The Tycoon's Marriage Deal. Melanie Milburne
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I don’t have to dislocate my neck to maintain eye contact?
‘Ladies first.’ Something about the sparkle in his eyes made her think of another context entirely.
She gritted her teeth behind her polite closed-lip smile, and instead of sitting on her own chair, held onto the back of it like a lion tamer about to take on a rogue lion. ‘What can I do for you, Mr McClelland?’
‘Actually, it’s more what I can do for you.’ There was an enigmatic quality to his voice and his expression that made the fine hairs on the back of her neck stand up and pirouette.
‘Meaning?’ Tillie injected enough cool hostility into her tone to have sent a pride of lions scampering for cover, chair or no chair.
Blake glanced at the stack of bills lying on her desk. Three of them were stained with a red stamp marking them as final notices. He would have to be colour blind not to have noticed.
‘Local gossip has it you’re undergoing a difficult financial period,’ he said.
Tillie kept her spine straighter than the ruler on her desk. ‘Pardon me if this sounds rude, but I fail to see how my current financial circumstances have anything to do with you.’
His eyes didn’t waver from hers. Not even to blink. He reminded her of a marksman who had taken aim, his finger poised on the trigger. ‘I noticed the wedding cake on my way in here.’
‘Hardly surprising since this is a cake shop,’ Tillie said, sounding as tart as the lemon meringue pies she’d made that morning. ‘Weddings, parties, anything—it’s what I do.’
‘I heard about your fiancé getting cold feet on the morning of the wedding,’ he said, still holding her gaze with that unnerving target-practice intensity.
‘Yes, well, it’s hard to keep something like that quiet in a village this size,’ she said. ‘But again—pardon me for being impolite—what exactly do you want to speak to me about? Because if it’s to talk about my ex and his tarty little girlfriend who is barely out of preschool, then you’d better leave right now.’
His smile tilted his mouth in a way that made the base of Tillie’s spine tingle and her hand want to rise up and slap him. She curled her fingers into her palms just in case. She was annoyed with herself for allowing him to see how humiliated she was by her ex’s choice of partner.
‘So here’s your chance to get even,’ Blake said. ‘Pretend to be my fiancée for the next month and I’ll take care of those debts for you.’
‘Pretend to be your...what?’
He picked up the sheaf of papers off her desk and proceeded to read out the amounts owing, whistling through his teeth when he got to the biggest one. He tapped the bills against his other hand and looked at her again with that startlingly direct grey-blue gaze. ‘I will pay off your debts and the only payment I want in return is for you to tell your old buddy Jim Pendleton we’re engaged.’
Tillie widened her eyes until she thought her eyeballs would pop right out of her head and bounce along the floor like ping-pong balls. ‘Are you out of your mind? Pretend to be engaged to you? I don’t even know you.’
He gave a mock bow. ‘Blake Richard Alexander McClelland at your service. Formerly of McClelland Park estate and now on a mission to buy back my ancestral home, which, up until twenty-four years ago, had been in the McClelland family since the mid-seventeen-hundreds.’
Tillie frowned. ‘But why don’t you make an offer to Mr Pendleton? He’s been talking about selling since he had a stroke two months ago.’
‘He won’t sell it to me.’
‘Why not?’
His eyes continued to hold hers but this time there was a devilish glint. ‘Apparently my reputation as a love-them-and-leave-them playboy has annoyed him.’
Tillie could well imagine Blake McClelland had done some serious damage to a few hearts in his time. Now she realised why he’d seemed familiar the first time he’d come into her shop. She recalled reading something recently about him at a wild party in Vegas involving three burlesque dancers. He had a fast-living lifestyle that would certainly be at odds with someone as old and conservative as Jim Pendleton, whose only misdemeanours in eighty-five years were a couple of parking fines. ‘But Mr Pendleton would never believe you and I were a couple. We’re total opposites.’
His smile was crooked. ‘But that’s the point—you’re exactly the type of girl Jim would want me to fall in love with and settle down.’
As if that would ever happen.
Tillie knew she wasn’t responsible for any shattered mirrors about the place, but neither would she be asked to model a bikini on a catwalk. Her girl-next-door looks wouldn’t stop a clock or even a wristwatch. Not even an egg timer. The likelihood of attracting someone as heart-stoppingly handsome and suave and sophisticated as Blake McClelland was as likely as her becoming a size zero. But she didn’t know whether to be insulted or grateful. Right now, the thought of paying off her debts was more tempting than a whole tray of Belgian chocolate éclairs. Two trays. And even better, it would send a middle finger in the air to her ex. ‘But won’t Mr Pendleton suspect something if we suddenly come out as a couple? He might be elderly and suffering from a stroke, but he’s not stupid.’
‘The old man’s a romance tragic,’ Blake said. ‘He was married fifty-nine years before his wife died. He fell in love with her within ten minutes of meeting her. He’ll be thrilled to see you move on from your ex. He talked about you non-stop—called you his little guardian angel. He said you were minding his house and his dog and visiting him every day. That’s how I came up with the plan. I can see the headlines now.’ He put his fingers up in air quotes. ‘“Bad boy tamed by squeaky clean girl next door.”’ His grin was straight off a cosmetic orthodontist’s website. ‘It’s win-win.’
Tillie gave him a look that would have soured her shop’s week’s supply of milk. ‘I hate to put a dent in that massive ego of yours, but my answer is an emphatic, irreversible no.’
‘I don’t expect you to sleep with me.’
Tillie didn’t care for the way he said it as if she was being a gauche fool for thinking otherwise. Why didn’t he expect her to sleep with him? Was she that hideous? ‘Good, because I wouldn’t do it even if you paid those debts fifty gazillion times over.’
Something about the spark of light in his eyes sent a shuddering tremor over the floor of her belly. His slanted smile was star student of charm school. ‘Although, if you ever change your mind I’ll be happy to get down to business.’
Business? Tillie dug her fingers into the back of her office chair so hard she thought her knuckles would explode. She wanted to slap that I-can-have-you-any-time-I-want-you smile off his face. But another part—a secret, private part—wanted him. Wanted. Wanted. Wanted him. ‘I’m not going to change my mind.’
He picked up a pen off her desk, tossed it in the air and deftly caught it in one hand. ‘And when the time comes to end it, I will allow you the privilege of dumping me.’
‘Big of you.’
‘I’m not being magnanimous,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to be run out of town by a bunch of villagers wielding baseball bats.’
Tillie wished she had a baseball bat handy right now to beat her resolve back into shape. But the chance to let her ex know she could land a guy was proving a little hard to resist.
And not just any old guy.
Someone rich and gorgeous and sexy as sin on a sugar-coated stick. It was only for a month. How hard could it be? Her thoughts were seesawing in her head. Do it. Don’t. Do it. Don’t.
‘Think about it overnight,’ Blake said, apparently undaunted because his smile didn’t falter. ‘I want a walk around the Park some time. For old times’ sake.’
‘I’d