The Marriage Solution

'It's nearly three o'clock.' She turned to Carlton in surprise. 'We ought to do that photocopying and then I must get back to the hospital.'

'How is your father?' Joseph asked quietly, his face completely serious for once.

'So-so.' She smiled but it was an effort 'He's a very proud man and the thought of losing everything in the full glare of bankruptcy is hard for him to come to terms with.'

'It would be for anyone.' Joseph's eyes had darted to his brother as she had spoken but now centred on her face again. 'It's a wretched situation.'

'Yes, it is.' Carlton spoke dismissively as he stood up abruptly and indicated for her to do the same, resting his hands on the back of her chair and pulling it away from the table as she followed his lead 'Let's go into my study and see to those papers.'

Joseph raised his eyes slightly as she followed Carlton out of the room and she smiled but said nothing, wondering what had caused the sudden departure but not caring to voice her confusion. Being around Carlton was like living on the edge of a volcano, she thought as she followed him down the hall and into a beautiful book-lined study at the far end of which a large coal fire was glowing bright red, giving the very male room a warm, comforting glow.

It had started to snow again outside, large feathery flakes felling thickly out of a laden grey sky, and Carlton stood looking out of the window for a few moments with his back to her before turning round suddenly and staring her straight in the face.

'Sit down.' It wasn't an invitation, more an order, and she did as she was told, sensing that something momentous was about to happen as she looked into his cold, grim face. 'It isn't much use photocopying those papers, Katie.' His voice was so devoid of expression that the portent of the words didn't sink in at first.

'It isn't?' She stared at him numbly.

'No.' He was still holding her eyes with a piercing gaze which she couldn't have broken if she had tried. 'I saw immediately I looked at them today that there is no hope of a reprieve. Your father signed several documents that were…skilfully worded and in doing so lost any chance of compensation. It was a forlorn hope at the best of times,' he added quietly.

'I see.' Her face had whitened as he'd spoken, but other than that she kept an iron grip on her emotions that wasn't lost on the tall, dark man watching her so intently. The brave tilt of her head, the dark anguish in the huge green-brown eyes with their liquid appeal caused his mouth to tighten into a hard line before he turned to look out into the winter's afternoon again.

'You understand what I'm saying?' he asked tautly after a few seconds had ticked by.

'Yes.' She stared at the broad back and wondered how she was going to dash her father's hopes without breaking down herself. It would have been better if Carlton hadn't offered the little ray of hope, she thought desperately as she remembered the painful appeal in David's face the last time she had seen him. It would be almost as though he had lost everything for the second time.

'But there is a way…' He turned and faced her again as the grey eyes narrowed on her pale face. 'There is a way we could turn things round.'

' 'Turn things round'?' She rose jerkily from her seat— she really couldn't sit still a moment longer—and walked over to the fire, feeling as though she would never be warm again. 'What do you mean, 'turn things round'?' she asked again, swinging to face him as his words sank through the grey blanket that had descended on her mind. 'We're talking thousands and thousands of pounds' worth of debts, aren't we?'

'Yes.' He was completely still as he watched her, an almost menacing tenseness in his body that sent a fluttering of chilling fear through her system as she looked into his dark face. 'Several million if you take the house into account too.'

'Then how—?'

'I could pay the debts for you and give your father the house.'

'What?' The word came out as a breathless sigh but he seemed to hear it none the less.

'I could pay everything off,' he said again. 'You needn't even tell David the real circumstances if you don't want to.'

'But we could never pay you back.' She felt very strange as she spoke, the room and his big dark figure taking on an unreal quality that made the dream-like impossibility of his words even more insubstantial.

'Not in a financial sense, no.' He walked over to her as her heart began to thump frantically, an awful presentiment of what he might be trying to say freezing her mind and body. But he couldn't mean that, she told herself helplessly as he stopped in front of her. He didn't have to buy sex like any back-street voyeur in the less reputable parts of Soho; he could have any woman he wanted with just a raise of his eyebrows—and women far more beautiful and experienced than she was, at that.

'I don't understand,' she said weakly.

'I think you do.' He raised his hand slowly, as though in spite of himself, and touched the soft silk of her hair with one finger as his eyes moved slowly over her face. The sensual, expensive smell that seemed a part of him set her senses aflame as she stared up into his face, her eyes enormous. 'I want you, Katie. I want you very badly.' It was said without any emotion, a cold statement of fact that sent a shiver of fear flickering through her limbs.

'You're seriously saying you want to buy me?' she asked numbly, unable to take it in. 'That you want me to be your mistress?'

'Hell, no!' The explosion was immediate and she flinched at the anger on his face even as she knew a moment of profound relief that she had misunderstood him. Of course he couldn't have been saying that—she should have known. What would a man like him want with someone so naive and ordinary as her, after all? She must have been crazy—

'I want to marry you, Katie.' Now she really was losing her mind, she thought as she stared at him in torpid insensibility. 'I want to marry you—a full marriage in every sense of the word with everything that that entails.' She knew her mouth had fallen open but there was nothing she could do about it. 'After which every debt would be cleared, every last penny paid off, the whole slate wiped clean.'

He stood back a pace and eyed her sardonically as his eyes registered her horrified shock. 'So it's really over to you,' he said slowly as he crossed his arms over his muscled chest and narrowed his eyes like a great black beast waiting to pounce. 'The grand sacrifice or disaster; a way of escape or a long walk down the painful road of financial ruin that you've been trying to save your father from so desperately.'

'Decision time, little Katie White; decision time.'

CHAPTER FOUR