Midnight Wedding

“I think it’s great that you have so many people who want you to be happy. Even though this isn’t real—I mean—”

“You mean even though this isn’t a real marriage,” said Jack, suddenly harsh.

“Well, yes.” Holly was taken aback. “But they don’t know that. They still wish you well. I think you ought to appreciate that. And remember it always.”

His voice was cynical. “On the cold dark nights when I’m alone?”

Holly winced. “Don’t.”

“You know, I never expected to spend my wedding night planning for the lonely times to come.” Holly hadn’t heard that note of savagery from supercontrolled Jack Armour before.

“But you knew,” she stammered. “You agreed…. It was your idea….”

Born in London, Sophie Weston is a traveler by nature who started writing when she was five. She wrote her first romance while recovering from illness, thinking her traveling was over. She was wrong, but she enjoyed it so much that she has carried on. These days she lives in the heart of London with two demanding cats and a cherry tree—and travels the world looking for settings for her stories.

Thrilling romance:

MORE THAN A MILLIONAIRE

Books by Sophie Weston

HARLEQUIN ROMANCE®

3630—THE SHEIKH’S BRIDE

Midnight Wedding

Sophie Weston

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

THE group of international journalists was miserable. Ignaz was fourteen thousand feet up in the Andes. The near-vertical track had challenged even the state-of-the-art Land Rover. The rain was relentless, the disaster site was a uniform mud colour and the press officer was clearly out of his depth.

‘What the hell am I going to photograph?’ muttered Elegance magazine’s star feature writer.

‘It will stop in half an hour,’ said a crisp voice behind them.

They all swung round. And saw a Greek god in khaki shorts. There was a silence filled with something between awe and screaming resentment.

‘Jack,’ said the press officer with unmistakable relief. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is Dr Jack Armour.’

‘Oh, wow,’ said Elegance magazine reverentially.

It was not difficult to see why. Dr Jack Armour was tall. Not just tall, but somehow larger than life. His skin was tanned to dark gold and you could see a lot of it. In contrast to the journalists huddling in their protective clothing, he wore the minimum, magnificently impervious to the steady downpour. Droplets ran down the muscled chest, darkening the dusting of hair there to black. His long legs were bare.

‘Dr Armour is the American expert I was telling you about. It is he who will show you round the emergency recovery site. Please feel free to ask him anything you want.’

‘Dr Armour!’ muttered Elegance magazine. ‘That is sex on a stick.’ She raised her camera.

‘Good morning,’ said the Greek god, amused.

He led the way up the hillside, moving as easily as a mountain goat, while he kept up a level of informed commentary. The muscular legs made nonsense of the mud, the slope and the ice-rink-slippery patches of exposed rock. Rain dripped off him. He seemed unaware of it, even though his sleeveless cotton jacket left his arms and much of his bronzed chest naked to the elements.

The journalists breathed hard.

‘Sorry about the pace,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘I’ve got to wind this up fast. I’m flying to Paris today.’

‘Lucky you,’ said one of the panting journalists ruefully.

‘I hate the place. But there’s a meeting I can’t miss.’

Elegance magazine was shocked and said so. ‘Hate Paris? City of culture, city of lovers?’

Jack Armour laughed aloud at that. ‘When I go to Paris I’ll be concentrating on natural disaster statistics. No sightseeing. No sex.’

She pursed her red-painted mouth. ‘So when do you do your—sight-seeing?’ The last two words were loaded with meaning.

The laughter died out of his face, leaving his eyes so dark they looked black in the sulphurous light.

‘Shut up,’ hissed a British journalist out of the corner of his mouth. He knew the man and his sore points.

Jack Armour ignored him and fixed Elegance magazine with a level gaze. It made her shift uncomfortably, a new experience for her.

‘A guy in my line of work has no time for—sight-seeing,’ he said deliberately.

‘But—’

‘Shut up,’ the British journalist hissed again.

Jack’s expression was as yielding as steel. ‘Tried it. Found it doesn’t work. End of experiment.’

Something in the harsh voice silenced even Elegance magazine.

