The Prospective Wife

Joe blushed and glanced uncomfortably in Kat’s direction. ‘If you weren’t ill…’

‘Don’t sulk in front of the lady, Joseph…’

‘I wasn’t sulking!’

Kat, happy to be distracted from the wantonly indiscriminate behaviour of her own body, gave a weak indulgent smile as she watched the two men good-naturedly bicker; the rapport between them obviously went deep.

An extraordinary notion occurred to her, and her jaw dropped as her eyes darted rapidly from one man to the other and back again. It couldn’t be, could it? As unlikely as the explanation seemed, it would explain why his mother felt Matt wasn’t going to get a wife without a lot of encouragement.

‘Heavens, I didn’t realise!’ she blurted out, without thinking. Her mind was racing. Why hadn’t that possibility occurred to her before? After all, one of the most masculine, straight-looking men she knew was gay.

‘Realise what?’ Matt asked

‘It’s all right,’ she explained soothingly. ‘One of my best friends is gay, and his parents found it hard to accept at first too, but they came round eventually and…’

‘Gay!’ Joe, his eyes round, looked at his hand, innocently resting on Matt’s shoulder, and with a horrified snort jerked it away.

Kat smiled in what she hoped was an open-minded nonjudgmental sort of way as she tried to analyse her somewhat ambivalent response to this discovery. There didn’t seem any harm now to acknowledge that the prospect of treating a man who she found so physically attractive—in a butterflies-in-the-belly…tingly sort of way—had been bothering her. She ought to be feeling much happier…much less cheated… Cheated? Where had that come from?

She kept her attention carefully trained on Joe. ‘You don’t owe me any explanations,’ she told him warmly.

Joe looked with smouldering resentment at his friend who, after a startled pause, had begun laughing.

‘This is your fault,’ he accused wildly. ‘I told you you should have got a haircut.’

‘I had no idea that sexual orientation had any direct connection with hair length.’

‘Stop mucking around, will you?’ Joe yelled. ‘Tell her…we’re not!’

‘It’s no good, Joe, she’s guessed!’ Matt intoned dramatically.

‘Cut it out, Matt!’ Joe begged, looking slightly sick. He felt unable to take this slur on his masculinity as lightly as his friend seemed to.

It was slowly dawning on Kat that yet again she’d jumped to the wrong conclusion.

‘Oh, God!’ she groaned. ‘I’ve got it wrong, haven’t I?’

‘Sorry, Miss Wray, but we’re both strictly hetero…’ If she got any redder there was a good chance she’d spontaneously combust, he thought, watching her discomfort with a degree of spiteful pleasure.

‘This could be a double bluff to get me where you want me…’ Matt mused thoughtfully.

Which presumably was flat on his back and helpless! The mental image that accompanied this maverick thought of her astride his prone body had enough detail to deepen the colour in her already pink cheeks significantly. She didn’t normally fantasise about having a man at her mercy!

‘But I’m inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt.’

Kat’s mouth fell ajar with shock and dismay. ‘You are?’

‘Unless, of course, you want to reveal that you actually find me and this broken body irresistible…?’ It bothered him like hell to detect the faint note of self-pity in his voice. As far as he was concerned, self-pity had no constructive value and therefore no place in his life. Self-pity was for losers.

‘Heavens!’ Kat exclaimed, so thoroughly thrown off balance by this remarkable change in his attitude that she forgot about professional reticence.

‘Dr Metcalf forgot to mention your mood swings.’

It was what he hadn’t forgotten to tell her that interested Matt, whose eyes narrowed to suspicious slits.

‘Sounds like good old Andrew was very obliging…’

With an exasperated sigh, Kat planted her hands on her softly rounded hips. A little toss of her head made the honey-gold ponytail dance in a way that charmed at least one of the men watching her performance.

‘Don’t start with that again, or I’m out of here…’ God, when will I learn to control my tongue? If he called her bluff, the schedule she’d worked out to repay the last of the debts would have to go out of the window. She crossed her fingers firmly.

‘Is that a threat or a promise?’

Kat heaved a sigh of relief. ‘Your mother had warned him that I’d probably be ringing…’

‘That’s Mum, all right. She thinks of everything.’

