Fiancee By Mistake

“I want an apology,” Leah demanded.

“An apology? For what?”

“For trying to seduce me!”

There, it was out. But Sean’s reaction was not at all what she had anticipated.

“For seducing you?” he echoed. “Oh, no, my darling Leah, I don’t apologize for anything that felt so right, so necessary. As a matter of fact, I would very much like to try it again some time.”

She glared at him furiously. “It’ll be a cold day in hell before I let you touch me again!”

“Is that a fact?” he drawled lazily. “Well, in that case I’d better make sure that I have a very cold shower instead of the hot one I had planned on. Are you sure I can’t persuade you to join me?”

KATE WALKER was born in Nottinghamshire, England, but as she grew up in Yorkshire, she has always felt that her roots were there. She met her husband at university and she originally worked as a children’s librarian but after the birth of her son she returned to her old childhood love of writing. When she’s not working, she divides her time between her family, their four cats and her interests of embroidery, antiques, film and theatre and, of course, reading.

Fiancée by Mistake
Kate Walker

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER ONE

SEAN GALLAGHER saw the car as soon as he rounded the corner into the quiet country lane. Saw it and recognised it as the one he had been looking for, fruitlessly, for the past couple of hours. A silver Renault, Pete had said, and here it was, right in front of him, just when he’d been about to give up.

‘Got you!’ he muttered, his voice rich with dark triumph. Little Miss Annie Elliot hadn’t escaped from him after all.

But the next moment his mood changed abruptly. As the wind stilled for a second, revealing what the swirling eddies of snow had hidden from him until now, he jammed on his brakes with a speed and force that were positively dangerous in the treacherous conditions.

‘Hell and damnation!’

Forcing his attention back to his driving, he controlled the powerful car with an effort, bringing it safely to the side of the road. The last thing he wanted was to join his quarry in the ditch.

It looked as if she had hit a patch of ice and skidded off the road. Hardly surprising, really, when you considered how the narrow lane twisted and turned, and how the snowstorm that had suddenly sprung up out of nowhere had rapidly developed into the worst blizzard in living memory.

Probably driving too fast in her eagerness to put plenty of space between herself and the mess she had left behind her, he decided cynically, getting out of the car and turning up his coat collar against the biting force of the wind. Her mind wouldn’t have been on what she was doing, but full of the new lover she had abandoned Pete for.

Well, her bad luck was very definitely his gain. Or, rather, Pete’s. Personally, he didn’t give a damn whether he found this woman or not. But a promise was a promise.

It was then that the silence, the total lack of movement inside the other car struck home to him, making him curse again, more violently this time. A promise was a promise, but this was a situation that neither he nor his brother had anticipated. What if the woman in the driving seat was badly injured, or worse?

With his head bent, his hair blown into wild disarray, he made his way towards the Renault as swiftly as he could, with his feet slipping and sliding over the frozen surface of the road.

‘Can I help you?’

They had to be the most wonderful words in the world, Leah thought hazily. The trouble was that with her mind still spinning from the panic of only moments before she couldn’t quite believe she had actually heard them.

Was it possible that they were not real, but only a figment of her imagination?

‘Can you…?’

As she echoed the question she didn’t dare to open her eyes, fearful that if she did she would discover that her deep-voiced rescuer didn’t exist.

‘Do you need help? Are you all right?’

The man’s tone—for it was unquestionably a masculine voice, dark and huskily sensual—sharpened noticeably on the question.

‘Are you hurt?’

‘Don’t think so.’

Mentally Leah checked herself over, carefully ticking off parts of her body on an invisible list.

Legs, two, intact. Arms, ditto, though one felt rather sore, as if badly bruised. Her shoulders ached miserably, and she felt as if she had jarred her back in the frantic effort to control the dangerous spin of the car, but it seemed she was still in one piece.

Unless…

Her closed lids flew open, violet eyes focusing swiftly on her own reflection in the car’s mirror.

No. Relief set in as she realised that the damp trail down her left cheek was not, as she had feared, the trickle of blood. Instead it had been caused by a single weak tear, probably the result of shock and disorientation. She hadn’t even been aware of having shed it.

