Marriage On Command

‘You might want to,’ he said, ‘but consider my reputation for a moment.’

Lee blinked at him. ‘I don’t understand. What has that got to do with it?’

‘I’m not in the habit of allowing my guests to pay for themselves. Particularly not women.’ His expression was grave but his eyes were another matter. They were full of secret amusement.

Lee gave it some thought before replying. ‘Firstly, I don’t think I fall into the category of a “guest”.’

‘I did invite you.’

She waved a hand. ‘I didn’t give you much choice.’

‘Now that’s an admission I didn’t expect you to make.’

‘Let me finish,’ she ordered. ‘Secondly, I’m not—’

‘Not a woman?’ he suggested, looking at her lazily.

Lee ground her teeth. ‘Of course—but I’m not a date—and even dates can go Dutch anyway. But…look,’ she said disjointedly, ‘I resent being patronised like this!’

‘On the contrary,’ Damien Moore drawled, ‘I’ve enjoyed my lunch today much more than I expected to—thanks to you, Miss Westwood. So I feel the least I can do is pay for yours.’

Lee stared at him wordlessly with confusion etched clearly in her green eyes. ‘You have?’ she said at length.

‘I give you my word.’

‘Why?’ Lee asked.

He shrugged. ‘You’re full of surprises.’

‘Like a circus act?’ she suggested with some bitterness.

He laughed. ‘No. Like a snippy redhead who shoots from the hip. It’s rather refreshing.’ His expression changed for a moment, as if he was viewing a phenomenon new to him. Then he said lightly, ‘So let’s have no more argument on the subject of who pays for this lunch.’ He stood up.

But it took Lee a moment or two to follow suit, because something struck her as she stared up at the tall figure of Damien Moore—something rather stunning and almost enough to take her breath away. Could you fall in love with a man over lunch?

At two o’clock the next morning Lee gave up trying to sleep on her convertible couch and made herself a cup of tea.

She was still stunned and uncomprehending at the thought that had crossed her mind just before she’d left the restaurant with her lawyer. Where had it come from? What had prompted it? How could something like that leap into her mind on only the second occasion she’d met a man?

But even if she were able to answer those questions what difference would it make? she wondered. Nothing could change the fact that her articulacy had deserted her as they’d walked out into the sunlight and he’d asked where she was parked. She’d pointed to her car and he’d escorted her to it.

She’d thanked him awkwardly for lunch and agreed to meet him in two days’ time, but it had been as if all the spontaneity and fluidity had drained from her—to be replaced by a keen awareness of the man beside her. The fact that his height caused a flutter along her nerve-ends, for example. The fact that she had enjoyed her lunch and his company much more than she’d expected to because he’d gone out of his way to make it enjoyable.

The fact, she thought hollowly, that he’d escorted her to her car as if he were escorting a movie star to her limousine rather than Lee Westwood in her work overalls to her second-hand yellow Toyota with its several dents.

But, she cautioned herself, with a sense of déjà vu, was it so surprising that at least a little flutter of attraction should cross her nerve-ends? How many other girls wouldn’t have felt the same beneath the spell of a tall, good-looking man at his charming best?

And there lies the rub, she thought ruefully. She was only one of a long line, she had no doubt. She heaved a sigh and decided the last thing she should ever do was give Damien Moore any indication that he’d been right about her that first day in his office. And she made a mental note that this was the second time she’d issued a warning of this nature to herself.

They met outside Cyril Delaney’s Balmain home on the appointed day.

Lee had taken the afternoon off work and wore neat beige linen trousers with a white shirt and a russet waistcoat. Her hair was loose but her trademark string bag remained the same. She showed no tendency to want to linger on the pavement, which Damien Moore noted, and he concluded from her severe expression that it held embarrassing memories for her.

He was tempted to ask her if that was so, but restrained himself. He had no real expectations of this interview solving anything for Lee Westwood’s grandparents, and it had caused him a few minutes’ internal interrogation to establish why that should concern him—minutely, but none the less it concerned him. The answer he came up with was that this feisty girl intrigued him. Not a good footing for lawyer-client relations, however, he reminded himself. Don’t get personally involved, in other words…

A housekeeper showed them into a sun room at the rear of the large, luxurious house, and introduced them to a frail-looking old man in a wheelchair—Cyril Delaney. They all shook hands and Lee and Damien seated themselves side by side on a cane settee.

