A Contract, A Wedding, A Wife?

Her brow furrowed at this. ‘You don’t want to fall in love?’

‘No.’

There was a small pause before she asked, ‘Why not?’

He shrugged. ‘It’s just not for me, that’s all. Despite my great-aunt’s insistence that it was the best thing that ever happened to her, I don’t believe falling in love with someone can really make you happy.’ He sat up in his chair. ‘In fact, I think it does the opposite. It didn’t work out for my parents, or for a large population of the country, and I intend to learn from their mistakes.’

Not to mention his own near miss—though he wasn’t about to tell her about that humiliating experience.

‘Just out of interest, what does your temporary bride get out of this arrangement?’ she asked in a faltering voice, jerking him out of his scrambled thoughts.

There was a tense pause where they looked at each other and he weighed up what he’d be prepared to offer her if she meant what he thought she meant by that.

‘The candidate would be able to keep the rental cost on their property the same for the next five years,’ he replied slowly.

‘And would there be some sort of pay-out as soon as she’d signed the marriage register?’ she asked, her gaze intent on his now.

‘There could be, if it was a reasonable request.’

‘But she’d have to live with you,’ she appeared to swallow, ‘in your house?’

Noting the renewed flush of her skin, he could guess what she actually meant by that.

‘It would be a purely business arrangement,’ he reassured her, ‘which would mean she’d sleep in her own bedroom. There wouldn’t be any conjugal expectations. In fact, it would be a totally platonic relationship, to avoid any complications.’

‘I see,’ she said, her shoulders seeming to relax a little.

Despite his wish to keep sex out of the deal, he couldn’t help but feel a little miffed by her apparent horror at the idea of sleeping with him. Was it really that off-putting an idea? He shook off his irritation, telling himself not to be an idiot. The woman didn’t know him from the next man, so of course she’d be nervous about the idea of any expected intimacy between them.

‘We’d also both have to agree not to have any sexual relationships outside the marriage, again, to avoid complications.’

‘Okay,’ she said without expression, not giving him any clues about her feelings on that one. Would that be a deal-breaker for her? She was an attractive, sparky woman and he guessed she must get plenty of male attention. There was something really appealing about her, especially when she smiled.

‘One of the other stipulations would be that she’d need to take my surname for the duration of the marriage,’ he said, pulling his attention back to the matter at hand. ‘It would just be for appearances and she could change it back again afterwards, of course.’

‘Afterwards?’

‘After the divorce. There’ll be a pre-nuptial agreement to sign so she won’t be able to petition for money or property during the legal severance of the marriage.’

There was a pause in which the air seemed to vibrate between them.

‘Oka-a-ay,’ she said slowly, her voice sounding a little breathy now.

He frowned, panicking for moment that she might be stringing him along for a laugh.

Before he could start to backpedal, though, she fixed him with a steady gaze, her lips quirking into a wide smile—triggering a warm, lifting sensation of hope in his chest—then took an audible breath and said, ‘I’ll do it. I’ll be your wife.’

CHAPTER TWO

Monopoly—move around the board for the chance to collect money and new property.

SOLITAIRE SAUNDERS HEARD her father’s voice in her head as she gazed anxiously back at the man who had the power to turn the course of her and her family’s lives around with a mere nod.

‘Your tendency to run headlong into things without thinking is going to get you in serious trouble some day, Soli,’ her father’s voice warned her.

He wasn’t wrong.

She knew that.

But you’re not here any more, Dad, and I’m doing the best I can.

There was a chance, of course, that she was actually dreaming all this and would wake up at any moment in bed with her heart racing and her palms as sweaty as they felt right now.

But she really hoped that wasn’t the case.

In fact, she knew it wasn’t possible because when she’d actually rolled out of bed this morning, and been unable to eat her breakfast because her stomach was jumping around so badly with nerves and worry, she’d never felt so awake—and afraid. The pressure of her mum and sister relying on her to stop both their home and livelihoods from being swept out from under them weighed heavily on her.

