Page 1 of Marry Me…Maybe?
1
Emily Applegate swung her motorbike in through the open gates of the grand Buckinghamshire estate and screeched to a halt in the car park allocated to visitors. Snatching the keys out of the ignition, she dismounted in one smooth, practised movement.
Leaving her crash helmet swinging from the handlebars, she marched up the sweeping driveway towards the imposing Elizabethan mansion that sprawled like a hubristic monarch before her.
The heels of her biker boots dug into the golden gravel with a satisfying crunch as she made a beeline for the front entrance.
She was going to have someone’s head – namely the stuck-up Lord of the Manor who’d had the gall to cancel her best friend’s booking to use this grand house for her wedding reception only one month before the event.
Ignoring the glares of the two imperious-looking stone lions that guarded the door, she raised the heavy brass knocker and hammered it down hard three times, the tension in her fists matching the determined clench of her jaw.
You did not do that to a bride-to-be. Especially not someone as sweet-natured as her best friend, Lula. The poor woman didn’tneed complications like this right before the most hotly anticipated event of her life.
She knew from numerous tipsy conversations with Lula over the years that her friend had been dreaming about her wedding day forever. In fact, the fantasy of happy-ever-after had been the thing that had helped keep her friend positive through an emotionally isolated youth with parents who didn’t give two hoots about her.
Their miserable childhoods had actually been the common denominator they’d bonded over after meeting at university, and the fact that they understood and identified with each other’s pain had kept them bound together ever since.
It was funny how they’d reacted to their loveless childhoods in totally different ways: Lula had been determined to marry well, and was convinced her life would be complete once she did, whereas Emily was determined never to rely on a man to make her happy.
The men she’d had relationships with over the years had only ever been interested in her as a good-time girl anyway; but that suited her just fine. All she wanted were good times. There had already been enough bad to last her a lifetime.
And, anyway, she dealt with enough stress fighting to maintain her public profile as host of the popular TV showTreasure Trail. She certainly didn’t need the added hassle of worrying about whether or not a guy was going to call her on top of that.
Not that she believed every man in the world was more trouble than he was worth. To give him his due, Emily knew that Lula’s husband-to-be, Tristan, would have been here to sort this mess out himself if he hadn’t been away in China on business. He was a good guy. One of the very few she’d met. She was glad to have the opportunity to step in on his behalf to help her friend with this crisis today. Lula wasn’t exactly a big fan of confrontation – in fact,Emily knew the thought of coming here herself would have made her friend feel physically sick.
She missed their closeness now that Lu had Tristan to confide in. Lula was the only person in the world who really knew her – who loved her for who she was – and she wanted her friend to know just how much that meant to her.
How muchshemeant to her.
She waited for a few more tense seconds before hammering on the door again, the noise making a dull reverberating echo somewhere deep in the heart of the building.
It sounded very empty in there.
A bit like its owner’s head.
After another minute of frustrated knocking, Emily became aware of a low rumbling noise coming from somewhere behind her. Turning to locate its source, she noticed an open door in one of the mews buildings that must have once served as the stables for the estate.
Perhaps there was a groundskeeper in there who could point her in the direction of the troublesome toff of an owner, so she could let His Lordship know exactly what she thought of him for so casually ruining her friend’s wedding plans.
As she approached the open doorway, she could make out the figure of a man bent over some kind of industrial-looking machine as he worked with a large piece of sheet metal. She couldn’t see his face clearly because he was wearing Perspex goggles to protect his eyes, and his jaw was covered in what must have been a week’s worth of stubble, so her gaze roamed instead over the oil-stained white cotton T-shirt that stretched across his broad shoulders, then moved back up to his head of sandy brown hair that fell across his forehead in artful clumps, as if he’d deliberately styled it that way – although, based on the rest of his dishevelled appearance, she very much doubted that he had.
She watched with interest as he took a step to the left and seamlessly switched tools, the hand-held machine sending out a shower of sparks that filled the air with silvery-blue shooting stars.
There was no point in trying to grab his attention with all the pyrotechnics going on, so she settled in to ogle the rest of him instead, taking a moment to appreciate the strong contours of his frame: the dip of his waist leading to the lean line of his hips and the long, muscled legs encased in oil-stained, multi-pocketed combat shorts. She could see a spanner sticking out of one pocket, and what looked like a piece of torn sandpaper out of another.
Her gaze dropped further as she noticed a line of dripped grease on one of his robust-looking calves, and she fantasised for a second about what it might feel like to slide her fingertips over the oily, toned muscles there.
She shivered in imagined pleasure.
There was something insanely hot about this man, looking all roughed up and dirty as he did, and a low, familiar throb began to beat deep inside her.
Judging by her body’s fiery reaction to him, it had clearly been far too long since she’d last had sex. After spending the last couple of months working flat-out filming her show, not allowing any distractions to tempt her, this guy appeared to have rekindled her voracious sexual appetite, and it was now back with a vengeance.
The sparks and noise stopped abruptly and he turned away from the machine to lob a heavy-looking clamp onto a bench to the side him, where it bounced and settled with a loud clunk-clank.
Something was clearly bugging him today too, if the tension in those work-honed shoulders was anything to go by.
The hairs on the back of her neck lifted as she became aware that he’d finally noticed her standing there and had shoved his goggles onto the top of his head so he could give her an impatientglare, one eyebrow raised in apparent annoyance at her unexpected appearance.
