Free A Spanish Engagement by Kathryn Ross

disconcerted her slightly. He turned the key in the ignition and the powerful engine hummed into life.
    ‘So what exactly is this favour?’ she asked curiously.
    He turned the car out of the parking space and up into the bright sunlight of the day before answering. ‘What I need is a similar acting job with my family.’ He flicked a wry glance over at her. ‘We’ll interlock. You pretend to be my fiancée, I pretend to be yours; a nice businesslike arrangement that will make everyone happy.’
    He sounded like her boss José, when he was closing a deal. Only this wasn’t business, this was playing with people’s emotions, and Carrie felt more than a twinge of misgiving. ‘I don’t understand. Why do you need a fiancée?’
    ‘My father has found out Manuel is leaving. And the timing couldn’t be worse. He’s started talking about going back into the office, says he will go back as soon as they discharge him from the hospital on Monday.’ Max stopped the car at some traffic lights and drummed hisfingertips on the steering wheel. ‘I’ve told him not to worry, that I will take over, but he’s stubbornly refusing to accept the offer. He says that I haven’t got the passion for the land. That if I had I would have settled down with a nice girl and raised a family.’ He glanced across at Carrie with a look of grim concern in his eyes. ‘The specialist has told my mother that if he goes back to the pressures of work his health will diminish rapidly. She’s worried sick…we all are.’
    The traffic lights changed. ‘Which way to your apartment?’ Max asked, ignoring the blare of horns behind them as he paused.
    ‘You need to turn left at the next junction.’ She watched as he manoeuvred through the busy lanes of cars. ‘So you think if you introduce me as your fiancée that your father will feel better about handing things over to you?’
    ‘It will prove to him that I’m serious about taking over. Which I am, incidentally.’ Max glanced over at her. ‘But having you on side will help convince him of that; it will buy some time, stop him fretting.’
    ‘Yes, but it’s just a pretence, Max.’ She shook her head. ‘How will your father feel when you tell him a little while later that our fake engagement is off?’
    ‘I suppose he’ll feel the same as Carmel and Bob will,’ Max said. ‘But he’ll just have to get over it. These things happen. Relationships fail. We just have to deal with it and move on.’
    Carrie glanced over at him, noting the hard edge, the quiet inevitability to those words. Max Santos was obviously a realist; he’d weighed up the pros and cons in a coolly businesslike way and had decided that the end justified the means. She wondered if it was his high-flyingjob that had given him that forceful edge, or something else—something more personal from his past.
    ‘Which is why I suggest we just keep up the pretence for as long as we can…’ Max continued crisply. ‘That way we are buying time and, I know it’s a cliché, but time is a healer. In that space my father can rest, and Carmel and Bob can come to terms with Tony’s death and this change of circumstances.’
    Carrie didn’t say anything for a moment. What he had said made a kind of sense. Seeing how Carmel and Bob had relaxed around Max today had made everything seem normal and under control, and for a while the lifting of tension had been a blissful relief.
    ‘It almost sounds practical when you put it like that,’ she murmured.
    ‘I think it is practical,’ Max said firmly. ‘We are both single, and neither of us wants a heavy commitment. This arrangement could work perfectly. Unless, of course, you have a boyfriend somewhere in the background who is going to kick up a fuss.’
    ‘No, there is no boyfriend,’ Carrie said quietly.
    ‘So no skeletons are going to fall out of closets, then?’ he persisted. ‘It’s just that Carmel mentioned over lunch that Tony had told her you were dating someone in