Bride Required

He seemed to finally catch up with the conversation. ‘Who told you I was homosexual?’

‘You did, earlier. Remember?’

‘Vaguely.’

‘Don’t worry,’ she assured him. ‘I won’t go advertising it.’

He seemed about to say something. Dee had the strong impression he was going to deny it. She hoped he wouldn’t. She was beginning to like him, but she couldn’t stand liars.

In the end, however, he said without much conviction, ‘That’s good to hear.’

‘I won’t, honestly,’ Dee stressed. ‘And it’s not as if it’s obvious. I mean you look very masculine, really.’

‘Should I take that as a compliment?’ he asked in ironic tones.

‘No.’

‘I thought not.’

Dee pulled a slight face and wished he would stop trying to put her on the spot.

They lapsed into silence as Rick came to set the table in front of them.

When he’d gone, the stranger asked, ‘Where is this squat?’

‘In a block of maisonettes the council have condemned.’

‘How long have you lived there?’

‘About six weeks.’

He frowned. ‘And the council haven’t noticed?’

‘Why should they?’ She shrugged. ‘I’ve left it boarded up, and the electricity and gas are still disconnected. Even if they did know, they wouldn’t care. They’re pulling it down for redevelopment soon.’

‘And then what? Where will you go?’

The questions could have denoted genuine interest, but Dee was doubtful. ‘Why? Are you doing a documentary or something? “The plight of the homeless?” Been done before, mate, sorry.’

‘No, I am not making a documentary.’ He kept his patience—just. ‘I was simply wondering if you’d made any contingency plans for the summer.’

‘Well, I was hoping to go cruising the Greek islands again,’ Dee replied in the same flippant tones, ‘but my boat’s in dry dock at the moment.’

His mouth tightened. ‘Don’t you take anything seriously?’

‘Like life, you mean?’ She slanted him a look wise beyond her years. ‘And where do you think that would get me—taking the long-term view?’

Baxter saw her point. With nothing to look forward to and no way of lifting herself up out of her current situation, maybe it was best to take each day as it came.

‘Have you no qualifications?’ he asked in a manner that suggested he expected she had none.

Dee decided to surprise him with the truth. ‘Nine GCSES—six As, two Bs and a D. I’m still working on my A levels.’

Baxter grimaced at what he took for sarcasm. ‘Okay, message received. You want me to mind my own business.’

Actually, no. Dee had wanted him to be impressed. To look at her in a new light. To talk to her as if she were worth talking to. But, no, she was just another homeless no-hoper to him—and to almost every other person who passed her on their way to work and the real world.

‘Give the man a coconut,’ she finally responded, just as Rick approached the table.

‘Coconut?’ Rick repeated, not much one for sarcasm. ‘I don’t serve coconuts. You want coconuts, go to one of those West Indian market stalls.’ He dumped two plates in front of them and waited for some acknowledgement.

‘Thanks, Rick,’ Dee said, with a commendably straight face.

‘Yes, thanks, Rick,’ Baxter echoed, in a voice also laced with amusement.

They waited until Rick was out of range before they laughed together.

It was a brief lapse, but laughter transformed her. From a belligerent, cropped-haired punk to a bright-eyed, spirited girl-woman. The change fascinated Baxter.

Then she switched to being a child, eating her meal with wordless, indiscriminate haste.

Dee had grown used to going all day with a virtually empty stomach, not allowing herself to think of her hunger. When presented with food, however, that was all she could think of. She didn’t look up until she’d finished every last scrap.

It was only then that she was aware of his eyes on her, only then that she realised how greedy she must seem.

His own plate remained untouched.

‘How old are you?’ he asked, not for the first time.

‘Eighteen.’ Well, she would be soon.

‘Good,’ he nodded.

‘Good?’ she quizzed.

‘I was worried you might be a runaway,’ he added, assuming she wasn’t.

She had been. She had first left home last summer. It had been easy. She’d had it planned for months. She’d had cash, squirrelled away from birthdays, Christmas and pocket money. It had seemed a fortune, but it had gone after a matter of weeks and she’d returned home rather than live on the streets. Three months ago she’d run away again. This time no one had come looking for her.

‘This thing I want you to do will be complicated enough—’ he resumed the conversation, ‘—without any irate parents appearing on my doorstep.’

