The Prospective Wife

“You’ve got it all wrong. I don’t want to marry you—I don’t even like you!”

There was a startled pause, during which Kat prayed for the ground to open up and swallow her.

“I have to tell you there are some serious flaws in your seduction technique, Miss Wray,” Matt Devlin told her.

Kat’s cheeks grew hotter as she squirmed under Matt’s scrutiny….

KIM LAWRENCE lives on a farm in rural Anglesey, Wales. She runs two miles daily and finds this an excellent opportunity to unwind and seek inspiration for her writing! It also helps her keep up with her husband, two active sons and the various stray animals that have adopted them. Always a fanatical consumer of fiction, she is now equally enthusiastic about writing. She loves a happy ending!

Kim Lawrence’s fast-paced, sassy books are real page-turners. She creates characters you’ll never forget, and sensual tension you won’t be able to resist….

The Prospective Wife

Kim Lawrence

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER ONE

CAUGHT between a rock and a hard place the unfortunate orderly began to sweat. He’d met some real hard cases in his time, but this black-haired bloke, who even on crutches towered over him, could have given the hardest of those tough characters a run for their money! It was something about those eyes, he concluded with a shudder, as he became unable to maintain eye contact with those electric blue orbs any longer.

Truth to tell, he’d always felt slightly scornful of his colleagues, who tended to be intimidated by some of the rich and famous patients who stayed at the exclusive clinic. It was a matter of pride with him…no obsequious grovelling to the spoilt and pampered. He was polite, but he didn’t treat them any differently than he would the ordinary man in the street. In his own defence there was no way this bloke was going to be mistaken for a man in the street, and that circumstance had nothing whatever to do with money.

‘Sister said…’ he began to protest weakly.

‘Take the wheelchair away.’

No shouting, no red-faced blustering, but he still managed to put an indefinable something into his voice that made your blood run cold.

‘Sister Nash said you’ve got to leave in a wheelchair.’

Matthew Devlin permitted himself a thin-lipped smile and remained blissfully unaware that the streetwise young man in front of him found it deeply sinister.

‘Sister Nash knows my opinion of wheelchairs.’

The redoubtable Sister Nash knew Matt’s opinion on a lot of subjects; they’d had many a clash of wills over the past few weeks.

‘Listen, mate.’ The harassed orderly made a last-ditch man-to-man appeal. ‘Maybe you don’t need the wheelchair, maybe you do; I don’t know. I do know you won’t be here tomorrow, but I will and so will Sister Nash. She can make life a misery.’

‘Thanks, Martin. I’ll see Mr Devlin off the premises.’

The orderly turned with an expression of relief to see Andrew Metcalf standing in the doorway.

‘Cheers, Doc!’ He gave him a grateful look and didn’t hang around to find out if his appeal had found a sympathetic ear.

‘Well, Matt, harassing my staff to the bitter end, I see…’

Matthew Devlin snorted. ‘That’s pretty rich, coming from you! If it’s not beneath your dignity—’ he nudged a slim leather briefcase with his toe ‘—carry that for me.’ As much as he hated asking for help, sometimes there was no alternative.

The curt unfriendly tone didn’t have any visible effect on the surgeon, who had a pretty shrewd idea of the frustration his patient was feeling.

‘I doubt if it’s on my job description but what the hell…for my favourite patient, why not?’

‘Is sarcasm in the job description?’ Matt gritted, swinging his crutches into action. Even though this posture robbed him of several inches, he was still a good head taller than the other man.

‘You’re in a hurry,’ the doctor observed, increasing his pace to keep up with the cracking pace Matt had set. ‘Anyone would think you didn’t like us…’

‘If I ever develop a yen to live in a police state you’ll be the first person I think of, Doc,’ Matt promised grimly.

‘I suppose I’d be wasting my breath telling you not to discharge yourself…?’ Matt delivered a look that could have withered grapes on the vine. The doctor gave a philosophical shrug. ‘You can’t blame me for trying. You are, after all, one of my most amazing success stories. I’d hate to see you blow all that hard work for the want of a bit of patience.’

Matt’s smile was wintry. He’d made heavy inroads during the past few months into his limited patience reserves. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t do anything to ruin your reputation as a miracle-worker.’