Suddenly she was desperately, horribly cold. She was unable to decide whether the shiver that shook her was the result of delayed reaction to the danger she had been in or something else. Equally, it might have been a purely physical response to the icy wind that sneaked past the powerful frame of the man who held the car’s front door wide open.

‘Could you give me a definite answer?’

The voice was harsh now, jolting her out of her near dreamlike state and back into full awareness of the present. Of course, he must have seen her crash—seen her small car skid suddenly, veering right off the road and onto the rough verge at its edge. Naturally he was concerned.

‘I’m sorry…’

The words died in her throat, shrivelled into an unbelieving silence as she shifted in her seat, her eyes finally focusing on the rearview mirror. With her own head no longer blocking the view from the door, she caught her first glimpse of her rescuer, and couldn’t believe what she saw.

‘I…’

Dear God, perhaps she was hallucinating after all. It must be the after-effects of shock, or perhaps she had hit her head hard enough to scramble her wits. Knights on white chargers didn’t exist in reality, and they certainly did not appear in such a devastating physical form. She couldn’t be seeing what she thought was there.

‘Of course I can.’ This time she managed to get the words out, swivelling in her seat to face him as she spoke. ‘I—I’m fine.’ Oh, Lord, this was no better! In fact it was far worse. No matter how hard she forced herself to concentrate, her fuddled brain still registered exactly the same thing, confirming that what she had seen in the mirror was not the illusion she had believed, but actual fact.

The mirror image had softened the impact of hard, strongly carved cheekbones, a straight nose, a firm slash of a mouth, stunningly bright blue eyes and a shock of longish, rather wild black hair. The dramatic effect of that forceful profile etched against the darkness was matched by the imposing height and strength of the body that filled the open doorway, the man before her having to stoop quite considerably in order to look her in the eye.

But the impossible thing was that those features, that powerful frame, could only belong to one man. And it was his identity that made Leah doubt her sanity at this moment.

‘No!’

Weakly she shook her head, hoping to dispel the tormenting vision. Even in her wildest dreams she had never fantasised that she might meet up with Sean Gallagher. After all, he was the latest TV heart-throb, the man whose appearance in a hugely successful drama series had had the effect of bringing almost the entire female population of Great Britain to a complete halt every Thursday night.

‘No?’ her rescuer questioned, no softening evident in his tone. ‘Is that, No, there’s nothing wrong, or, No, you’re not fine after all? For God’s sake, woman! Can you string two coherent words together or not?’

‘Of course I can!’

Incensed by his rudeness, Leah’s impatience matched his now, anger sharpening her words. So much for fantasy, she told herself ruefully. Sean Gallagher might be the hunk of the year—of the decade—but it seemed that his stunning looks were in no way matched by an equally appealing character.

‘Yes, I’m fine. No, I’m not injured—at least as far as I can tell. But as I haven’t tried to stand up yet I can’t exactly swear to the total accuracy of that statement. Does that satisfy you, or would you like to interrogate me a bit more?’

‘Well, on the evidence of that outburst, I would have to agree that you are obviously not badly hurt.’ The thread of dry humour that warmed his attractive voice had an effect that was almost as devastating as the smile that softened and curved his hard mouth. ‘But I take exception to your use of the word “interrogate”—’

‘Except away!’ Leah returned sharply, riled by the mockery in his words. ‘You may be God’s gift to women, but you’re clearly not going to win any prizes for sensitivity. Has no one ever told you that someone who has just hit a patch of black ice and spun off the road into a ditch might actually be some way from fully in control? There is such a thing as shock, you know, and…’

‘I know, and I’m sorry.’

Unexpected gentleness drew the force of her tirade, reducing her to stunned silence. He actually looked shamefaced too, she acknowledged, grudgingly conceding him a favourable point or two.

‘I was pretty shocked myself. After all, I’ve driven along this road day and night for weeks without seeing anyone. So you can imagine how I felt when I came round the corner to find your car nose-down in the ditch. Was that what happened? You hit a patch of ice?’

‘I think so.’

Leah’s voice was no longer as confident as it had been before. Her memories of the actual accident were hazy, and trying to recall them was distinctly unsettling.

