“You’ve got it all wrong. I don’t want to marry you—I don’t even like you!”

There was a startled pause, during which Kat prayed for the ground to open up and swallow her.

“I have to tell you there are some serious flaws in your seduction technique, Miss Wray,” Matt Devlin told her.

Kat’s cheeks grew hotter as she squirmed under Matt’s scrutiny….

KIM LAWRENCE lives on a farm in rural Anglesey, Wales. She runs two miles daily and finds this an excellent opportunity to unwind and seek inspiration for her writing! It also helps her keep up with her husband, two active sons and the various stray animals that have adopted them. Always a fanatical consumer of fiction, she is now equally enthusiastic about writing. She loves a happy ending!

Kim Lawrence’s fast-paced, sassy books are real page-turners. She creates characters you’ll never forget, and sensual tension you won’t be able to resist….

The Prospective Wife
Kim Lawrence

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER ONE

CAUGHT between a rock and a hard place the unfortunate orderly began to sweat. He’d met some real hard cases in his time, but this black-haired bloke, who even on crutches towered over him, could have given the hardest of those tough characters a run for their money! It was something about those eyes, he concluded with a shudder, as he became unable to maintain eye contact with those electric blue orbs any longer.

Truth to tell, he’d always felt slightly scornful of his colleagues, who tended to be intimidated by some of the rich and famous patients who stayed at the exclusive clinic. It was a matter of pride with him…no obsequious grovelling to the spoilt and pampered. He was polite, but he didn’t treat them any differently than he would the ordinary man in the street. In his own defence there was no way this bloke was going to be mistaken for a man in the street, and that circumstance had nothing whatever to do with money.

‘Sister said…’ he began to protest weakly.

‘Take the wheelchair away.’

No shouting, no red-faced blustering, but he still managed to put an indefinable something into his voice that made your blood run cold.

‘Sister Nash said you’ve got to leave in a wheelchair.’

Matthew Devlin permitted himself a thin-lipped smile and remained blissfully unaware that the streetwise young man in front of him found it deeply sinister.

‘Sister Nash knows my opinion of wheelchairs.’

The redoubtable Sister Nash knew Matt’s opinion on a lot of subjects; they’d had many a clash of wills over the past few weeks.

‘Listen, mate.’ The harassed orderly made a last-ditch man-to-man appeal. ‘Maybe you don’t need the wheelchair, maybe you do; I don’t know. I do know you won’t be here tomorrow, but I will and so will Sister Nash. She can make life a misery.’

‘Thanks, Martin. I’ll see Mr Devlin off the premises.’

The orderly turned with an expression of relief to see Andrew Metcalf standing in the doorway.

‘Cheers, Doc!’ He gave him a grateful look and didn’t hang around to find out if his appeal had found a sympathetic ear.

‘Well, Matt, harassing my staff to the bitter end, I see…’

Matthew Devlin snorted. ‘That’s pretty rich, coming from you! If it’s not beneath your dignity—’ he nudged a slim leather briefcase with his toe ‘—carry that for me.’ As much as he hated asking for help, sometimes there was no alternative.

The curt unfriendly tone didn’t have any visible effect on the surgeon, who had a pretty shrewd idea of the frustration his patient was feeling.

‘I doubt if it’s on my job description but what the hell…for my favourite patient, why not?’

‘Is sarcasm in the job description?’ Matt gritted, swinging his crutches into action. Even though this posture robbed him of several inches, he was still a good head taller than the other man.

‘You’re in a hurry,’ the doctor observed, increasing his pace to keep up with the cracking pace Matt had set. ‘Anyone would think you didn’t like us…’

‘If I ever develop a yen to live in a police state you’ll be the first person I think of, Doc,’ Matt promised grimly.

‘I suppose I’d be wasting my breath telling you not to discharge yourself…?’ Matt delivered a look that could have withered grapes on the vine. The doctor gave a philosophical shrug. ‘You can’t blame me for trying. You are, after all, one of my most amazing success stories. I’d hate to see you blow all that hard work for the want of a bit of patience.’

Matt’s smile was wintry. He’d made heavy inroads during the past few months into his limited patience reserves. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t do anything to ruin your reputation as a miracle-worker.’

Andrew Metcalf inclined his head in acceptance of the back-handed compliment. His expression was wry; he knew he was good, possibly the best, but he was a realist, and as much as he would have liked to claim all the credit for himself he knew that the speed and completeness of Matt’s recovery owed more to the man’s remarkable determination and steely willpower than anything else.

‘Back door to avoid the press…?’ He knew the routine; the clinic had had its fair share of celebrity patients.

‘I don’t see why I should make their lives easier, do you? Joe’s brought the car around.’

His doctor could see the reasoning behind this logic; he was pretty sure he might be a bit paranoid too if his personal life had been served up for public consumption as often as Matt Devlin’s had.

