Bride Required Read online

‘It’s not Mr Baxter,’ he corrected, ‘it’s—’

  ‘I know,’ Dee cut across him. ‘Mustn’t forget the title, must we? Dr Baxter.’

  Her tone was derisive. He was not perturbed.

  ‘Actually, I was about to say it’s Ross.’

  ‘Ross?

  ‘Mr Ross, if we’re going in for formalities.’ A slanting smile mocked her in return. ‘I’m not hung up on the “Dr” bit.’

  Having made a fool of herself, Dee didn’t exactly feel more warmly disposed towards him. ‘Baxter. That’s your first name?’ she concluded, and, at his nod, muttered, ‘What kind of name is that?’

  ‘A Scottish one.’

  ‘Well, that explains it.’

  Baxter knew he shouldn’t ask. But he did. ‘Explains what?’

  ‘Why you talk funny,’ Dee replied with careless rudeness.

  ‘I talk funny?’ He laughed at the sheer nerve of the girl. ‘Well, at least my accent doesn’t go walkabout.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ She glared back.

  But Baxter reckoned she knew well enough. ‘What I can’t quite figure,’ he ran on, ‘is which one’s real—the cockney sparrow routine or the middle-class girl from the Home Counties?’

  ‘You don’t need to figure it—’ his perception disconcerted Dee ‘—because neither is crazy enough to marry you!’

  He listened without expression, any insult lost on him. Mr Cool.

  ‘I didn’t actually ask you to marry me,’ he said at length.

  Dee scowled. Perhaps he hadn’t said the words, but that was surely his intent. He was just splitting hairs now.

  ‘So what else were you doing? Asking me to marry someone else?’ Her tone told him that would rate as even crazier.

  He hesitated fractionally before saying, ‘Whichever, it’s an irrelevancy. It would, naturally, be what’s termed a marriage of convenience.’

  ‘No sex, you mean.’ Dee had no time for silly euphemisms. ‘I’d kinda worked that out for myself… You need me as camouflage, right?’

  ‘Camouflage?’

  ‘You want to convince the world you’re straight, and you reckon what better way than to acquire a wife. Only you don’t want a real wife, because then she’d expect you to…well, you get my drift.’

  ‘I think so.’ Baxter realised she was on a completely different road, but possibly they’d arrive at the same destination in time. So why throw her off-course for now?

  Dee watched the thoughts crossing his handsome face and imagined she could read them. She relented slightly, saying, ‘Look, I really have no problem with your being gay, and if you want to keep it a secret I can understand that too. But maybe life would be easier if you simply “outed” yourself. Just made a one-off declaration to the world, then just got on with your life…

  Lots of people do it—TV personalities, actors, pop stars. You could almost call it fashionable… And you know what they say about honesty being the best policy and all that.’

  ‘I doubt it applies in this case.’ Baxter realised her sudden sympathy only applied because she thought he was gay.

  ‘Well, it’s your life.’ Dee decided she wasn’t in the best shape to be advising anyone else. ‘And I suppose a marriage of convenience rates one better than pretending to do it for real.’

  ‘Sorry?’ She’d lost him again.

  ‘It’s what some gay men do,’ she ran on. ‘Marry, have kids even, then, hey presto, they hit mid-life crisis and leave their wives for another man.’

  ‘You’re an authority on this, are you?’ he enquired dryly.

  ‘Not especially,’ she denied. ‘I just had a schoolfriend whose father did it… They were all devastated,’ she recalled matter-of-factly.

  ‘Do you know anyone with happy, uncomplicated lives?’ he asked when she’d finished this gloomy tale.

  ‘No—do you?’ she flipped back.

  Her tone said she didn’t believe in happiness. Baxter wondered what had made her so cynical.

  ‘Actually, yes,’ he responded. ‘My sister, Catriona, and her husband have a marriage that seems reasonably close to perfect.’

  ‘Seems being the operative word,’ Dee couldn’t resist commenting. From her own experience she knew so-called perfect marriages could hide cracks the size of the San Andreas fault line. Take her mother and stepfather. The world had always seen them as the perfect couple. Come to that, the world probably still did—the perfect couple cursed only by a bad lot of a daughter.

