Happily Ever After...: His Reluctant Cinderella / His Very Convenient Bride / A Deal to Mend Their Marriage. Sophie Pembroke
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bent down and picked up the dress, carefully putting it on the hanger. Still no sound, not even a sigh. Anticipation clenched at her stomach as she slipped the next outfit, a wide-skirted silk affair in a vivid green, off the rail and put it on, barely bothering to check the mirror before wrenching the curtain aside.
‘And?’
He was sitting on the sofa, lounging back seemingly without a care in the world. ‘The shoes don’t go.’
‘They go with the other dress. I didn’t change them.’ Seriously? Shoes? That was what he was thinking? She wouldn’t ask, she wouldn’t, she wouldn’t... ‘Okay. Spill.’ For goodness’ sake, her self-control was legendary. She prided herself on it! But the need to know was burning her and she didn’t want to examine why. ‘Who was that?’
Raff got to his feet with leonine grace and sauntered over to the rail. ‘I think we agreed on the red shoes for that outfit, didn’t we? It’ll work very well for lunches. What?’ He was regarding her with faint surprise. No wonder. Clara was aware she resembled a fishwife more than a lady-who-lunches, hands on hips and head back. ‘I did introduce you. That was Lisa. We worked together.’
‘Yes, in Somalia,’ Clara said as patiently as she could manage. ‘Why were you in Somalia?’
‘I worked with her husband in Somalia,’ Raff corrected her. ‘I knew Lisa in Sri Lanka. I think...’ he finished doubtfully. ‘It might have been Bangladesh.’
‘Mercenary or spy?’ The words burst out before she could stop them.
‘What?’ The look of utter shock on his face was almost comical.
‘You keep quiet about what you do, you work in some of the most dangerous places on earth, it has to be one or the other.’ It was the only thing that made sense.
‘Because spies and mercenaries love to throw fundraising balls?’ How she hated that amused smile. He had of course honed in on the only flaw in her thinking.
‘Part of your cover.’ Okay, not the best idea she’d ever had.
‘Interesting theory. I like it. I always fancied myself as a suave, martini-drinking type. Sorry to burst your little fantasy but nothing so exciting.’ He paused and handed her another dress, a fifties-style halterneck that Clara secretly rather liked. ‘Here, try this on. I’m a project manager for Doctors Everywhere.’
Oh.
Kitbags, dangerous places, fundraising balls, hospitals. That made sense. Reluctantly Clara let go of her visions of chase scenes, fancy cars, an evil mastermind bent on world domination.
‘Doctors Everywhere?’ she echoed as she obediently accepted the outfit and tottered her way back to the curtain. Of course she had heard of them; they provided healthcare in the Third World, in refugee camps, in war spots.
They were incredibly well respected. Not the natural playground of playboys. Which meant that every little preconception she had was wrong.
Clara changed on autopilot, so many thoughts tumbling around her brain it was as if her head had joined the circus.
Somehow the emotion she could most easily identify was anger. She pushed away the thought that this might be a little unreasonable. After all, what Raff Rafferty did with his time was really none of her business.
He had made it her business, she argued back as she fumbled with the buttons at the back and cautiously zipped up the tight bodice. Employing her, introducing her to his grandfather, buying her these exquisite, over-priced, really very flattering clothes.
He had made her complicit.
The curtain made a most satisfying swoosh as she pulled it open, and she stomped forward only wobbling twice. Damn, she was still wearing the stupid sliver shoes. No wonder Cinderella had discarded her glass slippers; she was probably in agony by midnight.
‘Doctors Everywhere?’
‘Yep.’ He was still standing up, leaning against the back wall. The plain colour of the backdrop suited him, made the hair a little blonder, the eyes even bluer. Not that she was noticing. Not at all.
Oh, no, she was putting her hands on her hips again. Ten years of careful, calm control and yet one day with this man and she was unleashing her inner harpy. ‘Which is obviously such a terrible thing for you to do you had no choice but to lie to your sister and grandfather?’ Clara could hear the sarcasm dripping from her voice and tried to calm down.
This wasn’t her family. Why did she care so much?
He looked at her for one long moment and Clara thought he wasn’t going to answer. After all, the annoying voice of reason whispered, he didn’t have to explain himself to her, but after a moment he sighed. ‘I didn’t lie. They know what I do.’
‘They know? Then why does your grandfather want you to take over Rafferty’s? And why has Polly never mentioned it?’ Clara twisted the heavy curtain fabric around her hand and studied him curiously.
‘According to Grandfather it’s just a phase I’ll grow out of. As for Polly...’ He glanced away, staring at the stark walls as if the answer would be found there. ‘I don’t know what she hates more—that Grandfather always wanted me to have this place or that I don’t want it. I hoped that if I went away she would be able to convince him that she was the better candidate but she accused me of running away. Maybe she was right.’
‘Why?’ So she was curious; it wasn’t a crime.
He pushed himself off the wall and walked over to the small table, which held a jug of iced water and a bunch of grapes, nothing that could mark the valuable clothes. ‘Want one?’ he offered and she shook her head.
He poured himself a glass. Clara watched as he took a long, deep drink, her eyes drawn to the way his tanned throat worked as he swallowed. He set the glass down and, with a purposeful manner, as if he had come to some kind of internal decision, he turned and faced her squarely, eyes holding hers.
‘Because I was running away,’ he said. ‘Away from expectations and responsibility and guilt and family. I was at a really low point, Polly and I were fighting, Grandfather kept promoting me higher and higher whilst passing her over—and believe me it wasn’t on merit—and then I met up with a friend who was volunteering with Doctors Everywhere. He mentioned that they always needed people with good project-management skills and a second language—to be honest I didn’t think I had a chance. A pampered boy like me who thought travelling second class was slumming it?
‘Nobody was as surprised as me when they took me. But I didn’t ever consider not going.’ He grimaced. ‘I genuinely thought it was a one-off. That I’d be back in three months relieved to be back behind my desk.’ His mouth twisted with a wry humour as he remembered. ‘I nearly was. That first three months was the most difficult, stressful three months of my life. It made prep school seem like a holiday camp. I couldn’t wait for it to be over.
‘But I signed up for my next assignment the day after I was released.’ He shrugged. ‘I didn’t know then that I had been broken in easy—an existing brick-built hospital, my own bedroom, not a war zone. Somalia was a horrid shock. But I signed up again as soon as I returned from there, for six months that time. It’s like a drug. I think I can walk away any time but I always go back for more.
‘Because...it makes a real difference, Clara. Everything I did changed somebody’s world. I might not be the person performing the operations—but I was the person making sure that the operations could take place. That we had beds and kits and food and water. It mattered.’
‘And Rafferty’s doesn’t?’
‘Not to me.’
Raff heard his words echo around the room. He’d thought them many times but had never said them aloud.
But the sky didn’t fall in, the world didn’t end, his grandfather didn’t appear in a puff of smoke to blast him away like a vengeful god. He was still