‘If you’re so bothered about security I’m surprised you’re not staying with your parents. Don’t they even have their own drawbridge…?’

‘Not to mention a moat, castle, and the best part of a village,’ Matt drawled languidly. ‘But no son… At least, not as far as my father’s concerned.’

The doctor looked at his patient’s perfectly proportioned, rather stern profile and wondered if he cared. You never could tell with Matt.

‘But…’ He stopped himself just in time from blurting out the information that Devlin senior, who had even more financial clout than his son, had forbidden any member of staff to mention. ‘I’d have thought the accident…’ he protested mildly.

‘It would take more than a near-death experience to make my father change his mind, Andrew. As far as he’s concerned I stopped being his son the day I didn’t do as he wanted. I’m the competition now…and he’d like nothing better than to ruin me.’

Andrew Metcalf was shocked by this cold-blooded analysis even though he knew it wasn’t strictly true.

‘Well, that’s not likely to happen, is it?’ he responded uncomfortably.

Despite the fact that after the somewhat mysterious departure of his more experienced partner the City had predicted disaster, it was well known that the airline Matt had started from very humble beginnings was now causing the big players who had scoffed—none louder than Matt’s own father, Connor Devlin—serious headaches.

‘Worried about your share dividend, Doc?’

Andrew grinned. He could afford to. Fair Flights was one of the financial success stories of the decade. ‘Actually, I do have a small sum invested.’

‘Then I’ll probably make you a very rich man,’ Matt announced with a total lack of modesty.

‘The rates we charge here and the amount of hardware in that leg, Matt, you already have…’

‘I’ve never actually done any private sector work, and to be honest it’s never really appealed.’

Despite her indifferent tone Kat was well aware she couldn’t afford to be picky when it came to jobs. In fact it was all she could do not to kiss the woman’s hand-made Italian shoes!

Kat’s anxiety began to mount as she watched Drusilla Devlin’s china-blue eyes drift around the forlorn-looking, half-empty sitting-room. Supposing I sounded too uninterested? It was one thing not wanting to come over as a charity case; it was another playing hard to get!

‘But you need work…?’

Kat felt a wave of relief. For a nasty moment there she’d thought she’d talked herself out a job.

‘Don’t we all?’

Well, not all, Kat silently conceded, realising that she was almost certainly speaking to someone who didn’t need to work. The chauffeur-driven limo Drusilla had driven up in had been ample proof of that.

Kat’s own situation wasn’t desperate, but it could get that way…and fast. Her godfather was executor of her mother’s estate and, even though he’d tried to break the news as gently as he could, Kat had been shocked to learn of the full extent of her mother’s debts. Kat had genuinely thought the gambling thing was in the past.

Apparently she wasn’t legally obliged to pay back the undocumented amounts of cash—some of them large—that her mother had borrowed from friends and family over a twelve-month period, but Kat was determined to pay back every penny!

It was a weight off her mind that the house had sold so swiftly; unfortunately this piece of good luck had left her without a roof over her head.

With very little in her bank account—the extended leave she’d taken to care for her mother during her final stages of her illness had been unpaid—she needed a job and somewhere to live.

Now here was a friend of Mum’s who, up until last month, they hadn’t seen for years, offering her both. It had to be fate!

She nudged the edge of a half-full packing case with the toe of her trainer. It was filled with the stuff the auctioneers hadn’t wanted.

‘People always want good physios, and I’ve heaps of experience. I’ll get a new job easily enough,’ she assured her affluent-looking visitor on an earnest, upbeat note.

‘But not your old one.’

‘No,’ Kat confirmed with a regretful sigh. ‘I knew they couldn’t hold it open indefinitely, but that might be a blessing in disguise.’

Drusilla wasn’t surprised to hear it. Five minutes after she’d met Kathleen Wray she had realised that her old friend’s daughter was as resiliently optimistic as she was beautiful. A few discreet enquiries into the girl’s financial situation, added to what Amy had told her, had revealed she’d need every ounce of that youthful resilience.

‘I’ve worked in the same hospital since I qualified—not exactly bold and adventurous.’

Drusilla wondered if Matthew would find the girl’s smile as enchanting as she did. A frown tugged at her seamless brow as she contemplated her son’s choice of female companionship.

‘I always meant to travel,’ Kat explained, her eyes shining with enthusiasm as visions of exotic sun-kissed shores rose tantalisingly before her eyes. ‘I just never got around to it somehow…’ The smile faded. ‘There’s nothing to keep me here any more.’

Drusilla caught up the young woman’s hand in a comforting clasp. ‘You did everything you could for Amy, my dear,’ she insisted warmly. ‘And you must take comfort from the fact that in the end she was here amongst all the familiar things that were dear to her, and with the daughter I know she loved very much.’