Kat loftily ignored this acid interjection. ‘As I was saying,’ she continued frostily, ‘Dr Metcalf merely supplied me with medical details.’ She didn’t mention that during the course of their telephone conversation the doctor’s grudging admiration for his patient had come across clearly.

‘It’s always handy to know that someone is likely to throw a wobbler if you mention wheelchair,’ she added slyly.

She let this sink in for a moment and watched from under the sweep of her lashes for Matt’s reaction. A slow grin slowly spread over his face; it filled his eyes with an unexpected and dangerously attractive warmth.

‘Do you really think you’re such a great catch?’ she grouched.

So it wasn’t tactful, but a girl had her breaking point! And it was something that Kat felt needed saying; this man had an entirely too great an opinion of himself! So what if he had a smile that could melt a girl’s bones?

Matt wasn’t a vain man, but he did take some things for granted and one of them was, to put it crudely—as Joe had, on more than one occasion—his pulling power! Without realising it, over the years he had come to expect a certain degree of appreciation from females.

It wasn’t as if he had any illusions about what attracted many women, and in Matt’s view it wasn’t the fascination of his blue eyes! He had money and power, and a particular sort of woman liked men who could provide them with those things. How else did you explain hordes of drop-dead gorgeous lovelies on the arms of men old enough to be their grandfathers?

Despite normally evincing a healthy cynicism for that sort of adulation, now, reading the scorn in Kat’s wide eyes, he decided that uncritical worship might not be so bad after all! Just how hard, he speculated, his lips settling into a brooding line of dissatisfaction, would it be to replace that superior disdain with indiscriminate drooling desire…? Now that might be the sort of therapy he needed!

‘You were going, I think, Joseph,’ Matt said without taking his eyes off Kat.

‘I was…?’ It occurred to Joe that, as far as the woman of his dreams was concerned, he had never really been there at all—he tried to take the fact he wasn’t making any contribution towards the electric atmosphere in the room philosophically.

‘Don’t worry, I think I’ll be quite safe in Miss Wray’s capable hands.’

Matt couldn’t ignore the stimulating effect this the image had on his jaded imagination… It was the undies question rearing its ugly head again. Were lingerie fetishes a normal result of several months of enforced celibacy…? There could be a paper in this for good old Dr Metcalf…

Kat could hardly believe the startling alteration in his manner. He sounded suspiciously like a normal, rational human being; there was even a hint of beguiling warmth in his voice!

‘You don’t mind me being here?’ Kat discovered she felt rather ambivalent about this breakthrough. She did have the offer of several temporary beds… Would you really prefer to be a burden on your friends? she asked herself sternly.

‘I want to throw those—’ his electric blue gaze lit momentarily on the discarded crutches ‘—out for good. If you can speed up the process I’d be a fool to object, wouldn’t I.’

It sounded reasonable…

‘Yes, you would.’ It seemed that he was no longer fearful that she would seduce him… How did you go about seducing someone…? With her rudimentary grasp of the subject, she’d probably produce a seduction routine that would have him laughing some more. She still felt like wincing when she thought about the sound of his deep, uninhibited amusement at her expense.

‘Then that’s settled.’

‘Your mother said that you—’

Matt didn’t much want to know what his mother said. ‘I thought you two were on first-name terms…?’ Matt interrupted her flow.

‘Is that a problem, Mr Devlin?’

‘Nobody calls me Mr Devlin.’

Kat’s mobile features screwed up in an uneasy frown. ‘I’m not sure I’m comfortable using your first name…’ She wasn’t sure why she felt so strongly about this… It wasn’t as if she was renowned for her formality.

‘I’m sure we all want you to be comfortable…’ he responded smoothly.

Then why, she wondered, does everything you do appear to be specifically designed to make me feel uneasy…? ‘No, I’m sure it will be fine…Matthew…’

‘Matt. And you’re…?’

‘Kat.’

‘Which is short for what…? Katherine…?’

‘Kathleen,’ she supplied, feeling a strange reluctance to divulge any personal information, no matter how innocuous, to this man.

‘Kathleen… Irish…?’

When he wasn’t barking orders or sounding paranoid, Matthew Devlin had a sinfully attractive voice, the sort of voice that had a colour and texture—in this case, midnight-blue and velvet—when you closed your eyes to appreciate the husky resonance. Kat didn’t close her eyes, but it was a close call!

‘On my mother’s side,’ she confirmed.