  Dee had no illusions. It was what people had thought of her. A bad lot that would come to a worse end.

  ‘Well, you’ll be able to judge for yourself.’ His voice broke into her thoughts once more.

  ‘Judge what?’

  ‘If it’s real, their happiness… But I’m warning you now. They do a great deal of laughing and smiling, and even kissing. So it may be hard for a world-weary cynic like yourself to take.’

  He was laughing, too. At her, in this case. Dee tried to take offence, but there was something disarming about the smile he slanted her.

  ‘I haven’t agreed to anything,’ she said instead, then realised it wasn’t quite positive enough. ‘I mean, I can’t possibly do what you’re suggesting.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Why not? Dee repeated to herself, and didn’t immediately find an answer. A smile touched his lips as he detected her weakening.

  She shook her head. ‘You expect me to go up to the wilds of Scotland—’

  ‘We live about fifteen miles from the centre of Edinburgh,’ he interjected. ‘Almost civilisation, in fact.’

  ‘Okay, but then there’s the time.’ She raised a new objection. ‘Or are you planning for me to go up on one train, play blushing bride for a day, then take the next train home? I doubt that’ll convince anyone.’

  ‘No, you’d obviously have to commit to longer. Let’s say a year’s contract.’

  ‘A year!’

  ‘At the very most.’ He nodded. ‘But if things go well I’d release you earlier.’

  ‘Release me?’ she echoed. ‘This is beginning to sound like a prison sentence.’

  ‘Not quite. You won’t be on bread and water, or sewing mailbags,’ he assured her in dry tones. ‘Basically, you’ll have your own room, three square meals a day and a moderate allowance. Will that be so bad?’

  ‘Sounds wonderful,’ she said, but gave a visible shudder as she ran on. ‘Going quietly out of my head, playing the little woman at home.’

  Baxter laughed in response. Not very wise at this stage of the negotiation, but it was just too absurd.

  ‘You? The little woman? Apart from looking totally unlike the part, I somehow doubt you’d be that good an actress.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She pulled a face. ‘So why ask me?’

  Good question, Baxter had to agree. ‘There wasn’t exactly a wide choice of candidates.’

  ‘And beggars can’t be choosers?’ Dee threw his earlier words back at him.

  ‘Something like that.’ He didn’t deny it.

  ‘You’re crazy,’ Dee said aloud, then silently to herself. For she had to be crazy, too, listening to this.

  He said nothing, but took out a pen and chequebook from the inside pocket of his jacket. Dee watched as he wrote in it, then stared in disbelief as he held the cheque in front of her face.

  ‘That’s what you’ll get on the day of the wedding,’ he relayed to her, ‘and then the same at the end of twelve months, or whenever I release you.’

  Five thousand pounds. Double that by the end. She read and reread it, wondering if she was hallucinating and seeing too many noughts.

  ‘You’re kidding!’ she scoffed.

  ‘Scotsmen don’t kid about money.’ He placed the cheque on the table before her. ‘Don’t you know that?’

  He smiled, as if it might still turn out to be a joke, but his eyes said different. This was business.

  It was Dee who shook her head. This was fantasy. ‘You’ll pay me ten thousand pounds just to marry you?�
�

  ‘You think that’s too much?’ he returned.

  Dee’s lips formed the word ‘Yes’ but she didn’t utter it aloud. Did she really want to talk the price down?

  ‘Make no mistake. It’s up to a year of your life—and that’s a long time at your age,’ he warned, eyes resting on her as if assessing just how young she was.

  ‘How old are you?’ Dee threw back at him.

  ‘Thirty-four.’ He watched her screw up her face and added, ‘Virtually geriatric to you, I imagine.’

  That wasn’t actually what Dee had been thinking. ‘Have you considered what other people are going to make of the age gap? I mean there’s not much point in hiring me for a respectable front if my appearance is going to result in the opposite.’

  ‘For ten thousand pounds, I expect you could modify your appearance,’ he suggested, without going into details.

  He didn’t have to. His gaze went from her earrings in triplicate to her close-cropped haircut.

