The Prospective Wife

‘My name is Kathleen Wray. You can call me Miss Wray, or, at a push, Kat. I don’t answer to Blondie. And I’m not leaving until your mother tells me my services are no longer required.’ Her rigid stance faded as her stormy grey eyes softened. ‘Pride is all well and good, Mr Devlin,’ she announced in a kindly way. ‘But, whether you like it or not—’ she cast a swift professional eye over his tall, broad-shouldered figure ‘—you do need me.’

Matt looked baffled by her response.

‘Are you slow or what…?’ He didn’t need this, not now. He was in pain, hot, tired and had a damned hank of hair in his eyes and no free hand to push it away. As always the mortifying consequences of illness made him mad enough to yell and curse. It took a lot of self-control to restrain his inclination to indulge in both.

‘It’s probably the pain that’s making you so tetchy.’ She kept her tone objective, not that it made his reaction any the less hostile. From the way his eyes flashed and his jaw tightened, she assumed he took any reference to his physical weakness as a direct insult; some men were like that.

‘I’m not in pain!’ Matt bellowed, throwing self-restraint to the winds. The muscles down his left leg chose that precise moment to go into painful spasm. Matt swore under his breath and gritted his teeth against the pain.

‘I told you you shouldn’t have gone into the office.’ There was a concerned note in his friend’s voice.

‘Save your sanctimonious I-told-you-sos.’ Matt closed his eyes and forced himself not to fight the wave of pain. Experience had taught him tensing up only prolonged the spasms.

‘You didn’t bring him straight here from the hospital…?’

‘He wouldn’t let me.’

‘I really don’t see there was much he could do to stop you!’ Kat responded crisply.

Her eyes were compassionate as she looked at the tall figure who was obviously suffering considerable pain. When he tried to shrug off the supportive hand she placed beneath his elbow she diplomatically pretended not to notice his efforts to dislodge her light grip.

‘You don’t know Matt,’ Joe returned wryly.

Kat resisted the childish impulse to assure him she didn’t want to.

‘Let’s get him inside, shall we?’ Matt heard the bimbo say, just before he had to endure the ultimate indignity of being hustled like a baby through the door between his best friend and Blondie.

Dear God, it had been bad enough when those damned nurses had fussed and fretted; this was more than flesh and blood could be expected to take!

‘When did he last take his medication?’

Matt lifted his dark head from the brocade-covered chaise-longue they’d deposited him on. ‘What are you asking him for? I’m not dumb!’ he snarled.

‘We should be so lucky,’ his friend breathed quietly.

‘What was that, Joe…?’ Matt growled.

‘When did you last take any pain relief?’ You didn’t need to be psychic to figure out that wiping the sheen of perspiration from his furrowed brow would not go down well. Fortunately his colour was looking more healthy than it had outside.

Kat’s eyes slowly worked their way up the strong column of his throat to his lean, angular face. Though pale after his hospitalisation, Matthew Devlin had the sort of olive skin tones that would darken given the first hint of sunlight.

She had a sudden and deeply distracting image of him stretched out on a beach, his skin gleaming with a healthy glow. She gave her head the tiniest of shakes to dispel the unprofessional hallucination.

She gave a whimsical but worried grin. Just as well he didn’t have a personality to match his looks or she might have trouble staying impersonal! If someone had forced her to produce a fantasy lover he would have looked remarkably similar to Matthew Devlin—which just went to show that looks weren’t everything!

‘I need a drink, not a pill. Pass me a Scotch, Joe.’

Kat wondered if he ever said please as she laid a restraining hand on Joe’s arm.

‘I don’t suppose there’s any reason you can’t have both, but it depends on what sort of painkillers you’re taking.’

‘I’m not taking pain relief…I don’t need crutches of any sort,’ he announced with scornful and not strictly accurate distaste.

Lips compressed into a stubborn white line, he rose to his feet. Deliberately ignoring the crutches and his audience’s combined concern, he walked over to the drinks cabinet and poured himself a whisky.

Kat was pretty sure that every step he took was agony, but the only external evidence of this in his drawn face were the beads of sweat that appeared across his upper lip. The man had guts—she had to hand him that. It was just a pity he didn’t channel his energies into something more constructive than thumbing his nose at the world in general and her in particular!

He lifted the glass in a mocking salute before downing the amber liquid in one swallow.

