SOS: Convenient Husband Required / Winning a Groom in 10 Dates

But why would he? There had been plenty of time back then. And he’d done a major matchmaking job with Michael Linton, a little older, steady as a rock and looking for a well brought up, old-fashioned girl to run his house, provide him with an heir and a spare or two. The kind of man her mother had been supposed to marry.

‘What kind of conditions?’ Adam asked.

‘Ones that I don’t meet,’ she said abruptly, as keen to change the subject as he had been a few moments earlier.

The morning had been shocking enough without sharing the humiliating entailment that Freddie Jennings had missed when he’d read her grandfather’s very straightforward will after the funeral. The one Grandpa had made after her mother died which, after generous bequests to his favourite charities, bequeathed everything else he owned to his only living relative, his then infant granddaughter, Mary Louise Coleridge.

Thankfully, they’d reached the small gate that led directly from the garden of her family home into the park and May was able to avoid explanations as, hanging onto the kitten, she fumbled awkwardly in her handbag for her key.

But her hands were shaking as the shock of the morning swept over her and she dropped it. Without a word, Adam picked it up, unlocked the gate, then, taking her arm to steady her, he pushed the buggy up through the garden towards the rear of the house.

She stopped in the mud room and filled a saucer with milk from the fridge kept for animal food. The kitten trampled in it, lapping greedily, while she lined a cardboard box with an old fleece she used for gardening.

Only when she’d tucked it up safely in the warm was she able to focus on her own mess.

Her jacket had an ominous wet patch and her skirt was plastered with mud. It was her best black suit and maybe the dry cleaners could do something with it, although right at the moment she didn’t want to see it ever again.

As she unzipped the skirt, let it drop to the floor and kicked it in the corner, Adam cleared his throat, reminding her that he was there. As if every cell in her body wasn’t vibrating with the knowledge.

‘Robbie will kill me if I track dirt through the house,’ she said, peeling off the shredded tights and running a towel under the tap to rub the mud off her feet. Then, as he kicked off his mud spattered shoes and slipped the buckle on his belt, ‘What are you doing?’

‘I’ve been on the wrong side of Hatty Robson,’ he replied. ‘If she’s coming at me with antiseptic, I want her in a good mood.’

May swallowed hard and, keeping her eyes firmly focused on Nancie, followed him into the warmth of the kitchen with the buggy, leaving him to hang his folded trousers over the Aga, only looking up at a burst of laughter from the garden.

It was the Christmas Workshop crossing the courtyard, heading towards the house for their mid-morning break.

‘Flapjacks!’

‘What?’

She turned and blinked at the sight of Adam in his shirt tails and socks. ‘We’re about to have company,’ she said, unscrambling her brain and, grabbing the first aid box from beneath the sink, she said, ‘Come on!’ She didn’t stop to see if he was following, but beat a hasty retreat through the inner hall and up the back stairs. ‘Bring Nancie!’

Adam, who had picked up the buggy, baby, bag and all to follow, found he had to take a moment to catch his breath when he reached the top.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

‘The buggy is heavier than it looks. Do you want to tell me what that was all about?’

‘While the appearance of Adam Wavell, minus trousers, in my kitchen would undoubtedly have been the highlight of the week for my Christmas Workshop ladies…’ and done her reputation a power of good ‘…I could not absolutely guarantee their discretion.’

‘The highlight?’ he asked, kinking up his eyebrow in a well-remembered arc.

‘The most excitement I can usually offer is a new cookie recipe. While it’s unlikely any of them will call the news desk at Celebrity, you can be sure they’d tell all their friends,’ she said, ‘and sooner or later someone would be bound to realise that you plus a baby makes it a story with the potential to earn them a bob or two.’ Which wiped the suspicion of a grin from his face.

‘So what do we do now?’ he asked. ‘Hide at the top of the stairs until they’ve gone?’

‘No need for that,’ she said, opening a door that revealed a wide L-shaped landing. ‘Come on, I’ll clean up your hand while you pray to high heaven that Nancie doesn’t wake up and cry.’

