Tempted by Her Convenient Husband
Автор
Charlotte Hawkes
Прочтений
18,5K
Глав
15
CHAPTER ONE
‘HOW LONG HAS the kid been on the oxytocin drip, Oti?’
‘Two hours,’ Octavia Hendlington murmured softly. ‘Six drops per minute.’
Not turning around as her colleague joined her, Oti continued to eye the young woman perched uncomfortably on the end of the bed and being cared for by her sister. The labour ward—or what passed for the labour ward in this end of the large hospital tent in her medical camp in South Sudan—was tiny.
But they had worked so many miracles in this place over the past four years, she could only hope tonight—her last night—would be a good one.
‘Dilation?’ Amelia queried.
‘She’s been at six centimetres for the past ten hours. Her name is Kahsha; she’s eighteen, primigravida.’
‘And the baby’s head still shows no sign of descending?’ Amelia frowned.
Oti’s teeth worried at her lower lip, and she stopped herself abruptly. In a matter of days she would be back in the UK, and her father would not accept such unattractive, unladylike habits.
Five more days of being herself, and then she would be back to playing a role again.
Would her new husband be just as irritated by her as her father had always been? Oti shoved the thought from her head and focused on her colleague.
‘No sign of the baby descending at all,’ she told Amelia.
She cast her gaze around the tent and tried to swallow down the thick lump of emotion that lodged itself so uncomfortably in her throat. If it hadn’t been for the fact that it looked as if it was going to be a complicated labour, Oti might have been grateful for the distraction from her own thoughts tonight.
She had been volunteering with the medical charity HOP—Health Overseas Project—for four years, ever since her brother’s accident, and this was the only place where she’d ever felt herself. Possibly the only time in her life—certainly in the last fifteen years.
Dr Oti.
It was simple and clean, and she thought that was perhaps what she loved the most. Out here, far away from the clamour of home, it was just about helping people and making a difference.
She had value.
Surely that was as uncomplicated as it got?
But soon that would all be over. And it didn’t matter which mask she would be donning this time—Oti the socialite, the It-girl, or Lady Octavia Hendlington, daughter of the Earl of Sedeshire and soon-to-be Lady Octavia Woods—it would still suffocate her, just the same.
What would Amelia and the other volunteers think if they knew she was about to marry the much-lusted-after billionaire, Lukas Woods? Or Sir Lukas Woods—given the knighthood he had received in the previous year’s New Year’s Honours list. Not the youngest recipient, but certainly one of the youngest.
Busying herself with the oxytocin drip, as though occupying her hands could also occupy her wayward mind, Oti tried to pretend that her stomach hadn’t just flip-flopped at the thought.
The man was one of the most eligible bachelors in the world right now—certainly one of the most eligible in the country—and in five days she would be marrying him. The thought was terrifying.
Lukas Woods wasn’t merely good-looking...he was practically elemental. As though there was fire, earth, wind and water...and then there was him. And that beautifully muscled exterior was rivalled only by his inner core of pure steel. Ruthless business magnate, media personality and self-made billionaire. How many other kids had written an app at the age of fifteen, and made their first million by the age of eighteen?
She might have met him on only that one intimidating occasion five months earlier, but it had been enough to leave her with the impression that he might as well have been honed from the very magma of the planet itself.
How was she ever to endure a marriage to this man? This stranger? What if she couldn’t even stand him?
Her body prickled in protest, and she ignored the tiny voice inside taunting her that she already knew the answer to that question.
Then again, the alternative had been a forced marriage to Louis Rockman, son of the Sixth Earl of Highmount, vicious, dictatorial and cruel. Even now, fifteen years on, she could still feel the grip of his fingers biting into her arms, his weight pinning her down...
‘You’re thinking a C-section?’
Amelia’s voice dragged her mercifully back to the present.
‘Yes. But now Kahsha wants to return to her own village to seek out help from a traditional healer.’
‘Right.’ Amelia nodded grimly. ‘It’s her choice, Oti.’
Oti dipped her head. They both knew that they couldn’t stop the young girl from seeking traditional help if that was what she chose to do. HOP had long drilled it into their volunteers that they were there to offer medical advice and options, but not dictate. Some of the women they encountered had little enough autonomy over their own lives as it was. They didn’t need a group of foreigners swooping in and taking away their choices on how they wanted to give birth.
It was enough that the charity’s volunteers showed respect for the decisions the Sudanese women made about their own deliveries and their own health.