‘I was driving along—crawling, really, because of the weather—and suddenly the car seemed to have a will of its own. It went into an uncontrollable skid, and the next thing I knew was that I was here…’

And where was here? She should have been over halfway to her mother’s by now, but in the appalling driving conditions she had missed the exit off the motorway and had had to take a smaller side road in order to get back to the route she wanted.

She’d made another wrong turning later, and was then hopelessly lost. As a result, she wasn’t at all sure where she’d ended up, only that it was somewhere in the wilds of Yorkshire, and obviously miles from anywhere. She couldn’t remember when she’d last seen a single house, let alone anything resembling civilisation.

And, if she was honest, her thoughts hadn’t exactly been on what she was doing. Foolishly, considering the whirling snow and swiftly dropping temperature, she had been distracted by the problems that had been fretting at her mind all week. That was why she had missed her turn-off in the first place.

‘I think you’d better get out of there. It doesn’t look exactly safe,’ her rescuer advised. ‘Can you stand?’

‘I think so.’

It was more of a struggle than she had anticipated. For one thing the front of the car was at a very awkward angle, one that necessitated an ungainly shuffle and an even less ladylike scramble in order to get her legs out of the door.

‘Here—’ Sean Gallagher held out a hand encased in a dark leather glove. ‘Let me help.’

It was only a hand, Leah told herself. And all he wanted to do was help. So why was she suddenly gripped by a rush of something that was neither fear nor excitement but a disturbingly volatile mixture of the two? Why did she feel that to touch him would…?

Would what? Now you’re being silly, she reproved herself sharply. Did she expect that just to take hold of his hand would spark off some explosion? Contaminate her in some way? Be sensible, Leah!

But common sense and reason seemed to have nothing to do with the way she was feeling. It was as if some primitive instinct older than time was warning her not to risk even the slightest contact with this man.

‘I can manage!’

She heard the words before she actually realised that her tongue had formed them and knew they were a mistake from the way his dark head went back, the long, powerful body stiffening in hostile response to her tone.

‘Suit yourself.’

It was curt, sharply dismissive, but what else had she expected? After all, her own inner unease had tightened her throat, making her declaration sound uncharacteristically tart and cold.

And, to compound the problem, her undignified scramble to get out of the car without any help had taken more effort than she’d realised. It had also resulted in the rucking up of the skirt of her red velvet dress, pulling it high up on her thighs.

Not for the first time Leah cursed the way her sudden decision to spend an extra day of the Christmas holidays at home had meant leaving in a rush straight after the agency’s party.

Her mother wasn’t even expecting her, believing that she wouldn’t be setting out until tomorrow morning. But Paula Elliot had sounded so sad and lonely when Leah had phoned her that she had decided on impulse to leave earlier. After all, Christmas was a time for families, and, without her father there, there was only Leah herself to fill that space in her mother’s life.

If she had planned more carefully, she could have found time to change into something much more appropriate for the long drive north. As it was, not anticipating the blizzard conditions that had set in once she was on the motorway, she had simply pulled on a warm coat over her party wear.

But a tight velvet Lycra sheath was definitely not the easiest of garments in which to manoeuvre her way out of a car perched at such a difficult angle. Particularly not with six feet two of very masculine hunk watching her every move with blatantly appraising interest.

‘Very nice,’ he murmured as Leah inched her way forward, wanting desperately to be upright and decently covered again as quickly as possible.

Those amazing blue eyes were on the slender length of her legs, brightening noticeably as an unwary movement pushed the tight skirt even higher, revealing the pale flesh of her thighs above the lacy tops of her stockings.

‘So tell me, what do you do for an encore?’ he asked provocatively.

‘Nothing!’

Leah aimed for freezing distance and missed it by a mile. Her snapped retort ended with a gasp of shock as, with her feet finally on the ground, she realised just how icy the road had become. The worn leather soles of the old shoes she wore for driving had no grip at all on the treacherous surface, and she felt her feet begin to slide from under her.

With a cry of panic, her hand went out automatically to grab at the nearest thing for support.