CHAPTER ONE

HOLLY stepped carefully out of the elevator, balancing her tower of caterer’s boxes with concentration. She was working hard to repress a superstitious shiver. She hated these huge, impersonal buildings, no matter how luxurious. They reminded her of visiting her mother at work in that vast office in London.

Most of the time she managed to forget all of that: mother, London and that other life. It was nearly eight years ago, after all. Then a train crash had taken her mother’s life and, along with it, every familiar thing in Holly’s schoolgirl existence. It sometimes seemed to her that ever since, wherever she was, she had been a stranger passing through.

The mirrored doors of the elevator reflected back just how much of a stranger. These days she hardly recognised herself. She had shot up on long colt’s legs. Her mid-brown hair had lightened. Now in some lights it almost looked gold. It was still uncontrollably curly. So she kept it long and plaited it for work. Now in her dungarees and baseball cap she looked like a gawky schoolboy.

Here in Paris she had been reborn as a delivery boy, she thought wryly. For the time being.

Her mother, she now realised, had tried to prepare her for life’s unpredictability.

‘Everything’s temporary, Hol,’ she would say, over and over.

All these years later, Holly could recall her huge eyes. Even when she was laughing with her daughter they had always seemed sad.

‘You’ve got to look after yourself,’ she would mutter, hugging Holly to her suffocatingly. ‘Nobody else will.’ And then, when she was exhausted, beyond laughter or sadness, ‘Forgive me.’

Of course Holly had not known there was anything to forgive then. Or nothing more than half her class had to forgive, chiefly the frequent absence of an overworked career mother. She had never known her father. She could not guess that her mother had left a message for him in her will.

But she had. A shocked and grieving Holly had found herself tidied up and transferred to his millionaire’s home in the American mid-West before she knew what was happening to her. So that was when she had discovered for herself the other great truth her mother had bequeathed her: ‘You can’t trust a man, except to break your heart.’

Holly gave herself a mental shake. That was all behind her now. Well behind her. The father she had never really known was dead. The stepsister who had been affronted by her very existence was far away; five years and a whole continent away.

And if that meant that Holly was alone—well, fine. If her heart was lost in ice floes at least no one could get at it. She was footloose and solitary and safe.

Congratulating herself on her successful life planning, she hefted the boxes into a more comfortable position and started to plod off along the miles of deep-piled silence to the offices of the International Disaster Committee.

‘Thank you, gentlemen,’ said the Chair. ‘You have given us a lot to think about.’ It was dismissal.

Jack bit back a protest. He had not yet covered half the topics he had prepared. There should have been plenty of time. He had established that Armour Disaster Recovery was scheduled to present their case through lunch. But that had been before Ramon’s outburst. The Chair did not like emotion. Jack sympathised—and knew when to cut his losses.

He rose to his feet. ‘Thank you, Madam Chair.’

Ramon Lopez stared up at him in disbelief. ‘We can’t just leave. The committee—’

‘Has our paper,’ Jack supplied smoothly. He took hold of Ramon’s chair behind his back and gave it a sharp tug. ‘And of course we will be available to answer any questions that they have. You have my number?’

The Chair consulted the business cards she had set out in front of her place at the conference table. She was very professional.

‘Yes, thank you, Dr Armour. I am sure we will have plenty of questions. It will be very helpful if you can keep yourself available.’

‘You’ve got it,’ said Jack. His charm was easy and quite false, though hopefully only Ramon detected it. He patted his pocket and looked round with a friendly smile. ‘Thank God for mobile phones.’

The committee laughed uneasily, one eye on Ramon. It looked as if the passionate Spaniard was not going to move. They braced themselves for a nasty scene.

But Jack was not a personality it was easy to withstand and he was the boss. In the end, Ramon went. Muttering under his breath, but he went. He took the briefcase Jack thrust at him and followed him out of the room.

Once outside in the corridor, he let out an explosive breath.

‘Hell! Why didn’t I keep my mouth shut?’

Jack was checking that his mobile phone was switched on. He did not look up.

‘You’ll know better next time.’

‘It’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have lost my temper. I should have used sweet reason, like you.’