‘Me, too.’

‘I know. They went to school together, but they hadn’t seen each other for years and years,’ she added swiftly, in case it got him started on the conspiracy theory again. ‘Not until…recently.’

Matt didn’t need to be hit on the head with evasion to recognise it. He’d always been good at picking up on things people didn’t say; it was a trait that had done him no harm in his business dealings. He felt his curiosity stir as he wondered about what Kat was leaving unsaid.

Kat was sorry to see Joe go. She’d felt he might be a useful ally in hostile territory. Kat was realistic; she had her foot in the door, but she was pretty sure that this was only the first hurdle—she soon discovered her instincts were right.

‘I’ll use the room I always do, thank you, Elizabeth. If you could have my bags moved upstairs at some point I’d be grateful.’ Despite the pleasant smile he had for the housekeeper, there was no doubt Matt hadn’t liked discovering he’d been put in the ground-floor guest suite.

The housekeeper, whom Kat had had down as the unemotional type, had all but wept with joy at seeing Matt. There was no accounting for taste! She now cast a look of urgent appeal in Kat’s direction as she left the room.

The door closed and Kat could no longer keep a hold on her tongue. She was too exasperated by this point to wrap up her criticism in sugar-coated terms. So far, during their cosy getting to know one another chat, he had vetoed every tentative suggestion she’d made, for no reason as far as she could see other than pig-headed awkwardness, plain and simple.

‘I suppose that’s one way to prove you’re in control. Lay down the law, watch them jump and don’t worry,’ she soothed nastily. ‘Even if they think what you’re saying is stupid they’re not likely to say so!’

Kat had never met a more obstinate individual! For the life of her she couldn’t understand why the staff here seemed so delighted to have him staying—it was bizarre. The housekeeper in particular seemed a very sensible woman, which made her reaction to Matt all the more incomprehensible.

Perhaps the man had hidden depths…? No, Kat decided, with an angry sniff, if he did have depths they were probably murky. Either it was case of mass hypnotism or the whole place must be particularly susceptible to blue eyes; there was no other explanation.

The thought drew her own angry eyes back to his. There was no escaping the fact that his eyes were very blue. Kat herself had found her own gaze repeatedly drawn towards his thickly lashed deep-set eyes as their conversation had become increasingly one-sided. Right now, the main expression she could see in those azure depths was shock… Perhaps he didn’t expect the paid help to answer back?

Matt settled back in his seat and reached for a slice of carrot cake, looked at it with a look as jaded as his palate, and then put it back on the plate untouched.

‘I take it I shouldn’t expect you to feel equally stifled when it comes to the subject of my stupidity.’

‘Are you going to eat that?’

‘Why, do you want it?’ He held out the plate towards her. So far she’d gone through two slices and several of the wafer-thin smoked salmon sandwiches.

‘Very funny.’ Her lips twisted with impatience. ‘You never think about other people, do you?’

‘Not feeling hungry puts me in the selfish and heartless category…?’ Why was he surprised? She seemed able to imbue his most innocent action with sinister intent. ‘Your logic is interesting—bizarre, but interesting.’ Interlacing his fingers, he rested his square chin thoughtfully on them. ‘I feel sure you’re about to fill in the gaps for me.’

‘The afternoon tea.’ She waved her hand over the rather grand spread. ‘I bet everything here is your favourite,’ she accused.

Kat watched as his blue eyes swept over the food on the delicate china plates. Now that she’d pointed it out, he recognised favoured titbits from his schooldays. His shoulders lifted in a negligent concessionary shrug.

‘Hah! I’m right!’ she crowed.

‘If you’ve got a point to make, I think now is the time to make it.’

‘You don’t see, do you?’ She shook her head disapprovingly. ‘A lot of people went to a great deal of trouble to do something nice for you, because for some reason they seem to care about you. How do you think they’re going to feel if this lot goes back the kitchen untouched…?’

The troubled frown that flickered across his face was barely discernible before his expression grew impatient. ‘I haven’t liked sweet things since I was twelve years old.’

Her arms folded across her chest and she wondered whether he had a better nature to appeal to. ‘You don’t like…and I suppose that makes it all right to ride roughshod over people’s feelings?’

His narrowed blue eyes drilled into her. ‘We’re not talking cakes here, are we?’

