The Bachelor's Bargain. Jessica Steele

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      CHAPTER THREE

      SUNDAY passed with Merren unable to get Jarad Montgomery out of her head. Today it seemed incredible to her that all she had to do to earn the money he had so generously given her was to pretend, though only to his mother and sister, that she and Jarad were an ‘item’.

      All she had to do in order to earn that ‘retainer’, it seemed, was to respond to a telephone call—that, according to Jarad, might never come—and rush to his home. Merren owned that she wasn’t very comfortable with the idea of having taken that money when most likely she would have to do absolutely nothing to earn it. On the other hand, she wasn’t very comfortable either with the notion of deliberately taking part in the deception of his two female relatives if called upon to do so.

      Having thought that, as the days progressed, the arrangement she had agreed with Jarad would sit more comfortably with her, she found herself mistaken. She woke up on Monday—and it didn’t seem right. And on Tuesday she knew that it just wasn’t right—and that nothing would make it right. Nothing would except paying him back that two thousand. It had nothing to do with pride—they had made a bargain. But she was getting the better part of the bargain—and she should never have agreed to it, should never have taken the money.

      Merren couldn’t think what else she could have done in the circumstances but have agreed to it—and have taken that money. But as she made her way home from her place of work that night—Robert had borrowed her car—she decided that as soon as her brother found himself a job and was no longer in need of her help she would start saving, and would pay Jarad Montgomery back every penny.

      Perhaps it was pride after all, she mused as she turned into the avenue where she lived. In any event, it was important to her that she lost the ‘waif and stray’ label that Jarad had once stuck on her.

      All thoughts of the man she had made that most unusual contract with went abruptly, though only temporarily, from her mind when, reaching the house, she saw a dilapidated old car standing on the drive.

      Hoping against hope that Robert hadn’t accumulated fresh debt by purchasing the piece of scrap metal, or, worse, that he hadn’t done a part exchange deal, handing her car in for cash and that rusting heap, Merren hurried indoors and was relived on two fronts. The car wasn’t a new acquisition of her brother’s. It belonged to her father—her father had arrived.

      ‘When did you get here?’ she asked, after greeting him.

      ‘About ten minutes ago. Carol was going to make me something to eat, but…’

      Carol, a tired and worn-out-looking Carol had her hands full with yelling Samuel and peevish Queenie and Kitty, who ‘didn’t want to’ whatever was suggested.

      Merren automatically held out her arms for the baby. He still yelled, but at least Carol looked relieved to hand him over for a few minutes while she had a stern parental word with her daughters.

      ‘Can you stay for a few days?’ Merren asked her father, when the baby’s cries had lessened a few decibels.

      ‘I thought I might,’ he replied, and Merren relinquished the attic bedroom, to which she had so recently moved. Still, the sitting room sofa was large, and at five foot eight, she was of slender build, and it would only be for a few days.

      She heard her car on the drive, and when Robert came in, and had greeted their father, she handed the baby to her brother and set about making a meal for them all. She sorely wanted to ask her father if he’d received her letter, if he’d arrived in response to it. Oh, wouldn’t it be wonderful if he’d come to help them out of the financial mess they were in?

      Correction, the financial mess she was in. By now Robert was debt-free. But she would much prefer to owe her father two thousand than she would Jarad Montgomery.