couldn’t imagine Ratchitt returning for such a poor prize. But who knew? Those who had nothing…
‘If he did come back, do you think she’d take up with him again?’ Jason asked.
Muriel pulled a face. ‘Love makes fools of the best of us.’
Jason had to agree. Just as well he wasn’t in love with the girl. He wanted to make his decisions about her with his head, not his heart.
‘See you tomorrow, Muriel,’ he said, and gathered up his lunch. He’d already tarried far too long in Tindley’s bakery. Muriel was going to have a field-day gossiping about what she’d gleaned.
Not that it would matter. Jason had made up his mind, and he would make his move this evening, after afternoon surgery. He had no intention of waiting till the dastardly Dean showed up. He had no intention of wasting time asking Emma for a date, either. He was going to go straight to the heart of the matter…with a proposal of marriage.
CHAPTER TWO
JASON was beginning to feel a bit nervous, a most unusual state for him.
But understandable, he decided as he opened the side gate which led round to the back of Emma’s house. It wasn’t every day you asked a woman to marry you, certainly not a woman you didn’t love, whom you’d never even been out with, let alone slept with. Most people would say he was mad. Adele certainly would.
Thinking of Adele’s opinion had a motivating effect on him. Anything Adele thought was insane was probably the most sensible thing in the world.
Determined not to change his mind, Jason closed the gate behind him and strode down the side path to Emma’s back door. A light was shining through the lace curtains at the back window, he noted with relief. Some music was on somewhere. She was definitely home.
There were three steps leading up to the back door, the cement worn into dips in the middle. Jason put one foot on the first step, then stopped to straighten his tie and his jacket.
Not that any straightening was strictly necessary. He was wearing one of his suavest and most expensive Italian suits, a silk blend in a dark grey which never creased and always made him feel like a million dollars. His tie was silk too, a matching grey with diagonal stripes of blue and yellow. It was smart and modern without being too loud. He’d even sprayed himself with some of the cologne he was partial to, but kept for special occasions.
Jason knew his mission tonight was a difficult one and he was leaving nothing to chance, using everything in his available armoury to present an attractive and desirable image to Emma. He wanted to be everything he was sure Dean Ratchitt wasn’t. He wanted to offer her everything Dean Ratchitt hadn’t. A solid, secure marriage to a man who would never be unfaithful to her, and whom she could be proud of.
Taking a deep, steadying breath, he stepped up, lifted his hand and knocked. In the several seconds it took for her to come to the door, a resurgence of nerves set his empty stomach churning. He should have eaten first, he thought irritably. But he hadn’t been able to settle to a meal before hearing Emma’s answer.
That she might think him mad as well suddenly occurred to him, and he was besieged by a most uncustomary lack of confidence.
She’ll turn you down, man, came the voice of reason. She’s a romantic and she doesn’t love you.
The door handle slowly turned and the door swung back, sending a rectangle of light right into his face. Emma stood, silhouetted in the doorway, her face in shadow.
‘Jason?’ came her soft and puzzled enquiry. It had taken him weeks of visiting Ivy to get her to call him Jason, he recalled. Even then, she still called him Dr Steel occasionally. He was glad she hadn’t tonight.
‘Hello, Emma,’ he returned, amazed at his cool delivery. His heart might be jumping and his stomach doing cartwheels, but he sounded his usual assured self. ‘May I come in for a few minutes?’
‘Come in?’ she repeated, as though she could not make sense of his request. He hadn’t been to visit since her aunt’s death. He’d attended the funeral, but not the wake, an emergency having called him back to the surgery. She probably thought that their friendship—such as it was—had died with her aunt’s death.
‘There’s something I want to ask you,’ he added.
‘Oh…oh, all right.’ She stepped back and turned into the light.
Jason followed, frowning. She looked more composed than she had the day of the funeral, but still very pale, and far too thin. Her cheeks were sunken in, making her green eyes seem huge. Her dress hung on her, and her hair looked dull, not at all like the shining cap of golden curls which usually framed her delicately pretty face.
It came to him as he glanced around the spotless but bare kitchen that she probably hadn’t been eating properly since her aunt’s death. The fruit bowl in the centre of the kitchen table was empty, and so was the biscuit jar. Maybe she didn’t have much money to spend on food. Funerals and wakes did not come cheap. Had it taken all her spare cash to bury Ivy?
Damn, but he wished he’d thought of that before. He should not have stayed away. He should have offered some assistance, seen to it she was looking after herself. What kind of doctor was he? What kind of friend? What kind of man?
The kind who thought he could bowl up here out of the blue and ask this grief-stricken young woman to marry him, simply because it suited his needs. He hadn’t stopped to really consider her needs, had he? He’d arrogantly thought he could fill them, whatever they were.
God, he hadn’t changed at all, he realised disgustedly. He was still as greedy and selfish as ever. When would he learn? Would he ever really change? Hell, he hoped so. He really did.
But knowing what he was didn’t change his mind about his mission here tonight. He decided he was still a good catch for a girl whose circumstances weren’t exactly top drawer.
‘I’ll get us some coffee, shall I?’ she said dully, and without waiting for an answer moved off to fill the electric kettle and plug it in.
It wasn’t the first time she’d made him coffee. She’d done the honours every time he’d come to visit Ivy. She already knew he liked his coffee in a mug, white with one sugar, so she didn’t have to ask.
Jason closed the back door behind him and sat down at the old Formica-topped table, silently watching her move about the kitchen, seeing again what he’d seen that first time. The unconscious grace of her movements. The elegance of her long neck. The daintiness of her figure.
Once again, he felt the urge to touch her, to stroke that tempting neck, to somehow seduce her to his suddenly quite strong desire, a desire as strong and almost as compelling as he’d once felt for Adele.
Yet she was nothing like Adele, whose dark and very striking beauty had a sophisticated and hard-edged glamour. Adele’s long legs and gym-honed body had looked incredibly sexy in those wicked little black suits she wore to work. And what she did for a red lace teddy had to be seen to be believed.
Somehow Jason couldn’t see Emma dressed in either red or black, or having the body to carry off the kind of sexy lingerie Adele had been addicted to.
But, for all that, he found the delicacy of her shape incredibly