‘It just doesn’t help when it isn’t what’s medically best for them.’ Oti folded her arms over her chest, making her friend frown at her.
‘You okay? I’ve never seen you quite this on edge.’
Oti had no idea how she managed to summon what she hoped was a bright smile.
‘Of course. Just tired probably. It’s been another twenty-hour shift.’
Her colleague looked unconvinced, and Oti knew why. Shifts were always long in a camp like this, but she’d never been this down. Perhaps a version of the truth would be better. She tried ramping the smile up a little more.
‘I’m think I’m going to miss this place.’
‘I’m so sorry.’ Amelia grimaced, understanding washing over her expression. ‘I forgot you were leaving tomorrow. But you’ll be back in a few months, right? You always are. What is it now, forty months out of the past four years that you’ve been out here?’
‘Something like that.’ Oti forced a laugh, as though she was any normal person looking forward to spending some time back home again. Ironically, another role that she knew how to play.
She hadn’t told anyone that this would be her last mission, any more than she’d told them that she was getting married. It would only invite too many questions that she wouldn’t know how to answer.
Or perhaps it was more that saying it aloud would somehow make it too real.
‘Go and get something to eat, and get your head down,’ her colleague advised. ‘You’ve got a five-hour drive just to the nearest airstrip.’
‘Sure.’ It felt more like an awkward jerk of her head than a nod, but at least Amelia didn’t seem to notice anything amiss.
She felt foolish. But what choice did she have, either about telling her colleagues, or about agreeing to the marriage in the first instance?
You could have said no, a voice whispered in her head, but Oti shut it down quickly.
True, Lukas Woods had asked her if she was sure she knew what she was doing, but declining him had never been a real option. Not if she wanted to save her brother. Her father had made that abundantly clear.
Her father hadn’t earned the title The Odious Earl for nothing, even if no one dared say it to his face. Not even her.
Especially not her.
Shaking her head free of the dark thoughts that threatened to overtake her, Oti watched the young mum-to-be struggle off the bed with the help of her sister and managed another smile at her colleague.
‘I think I might accompany Kahsha just a short way out of camp. You never know, the walking might help the baby to descend and we won’t need to try for a C-section after all.’
It was always possible. And, anyway, if this was to be her last trip out to Sub-Saharan Africa for a while—or ever—then she might as well absorb every last second of it.
Because all she saw for her future were even more fences to hem her in than she’d ever had to endure before.
As the organist played a virtuosic performance of Bizet’s ‘Farandole,’ Lukas watched his bride being led up the aisle by her father. Though led might be too mild a word for it, given that the man could evidently barely restrain himself. The Odious Earl—a nickname that the man had earned for his pomposity, his gambling and his penchant for young girls barely older than his own daughter—was practically racing to deliver Lady Octavia to her fate.
Not that Lukas cared to look too closely, but he was sure that if he did he would actually be able to see pound signs imprinted in the Earl’s eyes, the older man’s podgy fingers virtually grasping for the hefty sum of money that would be his on conclusion of the ceremony.
Involuntarily, Lukas’s gaze shifted to the taller than average, slightly willowy figure walking beside him with no fewer than seven bridesmaids in tow, although she eclipsed every one of them. An observation which he chose to ignore—along with the inconvenient and somewhat galling way that his body tightened in response.
This marriage wasn’t about love, or even lust. It was about securing the controlling interest in Octavia’s late brother’s company, Sedeshire International, as the latest acquisition for Lukas’s own company, LVW Industries. Preferably before the idiot Earl ran his late son’s company into the ground, as he had been doing in the short time that he’d had his hands on it.
And if marrying the old Earl’s socialite daughter was the price he had to pay for it—along with an eye-watering sum, of course—then Lukas considered it money well spent.
The business was actually a good investment, but the fact that he’d stolen it from right under the nose of Andrew Rockman, the Sixth Earl of Highmount, had been a delicious bonus.
How fitting that this was how Lukas would finally be able to fulfil the vow he had made to himself as a twelve-year-old, the week his mother had been lowered into that black hole in the ground—that he would one day take his revenge on the Rockman family. In particular that he would take his revenge on Rockman, the man who had effectively driven her there, along with Lady Octavia’s father, the man who had helped Rockman get away with his lies.
And, by marrying him, Lady Octavia would unwittingly help him to bring her repugnant father into line.
