Until now. Until the choice was to break the vow or to watch Peta take the next few steps and take her burden back to Australia.
He didn’t even know what her burden was. He hardly knew her. He had a corporate deal to stitch up; he had a date tonight with a woman most men would kill to be seen with; he had a life in New York…
Peta was watching him, her pixie face questioning. Waiting. Waiting for release so she could disappear.
He couldn’t give her that release. And there was only one way to stop her disappearing.
‘There is a way you can be married by Wednesday,’ he called, and the shoppers around them paused in astonishment.
‘How?’ she called, but maybe she hadn’t called it. Maybe her voice was a whisper. They were twenty yards apart and there were people between. He saw her lips move. He saw the thought in her eyes that he was holding her up for nothing.
But he wasn’t. He knew what he had to say and when he said it, it sounded right. Even inevitable.
‘You can marry me.’
CHAPTER THREE
SHE couldn’t believe what she’d heard. One minute she was looking defeat and despair in the face. This was the end of the world as she knew it. Tomorrow she’d have to bury Aunt Hattie with all the love and honour she deserved, trying to block out the hurt caused by this appalling last will. Then she’d climb on to an aeroplane and go home to face the boys and tell them that she didn’t have a clue what their future held.
As opposed to…what?
As opposed to facing the man twenty yards away from her and trying to make sense of his crazy statement.
‘I beg your pardon?’ she said at last and there was general laughter among the passers-by. Marcus’s words hadn’t just shocked Peta. More than one person had stilled to listen-to hear her response to this fascinating question.
‘He’s asking you to marry him, love,’ an elderly woman told her. ‘He looks a good sort of catch. I’d think about it if I were you.’
‘She’s young,’ someone else proffered. ‘Plus she’s pretty. She’s got plenty of time to play the field.’
‘No, but look at that suit,’ the older woman retorted. ‘The guy’s obviously loaded. You do it, love, but don’t go signing one of them pre-nup agreements. You take him for all he’s worth.’
‘Pretty funny proposal, if you ask me,’ someone else said. ‘You think she’s got leprosy or something, that he has to stay two shops away from her to ask her to marry him?’
‘Your girl got leprosy?’ someone else demanded. ‘Is that why the crutches?’
Even Marcus smiled at that.
So did Peta. It’s a joke, she thought. It’s a joke in appalling taste, but it’s a joke for all that.
‘Thanks,’ she called, with what she hoped was a vestige of dignity. ‘It’s a very nice proposal but I have a funeral to go to, and then a trip home to Australia. I can’t fit you in.’
‘I’m serious, Peta.’
She flinched. Stop it, she thought. She’d been through enough. It was time for the sick jokes to subside. It was time for everything to subside. For now, all she wanted to do was to crawl away into a dark cupboard somewhere and mourn her aunt as she deserved.
But Marcus was striding towards her through the throng of entranced passers-by. She felt an almost overwhelming urge to turn and run-fast-but of course she couldn’t. Her ankle wouldn’t let her. She had to stand and be polite. It was the only thing she could think of to do.
But she wanted to run.
Or did she?
‘Marcus…’
‘I’m serious.’ He reached her and his hands came out and caught hers. They were much bigger than her hands-much stronger. She could feel their strength and she could feel the urgency behind the strength.
She’d been holding her crutches. As he caught her hands, the crutches fell away-which made her feel even more helpless than ever.
‘Peta, we can do this.’
‘What…what?’ She could scarcely muster a whisper.
‘We can marry. As you turned away just now I saw it. Your aunt’s will has an out. You need to marry before Wednesday and you can. You can marry me.’
‘But…you don’t want to marry me.’
‘Of course I don’t. I don’t want to marry anyone. But that’s just it. Because I don’t want to marry anyone then I can marry you.’
‘That’s stupid.’
‘No. It’s sensible.’
‘Why is it sensible? How can it be sensible?’ She didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. Or simply to run. This big man with the smiling eyes was looking down at her with an expression that said he had all the answers to her problems right here. She just had to trust him.
Trust him? She didn’t know him. She pulled on her hands but his hold tightened.
‘Peta, it can work.’
‘How can it work? How can it possibly work?’
But fifteen minutes later, when he’d calmed her down sufficiently to listen, she was starting to concede that it just might.
‘I’ll have my lawyers sift the will this afternoon,’ Marcus told her. ‘But if that’s all you need-to be married-then I’m happy to oblige.’
She sat across the table from him. They’d found the first coffee shop they could; they’d sank into two deep armchairs and they hadn’t moved. Peta felt as if she’d been hit by a sledgehammer.
‘But…you only spilled my lunch,’ she managed. She felt as if all the wind had been sucked out of her. ‘You hardly ravished me. You hardly destroyed my honour or my marriage prospects. And here you are offering to marry me. Why?’
‘I don’t like Charles Higgins.’
‘Then kick him out of your building. Put salt in his water cooler. Cut off his supplies of waistcoats. Whatever. But not this. You’re offering to get involved up to your neck.’
But he was shaking his head, smiling. ‘No, I’m not. I’m simply offering to get married. That’s all. A simple ceremony. We do the deed. Despite what the lady on the street says, we draw up a pre-nuptial agreement saying we have no recourse to each other’s property after divorce, and then we go our separate ways. After your estate has been settled, we’ll divorce. My lawyers can take care of that. Apart from the one simple ceremony, we need never have anything to do with each other.’
‘But-I still don’t understand.’ She looked up from the mug of coffee she was cradling and met his look head-on. His smile just deepened her sense of confusion. ‘Okay, you don’t like Charles Higgins,’ she said. ‘That’s not a reason for doing this. Not for you. It’d solve my problems, and that’s so important to me that I’m almost tempted to fall in with your crazy plan. But there has to be a catch. There must be. What do you want in return?’
He hesitated.
She watched his face. It was a good face, she thought, somehow forcing herself to be dispassionate. It held strength and warmth and humour. A girl could do a lot worse than marry a man like this. Especially as the marriage would last a whole five minutes.
But it was crazy. It was!
It seemed, though, that it hadn’t been a spur-of-the-moment offer. He was really thinking.
‘It’d be something good to do,’ he said at last. ‘I don’t know whether you can understand that, but it’s