  Dee knew how she looked, with her hair and her combat jacket and her laced up Doc Martens—like a tough neopunk who could take care of herself. It was exactly how she wanted to look. When her hair had been longer and her clothes more feminine, she’d had to fend off the pimps and perverts who preyed on girls in her situation.

  ‘I expect I could,’ Dee echoed, ‘if I was mad enough to go along with you. But let’s get real. You think anybody—your family or friends—is going to believe we’re each other’s types?’

  Not in a million years, Baxter had to agree. His sister might have spent the last decade trying to marry him off, but even she would balk at this girl. Colleagues would imagine he was having a mid-life crisis. And male friends, unable to see any other virtue, would assume she was great in bed. Still, none of that really mattered.

  ‘Attraction of opposites?’ he suggested, with a smile of pure irony. ‘Don’t worry about it. It won’t be a problem… Just try and tone down a little before you come north of the border. I can give you an advance for clothes if necessary.’

  ‘Tweed skirts and twinsets?’ she commented dryly, but did wonder what image she was meant to cultivate.

  ‘Up to you.’ He shrugged, as if it was a small issue.

  And Dee, realising he was being serious about the rest, finally found herself considering it. What did she have to lose?

  ‘Well, how about it?’ He was hardly pressurising her into it.

  ‘I don’t know.’ She was clearly wavering.

  ‘Look, if you’re concerned about being able to marry someone else in the future,’ he added, ‘then don’t be. I’ll finance the divorce, too.’

  ‘That isn’t an issue. I won’t be getting married. Not for real, anyway,’ she amended.

  ‘Ever?’ He raised a brow.

  ‘Ever,’ she echoed with utter conviction.

  ‘Don’t tell me—you’re off men for life.’ He clearly didn’t take her seriously.

  ‘Not all men—and just marriage.’

  ‘A woman who doesn’t automatically hear wedding bells. Where have you been all my life?’

  He was joking. She realised that. But still it seemed an odd thing for him to say.

  She stared at him hard. ‘I didn’t think you were interested in women.’

  Baxter stared back briefly, before deciding to come clean.

  ‘Time to set the record straight, I think—straight being the appropriate word.’

  Dee took a moment to catch on. ‘You’re not gay?’

  ‘’Fraid not,’ he confided in ironic tones.

  Something about his manner made Dee believe him. She should have been angry—and she was—but, behind that, she also felt an odd sense of relief.

  She didn’t let it show as she demanded, ‘So why did you say you were?’

  ‘Technically I didn’t,’ he corrected. ‘What I said was, “I’m not interested in young girls”. Which I’m not, preferring a more mature kind of woman… So, you’re still safe.’

  Safe, but confused. ‘Then why the arranged marriage?’

  ‘That’s harder to explain.’ He was obviously in no hurry to do so.

  Dee, impatient as ever, jumped to another conclusion. ‘I bet it’s a legacy. You have to get married by your thirty-fifth birthday or you’ll be disinherited by some great-aunt. Am I right?’

  Baxter raised a mental eyebrow. She certainly had imagination. He just wasn’t sure yet if he could trust her with the truth.

  ‘It’s connected with a legacy, yes,’ he finally confirmed.

  ‘I knew it!’ She looked pleased with herself for guessing.

  ‘Anyway, I can’t go into details at the moment,’ he asserted. ‘I can only stress once more that it will just be a marriage of convenience.’

  He didn’t have to stress it. Dee had got the message. He didn’t fancy her. Did he have to keep labouring the point?

  ‘Well?’ he added, raising a brow.

  Decision time. ‘I’d have to take Henry.’

  ‘Of course.’ He glanced down at the dog stretched at their feet. ‘He seems a fairly well-behaved animal. Does he like trains?’

  ‘Is that how we’d be travelling…assuming I agreed?’

  He nodded. ‘I haven’t been back long from Kirundi, and am currently carless.’

  ‘You were in Kirundi?’ Dee read newspapers and magazines dumped in the underground by commuters. She knew something of the civil war that had raged in the African country.

  He nodded. ‘For the last couple of years.’

  He sounded emotionless about it, but how could he be? It must have been a scene from hell.

  ‘Are you going back?’ she asked.

  He shook his head. ‘I have no plans to do so.’