The motherly patting on the arm made Kat’s wide-spaced grey eyes fill with tears—not that Drusilla Devlin, with her designer clothes, glossy hair and impossibly youthful face, was like any mother she knew.

‘You’re very kind. You say this job would only be short term…? It is a live in post…?’ That would solve her immediate problem.

Drusilla clapped her prettily kept hands in delight. ‘You’ll do it for me? Excellent!’

‘There is a job, isn’t there? You’re not just inventing one because you feel sorry for me…?’ Her doubts emerged gruffly as she wiped a hint of moisture from the corner of her eye. ‘Mum didn’t ask you to watch out for me…?’

Drusilla laughed. ‘Oh, there’s a job all right; you’ll definitely earn your money, my dear. Incidentally, you’ll be working for me, not Matthew.’

Kat nodded. That was understandable. If the man had been in hospital for six months it was likely he didn’t have the spare cash to pay for a private physiotherapist, and it was equally obvious his mother did.

‘I suppose it will be some time before he’ll be able to get back to work…I mean, pilots need to be very fit, don’t they?’

‘Pilots…?’

‘You did say he was piloting a helicopter when he was injured?’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

Drusilla was looking a bit uncomfortable and Kat cursed her own insensitivity at referring to the accident.

‘You’d probably be better off getting someone else,’ she felt impelled to point out. ‘You know I’ve specialised in working with children for several years now.’

‘That might come in very handy when dealing with Matthew,’ Matthew’s mother reflected drily. ‘At heart most men are little boys.’

Kat’s fuzzy mental image of an over-indulged mummy’s boy intensified.

‘The problem is he’s never had a day’s illness in his life and he’s not making the most patient patient, poor dear. He needs cheering up, and small wonder! That terrible accident was bad enough, but then that awful girl proceeded to dump him.’ The blue eyes flashed with maternal ire. ‘I suppose we ought to be grateful she waited for him to be taken off the critical list before she went ranting on hysterically to those awful newspapers about him never walking again! “Horribly disfigured,” I ask you…!’

Kat’s grey eyes softened with sympathy. ‘I didn’t know… They can do marvellous things with facial reconstruction.’

‘Heavens, no; there was hardly a mark on his face. Obviously you don’t escape such a horrific accident with no scars,’ Drusilla conceded. ‘But the main problem was being forced to lie flat on his back with the spinal injury for so long; he’s had far too much time to brood. I knew the moment I saw you that you were just the girl for the job!’

‘Let’s hope your son thinks the same.’

It seemed strange to Kat that her new patient wasn’t having any say in the choice of his physio, but then for all she knew he might be the sort of man who let Mummy buy his socks for him!

There were a lot of men out there who still relied heavily on their mothers well into their thirties—she’d met one or two herself. She sometimes wondered if something about her screamed ‘substitute mother’ they certainly seemed to gravitate towards her.

‘Oh, I’m sure Matthew will love you.’

Nothing could have been more heartily confident than Drusilla’s firm tone… So why was Kat getting the distinct impression things weren’t quite as straightforward as the older woman was implying?

‘He does know that you’re…?’

‘You might find Matthew a little…erm…resistant…’ Drusilla was obviously choosing her words with care. ‘But you must promise me one thing.’ Her blue eyes gleamed with urgency as she caught hold of Kat’s hand. ‘Don’t listen to him if he tells you he doesn’t need you. Promise me, Kathleen!’

Kat felt slightly uneasy and a little embarrassed by the older woman’s intensity. ‘You’re the boss,’ she agreed, a shade of unease in her voice.

Kat had appreciated that her mother’s childhood friend had married money, but she hadn’t appreciated how much money until she arrived at that lady’s country cottage. A shooting box for some titled lord originally, its rooms were all on a grand scale and the opulent decor which was sympathetic to the period was out of this world. She just knew she’d live in constant fear of breaking some priceless ornament.

After the housekeeper—Kat’s idea that her ill-defined duties might need to stretch as far as the kitchen and the odd bit of light housework were fast fading—had shown her to her room, where she’d found a large bouquet of flowers and a warm letter from Drusilla apologising for her absence, Kat had explored the neatly kept grounds.

She was repelling the over-friendly advances of a large bee which had detached itself from the low lavender hedge that ran the entire length of the neatly trimmed lawn when a gleaming black Jag drew up on the gravelled forecourt.

The opportunist bee took advantage of Kat’s lapse in concentration and stung her on the inner part of her exposed forearm—great timing! She was vaguely aware that a good deal of door-slamming and gravel-crunching was going on whilst she was hopping around biting her lips stoically.

Kat was just getting on top of the pain when she heard a deep gravelly voice bad-temperedly demand, ‘Well, don’t just stand there, Joe, get rid of her!’

The strong clipped tones didn’t fit with the firm image in her mind of a wan, pain-ravaged invalid. She opened her eyes and blinked back the tears of pain to find a tall gangly chap of about thirty looking anxiously down at her. He looked nice, but a picture of health.

