Married For Real. Lindsay ArmstrongЧитать онлайн книгу.

      CHAPTER ONE

      ARIZONA Adams flung her large black hat on a settee, crossed the lounge to the mirror over the fireplace and withdrew the pins securing her thick hair. She ran her fingers through it as it fell to her shoulders in a rich river of chestnut. It was strong, abundant hair with a bit of a wave in it, and she could do pretty much as she liked with it. Her late husband, who had died a year ago and whose memorial service she’d just attended, had often commented that it had a life of its own.

      She sighed and looked at her elegant outfit, an almost ankle-length slim black dress worn with a long cream jacket, and thought he would probably have approved of it. He’d also often said that she had an innate but different sense of style, although he’d been fond of adding that she could wear anything and look good. But the truth was, she did her own thing when it came to clothes, and for some reason it generally came out right—then again, according to her mother, she always did her own thing pretty much, which was fairly ironic coming from her mother, who had named her only daughter after a song first and a state in the USA quite incidentally. Yet here she was, Arizona reflected also with irony, feeling tense and uneasy as well as sad and not at all sure whether she would be allowed to continue to do her own thing.

      She turned away from the fireplace and glanced at her watch. Nearly six o’clock, which left six more hours of this day—would he come?

      He came five minutes later.

      Arizona heard the doorbell chime just after she’d shed her jacket and was picking up her hat. She stilled, and right on cue the double lounge doors opened and Cloris stood there.

      ‘Sorry, Arizona,’ she said diffidently, ‘I know you didn’t want to be disturbed but it’s Mr. Holmes. I—well, I didn’t like to say no.’

      ‘That’s all right, Cloris,’ Arizona said resignedly, laying her hat and jacket down with exaggerated care. ‘I’m sure Mr. Holmes is a hard man to say no to.’

      Cloris, who liked to think she enjoyed a more exalted station than housekeeper but who nevertheless was a marvellous housekeeper, smiled gratefully. ‘He was at the service,’ she confided. ‘At the back—I don’t think many people saw him. I only saw him because I was at the back myself and, well—’ she gestured ‘—that’s Mr. Holmes.’

      ‘That’s Mr. Holmes,’ Arizona echoed. ‘Show him in, please, Cloris.’

      Cloris beamed then hesitated. ‘Would you like me to bring in some, er, drinks and snacks?’

      ‘No,’ Arizona said definitely.

      Cloris opened her mouth but detected the gleam in Arizona’s grey eyes, and she withdrew with a suddenly shuttered expression. Arizona grimaced. Ten seconds later Declan Holmes walked into the room. He was, as Arizona had often heard commented, a fine figure of a man. Tall and well built, he had thick dark hair and Irish blue eyes. That he often had a saturnine, cynical look in those blue eyes didn’t seem to lower him in the estimation of many women by an iota. If anything, it was the opposite. Which was a fact that she’d thought about once or twice with some cynicism herself—her own sex’s preference for dark, damning men. And, as she’d often seen him, he was faultlessly outfitted in a dark grey suit that hid neither his powerful shoulders nor lean hips and justly became his position of wealth and power.

      ‘Hello, Declan,’ she said coolly and with some idea of taking the initiative as he stopped a few feet from her. ‘So you did come.’

      He raised a wry eyebrow at her. ‘I don’t break my word lightly, Arizona. How are you? I believe I’m to be denied the pleasure of having a drink with you.’

      She narrowed her eyes and said a bare, ‘Yes.’

      ‘That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it?’ he murmured amusedly. ‘You look as if you could do with one yourself. It can’t have been an easy afternoon.’

      ‘And about to become even harder, I imagine.’

      ‘We’ll see,’ he said placidly. ‘Did you really think I wouldn’t come? I thought you knew me better than that, Arizona.’

      ‘It’s strange you should say that, Declan, because I hardly know you at all,’ she retorted.

      ‘Now that, my dear, is not quite true,’ he replied. ‘I think it’s fair to say we’ve been—eyeing each other over the fence for a couple of years now.’

      A flash of anger lit her eyes. ‘I have not been eyeing you or anyone else over any fence,’ she said precisely.

      He moved his shoulders slightly. ‘Well, put it this way—I’ve certainly been eyeing you, Arizona. And I’m equally certain that you have not been unaware of it.’

      She tensed inwardly and would have loved to be able to deny this with composure and surety. Unfortunately, although he’d made no overt moves at all, she had been aware, by some inner sense, of Declan Holmes’s interest. There had been times right from the day they’d first met when she’d looked across a room and encountered his blue gaze, times, she couldn’t deny to herself, when something within had responded, some curl of interest had awoken—which she’d thoroughly despised herself for. And correspondingly there had been times when she’d gone out of her way to avoid him, only to be visited by the uncomfortable feeling that he’d known exactly what she was doing and why... But I’m damned if I’m actually going to admit anything to him.

      She