A Convenient Marriage

‘You too. I was wondering if we could talk a little?’

Taken aback, Sabrina tucked a stray glossy strand of hair behind her ear. ‘Of course. Is here all right? I know it’s a bit cramped but I don’t really have anywhere else to—’

‘I noticed a park across the road.’ Javier jerked his head vaguely in that direction. ‘Can we take a walk?’

‘Why not? I could do with some fresh air, to tell you the truth. I’ll just get my coat.’

The winding concrete path into the ornamental gardens was littered with the colourful debris of autumn leaves. As they walked along side by side, Sabrina shivered inside her warm camel-coloured coat, wishing she’d thought to add her scarf to the hastily donned outer clothing. A tremendous gust of wind whooshed past her ear just then, and she shoved her hands deep into her coat pockets and turned her head to grin at the man beside her.

‘Tenerife is sounding more and more attractive by the minute, wouldn’t you say?’ she announced cheerfully. ‘Coming from a warm climate, this weather must seem positively Arctic to you!’

‘My country has an amazing diversity of climates and landscapes. Don’t forget we’ve got the snowcapped Andes as well as acres of hot, humid jungle. But yes, I do agree, by my home city’s standards, it is pretty cold.’ As he smiled back at her with something like pleasure in those deep, dark eyes with their straight black lashes, it was still clear that Javier had something on his mind other than the weather.

In for a penny… Sabrina decided to bite the bullet. Best clear the air and get whatever it was he had to say out of the way, then maybe, just maybe, she could suggest they meet for lunch later on in the week? She could practically hear Ellie cheering on the sidelines. Sabrina had never—not even once—asked a man out on a date. Well, there was a first time for everything, so they said…

‘You wanted to talk. Was it something in particular?’

Spying a weatherworn bench near a thick clump of hedgerow, Javier jerked his head towards it. ‘Perhaps it would be better if we sat down?’

For some reason, Sabrina’s heartbeat thundered in her chest as she sat down beside him. Where previously they’d been companionable, something in the air had shifted perceptibly and there was a new tension emanating from the big, handsome man sitting next to her. Once again Sabrina shivered, but this time not with the cold.

‘I can help you with your business,’ he said without preamble.

‘What did you say?’ She’d heard but couldn’t begin to make sense of such a statement.

‘I will give you the money—whatever the amount—as well as my expertise and knowledge to help you modernise the business and bring it into the twenty-first century.’

Sabrina’s pale hand curled tightly round the wrought-iron arm rest of the bench. ‘What’s all this about, Javier? I don’t understand.’

CHAPTER THREE

HIS expression couldn’t have been more serious. Dropping his head briefly into his hands, he drew them back and forth through his thick, dark hair. ‘I am also involved professionally in travel. I have a very successful internet business that I have been running for the past six years. I believe I know exactly what it is you need to do to turn East-West Travel around. If you will let me I would like to help you.’

‘I’m sorry but you’ll have to give me a couple of minutes here.’ Completely bewildered, Sabrina considered Javier with stunned blue eyes as if he had suddenly grown fangs and an extra head. ‘Am I hearing you right? You are in the travel business and you would be willing to lend me money and your expertise to expand my company? Why? Out of the goodness of your heart? Forgive me if I sound cynical, Mr D’Alessandro, but I’m not as green as I’m cabbage-looking!’

Frowning, Javier tried to make sense of her words. ‘I’m afraid you have lost me.’

‘You are no more lost than I am, that’s for sure!’ Her heart beating wildly inside her chest, she folded her arms tightly across her coat and glared at him. ‘Is that why you were looking in the window that day? Did you already know about my circumstances? Were you hoping to buy me out for a song, because if you are I can tell you right now, you’re on an awfully sticky wicket!’

Javier groaned. His head hurt trying to keep up with her colourful outpouring of injured pride.

‘I do not want to buy you out, Sabrina. That is the first thing. It was pure chance that had me standing outside your window that day. I had a lot on my mind and needed to walk and think. I’m staying at my brother-in-law’s house, which is not so very far away from you. I suppose I naturally gravitate towards anything to do with travel—like you, I am passionate about it. That’s why I happened to glance in your window when you ran into me.’ He paused to gaze into her pale, anxious face, hoping that his words had reassured her that he wasn’t some opportunistic shark waiting to snatch her beloved business out of her grasp.

Her heartbeat returning to a more normal cadence, Sabrina released an audible sigh. ‘OK. Go on. I take it there’s more?’

He nodded briefly, his long brown fingers linking together on his lap. ‘If you agree to let me help you, there is something I would ask of you in return. Something that is not altogether an easy thing for me to ask.’

He didn’t have to tell her that. Sabrina guessed whatever it was was causing him great concern and difficulty. As for his incredible offer—the answer to her prayers, no less—well, she wasn’t about to jump up and down with joy just yet. She had a natural tendency to be naïve about a lot of things but not this—not her precious livelihood.

‘Ask away. I’m listening.’ Two pigeons landed a few feet away, picking hopefully around in the leaves for a bite to eat. When they found nothing they simultaneously flew off into the trees in a brief flurry of wings and foliage. Sabrina pulled up the lapels of her coat around her ears and prayed she wasn’t going to be crushingly disappointed by whatever Javier had to say. Already she was beginning to like this man too much for her peace of mind and she couldn’t pretend she wouldn’t be sorry if she never saw him again.

‘I told you I have a niece? Angelina.’ Sabrina heard the love in his voice and something warm stirred in the pit of her stomach, something that her heart suddenly ached for. ‘She means everything to me. Especially since her mother—my sister, Dorothea—died eight years ago. Now her father, Michael, is ill. Dangerously ill. His prognosis, they tell me, is not good. I would do anything to help Angelina, to keep this terrible hurt from her, a hurt she has already experienced once before in her young life.