‘Are you all right?’

‘I was stung by a bee.’ She peered towards the area of her arm which was already puffy and inflamed.

‘You poor thing. Let me have a look…’

So much for all the elaborate subterfuge to ensure his privacy! Someone at the hospital must have passed on the information to the press. Matt Devlin quickly got tired of waiting for Joe to get rid of the unwanted visitor and eased himself slowly from the low-slung vehicle. By the time he was standing on the gravelled forecourt beads of sweat stood out on his brow.

Matt propelled himself with the assistance of the much-despised crutches to find out what was taking so long. Once he was in a position to get his first proper view of the girl he stopped wondering.

Honey-blonde hair pulled back into a cute ponytail to reveal a simpering smile—that was no way genuine—pinned on a face that was all scrubbed cheeks, innocent big eyes and sexy lips. Then, last but not least—definitely not least—there was the body. No anorexic waif, this one; Lara Croft meets the girl next door! In short, the babe of dopes like Joe’s collective dreams.

Joe had a vacuous grin on his face. It made Matt feel embarrassed just to look at it; he’d seen sheep that looked more intelligent than his best friend did at this moment! A superior sneer tugged at the corners of his lips. The women in his dreams had more going for them than insipid prettiness.

‘Matt,’ Joe hailed him. ‘Kat here has been stung by a wasp.’

Matt watched sourly as he held the babe’s slim arm out for his inspection.

‘Bee,’ the babe said in a brisk, un-babe-like voice.

Matt found she was looking critically at himself, not Joe. Her eyes were large, clear grey, lushly fringed by dark curling lashes and tilted ever so slightly at the outer corners.

Bimbo, yes…brainless, no… No amount of mascara or cheesy grins could disguise the intelligence lurking in those crystal-clear depths.

‘Are you another one from that damned woman’s magazine? I’ve already told your editor where she can stick her story!’ He felt a surge of grim satisfaction as he watched her high-voltage smile gutter.

The reference meant nothing to Kat, so she could shake her head in vigorous denial with a clear conscience.

‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’ His silence oozed disbelief. ‘You are Matthew Devlin…?’ A case of mistaken identity…? The optimist in her soared before his abrasive response brought her crashing down to earth with a thud.

‘I know who I am. Who are you?’

Kat blinked several times, and tried not act as if she felt slightly singed by those blazing blue eyes. He was tall without being lanky, broad of shoulder without being bulky, and darkly beautiful in a dangerous Byronic hero sort of way…in short, a knock-out! She felt a spurt of indignation. Why hadn’t someone warned her?

In the masculine beauty stakes she’d have rated him, on a scale of one to ten, at a conservative twelve and a half! She couldn’t help but reflect that it would have been an aesthetic tragedy if a face like that had been scarred; as it was, the only immediate evidence of his injuries was a thin scar that ran from a point midway along his prominent cheekbone to his temple.

He’d probably laugh when she explained…they’d laugh together. Another look at that lean uncompromising face with its intriguing planes and angles told her that was taking optimism too far! Whatever else this job was going to be, it wasn’t going to be a laugh a minute.

To prove that she wasn’t intimidated—an uphill battle—she smiled serenely, and the dark fallen angel face didn’t budge. There wasn’t even the suggestion of a quiver around the beautifully sculpted lips.

Faced with belligerent antagonism on the face of her patient—and Kat was getting the distinct impression this wasn’t the sort of man who would respond to gentle understanding—she felt a twinge of nostalgia for the pale, pliable, mummy’s boy of her imagination.

There was nothing even faintly pliable about the man who was looking at her with the sort of affection most folk reserved for something nasty they’d discovered on their shoe! He might be using crutches but nothing about him said vulnerable. Even in less than full working order he exuded an almost tangible aura of restless vitality.

‘I’m Kathleen Wray.’

Illness must have taken its toll, but he wasn’t making any concessions to it. Probably those lines around his eyes and hard but sexy mouth hadn’t been so deeply ingrained before his accident; long-term pain probably had a lot to do with the faint blue smudges under those fairly spectacular eyes too. Those deep-set, heavy-lidded orbs were just as startlingly blue as his mother’s, but whereas hers sparkled with humour his held a restless almost explosive quality. In fact there was something combustible about the entire man!

‘Is that supposed to mean anything to me?’

‘I think maybe the sting’s still in,’ Joe fretted. ‘What are you supposed to use for bee stings—vinegar…?’

The babe firmly repossessed her arm. ‘I’ve got some hydrocortisone cream in my bag.’ She dismissed the throb in her arm with a careless shrug.

‘And where might your bag be?’ Matt asked, looking around for any sign of transport.

‘In my room.’ Her eyes innocently sought the second-floor window in an effort to locate the charming room she’d been allocated.