‘A pill to go to sleep, another to wake…I’m not buying into that merry-go-round. I thought pain was the body’s way of telling a person something.’

Matt had been the soul of restraint up until very recently. Even when they hadn’t known how bad the spinal damage was, and life in a wheelchair had been a nightmare possibility, he’d managed to retain control of his stiff upper lip.

It had been the killing slowness of the whole convalescence thing that had finally made him snap. He was used to setting himself a goal and working towards it; he didn’t see why getting back to full fitness should be any different, but the blasted medics were constantly holding him back.

‘Going on the evidence so far, I rather doubt you’ve been listening to your body at all this morning, Mr Devlin.’

She’d seen his type before—though not quite so spectacularly packaged—the sort of man who’d push himself and his body to the limit of endurance and beyond. That sort of willpower was all very laudable, and probably made the person successful at anything he set his mind to—but it also made him a terrible patient!

‘My mother may think I need the attentions of some sultry little nursey…’

To Kat’s intense discomfort he did that undressing thing with his eyes again. She didn’t doubt for a second it was meant to unsettle her, but she’d not give him the satisfaction of showing how well the crude tactics worked.

‘…but I can assure you I don’t. So ignoring the fact I’ve fired you isn’t going to change my mind.’

It wasn’t a comfortable experience being pinned down by those arrogant eyes but Kat knew it would be fatal to back down at this point. However, facing down this man was proving to be one of the hardest things she’d ever done. It made her shudder to think how difficult it would be to thwart him when he was fully fit. She didn’t think she’d ever come across anyone who had such an ingrained aura of command.

‘I’m a physio, not a nurse.’

‘If you say so…’

Did the man think she was pretending, for God’s sake? Kat repressed the strong inclination to dig out her certificates and wave them under his infuriating nose.

‘Ignoring the fact you’ve got pain isn’t going to make it go away,’ she responded serenely.

Did she think he didn’t know that? Matt ground his teeth.

‘And being rude and unreasonable isn’t going to make me go away, either. I’ve worked with some very difficult children…’

A choking noise emerged from Joe’s throat. Matt was too stunned to notice his friend’s heaving shoulders.

‘Are you suggesting I’m acting like a child?’ he grated incredulously.

‘You’re only a child to your mother, Mr Devlin,’ she explained kindly. ‘To me you’re simply a client.’

The little witch was patronising him! The fact she looked like a fantasy figure made the fact she acted like a damned nanny all the more unpalatable. What sort of underwear did a nanny-pin-up hybrid wear—naughty black lace or prissy white cotton? His mental preoccupation with her damned underwear represented yet another example of his diminished mental control to Matt.

‘Client?’ he snarled. ‘A fancy name for a patient! Bloody doctors!’ he yelled, his frustration showing. ‘What do they know…?’

Hell! Why not go the whole way and stamp your feet, Matt? Small wonder her smile had a definite smug tinge to it. What, he wondered, had happened to the man of few words—none of them sulky—who could alter the course of a high-powered meeting with an effortlessly enigmatic look? It was humiliating to be forced to recognise he’d substituted infantile for enigmatic!

‘About flying a helicopter, probably nothing,’ she soothed. Matt was beginning to be able to predict the precise moment that dimple would peep out. ‘About relieving pain, hopefully quite a lot. It might seem very macho to suffer in silence, but there’s nothing particularly clever about suffering when there’s no need. There’s no disgrace in admitting you need help.’ With a small frown, her critical eyes ran over his stubbornly erect figure. If he’d ever had any excess flesh on his greyhound lean frame, it had been burned off long ago. ‘Actually, I’m surprised they discharged you so soon.’

‘So soon?’ he blasted. The memory of weeks and months of immobility was still in sharp focus in his mind as glared with intense dislike at the interfering female his mother had seen fit to inflict upon him.

‘They didn’t discharge him,’ Joe volunteered. ‘Though I suspect they might be breathing a large collective sigh of relief about now. You’ll probably find this hard to believe, but he was the perfect patient up until about three weeks ago… Uncomplaining, charming…’

‘Displaying the desired degree of dog-like obedience…’ Matt cut in savagely.

‘You’re right, I do find it hard to believe.’