‘Your mother has gone to a lot of trouble specially preparing those rooms for you.’

This was obviously the point where he was meant to be overcome by remorse and self-loathing.

‘My mother isn’t going to lose any sleep over where I choose to sleep,’ he drawled languidly.

‘Well, if you’re not bothered about hurting Drusilla’s feelings…’

‘You have a nasty habit of putting words into a man’s mouth…’ His eyes dwelt for a long distracted moment on the lush curves of her kissable lips… Other things might taste more palatable on his tongue than her acid recriminations.

‘Consider the practicalities. Just how exactly do you expect to get upstairs to your usual bedroom?’ she asked him. ‘Crawl…?’ Tact and compassion had their place, but not when dealing with Matt Devlin. Empathy wasn’t going to get her anywhere with this man, but brutal practicality might.

She wanted to play hard ball…fine. Matt suspected he’d had more practice at the pastime than Blondie here.

‘I can’t carry you. I suppose you could employ some muscular young man…’

‘I thought we’d already established I’m not into muscular young men…’ he drawled.

Kat ignored this interruption designed to distract her, even though the reminder made her flush. ‘But I expect your mother thought you’d prefer to be more independent.’

‘You think I’m ungrateful…?’ With a twisted smile he watched her struggle with the temptation to rip his character to shreds some more.

‘I’ve seen the suite, and it’s conveniently close to the pool and gym… Nothing could be more suitable.’

Or decadent, at least as far as the leisure facilities were concerned. The Roman-styled pool-house complete with waterfall which had been converted from a stable block had taken Kat’s breath away and made her want to tear off her clothes and immerse herself in that warm inviting water… Considering what had happened, it seemed ironic that back then she’d been concerned about first impressions—being caught skinny-dipping hadn’t seemed to capture the right note!

Kat was too startled to even squeak in protest when his hand shot out and he jerked her towards the chair he sat in. Off balance, she came down heavily on one knee; she only prevented herself from falling any further by bracing a hand against the arm of his chair.

‘Is there some constructive reason you keep reminding I’m an invalid?’

She took a couple of steadying breaths and inhaled undiluted Matt scent—it was an earthy, all-male fragrance. A wave fresh of dizziness struck Kat; this man must have cornered the market in pheromones.

Her eyes slid to the fingers encircling her wrist. They were long and lean like the rest of him; their iron strength didn’t feel at all sickly to her… She, on the other hand, didn’t feel so great at all. Thready, over-fast pulse, sweaty palms—both of which he’d probably noticed—a churning sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. A wave of intense heat raised her body heat several uncomfortable degrees.

‘You’re not an invalid, but for the moment whether you like it or not you do have limitations…’ Relief washed over her. Against all the odds she’d hit just the right note of objectivity and caring.

The slight imperious tilt of his dark head was a concessionary gesture—at least, for the sake of harmony, that was the way she decided to construe it.

Their eyes clashed and the harmony theory fell apart. Kat’s ferociously pumping heart sent a surge of adrenaline around her body so fast she felt light-headed.

‘So, incidentally, do I.’ This time her voice had a faint faraway quality. The focus of her troubled gaze shifted significantly to the fingers still encircling her wrist.

Her hot vision blurred so that for a moment she couldn’t quite make out the defining line between his flesh and her own paler skin; the weak fluttery sensations low in her belly got stronger and more disturbing. It was all she could do to stop herself tearing her hand away.

‘And one of them is look, but don’t touch…?’ His extended thumb moved thoughtfully over the blue-veined inner aspect of her wrist. It must be the challenge—he’d never been able to resist one of those—that conjured up the fantasy image of Kat begging him to touch her.

The sweeping motion must have crossed over a sensitive nerve-ending because the sharp electrical thrill Kat felt shot along her arm in both directions.

His hand fell away and her delicately curved eyebrows drew into a perplexed line as a wave of relief way out of proportion with the event washed over her. She felt pretty foolish on her knees, but, given the fact she wasn’t sure if she had total control over her limbs, she didn’t have much choice but to stay put.

‘I can’t stop people looking,’ she admitted huskily.

‘So you can lay those pretty hands on me as much as you like.’ One dark brow lifted before he impatiently flicked a heavy section of dark collar-length hair from his eyes. ‘But if I reciprocate you’ll…?’

