he said firmly. ‘I never did anything which could have been taken the wrong way.’
‘So can you remember exactly when it started to get more serious?’
He tried to pinpoint the moment when a schoolgirl crush had begun to escalate out of control. ‘I gave her a necklace on her eighteenth birthday,’ he realised. ‘It started soon afterwards.’
‘And how long ago was that?’
‘Almost two years.’
So Katrina was persistent. Two years of unrequited love was certainly dedication. ‘What kind of necklace?’ she asked.
‘Seed-pearls,’ he answered slowly, remembering that he’d bought them on his mother’s recommendation, and that they had cost rather more than he had intended to pay. He remembered the way Katrina had looked at him when he had handed the slim package over. The stunned expression followed by the shining gratitude in her eyes. The way she had flung her arms so tightly around his neck, until he had eventually had to disentangle them. ‘They were rather nice pearls, actually.’
‘Well, then—that’s why!’ said Megan. ‘You sent out the wrong message.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘How?’
‘Women look at jewellery in a rather different way to men,’ she explained. ‘I mean—you probably thought that you were just helping commemorate a big birthday, with a pretty keepsake, from a friend—’
‘Precisely!’
‘Whereas women view certain pieces of jewellery as actually meaning something.’ She looked at him. Even she knew that—why, she still felt positively misty-eyed when she put her own string of pearls on—though that might be because they had belonged to her mother. ‘What made you buy them in the first place?’
Dan shifted in his seat, beginning to feel as though something had been going on that he hadn’t really been aware of. As though, in some very discreet way, he’d been cleverly manipulated. Why had he never seen the obvious link before? ‘My mother suggested it.’
‘Oh, I see.’ She looked at him with a question in her eyes. ‘Your mother obviously likes her.’
‘She approves of her, yes,’ answered Dan thoughtfully as he reflected on Megan’s words. ‘So Katrina thinks she’s in love with me because I bought her a piece of fairly expensive jewellery for her eighteenth birthday?’
Megan faced him. ‘You’re the only one who can answer that.’
‘So what do I do?’
‘You make her stop loving you.’
‘How?’ he demanded.
Megan was tempted to suggest that he spend longer in the girl’s company—that would be bound to make the dream evaporate in an instant!
‘What have you done so far?’ she questioned. ‘To put her off?’
‘Last time I saw her, I gently explained that the age difference between us is too great.’
Megan shook her head. ‘Oh, dear! Big mistake!’
He looked at her sharply. ‘Oh?’
‘Saying that makes it sound as though it’s only convention standing in your way! True love thwarted by an inflexible world! The Romeo and Juliet syndrome,’ she added helpfully. ‘What else have you done?’
‘I don’t take her phone calls any more—and I haven’t returned any of the more recent e-mails. Or answered any of the letters.’ He stared at the paperweight and when he looked up the grey eyes were troubled. ‘Because I can’t think what to say—and because the letters are becoming slightly more—’ he seemed to have difficulty choosing the right word ‘—graphic,’ he finished reluctantly.
‘Ignoring her will only make her more desperate,’ Megan mused aloud, deciding that there was absolutely no need for her to know just how graphic. ‘And she’ll be worried that she’ll lose your friendship altogether. No, ignoring her won’t help.’
‘Well, then, just what do you suggest I do?’ he demanded.
Megan stared at him, her lips twitching with the temptation to tell him that it wasn’t really her place to suggest anything at all.
But then she thought of Katrina’s crestfallen voice and tried putting herself in the girl’s shoes and felt an enormous wave of sympathy for her. Because hadn’t she read somewhere that obsessional love could gnaw away at you and dominate your whole life?
She frowned with concentration. ‘There is one way of getting her off your back.’ She saw him wince at the way she had phrased it. ‘But you might think it’s rather cruel.’
His eyes grew suspicious. ‘What did you have in mind?’
Megan smiled. Her brothers were the same. Couldn’t see a simple solution even if it was staring them in the face!
‘You just convince her that you’re in love with someone else. Simple.’
‘Oh, really?’ he queried softly. ‘And how do you propose I do that?’
‘She said something about seeing you this weekend—’
‘No. Let’s rephrase that. You make it sound like a date and it’s not. My brother is getting married in a few weeks’ time—and he and his fiancée are visiting my mother’s house this weekend. I planned to go along as well. And Katrina will be there, too.’
‘So you take somebody else with you.’ There was a marked lack of understanding in the cool grey eyes. ‘A girlfriend,’ she elaborated. ‘Show Katrina you’re all over somebody else! There’s no surer way for someone to get the message that you aren’t interested!’
‘But I’m not in love with anybody else.’
Megan sighed. Men could be so infuriatingly dense at times—even ones as startlingly bright as Dan McKnight! ‘You don’t have to be. You just have to pretend to be. Just find someone who’s willing to go along with it.’
Dan screwed his face up. ‘Like who, for example?’
‘Well, I don’t know! There must be hundreds of women who would be delighted to slip into the role of being Dan McKnight’s partner for the weekend!’
‘Yes. With most of them looking to make the post permanent. I can’t take the risk,’ he said grimly.
His arrogance almost took her breath away. ‘I’m sure there must be a woman somewhere who could manage to resist your charm for forty-eight hours, Dan!’
He acknowledged her sarcasm with a slight quirk of his lips, and then his grey eyes began to gleam with the first inkling of a plan. Someone outside his circle. Someone who would be willing to play along with it for a couple of days and then forget it. Someone who didn’t tempt him. Someone who…
‘How about you?’ he asked suddenly.
‘Me?’