Yet as Lukas watched their approach closely, he was sure he saw her wobble. The faintest stumble before her father lowered his head to hers and murmured something that looked tender but which Lukas imagined was anything but. His bride-to-be seemed to stiffen her resolve even as a beatific smile graced her full mouth, and her eyes flickered up to meet Lukas’s own.
And something slammed into him.
Just as it had five months ago, when he’d visited Sedeshire Hall to ensure that she knew and agreed to the marriage, only for Lady Octavia to walk—no, stride—into that conservatory at her family home, carrying herself like a queen rather than a mere lady. She’d made his entire body leap on sight, even as she’d declared confidently that, deal or not, she knew what she was doing and she was prepared to marry him.
As though the decision had been hers.
Desire had walloped him then, just as it did now. Hard. Like a punch to the gut when a fighter dropped his guard in a bout—which he never did. He’d wanted her right there and then. Like nothing he’d ever known before.
And then she’d fixed him with that inscrutable stare of hers—with eyes far too intelligent and fierce and assessing than the air-headed, social-climbing creature he’d been led to believe she was.
Making him wonder at the veracity of all those rumours. Making him wonder if she really was such a vacuous socialite and making him want to piece together the fascinating puzzle that this woman suggested she was.
And that killer body that she seemed to have absolutely no idea that she possessed.
He’d known she was pretty enough. The photos of her exploits as an It-girl—clad in scraps of metallic dress or barely-there bikinis—revealed as much, though he’d believed that her personality would be as plasticky as so many socialites of his acquaintance. Perhaps that explained why he hadn’t been prepared for the almost visceral reaction he’d had to her.
In that one moment, five months ago, he’d been taken over by a desire that he’d never experienced before in his life. He had never wanted a woman so badly, with such a need that he thought he might go mad if he didn’t have her.
And yet at the same time, crazily, he’d wanted to protect her. From her father. And maybe from others. Perhaps that was the part of it which made the least sense.
He’d wanted to throw her over his shoulder and carry her out of that place, and if he’d had a damned horse then he’d believed he might have thrown her over that too. Rescuing her as if he was some medieval knight instead of a modern-day one, and she was his damsel in distress.
He, who had never been given to flights of fantasy in all his years.
It was the moment Lukas had realised that Lady Octavia Hendlington was the last woman on earth he should ever marry. Yet he’d done nothing to stop it, and now this vision was gliding gracefully up the aisle towards him, and she was no pretty-but-plastic girl. She appeared every inch a stunning woman with an indefinable quality that Lukas could neither put his finger on nor dismiss.
It unsettled him.
Not for the first time, he felt the tiptoeing steps of doubt creep into his brain, casting the faintest black shadow.
And, not for the first time, Lukas shut it out.
So she was attractive. It meant nothing that he noticed—he was, after all, a red-blooded male—but it didn’t mean he couldn’t control it, this jolt of heat that she seemed capable of igniting within him.
Attraction was fleeting; flames died. And, no matter how innocent his bride-to-be appeared on the outside, he could not afford to forget that Lady Octavia Hendlington was an autumn crocus—beautiful to look at and seemingly harmless, but in reality she was toxic right through. Just like her father.
Finally, she drew to an elegant halt beside him and he was suddenly struck once again by quite how vivid, how piercing her eyes were. A blue that almost seemed to reach inside him and strike that black thing which had long since resided where a heart would normally be.
He couldn’t bring himself to look away. Worse, he didn’t want to.
So as she stood before him, calmly allowing her bridesmaids to sort out the ridiculously long train of her wedding gown, Lukas fought to rein himself in, telling himself that the interlude was also a chance to get a grip on his own traitorous reactions.
‘You made it then,’ he remarked drily. For her ears only. As though engaging in banal conversation could somehow lessen her impact on him.
But, as she tilted her head up to him even further, that punch became a fist, tightening around his lower gut. He forced himself to ignore it.
‘Did you think I wouldn’t?’ she asked.
‘It crossed my mind. Especially since your father told me that you were at your special spa retreat, which I understand is your social circle’s euphemism for rehab. Again.’
‘I wasn’t in rehab,’ she bit out, and he couldn’t have said why he thought she hadn’t intended to speak.
For a moment it appeared that she was going to say something else, but then she blinked at him and closed her mouth. The air seemed to shift around them, leaving Lukas uncharacteristically unsettled. As though he’d somehow missed the mark.
