Cinderella’s Wedding Wish

Reaching out, he ran a knuckle down the curve of her cheek. It was the gentlest of touches, but it seemed to sear her skin, and Miranda flinched back from it, drawing a sharp, unsteady breath.

Rafe’s smile faded. ‘But maybe it is a problem for you,’ he said slowly. ‘I can see that you’re tense. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. Perhaps we’d better drop the whole idea?’

‘No!’ Miranda spoke without thinking. Her cheek was still burning where his finger had grazed the skin, and she was mortified at the way she had jerked back from his touch. What was wrong with her? Anyone would think she was a silly schoolgirl, instead of a sensible woman who had just been offered the chance of a lifetime!

She could do this. She could do it for Whitestones. It wasn’t as if Rafe were suggesting anything illegal or even immoral. Neither of them were committed to anyone else. They would be acting out a lie, true, but nobody’s feelings would be hurt. Rafe wasn’t expecting her to sleep with him-at least, she didn’t think so. All she had to do was hold his hand occasionally. Of course she could do that.

‘No,’ she said again. ‘It won’t be a problem. I’m not a very huggy-kissy person, I suppose, but I can see that if we want to convince everyone that we really are engaged, I’d need to be a bit more demonstrative. I can do that.’

‘Really?’ Rafe was still looking doubtful.

‘Really,’ said Miranda.

She was going to have to prove it to him, she realised. She was going to have to kiss him.

Heat washed through her as her eyes rested on his mouth, and a feeling like a fist clenching deep inside her made her inhale slowly. Face it, Miranda, she told herself. Not only can you do it, you want to do it.

‘Would you like me to prove it?’ she asked, and without waiting for an answer she stepped forwards and rested her hands against his chest. Slowly, almost thoughtfully, she spread them so that she could run them up and over his powerful shoulders.

Rafe smiled. ‘Why not?’ he said softly.

Miranda deliberately didn’t hurry. She felt curiously calm. Having got this far, she wasn’t going to back down now. If Rafe thought she was going to be content with a hurried peck on the cheek, he was going to discover his mistake. So he thought she was tense, did he? He thought she was prim and proper? Well, this was her chance to show him just how wrong he was.

He was standing very, very still, but there was an arrested expression in his eyes as she savoured the feel of his body beneath her hands. Only the pulse hammering in his cheek gave away his acute awareness of her, and suddenly Miranda was filled with a sense of her own power.

Her mouth curving in a smile of its own, she leant in and pressed her lips to his throat below his ear for a long, breathless moment before she began to tease little kisses along his jaw line. His skin was warm and faintly prickled with stubble, and he smelt comfortingly of clean laundry. Miranda eased herself closer and slid her hands down to slip beneath his jacket. Suddenly it was easy.

With a tiny sigh she reached the corner of his mouth at last. She felt it curve in response, but she kept her exploration soft and seductive, tasting his lips almost reflectively, giving herself up to the sheer bliss of being able to kiss him the way she realised she had wanted to right from the start.

Rafe felt as if he were about to explode. Unable to hold out any longer, he brought his hands up to grip her and yank her closer so that he could deepen the kiss, and Miranda clutched instinctively at his hard, gloriously solid body, anchoring herself against the swirl of sheer pleasure as she struggled to stay in control.

This was her kiss. She could kiss him as deeply, as hungrily, as he could kiss her. But her blood was pounding, her whole being pulsing with a joyous excitement that sucked her down in spite of herself as they kissed and kissed and kissed again, spinning her round until she forgot there was a competition, forgot what she was trying to prove, forgot everything except Rafe’s mouth and the thrill of his hands hard on her and the feel of him.

‘Miranda…’

He was kissing her throat, murmuring her name as he fumbled with the buttons of her blouse, and she gasped and tipped back her head, her fingers entwined in his dark hair. Vaguely she became aware of something sharp and solid digging into her back. It was enough to pull her back from the brink, and she flailed for a last shred of control. How had they ended up here? Had Rafe backed her against the door, or had she dragged him with her as she collapsed back onto it for support?

Either way, she had to stop this…now, Miranda told herself, even as she shivered and arched beneath the wickedly delicious drift of his lips.

Now, while she still could. Before Rafe peeled her blouse from her shoulders, before she tugged his shirt from his trousers and was unbuckling his belt. Before they stumbled upstairs, shedding clothes as they went, and fell onto her bed together.

From somewhere, Miranda found the strength to disentangle her fingers from his hair and press her palms against his chest to push him away an inch.

‘Wait,’ she croaked.

Rafe stilled for a moment, and then, very slowly, he levered himself away from her and dropped his hands.

Miranda moistened her lips. She was trembling, and the bones in her legs seemed to have dissolved, leaving only a fizzy sensation to keep her upright.

‘I…I think that’s made the point,’ she said unevenly.

Her lips were swollen, her face flushed, her eyes dark and dazed, and Rafe had to shake his head to clear it.

‘I take it all back,’ he managed, more shaken than he wanted to admit. He was having trouble with his breathing still. ‘There was nothing prim and proper about that kiss.’

‘I told you I could do it.’

‘You did, and you were right. No one watching you kiss like that would have the slightest difficulty in understanding why I’d want to marry you!’

‘I don’t think it will be necessary to repeat it,’ said Miranda, retreating behind her most prickly manner. ‘We’d hardly be likely to kiss in public. At least, not like that.’

‘No, perhaps it’s better if we don’t,’ agreed Rafe. ‘We’re liable to get ourselves arrested if we do!’ He smiled down at her. ‘I take it, then, that you’ll pretend to be my fiancee?’

‘It will just be for a month?’ Her legs were still very unsteady, but at least her voice sounded like her own again.

‘A month,’ he confirmed ‘At the end of which time, you have to find a way to break off our engagement. In return, I’ll give you a cheque for twenty-five thousand pounds. Does that seem fair?’

It was more than fair, Miranda thought.

‘I’ll do it,” she told him.

‘What about this one?’

Rafe picked up a ring with an eye-popping emerald set in a cluster of diamonds, each one of which would have made a spectacular ring on its own. He handed it to Miranda, who slid it reluctantly onto her finger.

It felt awkward and heavy, and looked completely out of place on her hand. Except, of course, it wasn’t the ring that was out of place. It was her.

What was she doing here in this exclusive jeweller’s, trying on engagement rings? Miranda was beginning to wonder what had possessed her to agree to Rafe’s crazy plan. Nobody in their right minds would ever believe that he would seriously consider marrying someone like her!

But Rafe seemed confident. He had immediately started making plans, and insisted on buying her a ring, sweeping aside her objections that it wasn’t necessary.

‘Of course you have to have a ring,’ he had told her. ‘You won’t look like a fiancee without a socking great diamond on your finger.’

If it had been left to him, they would have been at the jeweller’s the very next day, but Miranda had pointed out that it was Friday, and that she had to go to work, even if he didn’t.

‘They’re expecting me. I can’t just not turn up.’

‘Oh, very well, we’ll do it on Saturday then,’ Rafe had grumbled. ‘When does this assignment end?’

‘Tomorrow’s my last day.’

‘Then you’ll be free next week?’