Nancie, right on cue, opened incredibly dark eyes and, even before she gave a little whimper, was immediately the centre of attention.

May shoved the first aid box into Adam’s hand.

‘Shh-sh-shush, little one,’ she said as she lifted her out of the buggy, leaving Adam to follow her to the room that had once been her nursery.

When she’d got too old for a nanny, she’d moved into the empty nanny’s suite, which had its own bathroom and tiny kitchenette, and had turned the nursery into what she’d been careful to describe as a sitting room rather than a study, using a table rather than a desk for her school projects.

Her grandfather had discouraged her from thinking about university—going off and ‘getting her head filled with a lot of nonsense’ was what he’d actually said. Not that it had been a possibility once she’d dropped out of school even if she’d wanted to. She hadn’t been blessed with her mother’s brain and school had been bad enough. Why would anyone voluntarily lengthen the misery?

When she’d begun to take over the running of the house, she’d used her grandmother’s elegant little desk in her sitting room, but her business needed a proper office and she’d since converted one of the old pantries, keeping this room as a place of refuge for when the house was filled with guests. When she needed to be on her own.

‘Shut the door,’ she said as Adam followed her in with the buggy. ‘Once they’re in the conservatory talking ten to the dozen over a cup of coffee, they won’t hear Nancie even if she screams her head off.’

For the moment the baby was nuzzling contently at her shoulder, although, even with her minimal experience, she suspected that wasn’t a situation that would last for long.

‘The bathroom’s through there. Wash off the mud and I’ll do the necessary with the antiseptic wipes so that you can get on your way.’

‘What about you?’

‘I can wait.’

‘No, you can’t. Heaven knows what’s lurking in that mud,’ he replied as, without so much as a by-your-leave, he took her free hand, led her through her bedroom and, after a glance around to gain his bearings, into the bathroom beyond. ‘Are your tetanus shots up to date?’ he asked, quashing any thought that his mind was on anything other than the practical.

‘Yes.’ She was the most organised woman in the entire world when it came to the details. It was a family trait. One more reason to believe that her grandfather hadn’t simply let things slide. That he’d made a deliberate choice to keep things as they were.

Had her mother known about the will? she wondered.

Been threatened with it?

‘Are yours?’ she asked.

‘I imagine so. I pay good money for a PA to deal with stuff like that,’ he said, running the taps, testing the water beneath his fingers.

‘Efficient, is she?’ May asked, imagining a tall, glamorous female in a designer suit and four-inch heels.

‘He. Is that too hot?’

She tested it with her fingertips. ‘No, it’s fine,’ she said, reaching for the soap. ‘Is that common? A male PA?’

‘I run an equal opportunities company. Jake was the best applicant for the job and yes, he is frighteningly efficient. I’m going to have to promote him to executive assistant if I want to keep him. Hold on,’ he said. ‘You can’t do that one-handed.’

She had anticipated him taking Nancie from her, but instead he unfastened his cuffs, rolled back his sleeves and, while she was still transfixed by his powerful wrists, he took the soap from her.

‘No!’ she said as she realised what he was about to do. He’d already worked the soap into a lather, however, and, hampered by the baby, she could do nothing as he stood behind her with his arms around her, took her scratched hand in his and began to wash it with extreme thoroughness. Finger by finger. Working his thumb gently across her palm where she’d grazed it when she’d fallen. Over her knuckles. Circling her wrist.

‘The last time anyone did this, I was no more than six years old,’ she protested in an attempt to keep herself from being seduced by the sensuous touch of long fingers, silky lather. The warmth of his body as he leaned into her back, his chin against her shoulder. His cheek against hers. The sensation of being not quite in control of any part of her body whenever he was within touching distance, her heartbeat amplified so that he, and everyone within twenty yards, must surely hear.

‘Six?’ he repeated, apparently oblivious to her confusion. ‘What happened? Did you fall off your pony?’

‘My bike. I never had a pony.’ She’d scraped her knee and had her face pressed against Robbie’s apron. She’d been baking and the kitchen had been filled with the scent of cinnamon, apples, pastry cooking as she’d cleaned her up, comforted her.

