Mattie!
‘Nevertheless, I’m going to help you. If nothing else, I can peel potatoes, supply you with coffee, mop your fevered brow. I promise you, I shall enjoy it. Enjoy your company.’
And that was the truth. It didn’t surprise him in the least. Mattie was always comfortable to be around. And watching her grapple with alien practicalities—the way her quirky brows would pull together with a frown of concentration, the pink tip of her tongue peep from the corners of her mouth, just as it had done when she had been trying to master the mysteries of her word processor—would amuse him, would take his mind off—off other things.
‘If that’s what you really want.’ Mattie pretended to consult the lengthy list she’d left on the butcher’s block table. He wouldn’t enjoy it. He would know that the makings of a huge Christmas lunch that Mrs Flax had left in the deep freeze would have stayed right there if he hadn’t invited himself here. He was doing what he would see as his duty.
She would not let herself believe that he really did enjoy being with her. She wasn’t into self-delusion. But James, in this warmer, noticing mood was dangerous stuff.
And went on being dangerous to her equilibrium right through the holiday, his easy charm taking her breath away, making her sometimes believe in that old chestnut that if you wanted something badly enough it came to you. Only occasionally did he seem to withdraw into darkness, his eyes deeply thoughtful, brooding, she was sure of it, on his lost love. Not that Fiona’s name had been mentioned, not once.
This morning, the day James was due to leave, her father had taken himself off for a walk, complaining that he’d eaten far too much. ‘You did us proud, Mattie,’ he’d said, sounding astonished. And then, as if inner enlightenment had been granted, ‘But then, James was around to see you didn’t go dishing up any more disasters!’
Mattie resented that, she really did. She’d worked hard to bring some sort of logic to the mysteries of turning basic raw ingredients into palatable meals. She deserved some credit, she thought grumpily as she pushed the vacuum cleaner around the house with more passion than purpose and was thrusting it back into its cupboard in the kitchen when James walked in.
‘Ready to go?’ She sounded calm, sensible. Inside she was a mess. She would miss him dreadfully. She probably wouldn’t see him again for months. Only last night she’d happened, in passing the sitting-room door, to hear her father tell him that he’d travel up to the London head office in a day or two to discuss the funding for the Spanish project with him and their company accountant. So he wouldn’t be dropping by in the near future.
‘Almost.’ He closed the door behind him and leaned against it, his arms folded over his chest, as if barring her exit. Mattie took one look at him—he was so beautiful, even the worn old denim jeans and ancient leather jacket couldn’t detract from the lean, powerful elegance of his tall, whippy frame—and looked swiftly away.
She really did have to stop thinking this way. She’d managed to keep her emotions off the boil for years, tucking them away, refusing to let them churn her up. She could do it again. Hell’s teeth, of course she could!
Closing the cupboard door, she turned again to face him, smoothing down the smothering folds of the unflattering borrowed overall.
‘Can I get you a coffee before you go?’ That was better—she’d subdued the painful lump in her chest that might have made speech impossible. She was back to being calm and helpful.
‘Not for me.’ He levered his hard frame away from the door, walked towards her, his silver eyes intent. ‘There’s something I want to ask you. And before you jump down my throat, I want you to consider it carefully, bring your usual unruffled intelligence into play.’
He stopped walking, left a few feet of space between them, smiling wryly as that well-known puzzled little frown appeared between her eyes. The idea had come to him suddenly, and it was a good one. He’d thought about it long and hard since it had occurred to him last night, after his discussion with Edward.
It made good, practical sense. And he knew his Mattie. Once she got used to the thought of having to uproot herself she would see that.
‘Mattie,’ he said levelly. ‘Will you marry me?’
CHAPTER TWO
SOMETHING scary had happened to her, Mattie thought wildly. A sudden rush of blood to her head, maybe? It had boiled her brain, sent her loopy, made her hear things.
James proposing? To her?
‘Mattie?’
Even through the shock of fearing herself to have suffered a mortal affliction, she was bright enough to detect a note of wry amusement when she heard one. So that was it. A joke. An unfunny joke.
Oh, how dared he? It would serve him right if she took him seriously, flung herself at him, dewy-eyed and babbling about big white wedding dresses and having his babies. All those barren, hopeless years of loving this man didn’t stop her from wanting to punish him!
But common sense eventually did just that. Pretending to take him seriously would hurt her more than it hurt him. Winding her arms around him, covering his face with kisses, would be torture.
She uprooted her feet from the floor and trudged to the sink to fill the kettle. She needed coffee, even if he didn’t. At least she was moving now, thinking clearly. She said flatly, ‘Be careful, James. Jokes like that could rebound on you. You might be taken seriously.’
‘I meant it, Matts,’ he said from right behind her.
She froze. Everything inside her turned into stone. This was not possible. How could he mean it?
Lifting his hands, he took her shoulders, turning her to face him, and that brought her to life, blood coursing madly through her veins at his touch. She shrugged his hands away. He had never touched her before, not even accidentally, and much as she might crave this small intimacy she couldn’t handle it, not right now, not if she were to find out what his agenda was.
‘Has this got something to do with Fiona dumping you?’ she asked, her brain clearing. ‘She jilts you, so you immediately get engaged to someone else, just to show her she’s not the only pebble on the beach?’
Her heart twisted painfully. Was she right? Could he be that cruel? Would he use her like that, just to get his own back on the woman he loved? Buy her a flash engagement ring, make sure the whole world knew about it, then quietly break the whole thing off when the dust of Fiona’s public jilting had settled?
‘Well?’ she demanded. ‘No slick answer for once?’ His bleak silence spurred her on to angry sarcasm. ‘Or have you suddenly fallen madly in love with me? Somehow that would take a lot of swallowing!’
James glanced at the discreet face of his Rolex. He’d meant to spend the afternoon back in his apartment, going through a raft of paperwork. This was going to take longer than he’d thought.
‘You sell yourself short, Mattie. You really should break the habit.’ The words emerged on a breath of impatience, softened by slight amusement. ‘And no,’ he went on with no inflexion whatever, ‘I have no more “fallen madly in love” with you than you have with me. In fact, I don’t think the condition actually exists.’
He resigned himself to the loss of a full afternoon’s useful work. He’d been over-optimistic