‘So,’ Cyril said, ‘you’re the young lady my staff had to threaten with a restraining order while I was in hospital?’

Lee moistened her lips but took her time. In his prime, Cyril would have been tall and angular, she decided, whereas now he was stooped. His features were narrow and his teeth prominent. A few strands of silver hair were carefully combed over his head. But his eyes were bright blue and shrewd.

‘I am,’ she said quietly, ‘but I didn’t realise you were in hospital.’

‘Does that mean you would have picketed the hospital?’ he enquired.

Lee coloured faintly. ‘No. But I just couldn’t find any other way to bring this to your attention, Mr Delaney, and I feel I am quite within my rights to at least get a hearing.’

‘Hmm. So you’ve hired yourself a hotshot lawyer now?’ He turned those shrewd eyes on Damien. ‘Knew your father and I’ve always been an admirer of your mother, Damien Moore.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ Damien replied, and let a few moments elapse. ‘Concerning Miss Westwood’s claims on behalf of her grandparents—’

‘Let the girl speak for herself,’ Cyril Delaney broke in.

Damien turned to Lee with a clear warning in his eyes—no hot air!

Lee swallowed. Then she began to outline her grandparents’ plight, coolly and simply. She concluded by saying, ‘It was your reputation that got them in, Mr Delaney.’

Cyril Delaney lay back in his wheelchair. ‘Piffle,’ he remarked.

‘Now look here—’ Lee began, but Damien put his hand over hers.

Cyril noted this, as well as noting how Lee Westwood looked up at Damien Moore with a stubborn light in her green eyes, and how, when she transferred that stubborn green gaze back to himself, and repeated herself, Damien Moore’s expression became tinged with a sort of wry affection rather than exasperation. All of which caused him to make a mental note concerning Evelyn Moore’s good-looking son who as yet, he believed, had not been snared and taken to the altar.

Then he closed his eyes and overrode what Lee was saying so hotly.

‘Young lady, tell me a bit about yourself.’

Lee stopped, open-mouthed. ‘Why?’ she got out at last.

‘You interest me, that’s all. And since I’ve been confined to this accursed wheelchair a lot of interest has gone out of life for me, I can assure you.’

This time Lee responded to Damien’s pressure on her hand. ‘Well…’ she said a little confusedly, but didn’t seem to know how to go on.

‘Miss Westwood was brought up by her grandparents after her parents were killed,’ Damien put in.

‘Where?’

Lee told him, and received a suddenly acute look from the old man. ‘Is that a fact?’ he said slowly. ‘And what do you do with yourself?’

Lee told him.

‘You could be looking at the next Capability Brown,’ Damien put in at the end of Lee’s recital. ‘Her tenacity is little short of amazing.’

‘Don’t tell me she camped out on your doorstep too?’ Cyril hazarded.

‘I did not,’ Lee intervened, and pulled her hand out from Damien’s. ‘I would also appreciate it if you two would stop talking over me as if I didn’t exist.’

Damien shrugged and looked down at her with a faint smile. ‘There’s little likelihood of that.’

‘Hear, hear,’ Cyril contributed, but in a curiously meaningful way that caused Damien to suddenly eye him curiously.

But Cyril seemed to tire abruptly. ‘When’s this damn document dated?’ he asked testily.

Damien told him.

‘I was in hospital. Someone was using my name and forging my signature. It’s the only explanation, Miss Westwood. I’m sorry, but…’ He paused, and frowned, then said almost to himself, ‘No. Uh, I can certainly prove I was in hospital at the time, but you’re welcome to inspect my bank accounts, Damien Moore.’

‘That won’t be necessary, sir,’ Damien said.

‘Just a minute,’ Lee said desperately. ‘I’m sorry, sir—I can see you don’t feel well—but the man they described to me looked a lot like you!’

There was a sudden silence. And for a moment Cyril’s gaze was electric blue on Lee. Then it became hooded and he said to Damien, ‘Take her away, my boy, and look after her. And call the nurse on the way out.’

‘Feeling better?’

‘Yes. Thank you.’ Lee put away her handkerchief. They were in a hotel bar not far from Cyril’s house, and she had taken several sips of a strong brandy and soda. She hadn’t quite dissolved into helpless tears on Cyril’s doorstep, but there was no doubt she’d had tears in her eyes and been inwardly distraught. To such an extent that Damien had put her in his car and found this dim and quiet lounge bar.