Today, it was the cool, slightly rough touch of Adam’s chin against her cheek but there was nothing safe or comforting about him. She associated him with leather, rain, her heartbeat raised with fear, excitement, a pitiful joy followed by excruciating embarrassment. Despair at the hopelessness of her dreams.

There had been no rain today, there was no leather, but the mingled scents of clean skin, warm linen, shampoo were uncompromisingly male and the intimacy of his touch was sending tiny shock waves through her body, disturbing her in ways unknown to that green and heartbroken teen.

Oblivious to the effect he was having on her, he took an antiseptic wipe from the first aid box and finished the job.

‘That’s better. Now let’s take a look at your arm.’

‘My arm?’

‘There’s blood on your sleeve.’

‘Is there?’ While she was craning to see the mingled mud and watery red mess that was never going to wash out whatever the detergent ads said, he had her shirt undone. No shaky-fingered fumbling with buttons this time. She was still trying to get her tongue, lips, teeth into line to protest when he eased it off her shoulder and down her arm with what could only be described as practised ease.

‘Ouch. That looks painful.’

She was standing in nothing but her bra and pants and he was looking at her elbow? Okay, her underwear might be lacy but it was at the practical, hold ’em up, rather than push ’em up end of the market. But, even if she wasn’t wearing the black lace, scarlet woman underwear, the kind of bra that stopped traffic and would make Adam Wavell’s firm jaw drop, he could at least notice that she was practically naked.

In her dreams…Her nightmares…

His jaw was totally under control as he gave his full attention to her elbow.

‘This might sting a bit…’

It should have stung, maybe it did, but she was feeling no pain as his thick dark hair slid over his forehead, every perfectly cut strand moving in sleek formation as he bent to work. Only a heat that began low her belly and spread like a slow fuse along her thighs, filling her breasts, her womb with an aching, painful need that brought a tiny moan to her lips.

‘Does that hurt?’ he asked, looking up, grey eyes creased in concern. ‘Maybe you should go to Casualty, have an X-ray just to be on the safe side.’

‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s fine. Really.’

It was a lie. It wasn’t fine; it was humiliating, appalling to respond so mindlessly to a man who, when he saw you in public, put the maximum possible distance between you. To want him to stop looking at her scabby elbow and look at her. See her. Want her.

As if.

These days he was never short of some totally gorgeous girl to keep him warm at night. The kind who wore ‘result’ shoes and bad girl underwear.

She was more your wellington boots kind of woman. Good skin and teeth, reasonable if boringly brown eyes, but that was it. There was nothing about her that would catch the eye of a man who, these days, had everything.

‘You’re going to have a whopping bruise,’ he said, looking up, catching her staring at him.

‘I’ll live.’

‘This time. But maybe you should consider giving up climbing trees,’ he said, pulling a towel down from the pile on the rack, taking her hand in his and patting it dry before working his way up her arm.

‘I keep telling myself that,’ she said. ‘But you know how it is. There’s some poor creature in trouble and you’re the only one around. What can you do?’

‘I’ll give you my cell number…’ He tore open another antiseptic wipe and took it over the graze on her elbow. Used a second one on his own hand. ‘Next time,’ he said, looking up with a smile that was like a blow in the solar plexus, ‘call me.’

Oh, sure…

‘I thought you said you were going to South America.’

‘No problem. That’s what I have a personal assistant for. You call me, I’ll call Jake and he’ll ride to your rescue.’

In exactly the same way that he was using her to take care of Nancie, she thought.

‘Wouldn’t it be easier to give me his number? Cut out the middle sidekick.’

‘And miss out on having you shout at me?’

First the blow to the solar plexus, then a jab behind the knees and she was going down…

‘That’s all part of the fun,’ he added.

Fun. Oh, right. She was forgetting. She was the clown…

‘My legs are muddy. I really need to take a shower,’ she added before he took it upon himself to wash them, too. More specifically, she needed to get some clothes on and get a grip. ‘There’s a kettle in the kitchenette if you want to make yourself a drink before you go.’

