Page 29 of Emergency Engagement

‘I feel this is a “wait and see”situation,’ he murmured in return but then he clasped her hand under the table, resting it on his thigh. Sammy felt herself relax just a little.

‘To the love birds!’ Victoria pinned her eyes on them and raised her glass. Everyone else duly raised theirs too and Sammy decided that she could deal with a drunken toast to love birds.

‘Who would have thought? What a shock for the man who lives in the gossip columns to have finally found true love, and soquickly!’

Sammy’s smile froze and her fingers curled a little more tightly with Rafael’s.

‘I just hope it’s the real deal!’ Victoria waggled her finger in a reproving manner while everyone began to look just a tiny bit uncomfortable. ‘Because this is one very special lady!’

‘That’s enough, Victoria.’ Clement’s voice was mild but sufficiently commanding for her to hesitate and glance down at him.

‘I just want to wish the happy couple my congratulations!’ Victoria pouted. She stroked Clement’s head and swigged some champagne for good measure. Then she looked back at them and flashed her eyes with teasing intent. ‘So, can you tell us if we all need to start looking for wedding hats...?’

Sammy froze. She felt Rafael tense next to her. He rose to his feet, coolly thanked Victoria for her good wishes and thenlooked at Clement. ‘I think,’ he murmured, ‘that girlfriend of yours needs to get some beauty sleep just as soon as dessert is done and dusted. A little too much champagne can sometimes be a very bad idea.’

It wrapped up the moment of awkwardness, but twenty minutes later, with everyone tired and yawning and the conversation back to less fraught topics, Clement paused by Rafael. He looked at him, then at Sammy, with a smile.

‘Well, my boy.’ He leant towards them, his eyes sharp and as bright as a sparrow’s. ‘You’ve found yourself a good one here.’

Sammy blushed. Her gut feeling was that Rafael might perhaps disagree with that statement, considering they’d only been thrown into this situation by a series of unfortunate events.

‘Victoria may have had a little too much of the fine stuff for her own good, but she was spot-on when she said that this is a very special lady.’ He tapped the side of his nose and smiled. ‘Love at first sight—although it’s not quite that in your case—is certainly to be recommended. My Gail and I fell in love and within minutes I knew that I was going to marry her.’

His voice was wistful. ‘I thoroughly approve. So, if a proposal is on the cards, then you truly have my congratulations. It certainly is a fine thought to know that the company my dear wife and I built together will be under the auspices of a family man whose heart is in the right place.’

He straightened and nodded to Victoria, who was fidgeting in the background. She followed him out of the room along with everyone else, leaving Sammy and Rafael in the dining room on their own.

Rafael rose and immediately went to a sideboard and helped himself to some whisky, grabbing a glass of wine for Sammy. He shut the door to the dining room and slanted a glance at the remains of the day: plates, glasses and yet more glasses and bottles, all to be cleared later. Right now, he was busy wondering what the hell had just happened.

‘So...’ He sat, manoeuvring his chair so that he was facing her and leaned his long legs to one side.

‘So...’ Sammy parroted dubiously.

‘Victoria was just mischief-making.’

‘She implied that we were about to get married. We’ve gone from being an item to being practically engaged. I’m not sure I’m that comfortable with that.’

‘Why? One remark about wedding hats from someone who’d had too much to drink does not an impending marriage make.’

‘Why?Why?Engagements and weddings are serious business! At least, they are to people like me who live in the real world.’

‘My world’s very real.’

Sammy swept aside that interruption and fixed him with a baleful stare. ‘Plus, poor Clement seems to now think that wedding rings are going to be exchanged.’

‘Yes, that’s a little unfortunate,’ Rafael admitted. ‘He may have gone off the rails with Victoria in an attempt to distract himself from his grief, but he’s always been a family guy, and the fact that he now assumes that I’m a reformed character might ease any lingering doubts he might have about this deal.’

‘Is that likely? I thought it was all but done and dusted.’

‘To quote that well-worn saying, “there’s many a slip twixt cup and lip”...I wouldn’t want him to start suspecting that there’s anything fishy going on.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘You shouldn’t have been so charming.’

Rafael sipped his drink and looked at her. She was blushing. He’d never met any woman who blushed as much as she did, but then, she had none of the hard edges of the women he dated. She was basically a country girl with wide-eyed dreams who believed in love and romance. As she’d just said, engagements and weddings were a serious business. She’d been his fake girlfriend and now practically his fake fiancée—at least while they were out here—and he definitely shouldn’t look at her the way he was doing now. He lowered his eyes even though he could still see her image printed on his retina.

‘Nothing changes,’ he said gruffly. ‘Victoria knows where her bread is temporarily buttered and, as you can see, she may tower over Clement but he’s still the guy in charge.’

‘It just feels as though we’re on a slippery slope...’

‘Same slope, different wording. ‘Fiancée’ implies commitment, a bond that goes beyond two people in it for a bit of fun. We could start launching into disclaimer speeches but my feeling is that that would just end up muddying the waters. This deal is hugely important and not just to me. The ripples of its outcome will be felt by many. There’s nothing to worry about—after all, what’s a fiancée but a partner with a ring on her finger?’

---