  Dee met his eyes briefly and imagined she saw in them some of the shadows of that hell. It was just a fleeting impression before he looked away, but she knew without being told; she mustn’t ask any more.

  ‘My contract with the aid agency has just run out,’ he continued. ‘I’ll be taking up a research post at Edinburgh University in the autumn.’

  Dee absorbed this information, then said, ‘Okay, give me the time of the train and we can meet at the station.’

  It was a moment before he realised quite what she’d said.

  ‘You’ll do it?’ Her capitulation had caught him by surprise.

  Dee wondered if she really was mad, even as she nodded, ‘Yeah, why not?’

  ‘Great.’ Baxter suppressed any doubts and allowed himself some satisfaction.

  Dee decided it was time to go before she changed her mind. ‘If you don’t know times and things, you can phone Rick in the café. He’ll pass on a message.’

  He glanced towards Rick, who was now leaning on the counter, perusing the racing pages. He didn’t look the reliable type.

  ‘Wouldn’t it make more sense for me to pick you up in a taxi?’ he suggested.

  ‘You mean turn up at the squat?’ She was horrified by the idea. ‘No, thanks. I’ll meet you at the station or the deal’s off.’

  Baxter realised she didn’t want him to know where she lived. He supposed that was fair enough from her angle.

  He went into his pocket again and found his passport, still there from when he’d flown in a few days ago. He handed it to her.

  Dee checked it over, as he’d intended. It came open at the back pages; they were stamped with the names of a dozen countries, mostly in Africa. She flipped to the front and glanced at his picture. It was an old passport, showing a picture of him from some years ago. It looked like him, only without the current signs of age and experience. She checked the other details. Name: Baxter Macfarlane Ross. Occupation: Doctor. Birthplace: Bangkok.

  ‘Bangkok.’ She read it aloud. ‘As in Bangkok, Thailand?’

  ‘My parents were missionaries,’ he explained. ‘They happened to be trying to convert South-East Asia round the time of my birth.’

  ‘So where exactly were you brought up?’

  ‘Lots of places, but Scotl
and mainly. That’s where our grandparents lived and that’s where we were sent to school.’

  ‘Boarding school?’ she guessed, and he nodded in response.

  It explained a lot. He had no real accent, despite the fact she’d made a joke of it earlier. Instead he sounded neutral, almost as if he was a foreigner who’d learned to speak perfect English.

  ‘So, do your parents live up in Edinburgh?’ she asked, and felt a measure of relief when he shook his head. She didn’t fancy playing the blushing bride to some holy rollers who probably still believed in marriage.

  ‘They died when I was twelve,’ he added briefly.

  ‘Sorry,’ Dee apologised for her mean thoughts.

  ‘It was a long time ago.’ He dismissed any need for sensitivity. ‘And I didn’t know them well… My sister lives near me.’

  ‘Oh.’ So she was to meet some of his family. ‘Are you and your sister close?’

  ‘Yes and no. I’ve spent a large part of my adult life abroad… What about you? Do you have any brothers or sisters?’

  ‘No, I’m a little emperor.’ She’d read the expression in a magazine.

  ‘A what?’

  ‘An only child. It’s what they call them in China, now they operate a one-child policy… Apparently couples in Britain are also opting to have a single child so they can give them everything.’

  ‘Is that what you were given…everything?’ He wondered once more about this girl of contradictions.

  ‘Of course,’ she answered in ironic tones. ‘As you see, I dine at the Ritz, buy my clothes from Harvey Nichols and live in a darling little mews house in South Kensington.’

  He gave her an impatient look. ‘I take it that means no.’

  Dee shrugged. He could take it how he wanted. In truth she had been spoilt—materially anyway—until the day she had run away in her state-of-the-art trainers, designer jeans, and the baseball jacket that had come with a three-hundred-pound price tag and had fallen apart within weeks of her hitting the London streets.

  She handed back his passport, and he said, ‘Now you know who I am, perhaps you could trust me with your address.’

  ‘Just because you’re Dr Ross?’ She pulled a face, still unimpressed.

  ‘Point taken.’ He took one of the cheap paper napkins Rick had tossed down in front of them and wrote something on it.