The significance of the gesture wasn’t lost on Matt. ‘Are you trying to tell me you’re actually staying here? What the hell’s going on?’ he barked.

‘I assumed you’d be expecting me. I’m your physiotherapist, Mr Devlin.’

‘Not the best cover story. I don’t have a physiotherapist.’

‘You mustn’t worry. Your mother…’ Matt watched as she gave a self-conscious glance towards Joe. The composed little voice with the husky rasp dropped to a confidential whisper. ‘She’s paying my salary.’

‘Hah!’ Matt wasn’t sure why he should be worried about her salary, but at the mention of his parent things started to make a lot more sense.

His mother was untiring in her determined efforts to fling females she considered suitable mates in his path, in the mistaken belief that a grandchild was the key to healing the rift between father and son.

‘My mother. I should have guessed.’

His scrutiny slid over Kat from head to toe in a boldly insolent way that had her chin automatically rising to an aggressive angle.

‘Impressive.’ His eyes lingered on the contours of her full breasts.

Which was more than could be said for his manners! But Kat could cope with crude sexual innuendo; she had stopped rounding her shoulders in a futile attempt to hide her womanly attributes when she was about fifteen. She squared said shoulders proudly and clung onto her temper with difficulty.

‘I’m terminating your contract, Blondie.’

That was the best news she’d heard for some time, and it was on the tip of her tongue to tell him so when she recalled the promise Drusilla had wrung out of her. Concentrating on the state of her debts made it easier to retain her composure.

‘My name is Kathleen Wray. You can call me Miss Wray, or, at a push, Kat. I don’t answer to Blondie. And I’m not leaving until your mother tells me my services are no longer required.’ Her rigid stance faded as her stormy grey eyes softened. ‘Pride is all well and good, Mr Devlin,’ she announced in a kindly way. ‘But, whether you like it or not—’ she cast a swift professional eye over his tall, broad-shouldered figure ‘—you do need me.’

Matt looked baffled by her response.

‘Are you slow or what…?’ He didn’t need this, not now. He was in pain, hot, tired and had a damned hank of hair in his eyes and no free hand to push it away. As always the mortifying consequences of illness made him mad enough to yell and curse. It took a lot of self-control to restrain his inclination to indulge in both.

‘It’s probably the pain that’s making you so tetchy.’ She kept her tone objective, not that it made his reaction any the less hostile. From the way his eyes flashed and his jaw tightened, she assumed he took any reference to his physical weakness as a direct insult; some men were like that.

‘I’m not in pain!’ Matt bellowed, throwing self-restraint to the winds. The muscles down his left leg chose that precise moment to go into painful spasm. Matt swore under his breath and gritted his teeth against the pain.

‘I told you you shouldn’t have gone into the office.’ There was a concerned note in his friend’s voice.

‘Save your sanctimonious I-told-you-sos.’ Matt closed his eyes and forced himself not to fight the wave of pain. Experience had taught him tensing up only prolonged the spasms.

‘You didn’t bring him straight here from the hospital…?’

‘He wouldn’t let me.’

‘I really don’t see there was much he could do to stop you!’ Kat responded crisply.

Her eyes were compassionate as she looked at the tall figure who was obviously suffering considerable pain. When he tried to shrug off the supportive hand she placed beneath his elbow she diplomatically pretended not to notice his efforts to dislodge her light grip.

‘You don’t know Matt,’ Joe returned wryly.

Kat resisted the childish impulse to assure him she didn’t want to.

‘Let’s get him inside, shall we?’ Matt heard the bimbo say, just before he had to endure the ultimate indignity of being hustled like a baby through the door between his best friend and Blondie.

Dear God, it had been bad enough when those damned nurses had fussed and fretted; this was more than flesh and blood could be expected to take!

‘When did he last take his medication?’

Matt lifted his dark head from the brocade-covered chaise-longue they’d deposited him on. ‘What are you asking him for? I’m not dumb!’ he snarled.

‘We should be so lucky,’ his friend breathed quietly.

‘What was that, Joe…?’ Matt growled.

‘When did you last take any pain relief?’ You didn’t need to be psychic to figure out that wiping the sheen of perspiration from his furrowed brow would not go down well. Fortunately his colour was looking more healthy than it had outside.

Kat’s eyes slowly worked their way up the strong column of his throat to his lean, angular face. Though pale after his hospitalisation, Matthew Devlin had the sort of olive skin tones that would darken given the first hint of sunlight.

She had a sudden and deeply distracting image of him stretched out on a beach, his skin gleaming with a healthy glow. She gave her head the tiniest of shakes to dispel the unprofessional hallucination.

She gave a whimsical but worried grin. Just as well he didn’t have a personality to match his looks or she might have trouble staying impersonal! If someone had forced her to produce a fantasy lover he would have looked remarkably similar to Matthew Devlin—which just went to show that looks weren’t everything!