So she was hyper-aware, sitting there now in her smartest clothes with her wild hair as neat as she’d been able to get it, that how well she performed in this meeting could change all their lives for ever, one way or another. What she hadn’t expected when she turned up here was to be confronted with such an unusual and nerve-racking way to do it.

This—this incredible stroke of luck—could be the answer to all her problems.

If she could handle it, that was.

As far as she could see, the most challenging thing about it would be having to see Xavier McQueen, property baron and high-society mover and shaker every day for the next year.

And be his wife.

The thought of living with this powerful, domineering stranger made her heart thump harder in her chest.

The guy was seriously attractive, with a lean but muscular physique which she imagined he kept looking that fit with regular trips to the gym. His face was angular, with high cheekbones and a strong jaw, and he had light green, almond-shaped eyes, framed with dark lashes, which gave him a nerve-jangling look of stark intensity. And he had really good hair. Thick and shiny and the colour of melted chocolate. It sat neatly against his scalp as if it had been styled deliberately to do that by a master hairdresser at a top salon. Which, she mused, it probably had. Her fingers twitched at her sides as she fought a powerful urge to reach out and touch the soft waves, to see if it was as soft and smooth as it looked.

‘I have some non-negotiable demands if I’m going to do this,’ she said, a little more loudly than she’d meant to out of nerves.

‘I thought you might have,’ Xavier replied, with an ironic tinge to his voice. He had to be the most sardonic person she’d ever met. Throughout all their exchanges it had seemed as though he’d been having trouble taking anything she’d said seriously.

Still, he wasn’t exactly laughing now. In fact, despite his sarcasm, he was actually looking at her as if she might be the answer to all his problems.

‘Okay. If I’m going to be your wife for a year I need to know that my mother is being taken care of properly, so I’ll need to have a live-in carer provided for her while I’m away. She’ll be mostly okay during the day, but she’ll definitely need someone there overnight to help her get ready for bed and to get up when my sister’s not there. Which leads me on to the next stipulation. I also want you to pay for my sister’s tuition fees at university. She’ll get a job to cover her living expenses, but it won’t go any way towards the fees.’ Her heart was racing as she laid all this out, wondering whether he’d just tell her to get up and get out because she was being too greedy.

But he needs you, a voice in the back of her head told her, so front it out.

There was a long pause while he looked at her with such an intense gaze she felt it right down to her toes.

‘Okay, so let me get this straight,’ he said eventually; ‘you want a full-time carer for your mother, tuition fees paid for your sister, a stay on the rent on the café for the next five years and an as yet undisclosed sum of money as soon as we’re married?’

She swallowed hard, but held her nerve. ‘Yes.’

‘And how much were you thinking of for your lump sum?’

Shakily, she said an amount that she thought would cover the wages at the café for the next year as well as giving her some spending money which she could use for marketing or renovations to the café once they were divorced.

He surveyed her for a moment, his right eyebrow twitching upwards by a couple of degrees.

Soli held her breath, aware of her pulse throbbing in her head.

Had she blown it by asking for too much?

‘Okay. It’s a deal,’ he said finally. ‘But, considering you’ll be losing your wage from the cleaning job and you’ll have to employ someone to cover your position in the café, I’m prepared to give you an additional twenty per cent on top of that.’

Soli swallowed hard, his unexpected generosity bringing tears to her eyes.

‘As long as you agree to marry to me within the next month and spend the majority of your time in my home,’ he added quickly. ‘I don’t mind you visiting your mother and working part-time at the café, perhaps one or two days a week so you can keep an eye on it, but it needs to look as though the majority of your time is spent living there with me. Particularly in the evenings.’

‘So I can only work during the day?’

‘Yes. I’d like it if you were able to attend any work or social events at the drop of a hat. For that, I need you focused on your life with me as much as possible.’

She suspected that what he wasn’t saying out loud was that he wasn’t the sort of man to have the owner of a board game café for a wife and he didn’t want to have to explain himself to anyone.

