The Engagement Deal Read Free Page A

a spurt of unholy glee to see the roles of predator and victim apparently so neatly reversed.
    ‘And you wanted to use Rowena as a shield.’ She could instantly see where he was going; her sister was so drop-dead gorgeous that most women would be suitably intimidated. Hadn’t she spent her entire adolescence being intimidated by her elder sister’s perfection? ‘How do you know she—this woman—wants to marry you?’ This could be the arrogant assumption of a man who knew himself to be irresistible to the opposite sex.
    ‘She told me.’
    Holly’s eyebrows shot up. The amorous female was not an advocate of the subtle approach, then. ‘She might have been joking.’
    Niall gave a dry laugh. ‘Believe me, she wasn’t,’ he told her heavily.
    ‘How can you be so…?’
    ‘It’s Tara.’
    Holly dropped the milk carton and it spattered all over Rowena’s stainless steel splashback. ‘Not the same Tara…?’ she asked hoarsely.
    Niall had taken over the task of making the coffee as Holly seemed to have lost interest. ‘The same one I married and divorced. The mother of my child…Yes, that’s the one.’
    ‘Gosh!’
    ‘A more socially acceptable way of phrasing that instantly springs to my mind, but definitely… Gosh .’
    ‘I thought she was living with that actor in—’
    ‘ Was is the right word. Now she’s living wherever I happen to be,’ he announced, in the voice of a man whose patience was wearing thin. ‘I was in Paris, Tara appears; ditto in Los Angeles…’
    ‘I’m sure she travels a great deal. Models do.’
    ‘A book festival in Munich…?’
    ‘Perhaps not,’ Holly conceded.
    ‘There’s no perhaps about it.’
    ‘Wasn’t she the one who did the leaving?’
    He nodded, noticing she’d seemed to relish reminding him of this fact. ‘She’s dripping remorse now. She wants to make it all up to me.’
    He didn’t sound exactly overjoyed at the prospect, but Holly wondered if this wasn’t a matter of him protesting just a bit too much. She’d have thought the idea of Tara Steel, supermodel—she of the endless legs and gravity-defying ample bosom—making amends would have sent most males delirious with delight.
    ‘Why don’t you just tell her you don’t want to marry her…again?’ It seemed to her that he was creating problems where there weren’t any. Or perhaps this was all part of a token resistance.
    ‘I’ve tried, but she doesn’t believe me, and I don’t want to hurt her,’ he announced astonishingly. ‘The press gave the poor angel such a bad time when we split up, and when I got custody of Thomas they got really vicious.’ There was no mistaking the warmth towards his ex-wife in his voice. ‘Sugar?’ he enquired, spoon in hand.
    Poor angel! Holly gaped at him incredulously. The way the tabloids had told it—and, yes, she had read every single word—his model wife had dumped him when he’d quit the glamorous Formula One circuit and left him literally holding the baby! Did this mean he was still in love with her…?
    Heavens, she thought, aggravated by her fascination with the state of his emotions, what’s wrong with me? Two minutes ago, I had him in love with Rowena. Anyone would think I gave a damn.
    He looked genuinely distracted as he absently stirred his coffee. For once, he seemed to have forsaken his habitual urbane poise. ‘Tara is a woman on a mission,’ he told her in a tone of deep foreboding. ‘She wants to rescue me from a lonely, aimless existence.’
    ‘Do you have a lonely, aimless existence?’ she asked unsympathetically. If he did, he only had himself to blame.
    ‘Being single equates with lonely and aimless in Tara’s eyes.’
    ‘My heart bleeds.’ She stopped short of smirking outright—but only just. She widened her eyes innocently when he shot a savage glare in her direction.
    ‘I enjoy my single state.’
    ‘Yes, I think I read something about that the other week in the newspaper my fish and chips were wrapped up in.’