The Marriage Proposition. Sara Craven
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brim again. ‘On the count of three we empty our glasses, and the last one to finish does a forfeit. How’s that?’
Paige groaned inwardly. She couldn’t even drink water at speed, so she was bound to lose, but it was clear that if she objected she’d be the only dissenting voice. Easier to go with the flow, she thought resignedly, picking up her glass and waiting for the signal.
Just as she’d expected, she finished last, amid giggles and barracking.
‘So what’s her forfeit going to be?’ Lindsay demanded eagerly. ‘Walk round the room without touching the floor? Mime a full strip?’
‘Better than that.’ Becky’s smile was calculating. ‘She’s going over to Mr Snooty at the bar there, and offer him a tenner for a kiss. That’ll teach him to look down his nose at us.’
‘Oh, come on,’ Paige began, alarmed.
‘You have to do it,’ Rhona warned, laughing. ‘Or we’ll make you strip for real.’
Slowly, Paige reached down and extracted a ten-pound note from her bag. Gulping down that champagne had been bad news, she thought detachedly. She was feeling lightheaded, and the pulse in her throat seemed to be beating a warning tattoo.
None of the others would even hesitate, and she knew it. They’d be marching over already, to issue the challenge and put him on the spot. But it wasn’t her style. Strangers suffocated her with shyness. As for this cold-eyed stranger—well, simply asking him the time would be ordeal enough.
As for anything else …
The best she could hope for was that he’d treat her as a drunken pest and ignore her. The worst-case scenario was that she might actually have to kiss him. Or let him kiss her, she amended quickly.
Do it, she commanded herself, rising to her feet. Get it over with. Then you’ll be off the hook and you can go home.
She needed to saunter with purpose, but it was as much as she could do to put one foot in front of the other without tripping. She arranged a smile. Tried to rehearse a few words. But her mind was blank.
Her approach had been noticed, she realised. Her quarry had half turned and was watching her, dark eyes narrowed, mouth unsmiling.
Paige quickened her pace defiantly.
‘Hi.’ Fright made her voice husky, but maybe that was no bad thing.
His brows lifted. ‘Is there something I can do for you?’
‘Actually, yes.’ She widened her smile and lowered her lashes. She lifted her hand, letting him see the money, crackling the note between restless fingers. ‘I’d like to buy a kiss.’
All the neighbouring conversation seemed suddenly to have ceased. The silence that surrounded them simmered with amusement, and an odd tension.
‘Really?’ He drawled the word, leaning back against the bar. The dark gaze captured hers and held it, something glinting in its depths. Mockery, she realised, and something less easily recognised. ‘Only a kiss?’ He looked her up and down very slowly, taking in the neat black dress and the matching jacket, the dark tights and low-heeled pumps, and mentally discarding them.
Undressing her, she realised, shocked, with his eyes.
She swallowed, her last vestiges of bravado ebbing away under the calculated insolence of his stare. It was suddenly like one of those awful dreams where you find yourself naked in public, she thought, resisting an impulse to cover herself with her hands. Common sense told her to walk away, but she seemed unable to move.
Helplessly she watched as he reached inside his coat and took out his wallet.
Mesmerised, Paige saw him produce not one but two fifty-pound notes, and hold them up in front of her shocked face.
‘A counter-offer,’ he said softly. ‘But I’ll expect a damned sight more than a kiss—darling. So how about it?’
She needed a response, a swift comeback that would be witty, succinct, and ultimately devastating. Something to leave him with egg on his face, and make her the heroine of the moment, walking away victorious.
Instead, she heard the first ripple of laughter from their audience, and at the same moment felt a great wave of heat enveloping her from head to foot as she was overwhelmed and annihilated by the blush of the century.
She found herself immobilised, crucified with embarrassment as the guffaws rose in volume around her, and she heard the jeering sotto voce comments that accompanied them.
‘In your dreams,’ was all she could manage at last, her voice a stranger’s, as she forced herself to move. To turn and walk back to the table, trying hard not to run. Attempting to hide her discomfiture. Her humiliation.
At the same time trying to accept that she had no one but herself to blame. That she’d been a total idiot to allow the others to persuade her into such a piece of arrant stupidity. Although the realisation did nothing to calm her feelings or heal the wound to her amour propre.
‘What happened?’ Lindsay’s eyes were like saucers. ‘What on earth did he say to you?’
Paige shrugged, thrusting the money back into her bag with a shaking hand. Her skin was still burning, her mouth dry.
‘Just my luck.’ She tried for lightness. ‘A complete sense of humour bypass. He—turned me down.’
And for that at least she had to be thankful, she thought, as she contemplated for one shaken second what it might have been like to feel his mouth on hers, even momentarily, and her senses went into sudden overspin.
‘Miserable bastard.’ Becky turned a rancorous look towards the bar, and the array of grinning faces observing them. ‘Oh, come on,’ she added impatiently. ‘Let’s get out of here and find somewhere more interesting.’
Let’s just get out of here, Paige amended under her breath. She wanted to be outside, breathing what passed for fresh air. Or finding a convenient corner to die in.
She deliberately didn’t look either to the right or to the left as she walked with the others towards the door. The joke was over, and the audience had found other things to occupy them.
But there was always the possibility that he might be watching her go, and the very idea made her flesh crawl.
Once on the pavement, she firmly refused to accompany the others to a club Becky knew of, and thankfully hailed a passing cab.
She gave the address of her flat and sank back into the corner, closing her eyes wearily. But the stranger’s image was suddenly there, in the darkness behind her eyelids, and she sat up abruptly, smothering a faint gasp.
She couldn’t understand why she was so upset. Why she was still shaking and her insides were churning as they were.
She’d behaved like a fool, and he’d treated her with the contempt she probably deserved, but it went no further than that.
So why was she over-reacting like this—when the best thing she could do was put the whole nasty little incident right out of her mind?
I mustn’t let it matter any more, she told herself with determination. I’m sure that he’ll never give it a second thought—in fact he’s probably forgotten about it already. So there’s no reason for me to go on torturing myself either.
It was just a chance encounter, that’s all. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and did a stupid thing. But it’s over, and I’ll never have to set eyes on him again as long as I live.
The conviction brought a kind of comfort with it.
But, just to be on the safe side, she would make sure that she never, ever set foot in that particular wine bar again, she decided with a small, fierce nod.
And Becky and the others could read what they liked into that.
I was so sure I was safe,