Matt glanced at her sharply. So Miss Sugar and Spice had claws, he mused thoughtfully. The discovery made her slightly less objectionable…very slightly.

‘Then almost overnight it was bye-bye Mr Nice Guy! I suppose everyone has their breaking point, even Matt Devlin.’

‘I think you’re rather overplaying the irony,’ Matt growled darkly.

‘You always have had a problem with delegating, haven’t you, Matt?’ Joe observed, with an innocent smile. ‘I think he’d have secretly preferred it if his empire had crumbled without him at the helm.’

Matt glared at his oldest friend with intense dislike.

Kat found the talk of empires—a private joke, maybe—a bit confusing, but what she did understand from this interchange brought a deep furrow to her wide smooth brow.

‘So he discharged himself against medical advice…?’ Drusilla had said nothing about that!

‘What if I did?’ Matt asked belligerently. ‘And, if it’s not too much bother, do you mind not talking about me in the third person? I’ve had it up to here—’ he jabbed his hand up against his forehead, which did nothing to improve his headache, and almost made him lose his balance ‘—with medical busybodies! There’s nothing more anyone else, no matter how many medical degrees they’ve got, can do for me now. Anything that happens from this point onwards is up to me.’

Kat’s worried frown grew more pronounced. If he wasn’t prepared to accept limitations he could put back his recovery months.

‘I’ll have to talk to your doctor,’ she announced decisively. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Hasn’t it sunk in yet, baby-face? I fired you. Come to that, I never even employed you!’

‘I’m not working for you; I’m working for Drusilla.’

‘Drusilla,’ Matt drawled with a cynical smile. ‘How cosy.’

‘Metcalf. His doctor’s called Metcalf.’

Joe decided the angel’s smile was well worth the murderous glare he received from Matt.

‘And the clinic is…?’

‘There’s a name for friends like you,’ Matt announced grimly when the so-called physio had whisked busily away to have a heart-to-heart with his doctor.

Joe smiled unrepentantly back. ‘Sorry old son. Why don’t you sit down?’ he suggested. ‘I already know you’re made of steel,’ he added slyly as Matt limped over to an armchair. ‘It strikes me, Matt, you’re being awkward for the sake of it. You said yourself what a pain it was going to be traipsing off to the local hospital for physio every other day.’

‘I’m quite capable of employing my own physio. And if the babe doesn’t go, I will! I don’t have to stay here,’ he railed. ‘If my place has got too many steps I’ll buy another one. I’ve no intention of going along with one of my mother’s little schemes.’

Joe grinned. ‘She just wants to see you with a good woman.’

Matt’s expression grew even more cynical. ‘Of her choosing.’

‘Well, maybe she’s got a point. Delegating the task might not be such a bad idea…not with your track record. I mean, what man in his right mind would get engaged to Angela!’

‘I wasn’t engaged to Angela, except in her fevered imagination.’

‘You know that, I know that, but thousands of readers of the popular press think you’re an object of pity.’

‘Thanks for that, Joe. I feel better already,’ Matt came back, dry as dust.

‘You’ve had your chance to set the record straight,’ Joe reminded him, tongue firmly in his cheek.

A scornful sound escaped Matt’s throat. ‘I’d prefer to slit my throat than become a human interest story in a women’s magazine.’ There was genuine horror in his eyes.

‘How can you be so sure she isn’t genuine…?’

Matt gave a derisive snort. ‘You have a charmingly naïve view of women, Joe. I think I almost envy you…’

‘I’m not bitter and twisted, and proud of it,’ Joe added with a touch of lazy defiance.

‘You’re just a sucker for a pretty face…’

‘Pretty doesn’t really do her justice.’

‘I find it hard to see past the simpering smile.’

Kat’s bosom swelled with indignation—she’d never simpered in her life! Her fingers tightened around the doorhandle.

‘Matt!’ Joe ejaculated, shocked by the irreverence.

Matt remained unrepentant. ‘My mother is totally unscrupulous when it comes to getting what she wants, and at the moment she wants a grandchild. She’s always thought no man can resist a cleavage.’ His expression was grim as he reflected on the callous machinations of his manipulative parent.

‘To tell you the truth, Matt, as far as cleavages go I’ve always thought much the same myself.’ Joe admitted.

Despite the pain he was enduring, Matt’s lips twitched. ‘Under that choir-boy façade, Joe Casey, there lurks the soul of a debauched swine.’

