Конкурент. Уровень 4: 1100 слов. Вэнь Цзиньхай

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СКАЧАТЬ good in an emergency. By all accounts, he’d handled the discovery that his fiancée had slept with his brother less than twenty-four hours before their wedding with remarkable aplomb. He’d managed the news that he was about to inherit sole responsibility for a multinational media conglomerate without breaking a sweat. He’d even let the aforementioned fiancée, Helena’s sister, run out and elope with her true love moments before the wedding without looking particularly perturbed.

      But apparently Helena in her underwear was pushing him too far.

      With a sigh, she turned to present him with her back and the offending zip. ‘Just undo me, yeah?’

      Flynn hesitated a moment before she felt his warm fingertips against her back. ‘Why am I doing this?’

      ‘Because I need to get changed. Into that.’ She pointed at the wedding dress and felt Flynn’s hands still at her back.

      ‘No. No, you don’t. We’ll just go down to the church and...’

      She spun round to face him. ‘And what? Tell every business associate you have plus a nice collection of reporters—not to mention both sets of parents—that the wedding of the year is off?’ Helena shook her head. That option was very firmly a last resort. Never mind the tabloid fallout, or the impact on company shares—her father would have a heart attack.

      ‘Surely that has to be better than us getting...’ He waved a hand between them and she rolled her eyes.

      ‘Married, Flynn. Go on, you can say it. It’s not actually a dirty word. You were all set to do it with my sister, and I suspect you weren’t any more in love with her than she was with you. As evidenced by the fact you just told her to elope with Zeke.’

      ‘That was different,’ Flynn argued. ‘Thea and I had a plan. There was...paperwork.’

      The man was completely business bound. Grabbing the file the wedding planner had put together for Thea, Helena pulled out a spare invitation, grabbed the pen from its loop and scratched out her sister’s name to replace it with her own. Then, as an afterthought, she scribbled a few lines on the back on it. ‘Paperwork,’ she said, handing it to Flynn. ‘Happy now?’

      ‘“I, Helena Morrison, promise to marry Flynn Ashton purely to avoid the hideous fallout of my sister’s elopement,”’ Flynn read. ‘Helena, this is—’

      ‘Keep going.’ Helena reached behind her to try and work the zip down the last few inches, finally succeeding in wriggling the strapless dress past her hips and into a heap on the floor.

      Flynn turned his back on her, and Helena bit back a smile. He was so proper.

      ‘“Furthermore, I agree to renegotiate this contract once the official Morrison-Ashton company business issue thing is dealt with. Signed, Helena Morrison.”’ He placed the makeshift contract carefully on the table as if it were a real and important document. ‘Company business issue thing?’ he asked, sounding puzzled.

      ‘You know—the whole reason you and Thea were supposed to be getting married in the first place. Whatever that was.’ Helena stepped into her sister’s wedding dress and prayed to God that it fitted well enough to avoid comment. Thea was taller by a couple of inches and Helena had more in the way of curves, but as long as it did up and she could avoid tripping over the hem she’d probably be okay.

      ‘To join both sides of the business and provide...well, to give the company an heir.’

      An heir. A child. Maybe even children, plural. Helena swallowed, then pulled the wedding dress up over her chest. She’d cross that very high and scary bridge when she got to it. Or not. Maybe she could dig a tunnel instead...

      Okay, thinking was clearly not her friend today. The exhilaration of Thea’s escape, of being the one left behind to fix things, of this whole crazy plan, thrummed through her veins. She felt high on excitement in a way she hadn’t since she was sixteen.

      What she was about to do might be insane but at least it made her feel alive.

      For now, at least. ‘This doesn’t have to be a permanent arrangement, anyway,’ she said, manoeuvring herself around to Flynn’s side, wedding dress still trailing. ‘Lace me up?’ No zips for the bride. Apparently corset ties were the order of the day.

      He obliged without argument, yanking the ties more than tight enough to keep the dress up and tying them in a very efficient bow at the base of her spine. Apparently she was about to marry the one straight man in Europe more comfortable with putting clothes on a woman than taking them off.

      ‘That wasn’t the arrangement with Thea,’ he told her.

      Helena spun round to face him, a fake smile on her face. ‘Yes, well. I’m not Thea, am I?’ Something she seemed to have been pointing out to disappointed friends, relatives and acquaintances for most of her life. Mostly her father, first wondering why she couldn’t be better behaved, more obedient, less trouble. Until trouble had caught up with her at last and suddenly she was perfectly happy to stay home, stay out of trouble, stay safe.

      But it hadn’t been enough. Then he’d wanted to know why she couldn’t have her sister’s drive, or brains, or brilliance. Never mind that she was less trouble than Thea at last, that she kept their whole family on an even keel, dealing with the fallout from Thea’s latest romantic mishaps.

      Just like today, really.

      This. This one thing—marrying her own sister’s fiancé to safeguard the family name, business and reputation—if this didn’t make up for the mistakes of her past, nothing ever would. This was her chance.

      She could be enough for Flynn. She might not be Thea, but she was still a Morrison. She could give him what he needed, and maybe marrying him could give her absolution after eight long years in the wilderness.

      As long as he never found out why she needed absolution. Flynn, of all people, would never understand that.

      Flynn’s eyes were serious as she looked into them, steady and firm, and Helena’s smile slipped away. He was the ultimate man with the plan, she remembered from overheard business talk and the endless wedding preparations. Could he even do this? Be spontaneous enough to marry a stand-in bride?

      ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ he asked, and Helena rolled her eyes.

      ‘I don’t think either of us can be sure about that, given that we’ve had all of about five minutes to think about it.’ There was always a chance that she’d regret this moment, this idea for the rest of her life. But right then...the risk seemed worth it.

      ‘I will walk down there and tell everyone it’s off,’ Flynn said. ‘Just say the word, and you’re free.’

      Somehow, Helena knew that he’d planned to say those words anyway. That he’d have given Thea a last-minute out too, even if Zeke hadn’t come home for the wedding. Flynn was a fair, kind, considerate man. And he might not have been the husband she’d imagined for herself, not least because he was supposed to have been her brother-in-law, but she could have done a lot worse. He was a safe choice. He’d never force her, or trick her or be anything but upfront and honest. It was...refreshing.

      This could work, one way or another. Maybe they could make a friendly marriage, for the sake of the family and the business. Or, more likely, it might last a month and then they’d quietly end the whole СКАЧАТЬ