warning tattoo.

None of the others would even hesitate, and she knew it. They’d be marching over already, to issue the challenge and put him on the spot. But it wasn’t her style. Strangers suffocated her with shyness. As for this cold-eyed stranger—well, simply asking him the time would be ordeal enough.

As for anything else …

The best she could hope for was that he’d treat her as a drunken pest and ignore her. The worst-case scenario was that she might actually have to kiss him. Or let him kiss her, she amended quickly.

Do it, she commanded herself, rising to her feet. Get it over with. Then you’ll be off the hook and you can go home.

She needed to saunter with purpose, but it was as much as she could do to put one foot in front of the other without tripping. She arranged a smile. Tried to rehearse a few words. But her mind was blank.

Her approach had been noticed, she realised. Her quarry had half turned and was watching her, dark eyes narrowed, mouth unsmiling.

Paige quickened her pace defiantly.

‘Hi.’ Fright made her voice husky, but maybe that was no bad thing.

His brows lifted. ‘Is there something I can do for you?’

‘Actually, yes.’ She widened her smile and lowered her lashes. She lifted her hand, letting him see the money, crackling the note between restless fingers. ‘I’d like to buy a kiss.’

All the neighbouring conversation seemed suddenly to have ceased. The silence that surrounded them simmered with amusement, and an odd tension.

‘Really?’ He drawled the word, leaning back against the bar. The dark gaze captured hers and held it, something glinting in its depths. Mockery, she realised, and something less easily recognised. ‘Only a kiss?’ He looked her up and down very slowly, taking in the neat black dress and the matching jacket, the dark tights and low-heeled pumps, and mentally discarding them.

Undressing her, she realised, shocked, with his eyes.

She swallowed, her last vestiges of bravado ebbing away under the calculated insolence of his stare. It was suddenly like one of those awful dreams where you find yourself naked in public, she thought, resisting an impulse to cover herself with her hands. Common sense told her to walk away, but she seemed unable to move.

Helplessly she watched as he reached inside his coat and took out his wallet.

Mesmerised, Paige saw him produce not one but two fifty-pound notes, and hold them up in front of her shocked face.

‘A counter-offer,’ he said softly. ‘But I’ll expect a damned sight more than a kiss—darling. So how about it?’

She needed a response, a swift comeback that would be witty, succinct, and ultimately devastating. Something to leave him with egg on his face, and make her the heroine of the moment, walking away victorious.

Instead, she heard the first ripple of laughter from their audience, and at the same moment felt a great wave of heat enveloping her from head to foot as she was overwhelmed and annihilated by the blush of the century.

She found herself immobilised, crucified with embarrassment as the guffaws rose in volume around her, and she heard the jeering sotto voce comments that accompanied them.

‘In your dreams,’ was all she could manage at last, her voice a stranger’s, as she forced herself to move. To turn and walk back to the table, trying hard not to run. Attempting to hide her discomfiture. Her humiliation.

At the same time trying to accept that she had no one but herself to blame. That she’d been a total idiot to allow the others to persuade her into such a piece of arrant stupidity. Although the realisation did nothing to calm her feelings or heal the wound to her amour propre.