The Hired Husband. Kate Walker
has to be. I was really beginning to wonder if you were married to that company of yours. You seemed to spend every waking hour of your life in the office.’
‘There have been some problems.’ The muscles in Keir’s jaw tightened, making his reply sound clipped and distant. ‘My father’s death was so unexpected that it left a lot of things unresolved…’
‘But that was—what?—eighteen months ago? Surely you’ve sorted things out now?’
‘Just about.’ Keir nodded slowly, his eyes darker than ever as he thought back over the past year and a half. ‘There’s one last complication I have to deal with, and then everything will be just how I want it.’
In his business world at least. His personal affairs were quite a different matter. But right now all he could think of was the relief that that one ‘complication’ had been lifted from his shoulders. It had been the bane of his life for ten years, and he hadn’t been able to wait to see the back of it. Only now did he feel free to turn his attention fully to the vexed question of his reckless marriage.
‘And when can we expect to hear of a whole new generation of Alexanders?’ It was Richard’s wife who spoke, her voice soft and gentle as her nature, bringing her husband’s head round to her at once.
‘Give the poor lad a break, Jo! He’s barely put the ring on her finger! Let him at least enjoy the honeymoon before you wish the joys of parenthood on him. Not everyone wants to be plagued with the sort of brood we’ve got.’
The laughter in Richard’s voice was belied by the way his eyes lingered on the swell of his wife’s stomach, evidence of how close he was to becoming a father for the fourth time.
‘But you always said you wanted children, didn’t you, Keir? And I think you’d make a wonderful father—if the way you get on with Sam, William and Hannah is anything to go by.’
‘Your children are like their mother, Joanna.’ Keir smiled. ’They’d get on with anyone at all without any trouble. But I don’t think you should look for the chance of a couple of playmates for your gang at any time in the near future. Sienna and I haven’t even talked about having kids…’
What would be the point when this charade of a marriage they had embarked on wasn’t meant to last much longer than a full-term pregnancy anyway? But he couldn’t admit that to Rick and Joanna, who were so blissfully happy in their own union that they would find it hard to understand the convoluted reasoning that had led to his taking Sienna as his bride.
‘Now if you’ll excuse me…I’d better rejoin my wife.’
Coward! Keir reproved himself as he turned away and began to weave a path through the crowd to where Sienna stood on the opposite side of the room, pausing occasionally to shake a hand, acknowledge congratulations and good wishes. But his mind wasn’t on what he was doing. He knew he couldn’t have faced any more of Joanna’s gentle questioning without blurting out something that might have given the game away completely.
The trouble was that Rick and his wife had known him for too long. They had been there all those years before when, under the influence of rather more wine than had been wise, he had declared with impassioned certainty that he would never marry unless he knew it was for ever. That only the conviction that the relationship would last for a lifetime, nothing less, would get him up the aisle and put a ring on his finger.
So how had he ended up doing just that, in the certain knowledge that what he had entered into was just a temporary contract? Stopping dead abruptly, Keir looked down at the thick gold band now encircling his wedding finger, twisting it round and round in an uneasy movement. How come he had compromised all his ideals in this way?
Because he was so much older now—and he would say wiser. He knew that such ideals were nothing but fantasies, impossible to achieve. He had been hit over the head with a strong dose of reality that had driven all the dreams from his mind. These days he was realist enough to know that sometimes a pragmatic compromise was the best you could come away with.
‘Keir, darling, I’m so glad to see you…’
This time the hand on his arm was much smaller, finer, totally feminine. Adorned with an extravagant display of gold and diamonds, the slender fingers were tipped with long, pointed nails painted in a violent shade of red. As Keir stiffened instinctively a wave of some heavy, musky perfume assailed his nostrils, turning his stomach.
He would recognise that overpowering perfume anywhere, just as he would recognise the sound of her voice and that false-toned ‘darling’ that they both knew she didn’t mean in the slightest. She only used it for the benefit of everyone else around, in order to maintain the illusion—in reality they had never felt anything other than total hatred for each other.
‘Lucille.’ He bit the word out, her name leaving a foul, bitter taste in his mouth.
Lucille Alexander. The stepmother from hell and his own personal demon. The woman he had described with deliberate understatement as the one last ‘complication’ he’d had left to deal with in order to be free of all the problems that had been weighing him down over the past ten years. The woman whose greedy demands had forced him into this marriage that was not a marriage but a purely business arrangement.
And as he turned slowly to face her the wave of revulsion he couldn’t control left him in no doubt that the prospect of getting her out of his life once and for all made the pretence and subterfuge totally worthwhile.
CHAPTER THREE
‘IS SOMETHING wrong?’
‘Wrong?’
Keir’s voice was distracted, his attention obviously elsewhere, and the dark-eyed gaze he turned in his wife’s direction was hooded, shaded with hidden thoughts that she couldn’t begin to understand.
‘Why should anything be wrong? After all, we’re both now going to get exactly what we want.’
What had put that cynical note into his voice, roughening it until it scraped her already over-sensitive nerves raw? But the truth was that ever since Keir had come back to her side at the start of the formal wedding lunch it had been clear that his mood had changed dramatically. The playful teasing that had so disturbed her had vanished, replaced instead by a darker, brooding distance.
‘Well, you could at least act as if you were just the slightest bit pleased to be married to me,’ Sienna hissed in the whisper necessitated by her determination not to be heard by her mother at her side and Keir’s best man at his. ‘If you continue to stare at your plate as if it was poisoned, and push the food around without tasting any of it, people will begin to wonder just what’s wrong with you!’
Especially those who had just witnessed his Oscar-winning performance as the most lovelorn and devoted husband of the century.
‘Right now you look more like the condemned man who can’t even bring himself to eat his last meal…’
No, anger was the wrong approach entirely, drawing a disturbing response from him. Seeing the rejection that flared in his eyes, the way that one long-fingered hand clenched over the starched white damask of his napkin, Sienna hastily adjusted her tone and expression in the hope of appeasing him.
‘It won’t be long before this is all over,’ she tried soothingly. ‘There’s just the traditional speeches and cutting the cake and then we can call it a day.’
Thankfully, she hadn’t given in to the urgings of her friends and planned an evening party to round off the celebrations. She had been unable to square the idea with her already uncomfortable conscience, seeing it as taking hypocrisy way too far. And with Keir in this mood it would have been more like a wake than any sort of revelry.
‘We’ll soon be able to be on our own again.’
‘And that will be so much better, will it?’ Keir snapped coldly. ‘Mr and Mrs Keir Alexander—oh, I’m sorry, I forgot. You want this marriage so little that you don’t even think