An Eligible Bachelor Read Online Free

asuspicious nature, or would have a clue how to get into Call Register on her tiny Nokia – he was the only man she’d ever met who didn’t know how to use a mobile phone – but it was better to cover your tracks when the stakes were this high.
    She sighed.
    ‘I suppose we’d better do a photocall. They won’t leave us alone until we do.’
    Guy was filled with panic.
    ‘Not today. I’ll need a shave. And a clean shirt. And…’
    Richenda wound her arms around his neck.
    ‘No, darling. Not today. Anyway, I want the world to see you as you really are. That’s the whole point. That’s why I love you. Because you don’t pretend.’
    ‘So what will the headline be? Beauty and the Beast?’
    He scraped his stubble against her cleavage. She squealed with delight, then took his head between her hands, forcing him to look at her.
    ‘Seriously. We need to do something official or there’ll be photographers crawling all over the place.’
    Guy’s face clouded over.
    ‘OK. But do me a favour. Can we wait until I talk to my mother? I don’t want her finding out we’re engaged when the hired help comes in brandishing the News of the World. ’
    ‘Not the News of the World ,’ corrected Richenda. ‘The Daily Post Cindy will have an exclusive.’
    ‘Whatever,’ said Guy, with a slightly sinking heart, and swearing inwardly that he would never touch Taylor’s again.
2
    Guy took his mother to the Honeycote Arms. The pub in Eversleigh was perfectly good for a quick pint, but the food was acknowledged as dreadful, serving either soggy baguettes or rock-hard scampi. The Honeycote Arms, by contrast, was an epicurean paradise, warm and welcoming, and Guy managed to secure a table in the bar by the fire that was well out of earshot of the other diners. He installed his mother in the more comfortable of the chairs, and went over to the bar.
    While he waited to be served – the Honeycote Arms was always buzzing at lunchtime – he took a moment to ponder his predicament. Things had happened rather fast for Guy that day: in an ideal world after last night’s party he wouldn’t have been long out of bed, but waking up to find himself engaged had brought with it a sense of urgency that couldn’t be ignored. Swept along by the momentum, this was the first moment he had had to draw breath and analyse his true feelings.
    When he’d first met Richenda, he couldn’t deny that he’d thought of her as a novelty, a delicious little pleasure to indulge in while he went about his daily tasks, a consolation prize for being dragged back to do his filial duty. They were, he considered, borderline obsessed with each other, but he had to admit the relationship was largely based on walks in the wood, fireside suppers in this verypub and rather a lot of furtive sex – they had to avoid the rest of the film crew and his mother, which of course made it all the more thrilling. Yet Guy had assumed that once filming had finished, Richenda would drift back to London, that their relationship would wither and die, like a holiday romance. Somewhere along the line, things had changed – to the point that she was about to become his wife!
    It had certainly taken him by surprise, for he wasn’t the type to be trapped into marriage. Indeed, he’d spent many years dodging commitment; had become rather expert at extricating himself from relationships as soon as they showed any sign of becoming serious. For Guy had a somewhat misguided conviction that women were buying into a package rather than him, that it was the lure of being the lady of the manor that made him attractive. It was why he spent so much time travelling. When you met a girl in the surf of Sri Lanka, or in a hot, sweaty club in Havana, they weren’t aware that thousands of miles away sat a pile of Cotswold stone that made him the most eligible bachelor for miles around. But even then, he hadn’t met the right girl for him, because at the end of the day he knew his future lay at