‘So what will I do for the rest of the time?’ she asked as indignation rippled through her. What was wrong with working in a board game café? She really enjoyed it. It was sociable and kept her fit because she was on her feet all day.

He frowned, momentarily stumped by her question. ‘Perhaps you could work on that “high-concept business strategy” you haven’t had time for?’ He waved a hand. ‘I’m sure you’ll find plenty of things to do with your day.’

‘And what do you want me to tell people when they ask what I do for a living?’ she asked, still riled by her suspicion that he didn’t value her choice of livelihood. ‘What do the kind of women you normally date do for a job?’ she added, perhaps a little tetchily.

He rubbed a hand over his forehead, looking taken aback by the directness of her question. ‘Most of the women I’ve dated have either had a media job or been a doctor or solicitor.’

‘Well, I don’t think I’m going to convince anyone I’m a doctor or lawyer,’ Soli said, raising a wry eyebrow. ‘My sister got all the brains in the family.’

He frowned, apparently a little bemused by her now. ‘Okay, well, if you want to choose a different career for yourself, go right ahead. What would you have done if you hadn’t taken over the café? Do you have any burning ambitions?’

His question stumped her for a second. It had been a long time since she’d thought about doing anything but running the café. ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t exactly focused at school so I never expected to have a high-flying career. I liked designing clothes, but I did that in my spare time. My dad pressganged me into taking academic subjects to “give me a better chance in life”.’ She put this in air quotes, remembering with a sting of shame how she’d rallied against this notion, thinking it would bore her to tears to have a professional job in the future. All she’d wanted when she was in her mid-teens was to have a family of her own and perhaps make a living in some sort of arty career.

How naïve she’d been.

‘Well, why don’t you have a think about what you’d feel comfortable telling people you do? You’re a business owner; why don’t you go with that?’

She nodded slowly, her earlier irritation at his imagined snobbery subsiding. ‘Okay. Business owner it is.’

He nodded. ‘And what do you intend to tell your family about our arrangement?’ he asked in a careful tone.

‘I’m going to say I’ve taken a job as your live-in housekeeper, for which you’re going to pay me an exorbitant wage.’

He nodded, then pulled out his phone and began to type onto the touch screen, presumably making a note of her demands, and his, so they’d have something to refer back to should there be any issues in the future.

‘They’d buy that much more readily than the truth—that I’m marrying a total stranger,’ she added with a strange tingling feeling in her throat.

It felt so odd to say those words. Whenever she’d imagined getting married, which hadn’t been very often recently, owing to her life being too complicated for her to think that far into the future, she’d imagined herself meeting a guy, their mutual love of board games bringing them together, and dating him for a couple of years before moving in together, then him proposing to her out of the blue in some far-flung romantic destination, like Hawaii or Morocco, or maybe on a Mediterranean island whilst sailing through the clear blue water in a yacht.

They’d get married in a quaint little church with all their friends and family watching and throw a huge party afterwards, where they’d dance the night away together. Then, a year or two later, after they’d had some time together as a couple, they’d have kids, maybe three or four of them.

She’d always wanted a big family.

When she was younger, sitting bored and frustrated at school during subjects she couldn’t get a handle on no matter how hard she tried, she’d fantasised about what it would be like to be a mother. How she’d make her kids big bowls of hearty food, which they’d gobble down gratefully before going off to play happily with their toys, or do finger-painting with her at the kitchen table, laughing about the mess they were making together. Or she’d imagine ruffling their hair at the school gates and receiving rib-crushing hugs in return before they ran in, with her shouting that she loved them, which they’d pretend to find embarrassing but would secretly adore. Then later in the evening she’d tuck her sleepy, happy kids up into bed before spending the rest of the evening with her gorgeous husband, chatting about the day they’d had before retiring to bed together hand in hand.

That all seemed a million miles away now though.

