warmth of the balmy humid evening.
“Then I’ll come over to you.”
Before she could protest Declan covered the short distance between them, draped her limp arms around his waist and linked his own around hers.
“There now, that didn’t hurt a bit.”
Hurt? Maybe not in the physical sense, but there was an ache deep down inside her that had been her constant companion for longer than she wanted to acknowledge. A pain that couldn’t be assuaged and had taken eight years to learn to ignore. Damn him for opening that wound again.
“So, are you happy now?” Her words dropped bitterly from her lips.
“Hardly. This is all for show. If we’re going to make this work we have to look the part.”
“Make it work? I haven’t even agreed to this charade. In case you hadn’t already noticed I’m supposed to be engaged to Steve,” she snapped. His arms were warm bands around her, his fingers stroking in lazy circles against the small of her back. Gwen forced herself to listen to him and to ignore the spirals of pleasure that radiated traitorously from his touch.
“I believe that could be disputed, considering he’s abandoned you to face the wedding without him. Besides, you’re not exactly heartbroken he’s gone. Angry at him, for sure. He’s cleaned you out. But heartbroken? I doubt it.”
Gwen flinched as the truth in his words cut her to her core. Yes, Steve had abandoned her, but worse, Declan was right. With Steve she’d thought she could be safe. After all, wasn’t that what had attracted her to him in the first place? No crazy emotions living on the surface of their life. No wild declarations of burning passion. He’d been a biddable man. Someone she could rely on, or so she’d thought. A man who would be a reliable father and a supportive partner. A man who sounds about as exciting as a well-made foundation garment, a little voice taunted from the back of her mind.
Gwen gathered what was left of her dignity. “Look, I’ll tell Libby the truth when everyone is gone. She’ll help me call around, cancel the wedding. It was only going to be small. It won’t take long.”
A vise clamped around her chest. What the heck was she going to do then? Thanks to Steve, she didn’t even have enough left in her account to buy groceries—let alone meet the demands of the loan now secured against the house that had been part of her family for generations. A swell of nausea rocked her. She was going to lose her home—her one bastion of security since the day her mother had shucked her off like last year’s fashion.
Declan interrupted her misery. “So don’t cancel.”
Gwen reached deep to draw the courage she needed to answer him. “Give me one good reason why I should want to pretend to be engaged to you.”
“There’s no pretend about it. We will get married. Under New Zealand law we have just enough time to make your original wedding date, too.”
“Did you slip and bang your head or something?” Gwen leaned back slightly, deliberately ignoring the contact of her hips against his lower body, and looked hard in his eyes. “There’s no way I’m marrying you.”
“Yes, you are. Look, it’s certainly not my idea of the ideal solution, either, but right now it’s the only way you’re going to get your money back. As your husband, I can make sure of that.”
Gwen was lost for words. Even though the reality of Steve’s defection had only just begun to sink in, some glimmer of hope still clung to the thought that she’d get the money back from him, somehow.
“The way I see it,” Declan continued, “we both stand to benefit from a wedding.”
“No—”
“Hear me out. Once Crenshaw’s found, I will find a way to get the money back, you can count on it. But in the meantime his actions have put me in a very difficult position. You’ve heard about the Sellers tender?”
Gwen nodded. She’d more than heard about it. She’d been eagerly awaiting the outcome of the sale tender for the Art Deco hotel in the hope it would be redeveloped in keeping with its distinctive history. Then she could put in a proposal of her own to subcontract to the successful company. With her expertise in the restoration of old furnishings, and her skill in sourcing the materials required to redecorate to suit the period of the properties she’d worked on, she was in high demand. But a contract like the Sellers Hotel—that would launch her into an entirely new sphere altogether.
“I’ve put a bid together to purchase the property, but no thanks to Steve’s creative accounting I’ll have to withdraw from the tender unless I have the funds to continue the development—unless I can get my hands on a hefty sum of money. Now, I have that money at my disposal, but the only way I can access it is to marry. And that’s where you come in.” He dipped his head closer to hers, his dark eyes boring into her own. For all intents and purposes, to the guests whose buzz of conversation filtered in muffled snatches through the glass door to the balcony, they looked like a couple in love. The length of his legs seared through the fabric of her skirt. The outline of his muscled thighs and the weight of his hips pressed against her. Logic demanded she pull back, loose herself from his grasp and denounce his crazy idea for the fraud it was. To get the wild beat of her heart back under control.
“You have to marry? That’s archaic,” Gwen protested.
“It’s the way it is. My mother was a traditionalist and wanted to see all her boys settled before accessing our trust funds.”
A trust fund he’d already have had access to if she hadn’t let Renata talk her into attempting that cliff face when it was way beyond Gwen’s experience. But she couldn’t let her guilt at Renata’s death drive her into making yet another mistake. “And how would this advantage me? All I can see is a win-win for you here. Getting married isn’t just something you do to access a trust fund, for goodness sakes! No, it’s too important. I can’t—I won’t do it.”
“I’ll repay the money Steve stole from you.”
Gwen pulled out of his arms and walked across the balcony until she could go no farther from him. Declan felt the loss of her form against his body as if she’d been carved from him. As much as he denied it, they fit well together. Too well. In the evening darkness he studied her face carefully, watching as emotions chased across its surface until an implacable calm replaced the confusion. “C’mon, Gwen. What do you say?”
“I don’t want to do this.”
“It’s gone beyond what we want to do, Crenshaw’s seen to that. We need to make a decision, Gwen. Tonight.”
“Why do we have to do all this? Why can’t you just take out a business loan?” Light from a streetlamp caressed her white-blond hair and silhouetted her slender shape against the darkness like a sculptor’s loving touch.
“Because I wouldn’t get the loan.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Cavaliere Developments is one of the most successful and fastest-growing companies in the industry. Even I know that.”
Declan clenched his fists at his sides, then released his fingers, one by one. He had to convince Gwen, and the only way out was the truth, no matter how much it hurt. “When Renata died I had to keep busy, keep moving, keep working. I didn’t have the necessary capital then to expand at the rate I wanted