She didn’t give him a chance to argue, but dumped Nancie in his arms and, closing her ears to the baby’s outraged complaint, shut the door on him.

She couldn’t lock it. The lock had broken years ago and she hadn’t bothered to get it fixed. Why would she when she shared the house with her invalid grandfather and Robbie, neither of whom were ever going to surprise her in the shower?

Nor was Adam, she told herself as, discarding what little remained of her modesty, she dumped her filthy shirt in the wash basket, peeled off her underwear and stepped under the spray.

It should have been a cold shower, something to quench the fizz of heat bubbling through her veins.

Since it was obvious that even when she was ninety Adam Wavell would have the same effect on her, with or without his trousers, she decided to forgo the pain and turned up the temperature.

Chapter Three

ADAM took a long, slow breath as the bathroom door closed behind him.

The rage hadn’t dimmed with time, but neither had the desire. Maybe it was all part of the same thing. He hadn’t been good enough for her then and, despite his success, she’d never missed an opportunity to make it clear that he never would be.

But she wasn’t immune. And, since a broken engagement, there had never been anyone else in her life. She hadn’t gone to university, never had a job, missing out on the irresponsible years when most of their contemporaries were obsessed with clothes, clubbing, falling in and out of love.

Instead, she’d stayed at home to run Coleridge House, exactly like some Edwardian miss, marking time until she was plucked off the shelf, at which point she would do pretty much the same thing for her husband. And, exactly like a good Edwardian girl, she’d abandoned a perfect-fit marriage without hesitation to take on the job of caring for her grandfather after his stroke. Old-fashioned. A century out of her time.

According to the receptionist who’d been raving about the garden design course, what May Coleridge needed was someone to take her in hand, help her lose a bit of weight and get a life before she spread into a prematurely middle-aged spinsterhood, with only her strays to keep her warm at night.

Clearly his receptionist had never seen her strip off her skirt and tights or she’d have realised that there was nothing middle-aged about her thighs, shapely calves or a pair of the prettiest ankles he’d ever had the pleasure of following up a flight of stairs.

But then he already knew all that.

Had been the first boy to ever see those lush curves, the kind that had gone out of fashion half a century ago, back before the days of Twiggy and the Swinging Sixties.

But when he’d unbuttoned her shirt—the alternative had been relieving her of Nancie and he wasn’t about to do that; he’d wanted her to feel the baby clinging to her, needing her— he’d discovered that his memory had served him poorly as he was confronted with a cleavage that required no assistance from either silicon or a well engineered bra. It was the real thing. Full, firm, ripe, the genuine peaches and cream experience—the kind of peaches that would fill a man’s hand, skin as smooth and white as double cream—and his only thought had been how wrong his receptionist was about May.

She didn’t need to lose weight.

Not one gram.

May would happily have stayed under the shower until the warm water had washed away the entire ghastly morning. Since that was beyond the power of mere water, she contented herself with a squirt of lemon-scented shower gel and a quick sluice down to remove all traces of mud before wrapping herself in a towel.

But while, on the surface, her skin might be warmer, she was still shivering.

Shock would do that, even without the added problem of the Adam Wavell effect.

Breathlessness. A touch of dizziness whenever she saw him. Something she should have grown out of with her puppy fat. But the puppy fat had proved as stubbornly resistant as her pathetic crush on a boy who’d been so far out of her reach that he might as well have been in outer space. To be needed by him had once been the most secret desire shared only with her diary.

Be careful what you wish for, had been one of Robbie’s warnings from the time she was a little girl and she’d been right in that, as in everything.

Adam needed her now. ‘But only to take care of Saffy’s baby,’ she muttered, ramming home the point as she towelled herself dry before wrapping herself from head to toe in a towelling robe. She’d exposed enough flesh for one day.

She needn’t have worried. Adam had taken Nancie through to the sitting room and closed the door behind him. Clearly he’d seen more than enough of her flesh for one day.

Ignoring the lustrous dark autumn gold cord skirt she’d bought ages ago in a sale and never worn, she pulled on the scruffiest pair of jogging pants and sweatshirt that she owned. There was no point in trying to compete with the girls he dated these days. Lean, glossy thoroughbreds.