‘Michael would like me to adopt her. There lies my problem. I do not have permanent residency in this country and, although I can more or less come and go as I please, the courts will not be favourable to my application if I cannot offer Angelina a permanent home here. She is too anglicised to want to live in Argentina, though of course she has grandparents there, family. Plus she would not wish to be separated from her friends. To get straight to the point, Sabrina, I need a British passport to stay here and adopt her. The only way I see I can get that quickly is to marry someone from this country.’

Frowning as the meaning of his words began to sink in, Sabrina let out a long, slow breath and tucked some windswept strands of honey-brown hair behind her ear. ‘You’re asking me to—to marry you?’

He unlinked his hands to push his fingers through his hair. ‘It would be—what do you call it?—a marriage of convenience. Only on paper, no more. Of course, we would have to live together for a reasonable amount of time to please the courts, but after that…’ He shrugged as if it was the most reasonable proposition in the world. ‘After that I would, of course, not contest a divorce. You would be a free woman once again.’

‘And if I agree to this—this “marriage of convenience”—you agree to help me with the business?’ Her whole body felt suddenly terribly cold. A wave of vulnerability settled on her shoulders like a heavy coat. The first man she’d met in the longest time that she’d felt even remotely attracted to and all he wanted from her was a cold-hearted business proposition. Well, that just about summed her personal attributes up nicely, didn’t it?

‘Sí. Yes. You have my word.’ Of course. He had to be a man of honour—young as he was. Even on such brief acquaintance, that was never in doubt in Sabrina’s mind.

Feeling ridiculously like crying, she got slowly to her feet, turned to Javier and smiled in spite of the fact that her face felt like a block of ice with no movement in it at all.

‘I’m sorry, Javier. I couldn’t do it.’

‘What is it you want in return? How can I persuade you to change your mind? I will double any figure you care to come up with. I am a very wealthy man, Sabrina. You can check me and my company out on the internet. You say you rent your flat? I will buy you a house of your own for you to keep after we are divorced.’

He was only making it worse. Her heart ached at the thought of that possibly soon-to-be-orphaned little girl—Angelina—but Sabrina couldn’t agree to such a bizarre proposition for her sake only…could she? Even if what he had offered her in exchange seemed like the solution to all her worries.

Recognising the anxiety on her face, Javier told himself to ease back—not to push. She would need time. He could see that. She was not the sort of woman who would grab at such an opportunity with no thought of what it might mean to her personally other than the help she needed to expand her business. No. Sabrina Kendricks clearly had a lot of good qualities. Qualities like warmth, tenderness and integrity…He cut himself off short. He wasn’t looking for a lifetime partner so such qualities hardly mattered. Nor was he in the market for the kind of marriage that his parents and grandparents and—up until eight years ago—his sister and Michael had enjoyed. What was the point in setting yourself up for potential disaster and misery? He’d seen what love could do. Love could rip away your soul just as soon as your back was turned. That wasn’t for him. Instead he would pour all the love he had in his heart into caring for Angelina. If he could do that, then his life wouldn’t be wasted.

‘I’m really sorry about your niece. It must be terrible to be faced with losing both parents—at any age, never mind eleven years old. But I couldn’t do it, Javier. Please understand. I’m just—I’m just not like that.’

‘But you are an astute businesswoman, no?’ Pushing himself off the seat, he towered over her.

‘How could you throw away the perfect opportunity to save your business? You already told me the bank manager turned you down for a loan. Where else are you going to get the money from, Sabrina?’

‘That’s my problem.’ Flinching from the cold whipping round her ankles, she seriously wondered if it was the perfect opportunity. Surely she owed it not just to herself but to Jill and Robbie to do all she could to save their jobs? If Javier D’Alessandro could look on the whole thing as purely a business merger, why couldn’t she?

Sensing the conflict that was raging behind those bright blue eyes, he shook his head and decided to go for broke.

‘It wouldn’t have to be a problem at all if we agreed to make a deal. I’m not asking you to engage your emotions here, Sabrina. It is an emotive issue, I know that, but I am speaking to you as one businessman to another—we have both something to gain; it makes sense, sí?’

‘I’ll think about it.’

Without another word she turned on her heel and hastened back down the path, through the sea of dead leaves, back the way they had come.

Javier stayed where he was for a long time after she had left. He returned to the park bench and stayed there with his head in his hands, his mind working overtime and his gut churning until finally the raw bite of the increasingly cold wind made it impossible for him to stay there any longer. She would think about it. It didn’t mean she would agree. His heart heavy, he headed back to the house, preparing himself to hear the worst and cursing every fate known to man for the predicament he found himself in.

‘I’ve been ringing you for two days now with no answer. Jill told me you were home with a cold. Why haven’t you been answering your phone?’ With baby Tallulah on her hip, her light blue eyes unusually fierce, Ellie McDonald barged her way past Sabrina, only noticing that her sister was still in her dressing gown when she plopped herself down on the couch and settled Tallulah against a pile of velvet cushions with her rattle. Not only was Sabrina in her dressing gown but also the room was almost unbearably hot, with the radiators obviously turned up to maximum heat.

Slowly Sabrina came towards her. Pressing her handkerchief to her reddened nose, she smiled uncharacteristically feebly. ‘I have got a cold,’ she said defensively. ‘I’ve been in bed. That’s why I didn’t answer the phone.’

‘But you never get colds!’ Ellie sounded cross.

‘You’re usually disgustingly healthy. What’s up, Sabrina? Something must be wrong.’