Andrew Metcalf inclined his head in acceptance of the back-handed compliment. His expression was wry; he knew he was good, possibly the best, but he was a realist, and as much as he would have liked to claim all the credit for himself he knew that the speed and completeness of Matt’s recovery owed more to the man’s remarkable determination and steely willpower than anything else.

‘Back door to avoid the press…?’ He knew the routine; the clinic had had its fair share of celebrity patients.

‘I don’t see why I should make their lives easier, do you? Joe’s brought the car around.’

His doctor could see the reasoning behind this logic; he was pretty sure he might be a bit paranoid too if his personal life had been served up for public consumption as often as Matt Devlin’s had.

‘If you’re so bothered about security I’m surprised you’re not staying with your parents. Don’t they even have their own drawbridge…?’

‘Not to mention a moat, castle, and the best part of a village,’ Matt drawled languidly. ‘But no son… At least, not as far as my father’s concerned.’

The doctor looked at his patient’s perfectly proportioned, rather stern profile and wondered if he cared. You never could tell with Matt.

‘But…’ He stopped himself just in time from blurting out the information that Devlin senior, who had even more financial clout than his son, had forbidden any member of staff to mention. ‘I’d have thought the accident…’ he protested mildly.

‘It would take more than a near-death experience to make my father change his mind, Andrew. As far as he’s concerned I stopped being his son the day I didn’t do as he wanted. I’m the competition now…and he’d like nothing better than to ruin me.’

Andrew Metcalf was shocked by this cold-blooded analysis even though he knew it wasn’t strictly true.

‘Well, that’s not likely to happen, is it?’ he responded uncomfortably.

Despite the fact that after the somewhat mysterious departure of his more experienced partner the City had predicted disaster, it was well known that the airline Matt had started from very humble beginnings was now causing the big players who had scoffed—none louder than Matt’s own father, Connor Devlin—serious headaches.

‘Worried about your share dividend, Doc?’

Andrew grinned. He could afford to. Fair Flights was one of the financial success stories of the decade. ‘Actually, I do have a small sum invested.’

‘Then I’ll probably make you a very rich man,’ Matt announced with a total lack of modesty.

‘The rates we charge here and the amount of hardware in that leg, Matt, you already have…’

‘I’ve never actually done any private sector work, and to be honest it’s never really appealed.’

Despite her indifferent tone Kat was well aware she couldn’t afford to be picky when it came to jobs. In fact it was all she could do not to kiss the woman’s hand-made Italian shoes!

Kat’s anxiety began to mount as she watched Drusilla Devlin’s china-blue eyes drift around the forlorn-looking, half-empty sitting-room. Supposing I sounded too uninterested? It was one thing not wanting to come over as a charity case; it was another playing hard to get!

‘But you need work…?’

Kat felt a wave of relief. For a nasty moment there she’d thought she’d talked herself out a job.

‘Don’t we all?’

Well, not all, Kat silently conceded, realising that she was almost certainly speaking to someone who didn’t need to work. The chauffeur-driven limo Drusilla had driven up in had been ample proof of that.

Kat’s own situation wasn’t desperate, but it could get that way…and fast. Her godfather was executor of her mother’s estate and, even though he’d tried to break the news as gently as he could, Kat had been shocked to learn of the full extent of her mother’s debts. Kat had genuinely thought the gambling thing was in the past.

Apparently she wasn’t legally obliged to pay back the undocumented amounts of cash—some of them large—that her mother had borrowed from friends and family over a twelve-month period, but Kat was determined to pay back every penny!

It was a weight off her mind that the house had sold so swiftly; unfortunately this piece of good luck had left her without a roof over her head.

With very little in her bank account—the extended leave she’d taken to care for her mother during her final stages of her illness had been unpaid—she needed a job and somewhere to live.

Now here was a friend of Mum’s who, up until last month, they hadn’t seen for years, offering her both. It had to be fate!

She nudged the edge of a half-full packing case with the toe of her trainer. It was filled with the stuff the auctioneers hadn’t wanted.

‘People always want good physios, and I’ve heaps of experience. I’ll get a new job easily enough,’ she assured her affluent-looking visitor on an earnest, upbeat note.

