Merger By Matrimony

‘Arrangement?’ Destiny asked numbly.

‘Partnership,’ he corrected quickly.

‘I’m not sure,’ she said, feeling cold all over and very sure indeed. Very sure that the proposition he had put to her had not been the one her romantic, delusional mind had conjured up. Now, it made her feel ill to think that she’d imagined a marriage proposal to have been made with some declaration of love, or at least with some emotion other than the coolly logical one he was displaying now.

She had to get out of here. She couldn’t afford to let him start working on her with his arguments of common sense and practicality. He weakened her, and she wouldn’t enter into a marriage for all the wrong reasons. That would be a recipe for disaster. Hadn’t she made one disastrous error already by sleeping with him and telling herself that it was fine because she loved him? No way would she compound the mistake by adding yet another, and one that she would have a lifetime to regret.

‘I need to think it over.’

‘What’s there to think over?’ He rolled to his side and looked at her, his blue eyes urgent and demanding.

She wriggled back a bit. ‘I need a few days. Just to get my head around it…to adjust…’

‘Adjust to what?’

‘We barely know each other!’

‘We have been as intimate as two people can be…’

‘That’s not what I mean.’ She edged towards the side of the bed and practically fell off, reaching down for her clothes and sticking on the shirt she had borrowed with her back to him.

‘Where are you going?’ It was more of a demand than a question. He could feel her ebbing away from him, but the temptation to push harder was something he knew he had to resist. The ebb would turn into outright flight if he did that. She said she needed time, and there was nothing ominous about that. Of course she needed time. Marriage proposals were not things that were sprung on a daily basis. The best thing he could do now would be to curb his savage impatience and let her have the time she needed. With restrictions.

‘I need to get back to my place,’ she mumbled, not looking at him.

Callum sprang out of bed and pulled a tee-shirt over his powerful torso, followed by boxer shorts.

‘You’ll need a lift back. I’ll drive you.’ He kept one eye on her while putting on a pair of trousers, not bothering with a belt so that they hung slightly down his hips. She had sailed into the bathroom, shutting the door, and he waited with increasing frustration for her outside, drumming his fingers on the windowsill.

One desperate part of him was beginning to think that somewhere along the line his impeccably tempting offer, full of the sort of practical advantages that would appeal to someone as clear-headed as she was, was going badly wrong.

And with the desperation, nauseating in itself because it was just so alien to him, came a rush of surly defensiveness. Shouldn’t she have jumped to his offer with alacrity? Maybe, he thought, she was disturbed at the thought of cutting ties with the country she’d spent most of her life in. Perhaps she just needed time to sort out the practicalities of the issue.

That line of thought was reassuring, and by the time she emerged from the bathroom, inappropriately clad in her dress, he was prepared to be magnanimous.

‘Look,’ he said sympathetically, ‘I understand that you might be having a few doubts about leaving Panama…’ She was virtually scuttling out of the room and down the stairs, running her fingers through her uncombed hair, sticking on her shoes when she got to the front door. ‘But you would be able to go over there on holiday whenever you wanted. And of course your father could come and visit whenever he wanted…’

‘Oh, yes, right,’ she answered in a vaguely surprised voice. She still wasn’t looking at him and he positioned himself in front of the door so that she was compelled to look up. ‘I hadn’t really considered that aspect of it,’ she continued, flushing.

‘Then what aspects are you considering?’ he demanded with a trace of aggression in his voice, and she immediately pulled away into herself.

‘Please don’t push me.’

‘I’m not pushing you.’

‘You expect me to give you a yes or no answer right this minute…’

‘I told you I can more than understand that you might need time to think it over,’ Callum said repressively.

He steadied himself and stood aside to open the door, following her into the car and starting it with barely contained anger.

‘I’m going to be away for the next few days,’ he said into the lengthening silence. ‘So I won’t be around to pester you. Do you think you might have an answer for me by the time I get back?’