It had been ages since she’d been on a proper date with anyone and even then they’d barely got to the kissing stage before her lifestyle and responsibilities had got in the way of things developing any further. She’d made it clear that her family came first and that had destroyed the chances of a relationship.

Not that she blamed her mother and sister. Not a bit. In fact, despite their difficult circumstances, she quite liked being the head of the family. The one that everyone relied on. It gave her a sense of purpose that had previously been lacking in her life.

Yes, anyway, it was a good thing that Xavier had insisted on a purely platonic relationship. It wasn’t like she had any time for romance.

‘How old are you, Soli?’ Xavier asked brusquely, jolting her back to the present.

A shiver of disquiet tickled down her spine. Was he worried she wasn’t mature enough to deal with this?

‘I’m twenty-one,’ she said, setting back her shoulders and fixing him with a determined stare. ‘Old enough to know my own mind,’ she added firmly.

His eyes assessed her for a couple of beats more before he nodded. ‘Okay, then. I guess that’s everything we need to discuss today.’ He put his phone down on his desk, arranging it so it sat parallel with his keyboard, before looking up and giving her his full attention again. ‘Look, I appreciate this is a lot to take in right now, so why don’t you go away and have a think about it, to make sure you’re comfortable with everything we’ve discussed? It’s a big decision to make and I don’t expect you to sign up for it until you’ve had a chance to check me out first.’

She nodded jerkily. Despite her bravado, she was actually glad of the chance to go and think about this away from his discombobulating presence, just to make sure she hadn’t overlooked something important. ‘Okay. I’ll do that. It really wouldn’t do to marry an axe murderer by mistake,’ she said, flashing him a jokey grin.

Ignoring her attempt at levity, he opened a drawer in his desk and took out a business card which he handed to her. ‘This has my personal mobile number and address on it. Give me a call when you’re ready to talk again.’ He paused and frowned. ‘But don’t leave it too long or I might find someone else to marry in the meantime.’

For a second she wasn’t sure whether he was joking or not. He didn’t seem to do smiling, at least not the kind that made him look as though he was genuinely happy. Cynical. That was what he came across as. And reserved.

She wondered fleetingly what had happened to him to make him like that, but pushed the thought away. It wasn’t important right now and she really shouldn’t allow herself to get emotionally attached to him anyway, not if this was going to work as a purely business arrangement.

‘Okay, thanks. I’ll get in touch very soon,’ she replied, taking the card from his fingers.

She shot him a tense smile, then got up from the desk on shaky legs and turned to go.

‘And Solitaire.’

She turned back.

‘If I find out the details of this proposition have been leaked to the Press I’ll know where to find you.’ There was a heavy pause before he added, ‘And you’ll find your business and your family swiftly evicted from my property.’

‘Understood,’ she said, then left the office of her potential future husband, wondering what in the heck she’d just got herself into.

* * *

Back at the café, she relieved Callie, who waitressed for them a lot and had kindly agreed to work an extra shift that morning so Soli could go to the McQueen Property office. Once she’d caught up with the daily tasks and served a sudden rush of customers, she sat behind the serving counter with her laptop and typed Xavier’s name into the search engine with trembling fingers.

She’d already looked him up before the meeting, of course, scouring the web pages for something she could use in her defence against him, but to her frustration had found him to be squeaky clean. At least at first glance. She needed to put in more thorough due diligence here though if she was going to commit to live with the man for a year. The last thing she needed was to find herself sucked into something she’d not anticipated and then couldn’t escape from without causing more harm to her situation.

But as hard as she looked, she couldn’t find anything that threw even the meanest of shadows over his reputation.

The only things that came up about him were on gossip sites, where they mentioned him in relation to the high-society women he’d had flings with over the last few years. The man appeared to be some kind of international playboy, always showing up at high-profile fundraisers and gallery openings with a different, instantly recognisable woman on his arm. He was like a character from one of the romantic novels she liked to gobble up like sweets for escapism from her busy, stressful existence. She’d never really believed such a person could exist in real life, but here he was, a living, breathing, alpha male business tycoon.

