When she continued to stare at him, perplexed, he smiled. ‘I need a wife.’
‘A wife?’ She looked at him blankly. ‘I’m sorry, Brad, I don’t understand.’
‘I’m asking you to marry me,’ he said quietly.
She stared at him. This had to be some kind of a joke! Her lips curved and she found herself laughing. She couldn’t help herself. It was the nerve-tingling absurdity of the suggestion. ‘You can’t possibly be serious!’
‘I’m not talking about a lifelong commitment. I’m talking about twelve months.’
‘It sounds like a jail sentence.’ Paige was rewarded by a momentary expression of anger on his face. It gave her a certain amount of pleasure to strike through that cool, smug exterior of his. What on earth was he playing at? she wondered grimly. She had no illusions about his feelings for her... They might have been friends in the past, but he had never given her any indication that he wanted that friendship to deepen, no matter how much she had secretly yearned for it.
‘You want me for twelve months... What do I get?’ she asked derisively. ‘A purple heart for living with the enemy?’
‘You get this place. I’ll build it up for you, stick it back together and write off your loans.’ His voice was tight.
‘That’s a pretty expensive package.’ Her heart thundered against her breast. ‘And you’d be willing to do that to have me as your wife for twelve months?’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t understand this at all. Why a year? What’s in it for you?’
His lips curved in a mirthless smile. ‘I want a dutiful wife... Someone who will look up at me adoringly.’
Suddenly it clicked with her. ‘This is all because you are running for mayor here, isn’t it? You want the right image? The loving husband, a family man—’
‘Hold on there.’ He cut across her swiftly. ‘I’m not looking to start a family with you... Children are not part of the equation.’
Heat licked through her at the insulting undertone of that statement, but before she could coherently formulate a cutting reply he continued, ‘But yes, it has been suggested that I will find it easier to get elected if I’m married.’
‘And when we part... How would that look to your precious image?’
He laughed. ‘I’ll tell everyone you married me for my money... It won’t be so far from the truth, will it? I’ll probably be voted in again out of sympathy.’
She shook her head. ‘So why me?’
‘Why not you? You’re attractive. You know the score up front. We can draw up a business agreement and know where we stand.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m not really the marrying kind. I like my freedom. However, twelve months doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.’
It was such a preposterous idea that she just stared at him. ‘A marriage of convenience...a business deal,’ she muttered finally. ‘You get a partner to stand next to you on platforms and say the right things at civic functions, I get the vineyard back in a year?’
He nodded. ‘We’d be sleeping partners for a year.’ The gleam of humour in his eyes made her hands curl into tight fists at her sides.
‘You mean a marriage in name only?’
He didn’t answer her immediately. His eyes moved over her, looking at the curves of her figure, the luxuriant fall of her hair around the young face.
‘No, I know my limitations. You do have a fabulous body and I have a very healthy appetite. I’d want you in my bed, Paige.’
For just a moment she was so shocked that she couldn’t speak.
‘It’s not such a repulsive idea...is it, Paige?’ he enquired genuinely. ‘I know you are a good deal younger than I, but when we kissed a few moments ago it was very pleasurable; you can’t deny that. In fact I’m sure I tasted desire on your lips. It made me wonder why I had never kissed you before.’
Her skin burned with furious fires of humiliation and anger. The fact that he was right just served to infuriate her further. Her pride would never admit to the fact that she found him attractive...never. She shook her head. ‘That’s in your imagination. You tasted surprise, shock, nothing else.’
One dark eyebrow lifted. ‘Are you sure? There was a time when I wondered if you might have a crush on me.’
The arrogance of that remark really stung. ‘How far back are you going?’ She kept her equilibrium with difficulty. ‘You’re not going to remind me of the time I invited you to be my date for my high-school prom, are you?’ She forced herself to laugh. She knew very well that this was one of the few times she had braved showing her feelings to Brad, had allowed herself to flirt. ‘Heavens! If I remember rightly you laughed, told me that people would accuse you of robbing the cradle, and you were right, it was absurd.’ She added flippantly, ‘I must just have been into older men at the time.’
He shrugged. ‘You were very young.’
‘The same fifteen years are still between us,’ she said, quietly now.
‘I haven’t forgotten.’ His voice was heavy, very serious for a moment. Then his eyes moved over the slender lines of her figure. ‘But you are twenty-two now and it’s different.’
For just a second Paige gained the impression that he was trying to convince himself of this fact more than her.
‘I’m fair game to be exploited for a year, you mean?’ she snapped, her nerves stretching beyond endurance. ‘I’d rather sell my soul to the devil.’ Her voice trembled.
‘I wouldn’t call being pulled from the brink of bankruptcy exploitation.’ He laughed at that. ‘And I think you will agree to my proposal... because it will be the most profitable move of your life.’ He turned and walked towards the door. ‘Think it over.’
CHAPTER TWO
‘I CAN’T believe that you are faced with the prospect of selling this place,’ Rosie said with heartfelt sympathy in her voice.
‘It’s just unfortunate.’ Paige tried to play down her emotion on the subject as she poured her friend another cup of coffee.
They were in Paige’s kitchen at the vineyard. It was getting up towards midday and Paige had a million jobs waiting to be done. She had shelved them all very gratefully when Rosie arrived, glad of a chance to talk and relax for a while.
‘But what will you do? Where will you go?’
Paige shrugged. At the back of her mind Brad’s offer lay...too scary to think deeply about, too intriguing to forget. ‘I might go to Seattle. One of my friends has got a flat up there and apparently some contacts if I want to start looking for a job.’
‘Seattle!’ Rosie sounded shocked. ‘That’s a hell of a long way away... Who lives up there? Not that guy you were friendly with...Josh Summers?’
Paige smiled. ‘No, not Josh. He was just a friend, you know, Rosie... There was nothing romantic between us.’
‘No, but he would have liked there to be. I saw the way he looked at you when he came up here for that long weekend.’
‘He was just a fellow student. I had a card of sympathy from him when he heard about my father’s death...but I certainly have no plans to move in with him, I can assure you.’ She leaned back against the windowsill and sighed. ‘Strange, but Brad jumped to exactly the same conclusion when I told him I might share a flat with a friend. He asked if it was a male friend.’
‘Did he, now?’ Rosie looked extremely interested in this. ‘When did you see Brad?’
‘He came over here last night.’ For a moment there was silence as Paige grappled