Jack did look up then. His eyes gleamed with humour. ‘Oh, I don’t know. You sure impressed them when you thumped the table.’

Ramon was on the point of collapse. ‘I have cost us everything. Everything.’

‘Forget it,’ said Jack at last, exasperated. ‘We’ll just have to manage the negotiations differently, that’s all.’

Ramon shook his head wonderingly. ‘Does anything ever faze you?’

Jack laughed. ‘Every setback is an opportunity if you look at it the right way,’ he said, maliciously quoting Ramon’s favourite management guru.

Reluctantly Ramon smiled. ‘Like the New York photographer who wants to take your portrait?’ he retorted, malicious in his turn.

The Armour Recovery e-mail system had been buzzing with the tales of columnist Rita Caruso as the boss’s latest conquest.

‘Oh, you’ve got onto that one, have you?’ said Jack, resigned.

Ramon’s sense of humour was in recovery. ‘Can’t wait to see it.’

Jack snorted and put his telephone back in his pocket. ‘You’ll wait a long time.’

Ramon was all innocence. ‘But you were the one who said we needed publicity.’

‘Not that sort.’

“‘Public awareness of the long-term effects of natural disasters is zero”,’ Ramon chanted.

It was the paragraph on donor fatigue from the report they had left with the committee. He had redrafted the paragraph a zillion times until Jack was satisfied with it. So he knew it by heart, as he now demonstrated.

“‘After the immediate emergency, journalists move on. But more people die in the aftermath of most disasters than in the period of first impact. We must do everything we can to reverse this.”’ He smiled. ‘Doesn’t include some pretty pictures for a lady who fancies you?’

Jack cast his eyes to heaven. Or at least to the over-illuminated ceiling of the plushest corridor in Paris.

‘Come on, man. I’ll sell myself to a bunch of bureaucrats if that’s what it takes to get the job done. I draw the line at stud pics,’ he said brutally.

Ramon was startled. ‘Stud pics?’

‘Caruso’s a photo-journalist with Elegance magazine.’

‘So?’

‘They’re only interested in fashion, sex and gossip. Frankly, I was surprised they bothered to send anyone along to Ignaz.’

Ramon stared. ‘How do you know what Elegance magazine is interested in? When did you have time to read anything except work?’

Jack looked faintly uncomfortable. ‘You only have to look at the news-stands at airports.’

‘Since when did you cruise the women’s magazines stands?’ said Ramon in disbelief.

There was the tiniest pause. Then Jack said levelly, ‘Susana liked it.’

For once Ramon had nothing to say.

To Holly, balancing her boxes like a circus pro, the atmosphere between the two men blasted down the corridor like a fireball. They were at the far end, outside the board room. Two men in city suits: one small and anxious, one tall and dark and icily contained, as if holding his breath to withstand a blow.

Holly was not quite sure how she knew he was bracing himself. His high-cheekboned face was impassive. But somehow she did. It was the way he stood. She had a vivid impression of a man using every ounce of strength to keep the lid on some inflammable substance and not being sure the lid would hold. It was alarming.

I’m glad it wasn’t me who made him look like that, she thought, oddly shaken.

His companion said in English, ‘I’m sorry, Jack. I didn’t think. I’m an idiot.’

For a moment, the tall man did not answer. Then he said, ‘Conference room fever.’

And she knew the moment of danger had passed.

His companion did not seem so sure. He looked up at the tall man doubtfully.

‘In fact, look on the bright side. At least you’ve got us out of another forty-eight hours in there.’

Holly put one hand up to steady her precarious tower of boxes and marched towards them.

‘Forty-eight hours?’ The other man echoed, horrified. ‘Oh, Jack, surely it won’t take that long.’

Holly realised something else about the tall, intimidating stranger. He was gorgeous. Tough, yes; dangerously controlled, undoubtedly. But, beyond argument, gorgeous.

She frowned. Holly did not like gorgeous men. For very good reasons.

‘I knew I’d made them mad. But forty-eight hours?’

Gorgeous Jack was cynical. ‘Once you let bureaucrats start talking, it will last until they go home.’