The ‘nearest thing’ was Sean Gallagher’s arm. Leah’s flailing fingers closed over the soft wool of his jacket sleeve just as, reacting with swift reflexes, he moved his other hand to come round her waist. He took the full weight of her body on that one arm with as much ease as if she had been a petite slip of a thing, and not five feet ten in her stockinged feet and built on decidedly generous lines, with curving hips and softly voluptuous breasts.

‘There will be no encore, Mr Gallagher!’ Leah managed, rather breathlessly.

‘Pity,’ he drawled. ‘I was enjoying the show.’

He didn’t react to her use of his name. Probably he was well used to having people, especially women, recognise him immediately. It would be one of the burdens of fame.

Or, more likely, this man would consider it one of the perks of his job. Certainly he had appeared in the gossip columns as frequently as he had on the television, and with an ever-changing cast of beautiful women in the role of his partner.

Though just lately she hadn’t read very much about him, Leah recalled. Probably because he had been busy filming the latest series of Inspector Callender. She doubted very much that his social life could have ground to any sort of halt.

‘You put on a great performance.’

Leah could hear the smile in Sean’s voice even though she couldn’t see his face. She was pressed against his chest, held too close to be able to look up at him.

“‘Performance”!’ she spluttered, struggling to twist free from the strength of his hold. ‘It was no such thing! If you think—’

But movement was a mistake. Instead of loosening his grip, he tightened it painfully, crushing her even closer to the warmth of his body. She was so near to him that she could feel the steady beating of his heart under her cheek.

‘Calm down.’ His voice was softer now, warm as the touch of his hand on her face, stilling her instantly. ‘You’ve had a shock. Take a minute or so to recover. Breathe slowly, deeply.’

Soothed by the gentle stroke of his thumb over her cheek, Leah obeyed automatically. But if breathing deeply was meant to calm her, it had exactly the opposite effect. It only added to her awareness of him in a new and disturbing way. The scent of some clean, tangy cologne tantalised her nostrils, but mixed in with it was the subtle, uniquely personal scent that was his alone.

Leah suddenly felt as if something had short-circuited inside her brain. She couldn’t think clearly, couldn’t focus on anything other than the warmth and strength that enclosed her, the pressure of Sean’s body all along the length of her own.

Her heart seemed to be racing in double time, sending her blood pounding through her veins until her head swam. There was a hot, tight knot of excitement deep inside her that, contrarily, made her shiver convulsively.

‘Are you cold?’

Being so very close, Sean couldn’t have missed her reaction. His hands closed over her arms, sliding under her coat, smoothing the soft skin below the short sleeves of her dress.

‘You’re frozen!’ Concern sounded in his voice and he increased the pressure of his touch. ‘You need to get your blood moving…’

How could that be? Leah wondered dazedly. How could her skin be cold when inside she felt so burning hot? And her blood didn’t need any assistance. Already it was searing through her with the white-hot force of molten lava.

There was one thing she did need, though, and the force of that desire was so great that she just couldn’t fight it.

With a low murmur of sensual awareness, she lifted her head and pressed her lips to Sean Gallagher’s neck, her mouth soft against the warm strength of the taut muscle of his throat. The roughness of a day’s growth of stubble abraded her cheek and the faint salt taste of his skin made her tongue tingle.

For the space of a heartbeat she felt him stiffen in shock, and knew the fear of rejection. That momentary panic was enough to bring home to her the foolishness of what she had just done, but before she had time to react the hostile tension in his long body suddenly changed to a new and very different sort of awareness. Leah had perhaps a second or two to register the change before he moved again.

‘So that’s your game, is it?’ he muttered, swinging her round sharply, so that instead of being at his side she was now clamped firmly against him.

Her breasts were crushed against the hard wall of his chest, her pelvis tight against his. Then, as he leaned back against her car, he pulled her between his legs so that she felt enclosed by him on three sides. The bite of the wind receded as she felt the heat of his body reach her even through the layers of their clothes.

Sean’s mouth came down onto hers, taking it without care or consideration, crushing her lips back against her teeth and forcing a cry of shocked response from her. If her blood had seemed hectic moments before, now she felt that it was positively incandescent.