She had more in common with a Shetland pony. Small, overweight, a shaggy-maned clown.

What was truly pathetic was that, despite knowing all that, if circumstances had permitted, May knew she would have still succumbed to his smile. Taken care of Saffy’s adorable baby, grateful to have the chance to be that close to him, if only for a week or two while her mother was doing what came naturally. Being bad by most people’s standards, but actually having a life.

Nancie began to grizzle into his shoulder and Adam instinctively began to move, shushing her as he walked around May’s private sitting room, scarcely able to believe it had been so easy to breach the citadel.

He examined the pictures on her walls. Her books. Picked up a small leather-bound volume lying on a small table, as if she liked to keep it close to hand.

Shakespeare’s Sonnets. As he replaced it, something fluttered from between the pages. A rose petal that had been pressed between them. As he bent to pick it up, it crumbled to red dust between his fingers and for a moment he remembered a bunch of red roses that, in the middle of winter, had cost him a fortune. Every penny of which had to be earned labouring in the market before school.

He moved on to a group of silver-framed photographs. Her grandparents were there. Her mother on the day she’d graduated. He picked up one of May, five or six years old, holding a litter of kittens and, despite the nightmare morning he was having, the memories that being here had brought back into the sharpest focus, he found himself smiling.

She might have turned icy on him but she was still prepared to risk her neck for a kitten. And any pathetic creature in trouble would have got the same response, whether it was a drowning bird on the school roof—and they’d both been given the maximum punishment short of suspension for that little escapade—or a kitten up a tree.

Not that she was such an unlikely champion of the pitiful.

She’d been one of those short, overweight kids who were never going to be one of the cool group in her year at school. And the rest of them had been too afraid of being seen to be sucking up to the girl from the big house to make friends with her.

She really should have been at some expensive private school with her peers instead of being tossed into the melting pot of the local comprehensive. One of those schools where they wore expensive uniforms as if they were designer clothes. Spoke like princesses.

It wasn’t as if her family couldn’t afford it. But poor little May Coleridge’s brilliant mother—having had the benefit of everything her birth could bestow—had turned her back on her class and become a feminist firebrand who’d publicly deplored all such elitism and died of a fever after giving birth in some desperately inadequate hospital in the Third World with no father in evidence.

If her mother had lived, he thought, May might well have launched a counter-rebellion, demanding her right to a privileged education if only to declare her own independence of spirit; but how could she rebel against someone who’d died giving her life?

Like her mother, though, she’d held on to who she was, refusing to give an inch to peer pressure to slur the perfect vowels, drop the crisp consonants, hitch up her skirt and use her school tie as a belt. To seek anonymity in the conformity of the group. Because that would have been a betrayal, too. Of who she was.

It was what had first drawn him to her. His response to being different had been to keep his head down, hoping to avoid trouble and he’d admired, envied her quiet, obstinate courage. Her act first, think later response to any situation.

Pretty much what had got them into so much trouble in the first place.

Nancie, deciding that she required something a little more tangible than a ‘sh-shush’ and a jiggle, opened her tiny mouth to let out an amazingly loud wail. He replaced the photograph. Called May.

The water had stopped running a while ago and, when there was no reply, he tapped on the bedroom door.

‘Help!’

There was no response.

‘May?’ He opened the door a crack and then, since there wasn’t a howl of outrage, he pushed it wide.

The room, a snowy indulgence of pure femininity, had been something of a shock. For some reason he’d imagined that the walls of her bedroom would be plastered in posters of endangered animals. But the only picture was a watercolour of Coleridge House painted when it was still surrounded by acres of parkland. A reminder of who she was?

There should have been a sense of triumph at having made it this far into her inner sanctum. But looking at that picture made him feel like a trespasser.

May pushed open the door to her grandfather’s room.

She still thought of it as his room even though he’d long ago moved downstairs to the room she’d converted for him, determined that he should be as comfortable as possible. Die with dignity in his own home.

‘May?’

She jumped at the sound of Adam’s voice.

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you, but Nancie is getting fractious.’