Needed: One Convenient Husband(3)

Although why Kyle had stopped her marrying a man who had been eminently  suitable, and whom she had actually liked in a lukewarm kind of way,  she didn't know. Given their antagonistic past, she had thought Kyle  would have been only too glad to discharge a responsibility that had  been thrust on him, and which he could not possibly want.

Just like he hadn't wanted her.

Frowning at the thought of the brief, passionate interlude they had  shared eleven years ago, she met Kyle's gaze squarely. "Thanks, but no  thanks."

Dropping into the little sports car's bucket seat, she snapped the door  closed. The engine revved with a throaty roar. Throat tight, still  unbearably ruffled that he had actually had the gall to give her a pity  proposal, she put the car in gear. Spinning the car in a tight turn, she  headed in the direction of the Dolphin Bay Resort, where the reception  was being held.

Her jaw tightened at the thought that even the location of the  reception was tainted with memories of Kyle and the one time he'd kissed  her. In starting her wedding business, though, she'd had to be  pragmatic. The Dolphin Bay Resort was family run and offered her a great  discount. She would have been flat-out stupid not to use the venue.

Still fuming, Eva strolled into the resort to oversee the gorgeous,  high-end fairy-tale wedding she had designed as a promotional  centerpiece for her wedding planning business. A perfect wedding that  should have been hers, if only Jeremy hadn't cut and run.

Cancel that, she thought grimly. If only Kyle hadn't paid Jeremy off  with a lucrative job offer in sandblasted Dubai! Taking a deep breath  and reaching for her usual calm control, she checked her appearance in  one of the elegant mirrors that decorated the walls. The reflection that  bounced back was reassuring. Lately her emotions were all over the  place, she was crying at the drop of a hat, she actually wanted to watch  rom-coms and she was having trouble sleeping.                       
       
           



       

None of that inner craziness showed. She looked as calm and cool and  collected as she wished she felt, her mass of tawny hair smoothed into  an elegant French pleat, her too curvy figure disguised by a low-key  skirt and jacket in a pastel pink that matched her shoes and handbag.  The businesslike but feminine image achieved a balance between the  occasion and her role as planner.

More importantly, it ensured that she did not compete with the bride or  other female guests in any way. She had learned that lesson at what  would have been her first wedding when the groom had gotten a little too  interested in her and the bride had cancelled.

Eva walked through to the ballroom where the reception was being held  and lifted a hand to acknowledge the waitstaff, all of whom she knew  well thanks to the half dozen weddings she had staged at Dolphin Bay.  She tensed as she glimpsed commiseration in the normally businesslike  gaze of the maître d' as he mopped around an ice sculpture of swans she  had recklessly commissioned because this was supposed to be her one and  only wedding day.

The five-tiered extravaganza of a cake, snow-white icing sparkling with  crystals and festooned with clusters of sculpted flowers so beautifully  executed they looked real, stopped her brisk movement through the room.  Out of the blue, the emotion she had been working hard to stamp out  grabbed at her. She had wanted to make this a day she would remember all  of her life. Unfortunately, that had been achieved since it would be  difficult to forget that her perfect wedding now belonged to someone  else.

Stomach churning with a potent cocktail of frustration, panic and a  crazy vulnerability caused by the fact that Kyle seemed intent on  stopping her attempts to achieve a workable, safe marriage, she spun on  her heel and made a beeline for the kitchen.

Bracing herself, she pushed the double doors open and stepped into a  hive of gleaming white walls and polished steel counters. The cheerful  clattering and hum of conversation instantly stopped. Eva's chest  squeezed tight as waves of sympathy flowed toward her, intensifying the  ache that had started in her throat and making tears burn at the back of  her eyes. The jolt of emotion was crazy, given that she hadn't loved  Jeremy in the least and marriage had not been on her horizon until Mario  had literally forced her to it with that clause in his will. A clause  designed to railroad her into the kind of happiness he had shared with  his wife and which he had thought she should also have, whether she  wanted it or not.

Until she'd started planning this wedding, she had thought Mario had  been utterly wrong in believing he could make her want to be married.  But every detail of planning her own wedding had confronted her,  throwing together the stark realities of her life and cruelly  highlighting the parts she couldn't have: the romance and the  happy-ever-after ending that true love promised. Most of all, it  emphasized the happy aftermath she would never experience: her own  babies.

She had known since she was seventeen, thanks to a rare genetic  disorder she carried, that she shouldn't have children. The disorder had  proved fatal for her twin and two siblings, which had made her doubly  wary about the whole concept of marriage. There was always the  possibility that she could meet someone who didn't care about the  disorder and who would be happy to adopt, but she had difficulty getting  past the fact that she literally carried death in her genes.

In retrospect, it had been a huge mistake giving in to the temptation  to design a wedding that patently did not go with a marriage of  convenience. It smacked of wish fulfilment, and it had opened up a  Pandora's box of needs and desires she had thought she had put behind  her. She should have settled for a registry office ceremony. No fuss, no  bother, no emotion.

Pinning a smile on her face, she breezed through the large bustling  kitchen and waved at the head chef, Jerome, a Parisian with two Michelin  stars. Jerome had designed the menu personally for her. He sent her an  intense look brimming with passionate outrage and sympathy, even though  he knew she had managed to sell the wedding on to a couple who had been  desperate to marry quickly, owing to a surprise pregnancy.

Eva flinched at the concept that her pretty young bride not only had  her perfect wedding, but was also pregnant. She could not afford to  dwell on the painful issue that while she could not have children, other  women could, and at the drop of a hat.

Keeping her professional smile firmly fixed, Eva fished her menu out of  her bag and ran through it with Jerome. For once there were no  last-minute glitches. Every aspect of this wedding appeared to be  abnormally perfect. After dutifully admiring the exquisite mountain of  cupcakes, which Jerome was decorating-her favorite forbidden snack-she  escaped back to the reception room before he could toss his icing  palette knife down and pull her into a comforting bear hug.                       
       
           



       

Kyle had proposed.

The kitchen doors made a swishing sound as they swung closed behind  her. Eva stared blindly at the crisp white damask on the tables, the  sparkle of crystal chandeliers and lavish clusters of white roses. She  did not know why Kyle had the power to upset her so. It wasn't as if she  was immersed in the painful, oversentimental first love that had  gripped her at age seventeen. It wasn't as if she still wanted him.

As the wedding guests began to spill through the doors, she rummaged in  her handbag, found and slipped on a pair of the most unflattering  glasses she'd been able to buy. The lenses were fake, just plain glass,  but the heavy, dark rims served to deflect the attention that her good  looks usually attracted.

Fixing a smile on her face, she did a brisk circuit of the main  reception room, which she and her assistant, Jacinta, had dressed  earlier. Waiters were loading silver trays with flutes filled with  extremely good champagne she had sourced from an organic vineyard. Trays  of her favorite canapés from the five-star kitchen were lined up in the  servery.

The reception was heartbreakingly gorgeous. Since it was supposed to  have been her own, she had put a great deal of thought into every  detail, no expense spared. The only consolation was that she would be  very well paid. And, in three weeks' time, if she was still unwed, she  would be in desperate need of cash in order to retain her house and keep  her business afloat.

The doors to the kitchens behind her swished open as guests began to  seat themselves at tables. Jacinta Doyle, her sleekly efficient personal  assistant, came to stand beside her, a folder in one hand. Jacinta gave  her a look laden with sympathy but, tactfully, kept things  businesslike. Halfway through a list of minor details, she stopped dead.  "Who is that?"