‘But not your old one.’

‘No,’ Kat confirmed with a regretful sigh. ‘I knew they couldn’t hold it open indefinitely, but that might be a blessing in disguise.’

Drusilla wasn’t surprised to hear it. Five minutes after she’d met Kathleen Wray she had realised that her old friend’s daughter was as resiliently optimistic as she was beautiful. A few discreet enquiries into the girl’s financial situation, added to what Amy had told her, had revealed she’d need every ounce of that youthful resilience.

‘I’ve worked in the same hospital since I qualified—not exactly bold and adventurous.’

Drusilla wondered if Matthew would find the girl’s smile as enchanting as she did. A frown tugged at her seamless brow as she contemplated her son’s choice of female companionship.

‘I always meant to travel,’ Kat explained, her eyes shining with enthusiasm as visions of exotic sun-kissed shores rose tantalisingly before her eyes. ‘I just never got around to it somehow…’ The smile faded. ‘There’s nothing to keep me here any more.’

Drusilla caught up the young woman’s hand in a comforting clasp. ‘You did everything you could for Amy, my dear,’ she insisted warmly. ‘And you must take comfort from the fact that in the end she was here amongst all the familiar things that were dear to her, and with the daughter I know she loved very much.’

The motherly patting on the arm made Kat’s wide-spaced grey eyes fill with tears—not that Drusilla Devlin, with her designer clothes, glossy hair and impossibly youthful face, was like any mother she knew.

‘You’re very kind. You say this job would only be short term…? It is a live in post…?’ That would solve her immediate problem.

Drusilla clapped her prettily kept hands in delight. ‘You’ll do it for me? Excellent!’

‘There is a job, isn’t there? You’re not just inventing one because you feel sorry for me…?’ Her doubts emerged gruffly as she wiped a hint of moisture from the corner of her eye. ‘Mum didn’t ask you to watch out for me…?’

Drusilla laughed. ‘Oh, there’s a job all right; you’ll definitely earn your money, my dear. Incidentally, you’ll be working for me, not Matthew.’

Kat nodded. That was understandable. If the man had been in hospital for six months it was likely he didn’t have the spare cash to pay for a private physiotherapist, and it was equally obvious his mother did.

‘I suppose it will be some time before he’ll be able to get back to work…I mean, pilots need to be very fit, don’t they?’

‘Pilots…?’

‘You did say he was piloting a helicopter when he was injured?’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

Drusilla was looking a bit uncomfortable and Kat cursed her own insensitivity at referring to the accident.

‘You’d probably be better off getting someone else,’ she felt impelled to point out. ‘You know I’ve specialised in working with children for several years now.’

‘That might come in very handy when dealing with Matthew,’ Matthew’s mother reflected drily. ‘At heart most men are little boys.’

Kat’s fuzzy mental image of an over-indulged mummy’s boy intensified.

‘The problem is he’s never had a day’s illness in his life and he’s not making the most patient patient, poor dear. He needs cheering up, and small wonder! That terrible accident was bad enough, but then that awful girl proceeded to dump him.’ The blue eyes flashed with maternal ire. ‘I suppose we ought to be grateful she waited for him to be taken off the critical list before she went ranting on hysterically to those awful newspapers about him never walking again! “Horribly disfigured,” I ask you…!’

Kat’s grey eyes softened with sympathy. ‘I didn’t know… They can do marvellous things with facial reconstruction.’

‘Heavens, no; there was hardly a mark on his face. Obviously you don’t escape such a horrific accident with no scars,’ Drusilla conceded. ‘But the main problem was being forced to lie flat on his back with the spinal injury for so long; he’s had far too much time to brood. I knew the moment I saw you that you were just the girl for the job!’

‘Let’s hope your son thinks the same.’

It seemed strange to Kat that her new patient wasn’t having any say in the choice of his physio, but then for all she knew he might be the sort of man who let Mummy buy his socks for him!

There were a lot of men out there who still relied heavily on their mothers well into their thirties—she’d met one or two herself. She sometimes wondered if something about her screamed ‘substitute mother’ they certainly seemed to gravitate towards her.

‘Oh, I’m sure Matthew will love you.’