‘There’ll be no irate parents.’ Her mother was many things—pretty, silly, vain—but never strong enough to be irate. ‘So, if you’re thinking of murdering me, you can be fairly sure I’ll go unmourned,’ she added with black humour.

It drew no smile in return. Instead he said tersely, ‘If you thought there was any chance of my being a psychopath, why the hell did you go with me?’

‘Why do you think?’ she retorted. She waved the two halves of the notes in front of his face, as he’d done to her earlier. ‘Anyway, you don’t look much like a homicidal maniac… So, assuming you’re not, what are you?’

He hesitated, his eyes narrowing as if he was testing her discretion.

‘You’re not an actor, are you?’ Dee speculated.

‘An actor?’ His tone dismissed the idea. ‘What makes you think that?’

‘Because you’re so good-looking, I suppose,’ she admitted quite frankly. Of course, she wouldn’t have done so had he been straight. But he wasn’t, so it didn’t count.

He was taken aback for a moment, then said, ‘Are you always so forthright with men?’

‘No, not with—’ Dee caught herself up, about to use the word ‘normal’. It was a minefield, trying to be politically correct. She switched to saying, ‘Not with some men. You know—macho types that interpret “hello” as an invitation to sleep with you.’

His brows rose before he commented, ‘I suppose I should be grateful you don’t class me in that category.’

‘No, well, you couldn’t be, could you?’ Dee continued to display a newly discovered tactless streak. She dismissed a prospective career in the diplomatic service and ran on, ‘Does that mean you’re not an actor?’

‘Sorry to disappoint you,’ he drawled back, ‘but I’m something a shade more pedestrian.’

She lifted a questioning brow.

‘Pedestrian—that means—’

‘Commonplace, ordinary, mundane… Yes, I know.’

‘Sorry, I thought—’

‘That “homeless” equated with “ignorant”,’ she cut in. ‘Well, don’t feel too bad. It’s a fairly universal reaction.’

Baxter found he didn’t feel bad so much as disconcerted. He was used to being in charge, the senior man in most situations. But he suspected this smart-mouthed girl would be no respecter of age or position.

He tried her out, saying, ‘Actually, I’m a doctor.’

He waited for her reaction. Usually people were over-impressed by his profession.

Dee gave a brief, surprised laugh. It was some coincidence.

‘Well, no one’s ever found it amusing before,’ he said with a slight edge to his voice.

She shrugged without apology. ‘You don’t look the part, though I suppose you’re a big hit with the female patients.’ Once more she forgot his sexual orientation.

‘And why do you think that?’ he enquired dryly.

Dee found herself colouring under his amused gaze before muttering, ‘As I said earlier, you’re very good-looking. I imagine you’d send a few hearts fluttering—whether you wanted to or not.’

‘Hearts fluttering?’ He raised a brow. ‘Who would have thought a romantic lay under such a cynical exterior?’

Dee realised he was taking the mickey, and said coldly, ‘I was being ironic. You know what I mean.’

‘Not personally, no,’ he denied. ‘Most of my patients are too busy dying on me to notice my physical appearance.’

He spoke so dryly Dee wondered if he was joking, but something in his eyes told her he wasn’t.

‘I used to work for an aid agency in Africa,’ he explained briefly.

It was Dee who pursued it. ‘In famine areas, that kind of thing?’

He nodded, but, though her interest was patent, he didn’t capitalise on it. Instead he turned to eating his meal.

Dee studied him surreptitiously across the table, wondering if it was true. She knew several doctors. Her father had been one—harassed and overworked, dedicated in the beginning, a burnt-out man in the end. Her stepfather was something else, a hospital consultant with expensive tastes and no real interest in medicine besides what it could earn him. Their doctor friends had been somewhere in between.

But this stranger was different. She couldn’t categorise him.

‘That must be challenging,’ she finally replied, and immediately realised what an inadequate word it was to use for such work.

He probably thought so too, from the brief, tight smile on his mouth, but he let it pass.

Before she could make a fool of herself again, Dee asked, ‘So what sort of job could you possibly want me to do, Doc?’

He pulled a face at the ‘Doc’. ‘I’ll tell you in a minute. First I want you to understand something. If you decide you don’t want a part of it, then I have to warn you. You shouldn’t waste your time going to the police or the newspapers or anyone else, because I’ll simply deny it all… And you know who people will believe?’

Not her, Dee acknowledged silently, and felt like kicking herself. It was illegal, this job of his. Of course it was. What had she expected?