‘Sorry,’ she said, taking another sip. ‘It’s the disappointment—and on top of that I feel guilty. He seemed so old and frail—I don’t think it could have been him but there I was accusing him…’ She ran out of breath and could only shake her head helplessly.

‘I quite understand,’ Damien murmured, ‘but you’re right, Lee. It couldn’t have been him, although you weren’t to know that.’

‘So who was it?’ She raised her eyes to his. ‘And why did I get the feeling at the last moment that…I don’t know…something I said made him stop and think?’

Damien studied his own drink with a frown. ‘I got that impression too, but…’ He shrugged. ‘We may never know what it was.’

‘So what now?’ she asked.

‘Lee, there’s only one thing we can do now—hand it over to the police.’

‘I tried that,’ she said barely audibly. ‘I told you.’

‘Yes, but we’ve now established that even if the contract was watertight someone was masquerading under a false name, which could nullify it.’

Her shoulders slumped.

‘I’ll do it for you,’ he said.

She looked at him and smiled painfully as a beam of late-afternoon sunlight came through a high window and formed an aureole of light around her auburn head. She was still pale, he noted, which caused her freckles to be more noticeable. Then she straightened her shoulders and took a deep breath. ‘Thank you. But the truth is I can’t afford you any longer, Mr Moore, so I’ll do it myself.’

‘Damien,’ he responded. ‘And I won’t charge you.’

‘I couldn’t accept charity,’ Lee said with another painful little smile, ‘but thank you for the offer.’

‘There’s nothing you can do to stop me.’

Her eyes widened on him, seated across the small round table from her. At three in the afternoon the bar was empty except for themselves. So apart from the barman, who was energetically polishing glasses, there was no one to witness her reaction to the high-handed statement Damien Moore had just made.

‘What do you mean?’ she asked carefully.

He twirled a cardboard coaster between his long fingers. ‘Every citizen has a duty to report a felony. That’s what I’ll do.’ He shrugged, as if to say ‘simple’, but there was something in his eyes that indicated he wouldn’t take no for an answer anyway. ‘So there’s no need to feel beholden to me in any way, Lee.’

She opened her mouth to argue this, but he grinned suddenly with so much humour that she literally felt herself going weak all over beneath the sheer attractiveness of it—and couldn’t think of a thing to say.

‘Well, that’s sorted, then.’ He looked at his watch. ‘If you’re feeling better now, I’ll take you back to your car.’ He paused and studied her intently for a moment. ‘All is not lost yet, Lee. Hold on to that.’

She found her voice at last. ‘Are you doing this because Cyril told you to take care of me? And why would he say that anyway?’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Who knows? I’d say he admired your pluck and felt for your grandparents’ plight.’ He hesitated, then, ‘That’s all.’

He stood up and Lee followed suit, looking dazed.

It was as he took her arm to usher her out of the bar that Damien Moore examined his slight hesitation and realised he was not at all sure that what he’d said was the whole truth. True, most people would admire this girl’s pluck, even a sick old man. But he’d sensed something more behind Cyril’s parting remarks; he’d almost sensed a judgement being made, on himself and on Lee, but what the hell it could have been he had no idea.

Unless… He posed a question to himself. Unless Cyril had divined that a slightly protective feeling had wormed its way into his relations with this client?

Out on the pavement, he stopped briefly and studied his client in the bright sunlight. She was obviously more composed now, although still pale, but he wondered how long she would remain so unnaturally quiet. He didn’t have long to wait.

‘Thank you very much for all you’ve done, Mr Moore,’ Lee started to say. ‘I really—’

‘It’s Damien, Lee.’

A fleeting tinge of exasperation clouded her gaze. ‘I really appreciate your help and everything,’ she continued stubbornly, ‘but—’

‘Just hop in, Lee,’ he advised, and opened the door of the Porsche for her. ‘I’m running late.’

‘But I need to—’

‘You don’t need to say a thing. Go back to your gardens and leave this to me.’ He patted the top of her head.

Lee bit her lip, now not only exasperated but all mixed up.

She took his advice and five minutes later she’d been returned to her car and he was about to drive off.