The smaller man groaned. ‘If only we didn’t have to do this.’

Jack gave a sudden snort of laughter. ‘What we need is a friendly millionaire who believes in forward planning. Failing that, the International Disaster Committee is the best we’ve got.’

Holly had reached them.

‘Excuse me,’ she said from behind her boxes.

She was standing at Jack’s shoulder. The boxes tilted, catching against the canvas bag she wore looped across her body. She compensated, tilting in the other direction. Which might have made her voice muffled. Or maybe they were just too engrossed in their own affairs to notice.

Either way, they did not hear her.

‘If only I hadn’t put their backs up,’ said the second man wretchedly.

‘Not difficult with bureaucrats. They—’

‘Excuse me.’

‘—play status games all the—’ Jack swung round impatiently. ‘What is it?’

His eyes glittered like black diamonds. Holly was transfixed. Even with her boxes rocking off balance, she could not wrest her eyes away.

Gorgeous was not the word. And her instincts were sound: he looked hard, all right. The bone structure was that of a Greek god and, by the look of it, so was the temper. She could imagine people quailing under the intensity of that hooded gaze.

Well, she did not quail easily. She shifted her burden to one side and glared right back at him.

‘May I get past?’

Fierce dark eyes swept over her like a forest fire.

Most people would have blenched. Holly congratulated herself on the difference between herself and most people. She also congratulated herself on not folding up against the wall of the corridor and trying to squeeze meekly past them.

She tapped her foot, to the imminent danger of her boxes.

‘Now. Please.’ It was still just polite. Technically, anyway.

For a moment, Gorgeous Jack surveyed Holly with unnerving concentration.

Holly had always been quick to flare up, even before she’d honed her defensive skills in the battlefield that was her father’s house. Now her temper went onto a slow burn. She stopped pretending to be polite.

‘Now!’

To her fury, he was more alert than she was. He was already moving when Holly felt the boxes finally shift out of balance. Before they could topple, he had swept round and lifted them out of her arms.

He looked down at her, waiting.

‘Thank you,’ she said. She sounded as if she were being strangled.

His mouth twitched. ‘You’re welcome.’ But he did not let the incident interrupt his real interest. Over the top of the boxes, he said to his companion, ‘Don’t beat up on yourself, Ramon.’

Ramon hardly seemed to notice Holly. He was frowning and clearly full of guilt.

‘I should have let you handle it. I flew off the handle.’

Jack shrugged elegantly suited shoulders. The movement, Holly saw with fury, did not even stir the pile of boxes he was holding.

‘You lost focus. Can happen to anyone.’ He sent Holly a brief, indifferent glance. ‘Where are these supposed to go?’

Holly tried to feel grateful. It was not easy.

‘The front desk said it was the office at the end,’ she muttered.

The tall man turned without a word.

‘They’re for some guy called Armour.’ But she was talking to his back.

Great, she thought. Stand back, you poor creature, and let a big strong man take control. She had a long and justified prejudice against masterful men, too. She could have kicked him.

The man called Ramon pattered along beside him, taking two steps to every long stride.

‘But surely they still can’t keep us hanging about here for forty-eight hours?’ He sounded as if he was about to burst into tears.

‘They can try.’

Jack came to the impressive double doors at the end of the corridor and shouldered his way in without even a token knock. Nor, noted Holly, did he bother to acknowledge anyone in the secretariat that he had just invaded.

He dropped the boxes on the nearest desk and said generally, ‘Is that where you want them?’

Holly was tempted, childishly, to say no it wasn’t. Fortunately, the room’s elegant chief occupant took charge before Holly could go to war.

She rose and rushed forward, flustered out of her professional calm.

‘Oh, Mr Armour. I didn’t realise…Yes, there would be fine.’

Holly realised she knew her. Señora Martinez had ordered in from Chez Pierre before. She was multilingual, super-efficient and famously unflappable.

She did not look unflappable now. One casual look from those fierce dark eyes and she was stammering like a schoolgirl.

‘There are messages…The Director was asking…But I thought you’d still be with the committee…’

Holly watched in astonishment. Gorgeous Jack must be quite something, she thought. Señora Martinez was normally a Madonna of calm.

