Wedding-Night Baby Read Free Page B

compliments?’
    â€˜I’m not too keen on insults either.’
    â€˜I have my professional pride to consider,’ he told her gravely. ‘I would appreciate a little co-operation. Unless you relish the role of early Christian martyr?’
    This question made her bite her lip. He was right, of course. She had to act a part in order to salvage her battered pride. ‘I’m not a professional,’ she reminded him. ‘And I find it strange...your being a total stranger.’
    â€˜Live your part, Georgina; we’re a hot item,’ he contradicted her. His lips brushed hers, gently, but with a confident familiarity. ‘I thought all girls could fake it?’ His lips quirked in a deeply cynical smile.
    â€˜I’m sure the girls you know can,’ she responded acidly. ‘Do you think you could limit that sort of authenticity to the basic minimum?’ she added, drawing away, her colour noticeably heightened. She summoned a distracted but brilliant smile for the usher, a boy she’d known since school.
    â€˜Georgie?’ he said, a note of doubt in his voice. He flushed as she gave him a quizzical look, and continued hurriedly, ‘Bride or groom? Silly question; you’d hardly be with the groom, would you?’ The expression of ludicrous
dismay that spread over his face made Georgina feel almost sympathetic.
    â€˜We’ll find our own way, thank you, Jim,’ she said crisply, sweeping past him. ‘That’s my mother,’ she said to the man beside her in a hushed undertone as they entered the dim, ecclesiastical atmosphere of the old building. She nodded in the general direction of one of the front pews.
    â€˜Pink hat?’ Callum had bent his head to catch her hissed words.
    Georgina nodded. ‘We’ll clash marvellously; she’ll be furious,’ she observed fatalistically. ‘I should have known; Mother’s a pink sort of person.’ She led him selfconsciously to the front of the church.
    â€˜Georgie, what possessed you to wear pink with your hair?’ Lydia Campion was a beautiful woman whose stern features had been softened by the years. As always she looked stunningly elegant. Georgina knew she could never achieve that degree of polish—the lie of the silk scarf, the tilt of the chin. To Lydia it was as simple as breathing; to her it took hours of painstaking consideration, and even then she was only halfway there.
    Georgina shot her companion a tiny I-told-you-so look, before sitting down on the pew.
    â€˜Mrs Campion, I have to take full responsibility for the outfit. Georgina was humouring me.’
    The look of shock on her mother’s face as Callum, all eighteen-carat charm and charisma, bent forward across her and extended his hand made Georgina, despite the gravity of her situation, want to giggle. This was not the type of man her mother or anyone else expected good old Georgie to be with. For the first time since she’d seen Callum Smith she felt that her decision to employ a little face-saving artifice had been justified. Might as well utilise
his slightly dangerous air for what it was worth. She was the only one to know how fake the glamour was.
    â€˜He’s colour-blind,’ Georgina added with a faint quiver in her voice.
    This frivolous comment earned her a swift frown from her parents. ‘Who is this, Georgina? Where are your manners?’
    â€˜This is Callum Sm—’
    â€˜Delighted to meet you, Mrs Campion.’
    â€˜Do call me Lydia. You’re a friend of Georgie’s? She is so secretive.’
    â€˜A little more than that, eh, sweetheart?’ Callum’s impossibly deep blue gaze was fixed on her face with teasing affection. The warm, rich, bitter-chocolate tones just hinted at unspoken intimacies. He was so incredibly convincing that she found herself blushing deeply.
    At that moment a figure on the periphery of her vision rose from the row of pews just