‘I’ll be in touch!’ were his last words before he drove off, leaving her prey to a cauldron of emotions.

He was as good as his word.

Over the next few weeks he rang her several times, and invited her to have breakfast with him at his apartment once, to update her on the progress he was making. Then he took her to lunch to explain that it was going to be a long process, because whoever had masqueraded as Cyril Delaney had covered their tracks most efficiently.

During these meetings Lee was able to hide the ambivalence of her feelings towards him. She even felt she’d managed to revert to the snippy redhead who shot from the hip rather than the confused unhappy girl of the day of Cyril’s interview. The girl who had, in the same breath, been both entirely exasperated by his high-handedness and then suffered a vision of how heavenly it would be to have Damien Moore looking after her…

A month later she read that Cyril Delaney had died after a long illness. She felt touched by sadness. But three days afterwards, when Damien rang her to tell that they featured jointly in Cyril’s will, her emotions defied description as he explained the extraordinary bequest that was to change her life for ever.

CHAPTER TWO

DAMIEN MOORE looked at his watch, then glanced around the colourful pavement café impatiently. He had another appointment at two o’clock, now only fifty minutes away, and Lee Westwood was late.

He reached for the menu. She might eat like a rabbit but he didn’t, and he had no intention of bolting down his lunch. So he signalled the waitress and ordered a steak for himself, a Caesar salad for his guest, and a pot of coffee.

‘She’ll be here shortly, I assume,’ he told the waitress, ‘and she always orders rabbit food so I can’t go wrong with a salad.’ He smiled at the girl but felt his teeth set on edge at being on the receiving end of a coy, simpering smile in return. Which prompted the thought that Lee Westwood might be highly exasperating at times, but at least she never simpered over him or batted her eyelashes at him.

Then he saw her approaching from way down the block. Her long auburn hair was flying, and so was the green scarf she had round her neck, as she loped along the pavement with her trademark stride in a pair of short leather boots worn with faded jeans, a large cyclamen T-shirt and a bulging string bag hanging from her shoulder.

Sartorially a disaster, Damien Moore mused, as so often—although he supposed he should count himself fortunate she wasn’t wearing the black crocheted hat she often favoured, crammed onto her head.

OK, it was a pavement café, he told himself, but it was an extremely chic one, with its striped awnings and potted trees—which she would have known. And so was the clientele chic. Most of the women here looked as if they’d stepped straight out of Vogue. But when had that worried this girl, he thought amusedly, who could turn herself into the height of glamour on a whim? And, more to the point, what was it she possessed that still made her turn heads as she got closer?

Wonderful hair? Yes, he conceded. Long-lashed sparkling green eyes? Definitely a plus. Otherwise? That hint of freckles? He thought he knew enough about women to know they’d rather not be freckled—so a minus on the part of the beholden as well as the beholder, although he himself didn’t mind Lee’s freckles for some strange reason. A thin figure? Another minus, surely? Mind you, very long shapely legs…

But it wasn’t any of the above plusses or minuses, he decided in the last moments before she arrived at the table. It was her sheer vitality and the aura that she didn’t give a damn about what anyone thought of her. It was, after all, that force within her that had persuaded him to take on her legal battles when he’d known—and told her—she was barking up the wrong tree, and when he’d strenuously doubted that she could afford his fees.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said breathlessly as she looped the string bag over the back of the chair and plonked down onto it. ‘The traffic was unbelievable!’

‘Has it never occurred to you, Lee, that a bit of forward planning might relieve you of the tiresome business of having to apologise for being late?’

‘Oh, dear!’ She looped her hair behind her ears and glinted a laughing look at him out of those green eyes. At the same time she took in his severely tailored navy suit, pale blue shirt and discreet tie. ‘Have I seriously offended you?’

He shrugged. ‘Being late can make things difficult for other people. For instance, I now have only forty-five minutes to brief you.’

She gestured. ‘That’s only fifteen minutes less than you would have had if I’d been on time, not exactly an eon. I’m sure you can pack a powerful lot of briefing into three quarters of an hour, Damien, although I can’t imagine what you need to brief me about anyway—oh!’ She looked up as a huge Caesar salad was placed in front of her. ‘You ordered for me!’

Damien studied the steak he was presented with, observed from the pink juices running from it that it was rare, as he’d requested, and picked up his knife and fork. ‘If you’d been on time you could have ordered for yourself. Isn’t that the kind of meal you generally go for?’