‘Chance would be a fine thing. You can’t tell me you don’t find her at all attractive?’ Joe regarded his friend with open scepticism.

On the point of walking in, Kat paused. She found her own hesitation predictable and pathetic, but what girl, she reasoned, could resist hearing whether a man—even if she didn’t like him—found her fanciable…?

‘She’s got all the right equipment, but it’s the cabbage scenario.’

‘Cabbage?’ Joe’s tone echoed the sort of bewilderment Kat was feeling.

‘During my formative years everyone—nannies, parents, schoolteachers—they were all constantly telling me how good it was for me. Naturally I developed a loathing for the stuff which lasts to this day.’

‘So you want a woman who is bad for you?’

‘You’re missing the point, Joe. I don’t want one someone thinks I should want.’

That was what you get for eavesdropping! Kat had never been likened to cabbage before—she’d have remembered.

She wouldn’t have been human if she hadn’t allowed her mind to dwell on the pleasant picture of Matt Devlin a helpless victim of her irresistible charms. It would have been petty to dwell for too long on the image of his despair when she rejected him.

His antagonism made perfect sense now. No wonder he was acting like a real pain in the posterior if he thought his mother had sent her here to land a husband! This was an embarrassing mistake she could easily correct.

Her upbeat expression as she walked into the room didn’t even hint that she cared about the cabbage thing.

‘You’ve got it all wrong. I don’t want to marry you… For heaven’s sake, I don’t even like you!’

CHAPTER TWO

THERE was a startled pause during which Kat prayed for the ground to open up and swallow her. It didn’t, and she was left wondering why she’d imagined for a second that matters would be improved by telling a man she couldn’t stand the sight of him!

‘That must be a weight off your mind, Matt.’ Joe’s voice quivered ever so slightly.

Straight from the heart! The muscles of Matt’s throat worked overtime as he fought back unexpected laughter… Watching her face fall as she realised what she’d just said struck him as one of the funniest things he’d seen in ages… But then, if his nearest and dearest were to be believed, he had a particularly warped sense of humour.

‘I have to tell you there are some serious flaws in your seduction technique, Miss Wray.’ The gibe was delivered in a manner that suggested he was generously offering her advice.

He didn’t normally get a kick out of seeing people grovel, but there were exceptions…! No man, no matter how secure he was, liked being told a beautiful woman didn’t fancy him. He speculated—in a lazy, objective kind of way—how hard it would be to make her change her mind. Rejection didn’t occur to Matt.

Kat’s cheeks grew hotter as she squirmed under his malicious scrutiny… So she’d put both feet in it. It wasn’t very charitable of him to labour the fact…and enjoy it so much!

‘If you automatically assume every woman you meet is out to seduce you, perhaps you need the services of a good psychologist, not a physio!’ Go on, Kat, you tell him; it’s not as if you need the job, is it?

Matt met her defiant glare with a thoughtful expression. So, no grovelling.

She braced herself, pretty sure he was going to say something blighting, and pretty sure she deserved it, but when those heavy lids lifted he just stared… Kat had never personally encountered a stare quite like this. She found she could readily visualise innocent men confessing to heinous crimes if forced to endure that expressionless intensity for too long! She was glad that the only thing she was guilty of was clumsiness!

‘It’s not personal or anything.’

His sardonic stare underlined the stupidity of her stilted announcement.

‘I mean, I’m sure you’re a very nice person…underneath…’ Underneath being a dyed-in-the-wool misogynist, that was.

Was this meant to soothe his bruised ego…? Nobody as far as Matt could recall had ever called him ‘nice’ before as if they meant it, let alone as if they didn’t mean it!

The dangerous glitter in his eyes made Kat feel even more flustered. She decided it might be a good time to change tack.

‘I suppose you think it’s odd that Drusilla didn’t tell you about me… Actually,’ she conceded truthfully, ‘I do too.’

‘I’m sure she had her reasons.’

Kat tried to ignore the nasty knowing note in his voice and racked her brains for a reasonable explanation to account for Drusilla Devlin’s strange behaviour in dropping her in it like this.

‘She was probably worried you wouldn’t want me,’ she mused half to herself.

That had a nice self-effacing note to it. A cynical smile twisted his lips as Matt’s eyes slowly travelled the length of her curvaceous figure; this wasn’t a woman who lay awake at nights worrying about rejection.