What would she do…? It was a purely academic speculation. Up until this moment he hadn’t even thought about sex… He’d forgotten what a distraction it could be, thinking… He was thinking a lot all of a sudden. He blamed it on that responsive quiver he’d felt run through her body when he’d touched her. So the lovely Kathleen wasn’t being quite honest when she’d said she didn’t fancy him… Interesting.

‘I’ll think you’ve fallen for my fatal charm,’ she suggested acidly. ‘We can all live in hope.’

Her snappy sarcasm lifted his brooding frown and brought a genuine grin to his face.

Despite her best efforts to remain dispassionate, Kat was charmed.

‘I always think that hope has an unpleasantly passive sound to it…’

Kat didn’t need telling that she was in the presence of a man who didn’t lie around hoping for things to happen; she was quite sure that he went out and made them happen. Everything about him said he needed to be in control of his own fate.

‘It’s a harmless way to while away a wet afternoon though.’

Even though Matt deeply despised the soft-focus image that lodged in his brain of her staring through some rain-drenched window he had to admit it was an absurdly attractive one.

‘And what do you hope for during those wet afternoons, Kathleen?’

He had the sort of voice that could effortlessly make a girl believe he could fulfil all her hopes. Her eyes widened with alarm as the stray thought just popped into her head from God knew where!

‘The usual things,’ she responded, gruffly evasive.

‘Like a husband, children, nice house in the suburbs…?’ he speculated. ‘The traditional female things.’

His patronising attitude really got under her skin. ‘Those being things that no man worthy of his testosterone would desire…?’

‘How many teenage boys would list becoming a father as one of their ambitions…?’ One dark brow quirked scornfully when she didn’t respond. His broad shoulders lifted expressively. ‘I rest my case.’

‘It’s just as well one gender feels the urge to procreate or the human race wouldn’t last long.’

‘Men feel urges, all right, but it’s impregnation and not procreation that drives them,’ he explained crudely.

Kat felt herself blush like an adolescent; the fact her blushes seemed to amuse him only intensified her discomfort. She couldn’t figure out how what had started out as a perfectly innocent conversation had degenerated into something so uncomfortable.

‘Perhaps I have a higher regard for your own sex than you do.’

‘Then more fool you, Kat. Fidelity is an alien concept to the vast majority of men.’

‘Perhaps, Mr Devlin, you judge all men by your own failings…’

‘I’m an arrogant male, Kat. What makes you imagine I think I’ve got any failings?’ he drawled. His deep laughter rang out once more before his brows drew into a disapproving line. ‘And I thought we’d dispensed with the Mr Devlin.’

Kat’s tongue ran nervously over the outline of her dry lips.

‘Do I make you nervous, Kathleen?’

Wasn’t that the idea?

It was the one question she would have liked to avoid, and he’d made her face it. Resentment reflected in her eyes, she met his deceptively innocent blue gaze warily… He made her incredibly jumpy and had done from the first moment.

‘It’s hardly surprising that I don’t feel comfortable,’ she responded carefully. ‘You’ve made it quite clear I’m here under sufferance.’

Casually he flicked her softly rounded chin. ‘When you know me better…’

‘I can hardly wait!’ she mumbled.

Her face averted, Kat brushed some invisible specks off the dark grey trousers she wore beneath a white tee-shirt. She rose smoothly to her feet. It ought to give at least the illusion of superiority to look down at him… It didn’t. The slow charismatic grin that split his lean face held her dismayed gaze as surely as Superglue.

‘You’ll know I’m not big on forbearance. You’re not here because I feel charitable. It’ll be interesting to find out if you’re half as good as you say you are…’ He watched the colour mount in her cheeks. ‘Professionally speaking, of course,’ he added smoothly.

She couldn’t wait to prove her worth to this sarcastic swine… Of course, if she could have done it from the comparative safety of the neighbouring county, she’d have been even more eager! Inexplicably, she couldn’t concentrate all that well in the same room as him… Inexplicable, my foot! a small derisive voice in her head scoffed. You can’t keep your eyes off him and you’re worried to death you won’t be able to hide it when things get tactile.

‘When did you have in mind?’ she asked, her voice brisk to the point of brusqueness. ‘I’ll need to assess your capabilities, to begin with,’ she explained stolidly, ‘and work out a schedule that suits us….’