Page 45 of Bride Under Contract

She watched his shoulders shrug in a half-laugh.

‘True.’

He turned and gave her a smile that would melt the ice from the snow-caps, but she refused to return it.

‘It’s an offer, Grace, not a demand. You have to have been in the district for seven days before we can put in an application for marriage—that’s tomorrow. Twenty-one days after that we could marry and—’

‘La, la, la...’ She put her fingers in her ears and then removed them. ‘I am not discussing this, Carter. What happened to my no-strings one-night stand?’

‘He found out she was tough.’

She wasn’t, though, Grace thought. At least not when it came to Carter. Right now, her blasé reaction was all bravado.

When she’d realised he wasn’t joking, his offer had stunned her. The thought of securing her mother’s future had been foremost in her mind for so long, and she’d have been lying to herself to deny she’d glimpsed a solution. More worrying, though, had been a lurch of hope that their time together wasn’t quite over.

She’d tried to nullify that thought, of course. To remind herself it was a financial proposal he was putting to her, rather than a romantic one. Yet with her body still tender from their night, and her heart open to a man for the first time, Grace was finding it hard to extract emotion from the business deal on offer.

Sex?

A year...?

Grace stole a look at his broad back as he casually steered, her eyes drifting over the narrow hips and firm buttocks. It was impossible not to wonder if this arrangement included bed.

A year with Carter... As if the years she’d missed out on were all condensed into a delicious one.

As if he could sense her sudden longing he glanced over his shoulder. ‘Give it some consideration,’ he said, before turning his attention back to the river.

Rather than doing that, she looked at the chipped coral nail varnish on her toenails, wishing she’d thought to bring nail varnish remover.

Oh, and a comb that wasn’t falling apart more with each passing day.

It was easier to focus on trivialities than just sit admiring his back, and she was far too distracted by his proposal to notice they were taking a different route from last night.

‘Grace?’ he said, and she realised the boat had halted.

It was at that very moment she knew Carter Bennett had ruined every future lover for her.

No moment, no matter how perfect, would ever come close to this.

At the call of her name she blinked and looked up, and saw they had come to a halt in a river that seemed to no longer exist. The brown water was spread with dark green leaves and stunning lilac flowers and the sky was the clearest blue she had seen it since her arrival.

It was as if they had landed in the jungle version of Monet’s garden.

Better, even, because she wasn’t gazing at an image—she was in the midst of it.

It was truly a halcyon moment, the silence broken only by the gentle lap of the water against the boat.

‘Where are we?’ she asked him.

‘Close to the resort,’ he said. ‘The tour boats are too big to get down here.’ He reached into the water and plucked one of the flowers and handed it to her. ‘Water hyacinths.’

‘Stunning.’

‘They’re taking over,’ he said.

In truth they were invasive, and clogging the rivers, but he chose not to spoil it for her because, yes, they were indeed beautiful.

Only that wasn’t why he had brought her here.

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