Husband By Arrangement. SARA WOOD
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Her teeth clamped together as she tried to crush her useless, destructive thoughts. But she would have given anything to have a baby. Anything.
Without comment, he swerved to the inside lane and took an exit which led them to a small, bustling village. Struggling fiercely with her stupidly wayward emotions, Maddy didn’t recognise it at all but was too choked up to ask what he was doing.
And yet there was something calming about the twisty cobbled roads lined with crumbling white houses. The village clearly was a poor one, but roses trailed around the wonky wooden doors and geraniums tumbled down from pots on rickety balconies.
Everything came flooding back to her. This was the old Portugal, the one she’d known as a child, and far more recognisable than the smart motorway and huge villa developments they’d passed so far.
Trundling beneath the lines of washing which hung across the street, the truck finally stopped in a small square surrounded by orange trees. A wonderful silence descended, broken only by the sound of birdsong. It was heavenly.
The truck driver turned to her and scowled. ‘Out!’
Grimly he walked around and jerked at her door, the metal screeching in protest as his brute strength levered the door completely open.
She stared at his unfriendly face in dismay as it became apparent that he wasn’t intending to have a potentially weepy woman in the cab and had decided to abandon her, then and there.
He pinned her with his cold and uncompromising stare. And then anger gave her the courage to fling herself in the direction of the driver’s seat. For a moment she found herself intimately linked with the gear stick and then she was tumbling into place and switching on the ignition.
Which was just as quickly switched off by a large, warm hand which clamped down on hers and deftly twisted her fingers in an anticlockwise direction till the engine died.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he enquired, his deep, throaty voice somewhere in the region of her right ear.
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ she husked, suddenly swamped, it seemed, by the smell of smoke and warm, body-tingling man.
‘Do you know how to drive a truck?’ he growled.
‘No, I don’t!’
‘Then why try?’ he asked, not unreasonably.
Her stormy eyes flashed angrily to his. His face was close, invading her personal space. Trying not to be intimidated, she said, ‘It was me or you and I chose me!’
His forehead furrowed. ‘What?’
‘You were going to dump me by the road!’ she cried hotly.
He looked exasperated. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I was going to take you into that bar for a coffee or a brandy.’
Startled, she jerked her head around to peer at the building behind him. There was, indeed, a bar.
‘Why?’ she asked, utterly confused.
Only inches away, the dark eyes bored into hers without compassion or sympathy. She felt suddenly weak, blasted by his intense masculinity.
‘You’re tired. Or upset. It doesn’t matter which,’ he muttered gruffly. ‘It was all I could think of.’
‘Oh!’ She moved back to escape his compelling power. Her brain began to work and as it did her anger subsided. He was being kind in his curt, funny way! She smiled gratefully. ‘Sorry. My mistake. That’s very thoughtful. Thanks. I would like a coffee.’
He narrowed his eyes and considered her with care. The scrutiny caused a frisson to ripple through her, taking her unawares. But then few gorgeous men ever paid her any attention normally, she reasoned. And decided that it was all very unsettling.
‘Would you really have driven away and left me here?’ he murmured, obviously intrigued.
‘Yes, of course!’ she declared, still a little amazed at her own nerve. ‘How else would I get to the Quinta?’
He let out a bark of surprised laughter and then hastily stifled it as if it was something forbidden. Then he swung himself out again, onto the step.
‘I think,’ he said in steel-trap tones, ‘I need a brandy.’
For a moment she lowered her eyes in feminine acquiescence of male rights, before she remembered who she was and blurted out her initial thought.
‘Good grief! Your driving’s energetic enough without it being fuelled by alcohol!’ she reproved daringly.
He stepped down. ‘I’m taking a lunch break,’ he drawled. ‘I intend to soak up the brandy with a large plate of fresh, chargrilled sardines on pão integral.’
‘Local bread,’ she remembered wistfully, her mouth watering as she recalled the enormous, tasty sardines on chunks of rough wholemeal. ‘That sounds wonderful. I’ll join you.’
Grabbing her shoes in one hand, she began to clamber out, and found herself stuck on the lower step above a large puddle, just where she’d land if she jumped down. She noticed then that the leather of the truck driver’s working boots were stained with water where he’d already walked through the puddle.
So she waved her bare feet at him and smiled expectantly. He did nothing. Just stood back and watched her, hatchet-faced and ungallant. Sir Walter Raleigh he was not.
Just as she was resigning herself to an impromptu paddle in what might be sewage for all she knew, a group of males appeared as if from nowhere. They were unshaven and grinning, all ages from teens to nineties, and clearly encouraging her to leap into their arms.
She dithered, feeling both flustered and touched by their concern. ‘Oh, you’re very kind. I don’t—’
Two firm hands came to settle around her waist. Before she could protest, she was being lifted into the air as the truck driver swung her up and over the puddle then deposited her safely on a strip of grass.
‘Thanks!’ she husked, stooping to slip her shoes on and going pink from the interest caused when she bent down.
Oddly, she felt dizzy and disorientated, and she didn’t know if it was from the driver’s intense masculinity or because she hadn’t eaten for hours. Probably both. And the swooping sensation had been due to being lifted and deposited rather quickly. A kind of inner-ear problem.
‘Come on,’ he muttered.
Meekly she followed his broad back. Patently unwilling to miss the entertainment on offer, the village men swept into the bar behind them. They sat close by, raising their glasses to her and looking openly admiring.
There was an audible, communal sigh when she unthinkingly crossed one leg over the other, forgetting she was wearing something tight, short and revealing, instead of her usual grey and shapeless skirt.
‘I’m going to the washroom. I’ll put in our order on the way,’ the truck driver said curtly.
‘Oh,’ she whispered, suddenly nervous. ‘Don’t leave me! I feel like an exhibit.’
He grunted. ‘You ask to be ogled, wearing those clothes,’ he told her heartlessly. ‘And I’m not eating till I’ve washed.’
He had some standards, then. She watched him stride to the counter, and felt sympathy for the starry-eyed waitress who could hardly keep her eyes off the ultimate alpha male who was growling out his order as if it were a request for a suicide pill instead of sardines.
Rehearsing her role as a shameless hussy, Maddy studied him boldly. The muscles in his back rippled wonderfully when he moved. His rear was small and tight and he walked as if he was used to the freedom of the open air.
A wicked thought came into her head. Suppose, when she was talking to Sofia, she let slip that she was wildly attracted to the company’s truck driver?
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