The Demetrios Bridal Bargain by Kim Lawrence

Eureka moment.’
    â€˜What are you looking at me like that for?’
    â€˜I have thought of a position that you might be suited for…Yes, the more I think about it…’ His narrowed eyes travelled from the tip of her glossy fair head to her toes and back again. He slowly nodded. ‘Yes, you might just do.’
    â€˜Do what? What are you talking about?’
    â€˜You need a job; I need…’ He paused, a smile that filled her with deep distrust spreading across his lean features. ‘I have a vacancy.’
    â€˜A vacancy for what?’ She had demanded a job on impulse and had not for an instant expected him to come up with the goods. She still wasn’t sure he wasn’t just messing with her.
    â€˜You’re choosy suddenly.’
    â€˜What is this position?’
    â€˜I need a fiancée.’
    In the act of brushing a strand of hair from her cheek, she froze dead. ‘You need a fiancée?’ she repeated flatly. He said it the same way someone else would say they needed more petrol.
    â€˜Before you get excited…’ Too late, she already was if the heaving bosom was any indicator. ‘The position,’ he explained, dragging his reluctant gaze upwards, ‘is purely temporary.’
    Rose pointed to her face with a not quite steady hand. ‘What you are seeing is not excitement,’ she told him. ‘This is fear of being in the same room as an insane person.’
    The man was quite definitely off his head, but, that being a given, his mental state was apparently more stable than her own. For a split second there she had almost allowed herself to consider his offer. Not in a serious way but thinking about it in any way at all was worrying.
    â€˜If you need a fiancée I suggest you put an ad in the situations vacant column.’
    Or announce it on any street corner and you’ll be mobbed, she thought, watching as his lips curved into a smile that was almost as dangerous as the gleam in his incredible metallic eyes. As her eyes lingered on the sensual curve of his lips heat exploded somewhere deep in her belly and radiated outwards and downwards.
    Deeply ashamed of the heavy ache low in her pelvis, she struggled to school her features into a bland mask that gave no hint—she hoped—of the physical reaction over which she had no control. The wave of colour that washed over her skin she couldn’t hide; she just hoped he attributed it to anger.
    â€˜Let me explain…’
    Rose didn’t want explanations; she wanted the nervous excitement fluttering in her stomach and causing her mouth to grow dry to subside.
    Feeling the panic rise, Rose assured herself what was happening was no big deal. It was normal. He was an incredible-looking man. It was just shallow physical attraction, nothing to get worked up about…just biology. Something over which you had no control, like a sneeze.
    Think sneeze, Rose.
    It wasn’t easy to stand there and think sneeze when you were looking up at someone who was just possibly the most incredible-looking man on the planet.
    â€˜Save your breath,’ she advised tersely. ‘I’m not enjoying the joke.’
    â€˜It isn’t a joke. There is a girl that my father wishes me to marry.’
    Rose looked at him in exasperation. He wasn’t even attempting to make this plausible.
    â€˜And you, I suppose, always do what your father wants.’ She rolled her eyes, relieved that she had her hormones back in check. Mathieu being a dutiful obedient son was about as likely as him asking her to marry him for real.
    â€˜Don’t,’ she said, picking up her case, ‘say another word. I’m leaving.’

CHAPTER EIGHT
    H AD Mathieu really expected her to say yes to such a crazy idea?
    â€˜My God, I’m not that desperate!’ Rose muttered, slamming the taxi door and in the process trapping the hem of her ankle-length coat in it. ‘Damn,’ she