So he checked out okay online.

Picking up her phone, she called a friend who was a police officer in the Met and asked him if there was any way he could have a check around about Xavier, pretending she was doing it for business reasons concerning the café. Mercifully, her friend seemed to buy that and asked her to leave it with him.

She spent the rest of the day in a jumpy, nerve-filled state and was mightily relieved when her friend called her back in the early evening to let her know that nothing negative at all had come back to him with regard to Xavier, either personally or with his business. It seemed he was an upstanding citizen of the realm.

The only thing left to do now was to check out exactly where his house was using an online map app—just to make sure he wasn’t expecting her to live in some kind of broken-down hovel. Not that she expected to encounter that. Judging by the high-end furniture and breathtaking elegance of his office, she couldn’t imagine his house being a place she wouldn’t like to spend time in. She could have happily lived right there in his office if he’d asked her to, with that wonderful view over the water. It certainly beat the one she had from their living room window over the busy, vehicle-choked high street, or the one of the bins in their small back yard from the bedroom she shared with her sister.

Not that she was complaining about her lot. Home was where her family was and she’d been happy living here above the café with them. Staying in this flat had made her feel closer to her father somehow. She could still picture him sitting in the battered old leather armchair by the window after long shifts in the café, with a paperback resting on his knee and his requisite triple-shot black coffee on the small table beside him. He’d hated working at the bank and after twenty years he’d finally given up corporate life and they’d all downsized so he could run the board game café, a dream he’d had for years.

Sadly, he’d only worked there for five years before he died. Still, Soli was glad he’d had the opportunity to realise his dream. Ever since she’d lost him the café had become a symbol of hope for her, as well as a reminder that hard work and dedication paid off—something she’d been slow to learn in her younger years, to her everlasting shame.

Shaking off the guilt that always gave her a painful jab when she remembered how selfishly she’d acted in her teens, she got up from behind the counter to close up after the last stragglers made their way out onto the street, waving cheerily to her and calling their thanks. If only they had more regulars like them, the type that bought food and drink every hour as they played, the café would have some hope of survival.

She just needed to find a way to entice those types of people to walk through the door.

After locking up behind them and giving the floor a sweep and the tables one last wipe, Soli walked into the middle of the room and tried to survey it with objective eyes. Why weren’t people coming in as much as they’d used to? Sure, it was a bit shabby-looking now after years of wear and tear and it could probably do with a bit of sprucing up, but it had a friendly, comfortable aura to it, and didn’t people love shabby chic these days?

She hated the idea of messing with what her father had done to the café. He’d sanded and varnished the wooden tables himself, painted the walls, chosen the now slightly chipped crockery, and she couldn’t imagine any of it changing. It would be like wiping her father’s soul from the place.

She shuddered, hating the very thought of that.

No, she’d try advertising first, then think about any alterations they might have to make once the money was flowing in again.

Assuming they didn’t lose the tenancy in the meantime.

Taking a breath, she focused on calming her suddenly raging pulse. All she needed to do was marry Xavier McQueen and everything would be okay.

The utter bizarreness of that thought made her laugh out loud.

Shaking her head at the surreal turn her life had taken, she went to the till to make sure it had been cashed up properly, grimacing at the sight of the meagre takings for the day. Yes, something definitely needed to change.

Picking up her phone, she tapped in the number he’d given her. He picked up after two rings.

‘Xavier McQueen.’

‘It’s Soli.’

‘Hi,’ was all he said in reply.

There was a pause in which the weight of expectation hung heavily in the air.

‘So I checked up on you and it turns out you’re not an axe murderer,’ she quipped nervously.

There was a uncomfortable pause when he didn’t respond.

Okay, then. Jokes weren’t deemed appropriate right now. Wow, this guy was so businesslike.

Probably best just to get down to business, then.

‘So I’ve thought about it and I still want to go ahead with our deal.’