could not have been more heartfelt had she just announced her intention to marry him. Megan loosed a gurgle of laughter. ‘A joke,’ she placated.
‘He might not think so,’ the tall stranger observed as he scanned her amused face.
‘Then he has no sense of humour,’ Megan proclaimed.
‘You still haven’t said what brought you here…’
Halfway to the door, Megan turned back at the sound of his voice. Why not? the reckless voice in her head suggested. You’re never going to see the man again. Maybe there was something in that old maxim that it was easier to discuss things with a stranger.
‘My mother wants me to be happy.’ She began to experience a familiar tightness in her chest and she sat down cautiously on the arm of a chair.
‘And that’s a problem?’ Luc watched her fumble in her bag.
‘She believes no woman is complete without a man.’
‘And you don’t have one.’
Megan’s chin went up. ‘I don’t want one,’ she rebutted firmly. Her fingers closed over the inhaler she never went out without and she gave a sigh of relief. ‘At regular intervals she tries to set me up with someone she imagines…’
‘Is good breeding stock…’ came the straight-faced suggestion.
Megan’s eyes narrowed. ‘Will make me happy,’ she corrected and raised the inhaler to her mouth. The relief was almost immediate. ‘This is why I avoid cats,’ she said, anticipating his question.
‘You have asthma?’ he queried, watching the rapid rise and fall of her chest.
‘A little,’ she admitted. She went to rise but a large hand fell on her shoulder, anchoring her to the spot. Her eyes slid from his brown fingers to his face.
‘Take a minute to get your breath,’ he suggested, actually it was more than a suggestion, it was a quiet command.
Normally Megan didn’t respond well to commands but on this occasion she found herself strangely willing to let it pass. His concern, even though unnecessary was oddly comforting.
‘Can I get you anything? A glass of water?’
She nodded; her throat felt oddly achy and constricted.
Without a further comment he left and returned with a glass of water. He stood there, arms folded across his chest while she drank. Megan was very conscious of his silent presence. He wasn’t the sort of man you could forget was there.
‘Thank you,’ she said politely, handing back the empty glass. Their fingers touched briefly during the exchange; the contact did uncomfortable things to Megan’s pulse.
‘Can I call anyone for you?’
‘Gracious, no!’ Very conscious of her warm cheeks, she forced a smile but didn’t meet his eyes. ‘I’m fine.’
‘Despite a matchmaking mother.’
The comment brought her head up. ‘I’ve tried everything to put her off,’ she admitted ruefully. ‘Nothing works.’
Head tilted a little to one side, a frown deepening the line between his flyaway brows, he scanned her face. ‘What are you…thirty…?’
The almost-spot-on estimate disconcerted her; she had enough female vanity to feel peeved.
‘Sorry, have I touched a nerve?’
Megan glared at him. ‘No, you haven’t,’ she denied angrily. ‘I have no problem with being thirty…actually, almost thirty.’
‘Good for you,’ he interposed with silken gravity. ‘Don’t you think at almost thirty it’s time you told your mother to mind her own business?’
Megan coloured angrily. He made it sound so simple, but then it probably was, if you had no problem trampling all over the feelings of people you loved. ‘Oh, why didn’t I think of that? Of course, it might be because I don’t want to hurt my mother.’
His shoulders lifted in a disdainful shrug. ‘Well, if you don’t mind people running your life…?’
‘My mother doesn’t run my life!’ she flared.
‘No?’
Megan clenched her teeth. ‘No, she doesn’t. She has had a tough time the last few years,’ she informed him, swallowing past the emotional lump in her throat. ‘She isn’t some cold control freak, she is just a caring mum who wants to see her daughter happy and settled.’ She dragged a frustrated hand through her hair and gave a dejected sigh. ‘Unfortunately happy and settled for her equates with a man and marriage, which is why I had this idea…a sort of line-of-least-resistance thing.’
Luc watched as she gazed abstractedly into the distance, her smooth brow furrowed.
‘Least resistance…?’ he probed softly.
She nodded. ‘If I could get one of the prospective grooms to pretend to be smitten, Mum would be happy and leave me to get on with more important things.’
Luc’s deep-set eyes widened slightly as comprehension struck home. ‘And what do you consider important?’
‘My job.’
‘You can’t live and breathe your job.’
‘My work is very demanding; it leaves no time for relationships. ’
‘So you’re married to your career.’
She frowned; he made her sound freaky. ‘I’ve nothing against marriage, but I don’t think I’ll ever find a man who is willing to take what little I would have to give.’
‘You don’t have a very high opinion of men.’
‘I’m a pragmatist.’
‘You think you were being pragmatic when you came here to ask Lucas Patrick to…pretend to be smitten…?’
A mortified flush mounted Megan’s cheeks—when he said it, it sounded even more off the wall. ‘I didn’t say that.’
‘But that’s what you came here for?’
‘It’s not as crazy as it sounds.’
‘Did I say it was crazy? I’m just wondering…what was going to be in it for him?’
CHAPTER THREE
MEGAN frowned. ‘In it…?’
‘As in what would he get out of it?’ Luc looked into her bewildered face and laughed. ‘You thought he’d do it out of the goodness of his heart.’ His mobile lips lifted cynically at the corners. ‘You really never have met Lucas Patrick, have you?’
‘And
