One Bridegroom Required!. Sharon Kendrick
came his soft reply. ‘So tell me why you’re renting this shop.’
‘To sell my designs.’
He frowned as he tried to picture the insubstantial and outrageous garments in which emaciated models sashayed up the catwalk. He tried to imagine Caroline or any other woman he knew wearing one. And the only one who could get away with it was the leggy beauty standing in front of him. ‘Think there’ll be a market for them around here, do you?’ he mocked. ‘It’s a pretty conservative kind of area.’
She ignored the sarcasm. ‘I certainly hope so! There’s always a market for bridal gowns—’
His dark eyebrows disappeared beneath the tawny hair. ‘Bridal gowns?’
‘There you go again,’ she murmured. ‘Yes. Bridal gowns. You know—the long white frocks that women wear on what is supposed to be the happiest day of their lives.’ She waited for him to say something about his wedding day, which was what people always did say. But he didn’t. And Holly was both alarmed and astonished at the great sensation of relief which flooded through her at his lack of reaction. He isn’t married! she found herself thinking with a feeling which was very close to elation, and then hoped she hadn’t given anything away in her expression.
‘You design bridal gowns?’
‘You sound surprised.’
‘Maybe that’s because I am. You aren’t exactly what most people have in mind when they think of wedding dresses.’
‘Too young?’ she guessed.
‘There’s that,’ he agreed. ‘And marriage is traditional...’ his eyes glimmered ‘...which you ain’t.’
‘I can be. I know how to be.’
Interesting. ‘And you’ll be living—?’
‘In the flat upstairs, of course.’ She smiled in response to his frowned reaction to that, and wiped a dusty hand down the side of her jeans before extending her hand. ‘I guess we’d better introduce ourselves. I’m Holly Lovelace of Lovelace Brides.’ She smiled disarmingly. ‘Who are you?’
‘Holly Lovelace?’ He started to laugh.
‘That’s right.’
‘Not your real name, right?’
‘Wrong. I’ve got my birth certificate somewhere, if you’d like to check.’
He looked down at the hand she was still holding out, and shook it, her narrow fingers seeming to get lost within the grasp of his big, rough palm. ‘I’m Luke Goodwin,’ he said deliberately, and waited.
‘Hello, Luke!’
There was another brief pause as he savoured a heady feeling of power. ‘You haven’t heard of me?’
‘You’re absolutely right. I haven’t.’
‘Well, I’m your new landlord.’
Holly was too busy blinking up at him to respond at first. Up this close he was even more divine. He had the kind of mouth that even the most hardened man-hater would have described as irresistible. She was just wondering what it would be like to be kissed by a mouth like that when his words seeped unwillingly into her consciousness.
‘But you can’t be my landlord!’ she protested. Landlords were pallid and wore pinstriped suits, not faded jeans and a golden tan which she suspected might be all over.
He slanted a look at her from between sultry azure eyes. ‘Oh? Says who?’
‘Says me! You’re not the person I signed the lease with!’
‘And who did you sign the lease with?’
‘I had to meet a man in Winchester—’
‘Called?’
‘Doug Something-or-Other...’ Holly frowned as she recalled the smoothie who had tried plying her with gin and tonics in the middle of the day and sat leering at her thighs. His oily attitude had had a lot to do with the speed with which she had signed the lease. ‘I know! Doug Reasdale, that was it.’
‘Doug’s the letting agent,’ he informed her. ‘He acted for my uncle.’
‘Well, he certainly didn’t mention that there was an absentee and highly hostile landlord!’ snapped Holly.
‘No longer absentee,’ he amended thoughtfully. ‘And Doug neglected to mention to me that he’d just rented out one of my properties to someone who doesn’t even look old enough to vote!’
‘I’m twenty-six, actually,’ she corrected him tightly. She was getting fed up with people thinking she was just a kid. Maybe it was time she started wearing a little make-up, maybe even cut her hair...
‘Twenty-six, huh?’ He looked at the wild tangle of her curls and her wide-spaced green eyes. Bare lips that excited...invited... Right at that moment she looked like jail bait. ‘Well, maybe you should try acting it,’ he suggested softly.
Holly smirked. ‘Really? That’s neat, coming from you! You mean I should follow your shining example of adult behaviour and start throwing my weight around? I thought that dictatorships had gone out of fashion until I met you!’
‘But clearly a very ineffective dictatorship in this case,’ he observed, trying very hard not to laugh, ‘since I asked you to move your car, but it still seems to be taking up half the road!’
‘You didn’t ask me anything!’ she fumed. ‘You issued the kind of order that I haven’t heard since I was at school!’
‘Then you were obviously a very disobedient schoolgirl,’ he murmured, before realising that the conversation was in danger of sliding helplessly into sexual innuendo and that he was in very great danger of responding to it.
Holly had never met a man she found as physically attractive as the one standing in front of her, and maybe his allure was responsible for what she did next. She tried to tell herself that it was purely an instinctive reaction to that suggestive velvet whisper, but, whatever the reason, she found herself slanting her eyes at him like a courtesan. ‘Why?’ she murmured provocatively, and put her hands on her hips. ‘Have you got a thing about schoolgirls?’
Luke froze. When she leaned back like that it was easy to see that she wasn’t wearing a bra, that her lush breasts were free and unfettered. He saw the way her lips were parted into a smile and he knew for certain that, if he tried to kiss her right then, she would melt into his arms in the way that so many women had done before. But no more. His mouth hardened.
‘I’ll tell you what I have a “thing” about,’ he said carefully. ‘And that’s people who take on more than they’re obviously capable of—’
‘Meaning me?’
‘Meaning you,’ he agreed evenly, as he fought to keep his feelings under control. ‘You clearly can’t tell your left from your right, judging by your parking—so heaven only knows how you intend to run a thriving business! Or maybe that’s why you enjoy flirting with me so outrageously. Maybe you suspect that you’re destined to fail? Perhaps you like to have a little something to fall back on, huh? So that if your business goes bust, then the landlord might be lenient with you.’
Holly stared at him, first in horror, then in disbelief. Then with an irresistible desire to giggle. ‘My God, you’re actually being serious, aren’t you? Are you really from planet Earth, or have aliens just dropped you here? Or do you honestly think that I’d leap into bed with you if I didn’t have enough money to pay the rent?’
Luke knew that he had two choices. If he allowed her to think that he had actually meant that outrageous suggestion, then she would seriously underestimate his critical judgement—and Luke didn’t like being underestimated by anyone. If she underestimated him then she wouldn’t respect him either, and for some reason the thought of that disturbed him. Then he thought