But he hadn’t. It had been well-documented in the media that the first time she’d attended some kind of rehab she’d been fifteen, about the time her out-of-control partying had really begun to hit the headlines. Although she’d been decidedly more discreet in the past decade or so, the rumours had persisted.
That was presumably why her father had insisted on Lukas marrying her as part of the deal for Sedeshire International.
Without warning, his bride-to-be turned her head elegantly to look around the cathedral.
‘Verging on overkill, don’t you think?’
He followed her eyes as she glanced around. Bedecked in flowers, with the bells pealing and the world-renowned organist still playing, it was acutely apparent that no expense had been spared. Ordered—though none of it paid for—by her father, of course.
Luxurious wreaths and wide velvet ribbons hung from the magnificent, towering stone columns, while generous bouquets of calla lilies and baby’s breath decorated each and every pew filled with the four hundred or so guests.
‘Precisely how I believe you instructed it,’ Lukas replied drily.
Or perhaps, more likely, as had been instructed by some young twenty-something would-be party planner, and the Earl’s latest badly kept secret.
If he hadn’t known better, he might have thought his bride-to-be actually winced. But if she did, she caught herself quickly.
‘Of course. And the fitted lace gown, a six-foot-long train and thirty silk buttons complete with rouleau loops?’ she bit out.
‘It’s from the most sought-after designer of the moment—just as I believe you requested.’
‘Really? You believe I requested a wedding gown so tight that I had to pour myself into it and then be sewn in place?’ She couldn’t help herself; her discreet tone did nothing to disguise the barbed note to her words. ‘It leaves nothing to the imagination.’
The organist was concluding now and the bishop was preparing to deliver his address, so Lukas had to move his head even closer to her ear to ensure they weren’t heard.
Instantly he became aware that her scent—fresh and light, and not remotely cloying—was assailing his senses.
Making his body tighten all the more.
‘If you’d wanted a say in the design of your wedding dress, and if you weren’t in rehab, Lady Octavia...’ he didn’t know why he felt the need to emphasise her name just then—perhaps to keep his mind on the game? ‘...then perhaps you should have bothered to come back and deal with it, rather than spending the last few months partying and sunning yourself on one beach after the next.’
She glowered. ‘Are you guessing now?’
‘I don’t need to. Your glowing tan rather gives it away,’ he made himself say. ‘But, either way, does it matter?’
There was the briefest of pauses, as though she wanted to say something—perhaps along the lines that it mattered to her. But instead she flashed a bright smile which he couldn’t help feeling was a little too practised.
‘Of course not.’ Her smile had an edge that felt an awful lot like a blade. ‘I’ve long held the title of Sedeshire’s lost cause heiress, after all.’
‘Then all the more reason to make it a show and quell any rumours that this is some hastily arranged marriage simply because you are pregnant with my—or any other man’s—child.’
She bristled, though he suspected he was the only one close enough to spot it.
‘Does that title concern you?’ he couldn’t help himself from asking.
‘Lost cause heiress?’ Her head snapped up. ‘Of course not. I learned years ago not to care what anyone thought.’
He couldn’t have said why, but he didn’t entirely believe her.
‘And, for what it’s worth, the lace alone on your bridesmaids’ gowns took months to sew,’ Lukas added, ‘so there will be no question that this wedding took care, and planning, and time. I hope you enjoyed those last months of heady indulgence. But I should warn you, your partying lifestyle is now at an end.’
‘How very autocratic of you,’ she bit out before she could stop herself. ‘And between the intricate lace of my bridesmaids’ dresses and the tightness of this one to show that there is no baby bump concealed beneath, I’m flattered that you paid such close attention.’
‘As you should be.’
Before she could work out whether he was serious or still mocking, he flashed her a wolfish smile.
‘Perhaps, though, having you as the mother of my heir could be a wise selection. Good stock, as they say.’
He knew he would score a hit even before he said the words. There had never been any mention of heirs before, even if he couldn’t entirely explain what had made him even say it.
It seemed his bride-to-be got under his skin a little too much, but she didn’t need to know that. Neither did she need to know that he was lying about heirs; he had never had any intention of ever perpetuating his cold, damaged bloodline.
Not with a father—biologically, if nothing else—like his.
Still, something in Lukas had uttered the words, and now he relished the way his soon-to-be-bride practically bubbled with indignation.
And something else he chose not to identify.