‘Well, yes,’ Lee conceded, but not in a conciliated manner. ‘I would have asked for a much smaller one than this, though. I would have requested no anchovies, which I hate, and—’

‘Don’t eat the anchovies and leave half of it,’ he recommended dryly.

‘You don’t understand,’ she murmured, favouring him with irony in her eyes. ‘The sheer size of a meal, however delicious, can be off-putting and take away your appetite.’

He swore. ‘It’s only a salad, for crying out loud! I’m not trying to force feed you a gargantuan serving of…of roast beef and baked potatoes. It wouldn’t hurt you to eat a bit more either.’

‘Is that designed to make me feel uncomfortable about my figure? If so, may I enquire what it has to do with my lawyer?’ She looked at him haughtily.

Damien Moore breathed deeply—and counted to ten for good measure. Neither of these devices helped, however. For a twenty-four-year-old girl she often packed quite a punch, and was capable of needling him with the best. ‘Nothing on earth,’ he said coolly—and pointedly.

Lee grimaced. ‘Then perhaps you’d like to tell me why you’re in such a bad mood? Incidentally, I didn’t just drive across town for lunch. I came up the Pacific Highway, which is undergoing considerable roadworks, hence the build-up of traffic and the delays.’

Something even more irritated flickered in his dark eyes, but almost immediately gave way to a form of self-directed irony. He eased his shoulders and said ruefully, ‘Sorry. How’s it going “down on the farm”?’

Lee’s eyes lit up. That little phrase ‘down on the farm’ encapsulated the miracle that Cyril Delaney’s will had brought to her life. For the most bizarre reason he had left a property—Plover Park, its twenty-five acres and registered wholesale nursery—to her and Damien jointly, on the condition that they didn’t attempt to dispose of it within twelve months. At one stroke it had not only brought her life’s dream within her grasp but also, because of the income the nursery generated, it had solved her grandparents’ immediate cash-flow problems.

The other part of the miracle was that Plover Park was ten minutes’ drive from her grandparents’ home—it was in the area where Lee had grown up and gone to university. It had been like going home for her. And her still active grandfather was more than happy to work the nursery with her.

‘It’s…fantastic,’ she said glowingly. ‘Sometimes I have to pinch myself! We’re almost into full production now.’

He looked impressed.

‘So what did you want to see me about so urgently?’ Lee asked blithely as she inspected her salad and removed the anchovies.

Damien paused and wondered if there was any kind way of breaking the news to this glowing girl. ‘There’s been a complication,’ he said slowly, and decided it was best to get it over fast. ‘The will is to be contested.’

Lee gasped and paled. ‘You’re joking!’

He shook his head.

‘On what…on what grounds?’

‘On the grounds that we may have exerted undue pressure on Cyril to force him to make the bequest.’

‘But we didn’t! We had no idea it was going to happen,’ she protested.

‘You know that and I know that, Lee. Unfortunately Cyril is no longer with us to corroborate it.’

‘And you…you set aside an hour of your precious time to break this news to me!’ Lee stammered.

He shrugged. ‘I’m extremely busy at the moment. And so, you gave me to understand, are you.’

‘But this is terrible! It could be catastrophic!’

‘It could indeed,’ he agreed. ‘For you.’

Lee stared at the Caesar salad she now definitely didn’t want and swallowed. ‘So what’s your considered opinion? As a lawyer? Have they got a leg to stand on?’

Damien ate in silence for a while, then pushed his empty plate away and reached for the coffee pot. ‘In general terms you’re allowed to make bequests in your will as you see fit, provided your legal heirs are taken care of. One of Cyril’s legal heirs,’ he said significantly, ‘has decided that he wasn’t sufficiently taken care of and that Plover Park is rightly his.’

‘Which one?’

‘His brother. One of his contentions is that Plover Park belongs in the Delaney family. It was originally owned by their grandfather and has been in the family all that time. Whereas the only use we have for it is to sell it when the twelve months are up and divide the profits.’

‘He…well, he’s right—hard though that’s going to be,’ Lee said unguardedly, ‘but how can he be so sure?’

Damien studied her searchingly for a long moment. ‘Cyril wrote a letter that is on public record explaining this unusual bequest.’