She began to rise to her feet, and a hand shot out to keep her there. ‘Where are you going?’

‘Forget it.’ She thrust the two halves of money at him. ‘If it’s illegal, I’m out of here.’

‘It isn’t,’ Baxter lied without conscience, and felt relief as she subsided back in her chair. Then a thought occurred to him. ‘You aren’t already in trouble with the police, are you?’

‘No, I am not!’ she declared indignantly.

‘Okay, okay,’ he pacified her, although inwardly disputing her right to be outraged after the fare-dodging incident. ‘I was just checking. I don’t need any additional hassles…I assume you’re single, too?’

‘Single?’

‘As in unmarried.’

‘Of course.’ Dee laughed, conveying how little she thought of marriage. ‘—Why?’

Baxter hesitated, then finally decided to get round to the reason he’d approached this waif and stray.

He grimaced before relaying the information. ‘You can’t be married because that’s part of the job—getting married.’

Getting married? Dee repeated the words to herself, as if by doing so they might take on a new meaning, but they didn’t. Then she took to staring at him as if he were completely and utterly mad.

He wanted her to marry him and she didn’t even know his name!

CHAPTER TWO

‘I DON’T even know your name,’ Dee said aloud.

‘Baxter,’ he introduced himself, as if that would make it less ridiculous.

‘Look, Mr Baxter…’ She intended to tell him what he could do with his job.

‘It’s not Mr Baxter,’ he corrected, ‘it’s—’

‘I know,’ Dee cut across him. ‘Mustn’t forget the title, must we? Dr Baxter.’

Her tone was derisive. He was not perturbed.

‘Actually, I was about to say it’s Ross.’

‘Ross?

‘Mr Ross, if we’re going in for formalities.’ A slanting smile mocked her in return. ‘I’m not hung up on the “Dr” bit.’

Having made a fool of herself, Dee didn’t exactly feel more warmly disposed towards him. ‘Baxter. That’s your first name?’ she concluded, and, at his nod, muttered, ‘What kind of name is that?’

‘A Scottish one.’

‘Well, that explains it.’

Baxter knew he shouldn’t ask. But he did. ‘Explains what?’

‘Why you talk funny,’ Dee replied with careless rudeness.

‘I talk funny?’ He laughed at the sheer nerve of the girl. ‘Well, at least my accent doesn’t go walkabout.’

‘What do you mean?’ She glared back.

But Baxter reckoned she knew well enough. ‘What I can’t quite figure,’ he ran on, ‘is which one’s real—the cockney sparrow routine or the middle-class girl from the Home Counties?’

‘You don’t need to figure it—’ his perception disconcerted Dee ‘—because neither is crazy enough to marry you!’

He listened without expression, any insult lost on him. Mr Cool.

‘I didn’t actually ask you to marry me,’ he said at length.

Dee scowled. Perhaps he hadn’t said the words, but that was surely his intent. He was just splitting hairs now.

‘So what else were you doing? Asking me to marry someone else?’ Her tone told him that would rate as even crazier.

He hesitated fractionally before saying, ‘Whichever, it’s an irrelevancy. It would, naturally, be what’s termed a marriage of convenience.’

‘No sex, you mean.’ Dee had no time for silly euphemisms. ‘I’d kinda worked that out for myself… You need me as camouflage, right?’

‘Camouflage?’

‘You want to convince the world you’re straight, and you reckon what better way than to acquire a wife. Only you don’t want a real wife, because then she’d expect you to…well, you get my drift.’

‘I think so.’ Baxter realised she was on a completely different road, but possibly they’d arrive at the same destination in time. So why throw her off-course for now?

Dee watched the thoughts crossing his handsome face and imagined she could read them. She relented slightly, saying, ‘Look, I really have no problem with your being gay, and if you want to keep it a secret I can understand that too. But maybe life would be easier if you simply “outed” yourself. Just made a one-off declaration to the world, then just got on with your life…

Lots of people do it—TV personalities, actors, pop stars. You could almost call it fashionable… And you know what they say about honesty being the best policy and all that.’

‘I doubt it applies in this case.’ Baxter realised her sudden sympathy only applied because she thought he was gay.

‘Well, it’s your life.’ Dee decided she wasn’t in the best shape to be advising anyone else. ‘And I suppose a marriage of convenience rates one better than pretending to do it for real.’

‘Sorry?’ She’d lost him again.