Now he said cheerfully, ‘The committee threw us out, Elena.’

No sign now of that fury Holly had surprised in the corridor. In fact, he was smiling at Señora Martinez with such conscious charm it set Holly’s teeth on edge.

It worked though. Señora Martinez laughed, blushed and shook her head at him.

‘I’m sure they did no such thing, Mr Armour. I know they were all very impressed by your company’s proposal.’

Holly did not like being ignored. The man had not spared her a glance since that flicker of amusement in the corridor. Now she seized upon the name.

‘Armour, huh?’ She placed herself in front of him and said loudly, ‘Lunch for ten.’

He was blank. ‘What?’

Silently she held the delivery docket out to him.

At least he looked at her then. He was impatient. He did not take the docket. But he looked.

‘Yes?’ If it was possible to sound more indifferent, Holly could not imagine it.

She could have danced with fury.

The trouble was, she knew what he was seeing and it was not impressive. The white buttoned chef’s jacket was grubby after a morning’s rapid deliveries through this busy part of Paris. And the baseball cap that covered her unruly golden-brown hair was frankly tatty.

She stuck her chin in the air and stood her ground. ‘I want a signature for the delivery,’ she said truculently, adding with a respect that was as unconvincing as it was belated, ‘sir.’

The man’s eyes narrowed, arrested. Señora Martinez looked shocked.

‘My good child—’ his voice was a drawling insult ‘—what in hell would I do with lunch for ten?’

Holly’s temper went through the top of her head.

She said sweetly, ‘I don’t care if you take every single piece of quiche Lorraine and feed it to the pigeons. I want my signature.’

He had a long curly mouth. It made him look mocking without even trying.

‘On the contrary. You want my signature. And believe me, no one gets that without working for it.’

Holly ground her teeth.

Señora Martinez intervened fast. ‘Here is a misunderstanding.’ Her perfect English was slipping under stress. ‘The food is for the Committee’s meeting with Mr Armour. It is I who ordered it.’ She grabbed the docket and leaned it against her knee to scribble a signature.

Holly hardly looked at her.

‘Mr Armour’s meeting?’ she said, letting her eyes drift up and down his tall figure with barely disguised scorn. ‘Well, God bless America.’

Señora Martinez and Ramon exchanged alarmed glances. Gorgeous Jack, by contrast, began to look as if he was enjoying himself.

‘Oh? Why?’

‘The only nation in the world,’ said Holly quoting her employer, gourmet chef Pierre, ‘to make eating at the conference table a moral imperative.’

There was a startled silence. Holly pulled the peak of her baseball cap down defiantly.

The Greek god certainly looked like the sort of man who would refuse to permit lunch-breaks until the world fell into line. Yet somehow, with those unreadable eyes fixed on her, Holly felt as if she had made a very big mistake. And a complete fool of herself into the bargain.

Then he shrugged, confirming all Holly’s prejudices about his nationality and his indifference to food.

‘So I’m the king of the carry-out. What does that make you?’

Holly stared, taken aback.

‘I guess you don’t like the stuff,’ he suggested. ‘You just sell it.’

Oh, he was so confident, so pleased with himself, all high slanting cheekbones and black laughter. She had seen arrogance like that before.

Her brother-in-law and his best crony, the guy who ran her father’s company, had both been like that. So certain that they were right; so certain that the awkward, illegitimate newcomer would realise it in the end and fall into line. Suddenly Holly wanted to scream at all of them. She wanted to so much she choked on it.

He smiled. ‘Game, set and match to the slob who gets the pizza, huh?’ And turned away.

Behind her Ramon laughed. ‘Ouch.’

Holly flushed furiously. She could feel her ears tingle with it. There was a microsecond when she wanted to throw things, make him eat his words, make him look at her. Look and see more than a delivery robot.

Then the practical Holly reasserted herself. Reluctantly she curbed her temper. Pierre would never forgive her if she kicked a client. He might even sack her and she needed the job. She would have to get out of there before the temptation to hit him became overwhelming.