When his tongue probed the sensitive interior of her mouth she moaned out loud, as if the action had been a more intimate invasion. She couldn’t control her instinctive response to the arrow of need that sliced through her, making her writhe in an uncontrolled movement that drew a low growl from deep in Sean’s throat. It seemed as if some wild, electric charge had passed through every inch of her body, setting it alight with burning, tingling excitement.

She had no awareness of the darkness around them. She didn’t feel the stinging sensation of the whirling snow as it fell against her face, nor the icy drifts that pooled around her feet in the well-worn shoes. There was only herself and this man and the blazing electrical storm they had lit between them. Leah whimpered in blind delight as rough hands pushed under her coat, finding and closing over the sensitised swell of her breasts under the scarlet velvet.

With shocking suddenness Sean broke the intimate contact, wrenching his mouth away from hers with a violent imprecation. She was his brother’s fiancée! For several seconds more he swore with savage and unnerving eloquence, pushing her away from him with such force that she slid dangerously on the treacherous road surface.

‘And what was all that about?’ The blazing fury in his voice could be heard even above the wild cacophony of the howling wind. ‘Just what did you think you were doing?’

How could she answer that? Leah didn’t dare to even look into his face, keeping her eyes fixed on the ground as she tried to impose some order on her wildly confused thoughts.

What had she been doing? What had possessed her to throw herself at a man she had never met in her life before? A man she knew nothing about other than the stories in the tabloids and the fact that his face and form appeared on her television set once a week?

‘I—didn’t think.’

‘You didn’t think!’ he echoed scathingly. ‘Oh, I can believe that! But it wasn’t your mind that was driving you, was it, Miss Elliot?’

That brought Leah’s head up in a rush, wide, shocked eyes going to his face. How did he know her name? Where…?

But as her gaze focused on his strongly carved features the question in her mind never got past her lips. Instead it was stopped by her own hand, her fingers coming up to cover her mouth, the shock that kept her silent turning her eyes dark as pansies.

It was only now that she realised he had kept part of his face turned away from her. When he had opened the car door, and again when he had held out a hand to help her, she had only seen his right profile, the left staying hidden by the darkness. The rest of the time she hadn’t been looking at him and—hot colour flamed in her cheeks—she had kept her eyes closed when he had kissed her.

‘Sean!’

Now, for the first time, she could see all of his face, and the sight made her breath catch harshly in her throat. In spite of the darkness, there was no mistaking the devastating effect of the raw, jagged line that ran down his face from the corner of one eye, angling away from his mouth to end just on the strong, forceful jaw.

The barely healed scar was obviously recent, clearly the result of some dreadful accident. The handsome looks that had won Sean Gallagher so many fans were ruined; the face that adorned thousands of publicity photographs was destroyed for ever.

Watching her intently, Sean had seen the direction of her gaze, the response she couldn’t disguise.

‘Pretty, isn’t it?’ His cynicism was brutal.

‘Oh, Sean!’

Shock and sympathy drove every other thought from her mind. Reacting purely instinctively, she moved forward impetuously, only realising as he flinched back, away from her, that she had actually lifted a hand as if to touch his damaged face.

‘No way, lady!’ he warned roughly. ‘I don’t fall for that trick twice in a row.’

‘It was no trick!’

Furious at the way he had misinterpreted her gesture of concern, Leah actually stamped her foot hard, regretting her impulsive act instantly as it sent a spray of freezing snow over her feet and legs.

‘What sort of person do you think I am?’

‘The sort of female…’ deliberately he emphasised his use of a different noun ‘…who throws herself at any available man without a thought for the one she’s left behind.’

The arrogance of the man! He actually believed that just because he was a TV star any and every woman must be crazy about him, available solely for his pleasure! But then the exact words Sean had used hit home with a worrying clarity.

‘What do you know about any men in my life?’

She just managed to get the words out before the truth exploded inside her head with a force that made her head reel.

It didn’t matter how Sean Gallagher knew about Andy—if in fact he knew anything, and wasn’t just making a lucky guess. What mattered was that she hadn’t spared the other man a thought at all, not since Sean had appeared so unexpectedly.

Leah bit down hard on her bottom lip as her conscience reproached her bitterly. For the shock of the accident to have temporarily driven all thought of the man who had asked her to marry him from her head was one thing. But to discover that the man she had parted from only that evening had been completely wiped from her mind was quite another. How could she be so foolish—so shallow?