‘It’s what some gay men do,’ she ran on. ‘Marry, have kids even, then, hey presto, they hit mid-life crisis and leave their wives for another man.’

‘You’re an authority on this, are you?’ he enquired dryly.

‘Not especially,’ she denied. ‘I just had a schoolfriend whose father did it… They were all devastated,’ she recalled matter-of-factly.

‘Do you know anyone with happy, uncomplicated lives?’ he asked when she’d finished this gloomy tale.

‘No—do you?’ she flipped back.

Her tone said she didn’t believe in happiness. Baxter wondered what had made her so cynical.

‘Actually, yes,’ he responded. ‘My sister, Catriona, and her husband have a marriage that seems reasonably close to perfect.’

‘Seems being the operative word,’ Dee couldn’t resist commenting. From her own experience she knew so-called perfect marriages could hide cracks the size of the San Andreas fault line. Take her mother and stepfather. The world had always seen them as the perfect couple. Come to that, the world probably still did—the perfect couple cursed only by a bad lot of a daughter.

Dee had no illusions. It was what people had thought of her. A bad lot that would come to a worse end.

‘Well, you’ll be able to judge for yourself.’ His voice broke into her thoughts once more.

‘Judge what?’

‘If it’s real, their happiness… But I’m warning you now. They do a great deal of laughing and smiling, and even kissing. So it may be hard for a world-weary cynic like yourself to take.’

He was laughing, too. At her, in this case. Dee tried to take offence, but there was something disarming about the smile he slanted her.

‘I haven’t agreed to anything,’ she said instead, then realised it wasn’t quite positive enough. ‘I mean, I can’t possibly do what you’re suggesting.’

‘Why not?’

Why not? Dee repeated to herself, and didn’t immediately find an answer. A smile touched his lips as he detected her weakening.

She shook her head. ‘You expect me to go up to the wilds of Scotland—’

‘We live about fifteen miles from the centre of Edinburgh,’ he interjected. ‘Almost civilisation, in fact.’

‘Okay, but then there’s the time.’ She raised a new objection. ‘Or are you planning for me to go up on one train, play blushing bride for a day, then take the next train home? I doubt that’ll convince anyone.’

‘No, you’d obviously have to commit to longer. Let’s say a year’s contract.’

‘A year!’

‘At the very most.’ He nodded. ‘But if things go well I’d release you earlier.’

‘Release me?’ she echoed. ‘This is beginning to sound like a prison sentence.’

‘Not quite. You won’t be on bread and water, or sewing mailbags,’ he assured her in dry tones. ‘Basically, you’ll have your own room, three square meals a day and a moderate allowance. Will that be so bad?’

‘Sounds wonderful,’ she said, but gave a visible shudder as she ran on. ‘Going quietly out of my head, playing the little woman at home.’

Baxter laughed in response. Not very wise at this stage of the negotiation, but it was just too absurd.

‘You? The little woman? Apart from looking totally unlike the part, I somehow doubt you’d be that good an actress.’

‘Thanks.’ She pulled a face. ‘So why ask me?’

Good question, Baxter had to agree. ‘There wasn’t exactly a wide choice of candidates.’

‘And beggars can’t be choosers?’ Dee threw his earlier words back at him.

‘Something like that.’ He didn’t deny it.

‘You’re crazy,’ Dee said aloud, then silently to herself. For she had to be crazy, too, listening to this.

He said nothing, but took out a pen and chequebook from the inside pocket of his jacket. Dee watched as he wrote in it, then stared in disbelief as he held the cheque in front of her face.

‘That’s what you’ll get on the day of the wedding,’ he relayed to her, ‘and then the same at the end of twelve months, or whenever I release you.’

Five thousand pounds. Double that by the end. She read and reread it, wondering if she was hallucinating and seeing too many noughts.

‘You’re kidding!’ she scoffed.

‘Scotsmen don’t kid about money.’ He placed the cheque on the table before her. ‘Don’t you know that?’

He smiled, as if it might still turn out to be a joke, but his eyes said different. This was business.

It was Dee who shook her head. This was fantasy. ‘You’ll pay me ten thousand pounds just to marry you?’

‘You think that’s too much?’ he returned.

Dee’s lips formed the word ‘Yes’ but she didn’t utter it aloud. Did she really want to talk the price down?

‘Make no mistake. It’s up to a year of your life—and that’s a long time at your age,’ he warned, eyes resting on her as if assessing just how young she was.

