The Tycoon's Marriage Deal
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Blake tapped his index finger on the stack of bills on her desk. ‘It won’t be your shop for much longer if these aren’t seen to soon. Give me a call when you’ve changed your mind.’
Tillie lifted one of her brows as if she were channelling a heroine in a period drama. ‘When? Don’t you mean if?’
His eyes held hers in an iron will against iron will tug of war, making her heart skip a beat. Two beats. Possibly three. If she’d been on a cardiac ward they would have called a Code Blue.
‘You know you want to.’
Tillie wasn’t sure they were still talking about the money. There was a dangerous undercurrent rippling in the air. Air she couldn’t quite get into her lungs. But then he picked up his business card, which she’d placed on her desk earlier, and, reaching across the small space the desk offered, slid it into the right breast pocket of her shirt. At no point did he touch her, but it felt as if he had stroked her breast with one of those long, clever fingers. Her breast fizzed as if a firework were trapped inside the cup of her bra.
‘Call me,’ he said.
‘You’ll be waiting a long time.’
His smile was confident. Brazenly confident. I’ve-got-this-in-the-bag confident. ‘You think?’
That was the whole darn trouble. Tillie couldn’t think. Not while he was standing there dangling temptation in front of her. She’d always prided herself on her resolve, but right now it felt as if her resolve had rolled over and was playing dead.
She owed a lot of money. More money than she earned in a year. Way more. She had to pay her father and stepmother back the small loan they’d given her because as missionaries living abroad they were living on gifts and tithes as it was. Mr Pendleton had offered to help her but it didn’t sit well with her to take money off him when he had already been incredibly generous by allowing her to stay at McClelland Park rent-free and to use his kitchen for baking when she ran out of time at the shop. Besides, he would need all his money and more if he didn’t sell McClelland Park, because an old Georgian property that size needed constant and frighteningly expensive maintenance.
But to take money off Blake McClelland in exchange for a month pretending to be his fianc'ee was a step into territory so dangerous she would need to be immediately measured for a straitjacket. Even if he didn’t expect her to sleep with him she would have to act as if she were. She would have to touch him, hold hands or have him—gulp—kiss her for the sake of appearances.
‘Good day, McClelland,’ Tillie said, as sternly as if she were dismissing an impertinent boy from the staffroom.
Blake was almost out of her office when he turned around at the door to look back at her. ‘Oh, one other thing.’ He fished in his trouser pocket and took out a velvet ring box and tossed it to her desk to land on top of her stack of bills with unnerving accuracy. ‘You’ll be needing this.’
And without stopping to see her open the box, he turned and left.
JOANNE CAME INTO the office before Tillie had time to pick her dropped jaw up off the desk, much less the ring box. ‘Oh. My. God. Is that what I think it is?’ she said.
Tillie stared at the box as if it were a detonator device. ‘I’m not going to open it.’
I’m not. I’m not. I’m not.
Even though her finger still felt horribly empty after three years of wearing an engagement ring. Three years and another five before that wearing a friendship/commitment ring. But she had a feeling Blake’s ring wouldn’t look anything like the humble little quarter-carat diamond Simon had purchased. Actually, Simon hadn’t purchased it. She’d put it on her credit card and he was meant to repay her but somehow never did. Another clue he hadn’t truly loved her.
Why hadn’t she realised that until now?
‘Well, if you don’t want it, give it to me,’ Joanne said. ‘I’m not against gorgeous men buying me expensive jewellery. What did he want to speak to you about?’
‘You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.’
‘Try me.’
Tillie let out a gust of a breath. ‘He wants to settle all of my debts in exchange for me pretending to be his fianc'ee for a month.’
‘You’re right. I don’t believe you.’
‘He’s the most arrogant man I’ve ever met,’ Tillie said. ‘The hide of him marching in here expecting me to say yes to such a ridiculous farce. Who would believe it anyway? Me engaged to someone like him?’
Joanne’s smooth brow crinkled in thought. ‘I don’t know... I think you’re a little hard on yourself. I mean, I know you’re not big on fashion but if you wore a bit more colour and a bit of make-up you’d look awesome. And you’ve got great boobs but you never show any cleavage.’
Tillie sat down with a thump on her desk chair. ‘Yes, well, Simon didn’t like it when women paraded their assets.’
And how could I have spent money on clothes and make-up while saving for the wedding?
‘Simon was born in the wrong century,’ Joanne said with a roll of her eyes. ‘I reckon you’re better off without him. He never even took you out dancing, for pity’s sake. You deserve someone much more dynamic than him. He’s too bland. Blake McClelland, on the other hand, is capital D dynamite.’
Blake McClelland was too darn everything.
Tillie eyed the ring box again, curling her fingers into her palms like hooks to stop herself reaching for it. ‘I’m going to take it to Mrs Fisher’s second-hand shop.’
Joanne couldn’t have look more shocked than if she’d said she was going to flush it down the toilet. ‘Surely you’re not serious?’
Tillie left the ring box where it was and pushed back from her desk. ‘I’m deadly serious.’
* * *
Blake drove the few kilometres out from the village to his family’s estate in rural Wiltshire. He had driven past a few times over the years after leaving flowers at his mother’s grave at the cemetery in the village, but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to stop and survey the estate in any detail. To stare at the home that used to belong in his family had always been too painful, like jabbing at a wound that had never properly healed.