‘I’m taking Matts out to lunch, as a thank you for all the hard graft she’s put in over the past few days.’ His narrowed eyes impaled her with silver command. ‘Go get your coat.’
Her instinct was to tell him not to dish out his orders in that brisk, authoritative voice, as if she were some lowly employee. Tell him to ask her nicely, and she’d think about it. But she’d controlled her emotions where James was concerned for more years than she cared to remember and she’d be a fool to give way to the need to snap and shout, indulge in a verbal stand-up fight.
He would simply turn his back on her, walk straight out, and she’d never discover what in damnation he’d been thinking about when he’d come out with that unbelievable proposal of marriage.
Besides, his eyes were positively glacial when he bit out, ‘Scoot, Mattie. We don’t have all day.’
The tone of his voice sent shivers down her spine. She had heard he was a force to be reckoned with, a man no one but an out-and-out fool would dare to cross, but in all the time she had known him she had never been afraid of him, or had the feeling that he was taking control of her life.
She went, almost tripping over her own feet, leaving the room before he could say or do anything else to add to her sense of angry confusion.
Of course she wasn’t afraid of him, she told herself as she pulled Mrs Flax’s overall over her head and searched in the hall cupboard for her serviceable waxed jacket. Afraid of what he was making her feel was more like it.
Disorientated. As if her brain had been put in a blender.
Stuffing her feet into leather boots, she tucked the bottoms of her trousers in with shaky fingers and James, dangling car keys, asked ‘Ready?’ making her jump out of her skin.
Impatient, she thought, glancing up at his tight jawline, the thin line of his mouth. And not the impatience of a man desperate to get his woman to himself. He’d been very quick to respond to her sarcastic question—of course he hadn’t fallen in love with her. Any more than she’d fallen in love with him, he’d added.
If only he knew!
‘Yes, I’m ready. And curious to know what this is all about,’ she answered steadily enough, even though her heart was jittering about like a flying beetle trying to get out of a paper bag.
‘I’ll tell you over lunch.’ And he’d throw in a bottle of wine. He wouldn’t be drinking because he’d be driving later, but she looked as if she needed something to help her relax. She’d pulled a black woolly hat on her head, her bunched-back hair making it sit at an odd angle, the unflattering colour emphasising the pallor of her face. Poor little scrap!
He’d had this idea, had carefully examined it, found it to be sound and, as always, intended to act on it. Right now. No messing about. But she hadn’t a clue what was in his head. He couldn’t blame her for looking as if the world had gone insane around her.
‘Let’s go,’ he said gently.
They drove half a mile to the village pub. Not far, the journey didn’t give her nearly enough time to get her head together. James actually did want to marry her. He’d said so, but she was having difficulty taking it in.
Years ago, before she’d learned to control a tendency to indulge in foolish daydreams, she’d imagined him proposing. Down on one knee, moonlight and roses and all that stuff, vowing he’d always loved her, had been waiting for her to grow up.
Reality was totally different from the daydreams of a teenager. Wasn’t it just!
The slack period between Christmas and the New Year celebrations meant they had the tiny, heavily beamed restaurant to themselves. The fire in the inglenook had only just been lit and the room was chilly. Mattie kept her bulky jacket on, but James plucked the woolly hat from her head as she scanned the short menu.
‘That’s better,’ he said and she glanced across the table and caught the smile that softened the sculpted hardness of his mouth. He looked in full, complacent control. Suddenly, she wanted to slap him.
She laid the menu down. ‘I’m not hungry. I just want you to tell me what’s behind your singularly unromantic proposal of marriage.’
The clipped tone of her voice told him she was firing on all cylinders again. So right, his suggestion of marriage had confused her, but she was dealing with it. It was one of the things he admired about her—her ability to look at a problem from all angles and, eventually, to solve it, be it learning to drive or cooking a three-course meal.
‘Over lunch, like civilised people. Choose something light if you haven’t much appetite. I’m going for the lasagne.’
Civilised? Well, she supposed she could manage that. Just. She opted for an open prawn sandwich and drank a glass of the red wine he’d ordered while they waited. Her stomach closed up entirely when she saw the sheer size and bulk of her supposedly simple sandwich.
Gulping down more wine, she nibbled at a prawn. One down, five thousand more to go. How could he attack his loaded plate with such gusto? Easy. His stomach wasn’t full of jitterbugging butterflies; his heart wasn’t racked with painful contractions; he was completely unaffected.
She laid down her fork. ‘I warn you, James, if, as I suspect, you want to get engaged in such a hurry to pay Fiona back, then you can forget it as far as I’m concerned. Find someone else to play games with.’
‘Right.’ He laid his fork down on his almost empty plate and leaned back, his eyes pinning her to her seat. ‘I don’t recall mentioning an engagement. What would be the point when we could be married within three weeks? And let’s leave Fiona out of it.’
‘We can’t do that.’ He was everything she’d ever wanted, but she wouldn’t let herself be used. She wouldn’t let herself in for that much pain. Living with him as his wife, knowing that every time he made love to her he would be pretending she was Fiona.
Her voice thick in her throat, she reminded him, ‘You called being in love a “condition” and said you didn’t think it existed. You’ve been dating gorgeous women for almost as long as I can remember, but it took Fiona to make you want to settle down and marry. You must love her.’ Instinctively her voice lowered, softened with compassion; she didn’t want to rub his nose in his hurt but it had to be done. ‘I can imagine your pain when she rejected you, but jumping into marriage with someone else won’t make it go away.’
She wanted to reach out and take his hand, comfort him, but he looked so formidably detached she didn’t quite dare. She drained her wineglass recklessly. ‘When you got over the Fiona thing and came to your senses, you’d find yourself saddled with a wife you couldn’t love. And I wouldn’t want to go through life knowing I was a poor second best.’
‘You’re not cut out to be an agony aunt, you don’t know what you’re talking about.’ With difficulty he controlled his annoyance. She was thinking along the lines of a normal marriage, and that wasn’t what he had in mind at all. And if she’d stop talking about Fiona for five seconds he’d put her in the picture.
He refilled her wineglass, sat back, and told her as much as her harping on about his broken engagement had made necessary. ‘I took a look at my lifestyle and decided I needed a wife. Fiona was eminently suitable, beautiful to look at—’ no need to mention her inventiveness in bed, that was his business ‘—a highly accomplished hostess. Essential, because, as you know,