‘How old are you?’ Dee threw back at him.

‘Thirty-four.’ He watched her screw up her face and added, ‘Virtually geriatric to you, I imagine.’

That wasn’t actually what Dee had been thinking. ‘Have you considered what other people are going to make of the age gap? I mean there’s not much point in hiring me for a respectable front if my appearance is going to result in the opposite.’

‘For ten thousand pounds, I expect you could modify your appearance,’ he suggested, without going into details.

He didn’t have to. His gaze went from her earrings in triplicate to her close-cropped haircut.

Dee knew how she looked, with her hair and her combat jacket and her laced up Doc Martens—like a tough neopunk who could take care of herself. It was exactly how she wanted to look. When her hair had been longer and her clothes more feminine, she’d had to fend off the pimps and perverts who preyed on girls in her situation.

‘I expect I could,’ Dee echoed, ‘if I was mad enough to go along with you. But let’s get real. You think anybody—your family or friends—is going to believe we’re each other’s types?’

Not in a million years, Baxter had to agree. His sister might have spent the last decade trying to marry him off, but even she would balk at this girl. Colleagues would imagine he was having a mid-life crisis. And male friends, unable to see any other virtue, would assume she was great in bed. Still, none of that really mattered.

‘Attraction of opposites?’ he suggested, with a smile of pure irony. ‘Don’t worry about it. It won’t be a problem… Just try and tone down a little before you come north of the border. I can give you an advance for clothes if necessary.’

‘Tweed skirts and twinsets?’ she commented dryly, but did wonder what image she was meant to cultivate.

‘Up to you.’ He shrugged, as if it was a small issue.

And Dee, realising he was being serious about the rest, finally found herself considering it. What did she have to lose?

‘Well, how about it?’ He was hardly pressurising her into it.

‘I don’t know.’ She was clearly wavering.

‘Look, if you’re concerned about being able to marry someone else in the future,’ he added, ‘then don’t be. I’ll finance the divorce, too.’

‘That isn’t an issue. I won’t be getting married. Not for real, anyway,’ she amended.

‘Ever?’ He raised a brow.

‘Ever,’ she echoed with utter conviction.

‘Don’t tell me—you’re off men for life.’ He clearly didn’t take her seriously.

‘Not all men—and just marriage.’

‘A woman who doesn’t automatically hear wedding bells. Where have you been all my life?’

He was joking. She realised that. But still it seemed an odd thing for him to say.

She stared at him hard. ‘I didn’t think you were interested in women.’

Baxter stared back briefly, before deciding to come clean.

‘Time to set the record straight, I think—straight being the appropriate word.’

Dee took a moment to catch on. ‘You’re not gay?’

‘’Fraid not,’ he confided in ironic tones.

Something about his manner made Dee believe him. She should have been angry—and she was—but, behind that, she also felt an odd sense of relief.

She didn’t let it show as she demanded, ‘So why did you say you were?’

‘Technically I didn’t,’ he corrected. ‘What I said was, “I’m not interested in young girls”. Which I’m not, preferring a more mature kind of woman… So, you’re still safe.’

Safe, but confused. ‘Then why the arranged marriage?’

‘That’s harder to explain.’ He was obviously in no hurry to do so.

Dee, impatient as ever, jumped to another conclusion. ‘I bet it’s a legacy. You have to get married by your thirty-fifth birthday or you’ll be disinherited by some great-aunt. Am I right?’

Baxter raised a mental eyebrow. She certainly had imagination. He just wasn’t sure yet if he could trust her with the truth.

‘It’s connected with a legacy, yes,’ he finally confirmed.

‘I knew it!’ She looked pleased with herself for guessing.

‘Anyway, I can’t go into details at the moment,’ he asserted. ‘I can only stress once more that it will just be a marriage of convenience.’

He didn’t have to stress it. Dee had got the message. He didn’t fancy her. Did he have to keep labouring the point?

‘Well?’ he added, raising a brow.

Decision time. ‘I’d have to take Henry.’

‘Of course.’ He glanced down at the dog stretched at their feet. ‘He seems a fairly well-behaved animal. Does he like trains?’

‘Is that how we’d be travelling…assuming I agreed?’

He nodded. ‘I haven’t been back long from Kirundi, and am currently carless.’

‘You were in Kirundi?’ Dee read newspapers and magazines dumped in the underground by commuters. She knew something of the civil war that had raged in the African country.