‘I need a drink, not a pill. Pass me a Scotch, Joe.’

Kat wondered if he ever said please as she laid a restraining hand on Joe’s arm.

‘I don’t suppose there’s any reason you can’t have both, but it depends on what sort of painkillers you’re taking.’

‘I’m not taking pain relief…I don’t need crutches of any sort,’ he announced with scornful and not strictly accurate distaste.

Lips compressed into a stubborn white line, he rose to his feet. Deliberately ignoring the crutches and his audience’s combined concern, he walked over to the drinks cabinet and poured himself a whisky.

Kat was pretty sure that every step he took was agony, but the only external evidence of this in his drawn face were the beads of sweat that appeared across his upper lip. The man had guts—she had to hand him that. It was just a pity he didn’t channel his energies into something more constructive than thumbing his nose at the world in general and her in particular!

He lifted the glass in a mocking salute before downing the amber liquid in one swallow.

‘A pill to go to sleep, another to wake…I’m not buying into that merry-go-round. I thought pain was the body’s way of telling a person something.’

Matt had been the soul of restraint up until very recently. Even when they hadn’t known how bad the spinal damage was, and life in a wheelchair had been a nightmare possibility, he’d managed to retain control of his stiff upper lip.

It had been the killing slowness of the whole convalescence thing that had finally made him snap. He was used to setting himself a goal and working towards it; he didn’t see why getting back to full fitness should be any different, but the blasted medics were constantly holding him back.

‘Going on the evidence so far, I rather doubt you’ve been listening to your body at all this morning, Mr Devlin.’

She’d seen his type before—though not quite so spectacularly packaged—the sort of man who’d push himself and his body to the limit of endurance and beyond. That sort of willpower was all very laudable, and probably made the person successful at anything he set his mind to—but it also made him a terrible patient!

‘My mother may think I need the attentions of some sultry little nursey…’

To Kat’s intense discomfort he did that undressing thing with his eyes again. She didn’t doubt for a second it was meant to unsettle her, but she’d not give him the satisfaction of showing how well the crude tactics worked.

‘…but I can assure you I don’t. So ignoring the fact I’ve fired you isn’t going to change my mind.’

It wasn’t a comfortable experience being pinned down by those arrogant eyes but Kat knew it would be fatal to back down at this point. However, facing down this man was proving to be one of the hardest things she’d ever done. It made her shudder to think how difficult it would be to thwart him when he was fully fit. She didn’t think she’d ever come across anyone who had such an ingrained aura of command.

‘I’m a physio, not a nurse.’

‘If you say so…’

Did the man think she was pretending, for God’s sake? Kat repressed the strong inclination to dig out her certificates and wave them under his infuriating nose.

‘Ignoring the fact you’ve got pain isn’t going to make it go away,’ she responded serenely.

Did she think he didn’t know that? Matt ground his teeth.

‘And being rude and unreasonable isn’t going to make me go away, either. I’ve worked with some very difficult children…’

A choking noise emerged from Joe’s throat. Matt was too stunned to notice his friend’s heaving shoulders.

‘Are you suggesting I’m acting like a child?’ he grated incredulously.

‘You’re only a child to your mother, Mr Devlin,’ she explained kindly. ‘To me you’re simply a client.’

The little witch was patronising him! The fact she looked like a fantasy figure made the fact she acted like a damned nanny all the more unpalatable. What sort of underwear did a nanny-pin-up hybrid wear—naughty black lace or prissy white cotton? His mental preoccupation with her damned underwear represented yet another example of his diminished mental control to Matt.

‘Client?’ he snarled. ‘A fancy name for a patient! Bloody doctors!’ he yelled, his frustration showing. ‘What do they know…?’

Hell! Why not go the whole way and stamp your feet, Matt? Small wonder her smile had a definite smug tinge to it. What, he wondered, had happened to the man of few words—none of them sulky—who could alter the course of a high-powered meeting with an effortlessly enigmatic look? It was humiliating to be forced to recognise he’d substituted infantile for enigmatic!

‘About flying a helicopter, probably nothing,’ she soothed. Matt was beginning to be able to predict the precise moment that dimple would peep out. ‘About relieving pain, hopefully quite a lot. It might seem very macho to suffer in silence, but there’s nothing particularly clever about suffering when there’s no need. There’s no disgrace in admitting you need help.’ With a small frown, her critical eyes ran over his stubbornly erect figure. If he’d ever had any excess flesh on his greyhound lean frame, it had been burned off long ago. ‘Actually, I’m surprised they discharged you so soon.’

‘So soon?’ he blasted. The memory of weeks and months of immobility was still in sharp focus in his mind as glared with intense dislike at the interfering female his mother had seen fit to inflict upon him.