Sean’s smile in response to her question was cold, dangerous.

‘I get the impression that you’re the sort of woman who uses her undeniable charms to entrap poor, weak fools, only to chew them up and spit them out when you’re done with them.’

‘And on what evidence do you base this outrageous attack on my character? You don’t know—’

‘I don’t need to know.’ Sean’s icy response slashed through her indignant protest. ‘I have eyes to see.’

A contemptuous wave of his hand and the downward flick of his eyes made Leah suddenly aware of just how she must look.

Her long dark hair had fallen from its elegant coil and now tumbled in wild disarray around her face. Her skirt seemed to have stuck high up on her thighs, still revealing the lacy stocking tops, and her coat now hung wide open, exposing the smooth white curves of her breasts above the clinging, low-cut bodice. The wind had whipped up a hectic colour in her cheeks, making her eyes unnaturally bright above them.

Unable to bear Sean’s cold-eyed scrutiny, Leah pulled her flapping coat closely round herself like a defensive shield, tugging the belt tight at her waist.

‘I was at a party, for God’s sake! It is Christmas—peace and goodwill and all that!’

‘Goodwill to all men!’ he flung back at her. ‘Or just a select few?’

‘Now look here—’ Leah began, purple eyes flashing fire.

But the full effect of her anger was ruined by the way that her teeth chattered against each other, and the fact that she was shaken by a sudden, convulsive shiver. The snow was still falling steadily, now coming down thicker than ever, and in the thin-soled shoes her feet were like blocks of ice. With a grimace of distress, she shifted uncomfortably, trying to ease them.

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Sean exclaimed impatiently. ‘We can’t stay here like this. We’ll freeze if we do.’

‘I couldn’t agree more.’

Leah was glad of any excuse to end this embarrassing confrontation. All she wanted was to get her car back on the road and be on her way. Sean Gallagher might have seemed to be a knight coming to the rescue of a damsel in distress, but appearances were definitely deceptive. He appeared to be the most devastatingly attractive man she had ever met, but his character had to be the most unpleasant of any she had encountered in all her twenty-five years.

‘If you could just help me move my car…’ she began, her voice failing as she saw his dark head move in obdurate denial of her request.

‘No chance,’ he stated flatly. ‘There’s no way we can do anything with it without a tow-truck and some chains, and even then I doubt if it will start. I mean, look at it.’

Following the contemptuous wave of one hand, Leah had to admit he spoke nothing but the truth. Leaning at a perilous angle, its front wheels deeply embedded in the ditch and the snow piling up heavily all around it, the Renault looked totally immovable. It would take professional know-how and equipment to enable her to continue her journey.

‘Then perhaps you could drive me to the nearest garage or house.’

She looked hopefully to where Sean’s car was parked at the side of the road. A heavy layer of snow had built up on its bonnet and roof while they were talking, but it looked in much better shape than her own vehicle.

‘Please.’ Tact made her add the last word, though she felt very far from wanting to be strictly polite.

A harsh, humourless laugh left her in no doubt as to exactly what he thought of that idea.

‘The nearest garage, my dear Ms Elliot, is more than ten miles in that direction.’ He gestured back towards the way he had come. ‘I’ve just negotiated that road once on the way here, and believe me it was no fun at all in this weather. I’ve no intention of doing it again and risking my life for anyone. Have you tried the emergency services?’

‘I’m not a member of a breakdown service or anything like that. Oh, I know!’ she exclaimed as she saw the scathing look that told her exactly how he felt about that. ‘I probably should have joined—as I’m sure you did—ages ago! But I only took possession of this car last weekend. And besides, I’d need a mobile phone to call them from here—something I don’t run to on my salary.’

She glanced at the sleek and obviously expensive lines of his own BMW. A new light brightened her eyes and she looked at him expectantly.

‘I suppose you’ve got the very latest model in your car. I could—’

As a matter of fact, no, I haven’t,’ Sean put in coolly. ‘When I’m on the road I prefer to be unobtainable. And I know for a fact that there are no houses any closer than my own cottage. One of the reasons I bought it in the first place was because it is so isolated.’