Nothing could have been more heartily confident than Drusilla’s firm tone… So why was Kat getting the distinct impression things weren’t quite as straightforward as the older woman was implying?

‘He does know that you’re…?’

‘You might find Matthew a little…erm…resistant…’ Drusilla was obviously choosing her words with care. ‘But you must promise me one thing.’ Her blue eyes gleamed with urgency as she caught hold of Kat’s hand. ‘Don’t listen to him if he tells you he doesn’t need you. Promise me, Kathleen!’

Kat felt slightly uneasy and a little embarrassed by the older woman’s intensity. ‘You’re the boss,’ she agreed, a shade of unease in her voice.

Kat had appreciated that her mother’s childhood friend had married money, but she hadn’t appreciated how much money until she arrived at that lady’s country cottage. A shooting box for some titled lord originally, its rooms were all on a grand scale and the opulent decor which was sympathetic to the period was out of this world. She just knew she’d live in constant fear of breaking some priceless ornament.

After the housekeeper—Kat’s idea that her ill-defined duties might need to stretch as far as the kitchen and the odd bit of light housework were fast fading—had shown her to her room, where she’d found a large bouquet of flowers and a warm letter from Drusilla apologising for her absence, Kat had explored the neatly kept grounds.

She was repelling the over-friendly advances of a large bee which had detached itself from the low lavender hedge that ran the entire length of the neatly trimmed lawn when a gleaming black Jag drew up on the gravelled forecourt.

The opportunist bee took advantage of Kat’s lapse in concentration and stung her on the inner part of her exposed forearm—great timing! She was vaguely aware that a good deal of door-slamming and gravel-crunching was going on whilst she was hopping around biting her lips stoically.

Kat was just getting on top of the pain when she heard a deep gravelly voice bad-temperedly demand, ‘Well, don’t just stand there, Joe, get rid of her!’

The strong clipped tones didn’t fit with the firm image in her mind of a wan, pain-ravaged invalid. She opened her eyes and blinked back the tears of pain to find a tall gangly chap of about thirty looking anxiously down at her. He looked nice, but a picture of health.

‘Are you all right?’

‘I was stung by a bee.’ She peered towards the area of her arm which was already puffy and inflamed.

‘You poor thing. Let me have a look…’

So much for all the elaborate subterfuge to ensure his privacy! Someone at the hospital must have passed on the information to the press. Matt Devlin quickly got tired of waiting for Joe to get rid of the unwanted visitor and eased himself slowly from the low-slung vehicle. By the time he was standing on the gravelled forecourt beads of sweat stood out on his brow.

Matt propelled himself with the assistance of the much-despised crutches to find out what was taking so long. Once he was in a position to get his first proper view of the girl he stopped wondering.

Honey-blonde hair pulled back into a cute ponytail to reveal a simpering smile—that was no way genuine—pinned on a face that was all scrubbed cheeks, innocent big eyes and sexy lips. Then, last but not least—definitely not least—there was the body. No anorexic waif, this one; Lara Croft meets the girl next door! In short, the babe of dopes like Joe’s collective dreams.

Joe had a vacuous grin on his face. It made Matt feel embarrassed just to look at it; he’d seen sheep that looked more intelligent than his best friend did at this moment! A superior sneer tugged at the corners of his lips. The women in his dreams had more going for them than insipid prettiness.

‘Matt,’ Joe hailed him. ‘Kat here has been stung by a wasp.’

Matt watched sourly as he held the babe’s slim arm out for his inspection.

‘Bee,’ the babe said in a brisk, un-babe-like voice.

Matt found she was looking critically at himself, not Joe. Her eyes were large, clear grey, lushly fringed by dark curling lashes and tilted ever so slightly at the outer corners.

Bimbo, yes…brainless, no… No amount of mascara or cheesy grins could disguise the intelligence lurking in those crystal-clear depths.

‘Are you another one from that damned woman’s magazine? I’ve already told your editor where she can stick her story!’ He felt a surge of grim satisfaction as he watched her high-voltage smile gutter.

The reference meant nothing to Kat, so she could shake her head in vigorous denial with a clear conscience.

‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’ His silence oozed disbelief. ‘You are Matthew Devlin…?’ A case of mistaken identity…? The optimist in her soared before his abrasive response brought her crashing down to earth with a thud.

‘I know who I am. Who are you?’

Kat blinked several times, and tried not act as if she felt slightly singed by those blazing blue eyes. He was tall without being lanky, broad of shoulder without being bulky, and darkly beautiful in a dangerous Byronic hero sort of way…in short, a knock-out! She felt a spurt of indignation. Why hadn’t someone warned her?

In the masculine beauty stakes she’d have rated him, on a scale of one to ten, at a conservative twelve and a half! She couldn’t help but reflect that it would have been an aesthetic tragedy if a face like that had been scarred; as it was, the only immediate evidence of his injuries was a thin scar that ran from a point midway along his prominent cheekbone to his temple.

He’d probably laugh when she explained…they’d laugh together. Another look at that lean uncompromising face with its intriguing planes and angles told her that was taking optimism too far! Whatever else this job was going to be, it wasn’t going to be a laugh a minute.

To prove that she wasn’t intimidated—an uphill battle—she smiled serenely, and the dark fallen angel face didn’t budge. There wasn’t even the suggestion of a quiver around the beautifully sculpted lips.

Faced with belligerent antagonism on the face of her patient—and Kat was getting the distinct impression this wasn’t the sort of man who would respond to gentle understanding—she felt a twinge of nostalgia for the pale, pliable, mummy’s boy of her imagination.

There was nothing even faintly pliable about the man who was looking at her with the sort of affection most folk reserved for something nasty they’d discovered on their shoe! He might be using crutches but nothing about him said vulnerable. Even in less than full working order he exuded an almost tangible aura of restless vitality.

‘I’m Kathleen Wray.’

Illness must have taken its toll, but he wasn’t making any concessions to it. Probably those lines around his eyes and hard but sexy mouth hadn’t been so deeply ingrained before his accident; long-term pain probably had a lot to do with the faint blue smudges under those fairly spectacular eyes too. Those deep-set, heavy-lidded orbs were just as startlingly blue as his mother’s, but whereas hers sparkled with humour his held a restless almost explosive quality. In fact there was something combustible about the entire man!

‘Is that supposed to mean anything to me?’

‘I think maybe the sting’s still in,’ Joe fretted. ‘What are you supposed to use for bee stings—vinegar…?’

The babe firmly repossessed her arm. ‘I’ve got some hydrocortisone cream in my bag.’ She dismissed the throb in her arm with a careless shrug.

‘And where might your bag be?’ Matt asked, looking around for any sign of transport.

‘In my room.’ Her eyes innocently sought the second-floor window in an effort to locate the charming room she’d been allocated.

The significance of the gesture wasn’t lost on Matt. ‘Are you trying to tell me you’re actually staying here? What the hell’s going on?’ he barked.

‘I assumed you’d be expecting me. I’m your physiotherapist, Mr Devlin.’

‘Not the best cover story. I don’t have a physiotherapist.’

‘You mustn’t worry. Your mother…’ Matt watched as she gave a self-conscious glance towards Joe. The composed little voice with the husky rasp dropped to a confidential whisper. ‘She’s paying my salary.’

‘Hah!’ Matt wasn’t sure why he should be worried about her salary, but at the mention of his parent things started to make a lot more sense.

His mother was untiring in her determined efforts to fling females she considered suitable mates in his path, in the mistaken belief that a grandchild was the key to healing the rift between father and son.

‘My mother. I should have guessed.’

His scrutiny slid over Kat from head to toe in a boldly insolent way that had her chin automatically rising to an aggressive angle.

‘Impressive.’ His eyes lingered on the contours of her full breasts.

Which was more than could be said for his manners! But Kat could cope with crude sexual innuendo; she had stopped rounding her shoulders in a futile attempt to hide her womanly attributes when she was about fifteen. She squared said shoulders proudly and clung onto her temper with difficulty.

‘I’m terminating your contract, Blondie.’

That was the best news she’d heard for some time, and it was on the tip of her tongue to tell him so when she recalled the promise Drusilla had wrung out of her. Concentrating on the state of her debts made it easier to retain her composure.