‘They didn’t discharge him,’ Joe volunteered. ‘Though I suspect they might be breathing a large collective sigh of relief about now. You’ll probably find this hard to believe, but he was the perfect patient up until about three weeks ago… Uncomplaining, charming…’

‘Displaying the desired degree of dog-like obedience…’ Matt cut in savagely.

‘You’re right, I do find it hard to believe.’

Matt glanced at her sharply. So Miss Sugar and Spice had claws, he mused thoughtfully. The discovery made her slightly less objectionable…very slightly.

‘Then almost overnight it was bye-bye Mr Nice Guy! I suppose everyone has their breaking point, even Matt Devlin.’

‘I think you’re rather overplaying the irony,’ Matt growled darkly.

‘You always have had a problem with delegating, haven’t you, Matt?’ Joe observed, with an innocent smile. ‘I think he’d have secretly preferred it if his empire had crumbled without him at the helm.’

Matt glared at his oldest friend with intense dislike.

Kat found the talk of empires—a private joke, maybe—a bit confusing, but what she did understand from this interchange brought a deep furrow to her wide smooth brow.

‘So he discharged himself against medical advice…?’ Drusilla had said nothing about that!

‘What if I did?’ Matt asked belligerently. ‘And, if it’s not too much bother, do you mind not talking about me in the third person? I’ve had it up to here—’ he jabbed his hand up against his forehead, which did nothing to improve his headache, and almost made him lose his balance ‘—with medical busybodies! There’s nothing more anyone else, no matter how many medical degrees they’ve got, can do for me now. Anything that happens from this point onwards is up to me.’

Kat’s worried frown grew more pronounced. If he wasn’t prepared to accept limitations he could put back his recovery months.

‘I’ll have to talk to your doctor,’ she announced decisively. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Hasn’t it sunk in yet, baby-face? I fired you. Come to that, I never even employed you!’

‘I’m not working for you; I’m working for Drusilla.’

‘Drusilla,’ Matt drawled with a cynical smile. ‘How cosy.’

‘Metcalf. His doctor’s called Metcalf.’

Joe decided the angel’s smile was well worth the murderous glare he received from Matt.

‘And the clinic is…?’

‘There’s a name for friends like you,’ Matt announced grimly when the so-called physio had whisked busily away to have a heart-to-heart with his doctor.

Joe smiled unrepentantly back. ‘Sorry old son. Why don’t you sit down?’ he suggested. ‘I already know you’re made of steel,’ he added slyly as Matt limped over to an armchair. ‘It strikes me, Matt, you’re being awkward for the sake of it. You said yourself what a pain it was going to be traipsing off to the local hospital for physio every other day.’

‘I’m quite capable of employing my own physio. And if the babe doesn’t go, I will! I don’t have to stay here,’ he railed. ‘If my place has got too many steps I’ll buy another one. I’ve no intention of going along with one of my mother’s little schemes.’

Joe grinned. ‘She just wants to see you with a good woman.’

Matt’s expression grew even more cynical. ‘Of her choosing.’

‘Well, maybe she’s got a point. Delegating the task might not be such a bad idea…not with your track record. I mean, what man in his right mind would get engaged to Angela!’

‘I wasn’t engaged to Angela, except in her fevered imagination.’

‘You know that, I know that, but thousands of readers of the popular press think you’re an object of pity.’

‘Thanks for that, Joe. I feel better already,’ Matt came back, dry as dust.

‘You’ve had your chance to set the record straight,’ Joe reminded him, tongue firmly in his cheek.

A scornful sound escaped Matt’s throat. ‘I’d prefer to slit my throat than become a human interest story in a women’s magazine.’ There was genuine horror in his eyes.

‘How can you be so sure she isn’t genuine…?’

Matt gave a derisive snort. ‘You have a charmingly naïve view of women, Joe. I think I almost envy you…’

‘I’m not bitter and twisted, and proud of it,’ Joe added with a touch of lazy defiance.

‘You’re just a sucker for a pretty face…’

‘Pretty doesn’t really do her justice.’

‘I find it hard to see past the simpering smile.’

Kat’s bosom swelled with indignation—she’d never simpered in her life! Her fingers tightened around the doorhandle.

‘Matt!’ Joe ejaculated, shocked by the irreverence.

Matt remained unrepentant. ‘My mother is totally unscrupulous when it comes to getting what she wants, and at the moment she wants a grandchild. She’s always thought no man can resist a cleavage.’ His expression was grim as he reflected on the callous machinations of his manipulative parent.

‘To tell you the truth, Matt, as far as cleavages go I’ve always thought much the same myself.’ Joe admitted.

Despite the pain he was enduring, Matt’s lips twitched. ‘Under that choir-boy façade, Joe Casey, there lurks the soul of a debauched swine.’

‘Chance would be a fine thing. You can’t tell me you don’t find her at all attractive?’ Joe regarded his friend with open scepticism.