Kat continued her meandering explanation, oblivious to his cynical observations.

‘I really needed the job you see.’ It was probably way too late to remember that.

Now there was a statement that just begged a question, and if he asked it he’d have laid money on her being able to produce a first-class sob story… Ironically, he was half inclined to believe it might even be true! If this was acting, it was Oscar-class stuff.

‘Simple philanthropy rarely covers my mother’s behaviour…’

‘It’s true,’ Kat fired back, angry on Drusilla’s behalf. ‘Your mother was being kind to me, offering me the job…not that I’m not very well qualified.’ She frowned fiercely and divided her glare that said she was willing to defend her credentials between both men. ‘You see, she went to school with my mum and she knew I was in a bit of a fix…moneywise…’ An uncomfortable flush mounted her smooth cheeks as she hastily skipped over this subject.

‘I can’t help but feel it might have been simpler all round if she’d just given you the money, not foisted you on me.’

Kat’s eyes widened in indignation. ‘I don’t take charity!’

‘A girl with principles,’ he drawled.

‘You find that funny?’ she snapped from between clenched teeth.

‘I find it commendable,’ he replied with such patent insincerity that Kat felt like hitting him over the head with one of his crutches. She didn’t normally have such violent inclinations, but he was an extremely trying man.

‘I’m more than capable of working for my money…’

‘And is this…project paying very well?’

This was one nasty insinuation too many, as far as Kat was concerned. ‘Let’s just say that I’d need to be getting an awful lot more if the job description included trying to get romantic with you! I don’t mean to be rude—’

‘You do surprise me—’

‘—but you did ask,’ she finished defiantly. ‘And I don’t know why you’re acting so offended. Nobody’s suggested you’re stupid and avaricious enough to agree to marry someone if you were paid enough!’

‘I don’t think my mother paid you.’

He didn’t add that the prospect of being his wife would be financial inducement enough for a lot of women… Maybe not this woman…? Definitely not this woman! It had been some time since he’d met a starry-eyed idealist, which no doubt accounted for the fact it had taken him so long to recognise this one. In his opinion, idealism was a dangerously unpredictable trait.

Her brows shot up in elaborate surprise. ‘You think I’d do it for free?’ she flung back childishly.

For the first time she glimpsed a flicker of genuine humour in his electric blue eyes.

‘I think she was relying on propinquity and my natural charm to do the job,’ he responded drily. He smiled and provided her with a brief but dazzling flash of that charm. ‘You look dubious…but, you see, mothers,’ he explained gravely, ‘are notoriously blind when it comes to their off-spring.’

‘I didn’t mean to be—’

Matt waved aside her protest with a faint movement of his long tapering fingers. ‘Personal…I know. For someone who is keen on professional detachment, you cram in more insults per minute than anyone else I’ve ever met.’

‘But…’

‘Calm down, that’s not bad.’

‘It isn’t?’

‘I can’t abide boot-lickers,’ he announced blandly. ‘Let’s say for one minute that you can swear hand on heart—’ his focus shifted to the region where that organ was housed, and lingered there ‘—that you’re only here to continue the torture inflicted on me by members of your profession in the clinic.’

Kat let out a silent sigh of relief as his eyes finally lifted. She just hoped and prayed her top was thick enough to hide the tingling activity of her nipples.

‘That doesn’t alter the fact that if I decide I need a resident nurse or physio I’d prefer one of my own choosing…’

Kat was still too preoccupied by the inexplicable behaviour of her body to summon up the necessary energy to fight him on this; besides, as much as she needed this job, she wasn’t about to beg.

‘It won’t take me long to pack.’ She made a conscious effort to belatedly put a bit of dignity back into the proceedings. Actually, some things were worse than being in debt—things like being eaten up with lust for a man you didn’t even like!

‘I thought you needed the job…?’

Anyone would think he gave a damn! Kat fixed him with an angry incredulous stare. He definitely was the most perverse man she’d ever encountered.

‘She does, she does…’

Kat had almost forgotten the other man’s presence.

‘Your concern for my well-being is touching, Joe. I’m well aware that it wouldn’t suit your plans if I went for a male physio built like a barn…’ Matt taunted his lust-sick friend with idle affection.