On the point of walking in, Kat paused. She found her own hesitation predictable and pathetic, but what girl, she reasoned, could resist hearing whether a man—even if she didn’t like him—found her fanciable…?

‘She’s got all the right equipment, but it’s the cabbage scenario.’

‘Cabbage?’ Joe’s tone echoed the sort of bewilderment Kat was feeling.

‘During my formative years everyone—nannies, parents, schoolteachers—they were all constantly telling me how good it was for me. Naturally I developed a loathing for the stuff which lasts to this day.’

‘So you want a woman who is bad for you?’

‘You’re missing the point, Joe. I don’t want one someone thinks I should want.’

That was what you get for eavesdropping! Kat had never been likened to cabbage before—she’d have remembered.

She wouldn’t have been human if she hadn’t allowed her mind to dwell on the pleasant picture of Matt Devlin a helpless victim of her irresistible charms. It would have been petty to dwell for too long on the image of his despair when she rejected him.

His antagonism made perfect sense now. No wonder he was acting like a real pain in the posterior if he thought his mother had sent her here to land a husband! This was an embarrassing mistake she could easily correct.

Her upbeat expression as she walked into the room didn’t even hint that she cared about the cabbage thing.

‘You’ve got it all wrong. I don’t want to marry you… For heaven’s sake, I don’t even like you!’

CHAPTER TWO

THERE was a startled pause during which Kat prayed for the ground to open up and swallow her. It didn’t, and she was left wondering why she’d imagined for a second that matters would be improved by telling a man she couldn’t stand the sight of him!

‘That must be a weight off your mind, Matt.’ Joe’s voice quivered ever so slightly.

Straight from the heart! The muscles of Matt’s throat worked overtime as he fought back unexpected laughter… Watching her face fall as she realised what she’d just said struck him as one of the funniest things he’d seen in ages… But then, if his nearest and dearest were to be believed, he had a particularly warped sense of humour.

‘I have to tell you there are some serious flaws in your seduction technique, Miss Wray.’ The gibe was delivered in a manner that suggested he was generously offering her advice.

He didn’t normally get a kick out of seeing people grovel, but there were exceptions…! No man, no matter how secure he was, liked being told a beautiful woman didn’t fancy him. He speculated—in a lazy, objective kind of way—how hard it would be to make her change her mind. Rejection didn’t occur to Matt.

Kat’s cheeks grew hotter as she squirmed under his malicious scrutiny… So she’d put both feet in it. It wasn’t very charitable of him to labour the fact…and enjoy it so much!

‘If you automatically assume every woman you meet is out to seduce you, perhaps you need the services of a good psychologist, not a physio!’ Go on, Kat, you tell him; it’s not as if you need the job, is it?

Matt met her defiant glare with a thoughtful expression. So, no grovelling.

She braced herself, pretty sure he was going to say something blighting, and pretty sure she deserved it, but when those heavy lids lifted he just stared… Kat had never personally encountered a stare quite like this. She found she could readily visualise innocent men confessing to heinous crimes if forced to endure that expressionless intensity for too long! She was glad that the only thing she was guilty of was clumsiness!

‘It’s not personal or anything.’

His sardonic stare underlined the stupidity of her stilted announcement.

‘I mean, I’m sure you’re a very nice person…underneath…’ Underneath being a dyed-in-the-wool misogynist, that was.

Was this meant to soothe his bruised ego…? Nobody as far as Matt could recall had ever called him ‘nice’ before as if they meant it, let alone as if they didn’t mean it!

The dangerous glitter in his eyes made Kat feel even more flustered. She decided it might be a good time to change tack.

‘I suppose you think it’s odd that Drusilla didn’t tell you about me… Actually,’ she conceded truthfully, ‘I do too.’

‘I’m sure she had her reasons.’

Kat tried to ignore the nasty knowing note in his voice and racked her brains for a reasonable explanation to account for Drusilla Devlin’s strange behaviour in dropping her in it like this.

‘She was probably worried you wouldn’t want me,’ she mused half to herself.

That had a nice self-effacing note to it. A cynical smile twisted his lips as Matt’s eyes slowly travelled the length of her curvaceous figure; this wasn’t a woman who lay awake at nights worrying about rejection.

Kat continued her meandering explanation, oblivious to his cynical observations.

‘I really needed the job you see.’ It was probably way too late to remember that.

Now there was a statement that just begged a question, and if he asked it he’d have laid money on her being able to produce a first-class sob story… Ironically, he was half inclined to believe it might even be true! If this was acting, it was Oscar-class stuff.

‘Simple philanthropy rarely covers my mother’s behaviour…’

‘It’s true,’ Kat fired back, angry on Drusilla’s behalf. ‘Your mother was being kind to me, offering me the job…not that I’m not very well qualified.’ She frowned fiercely and divided her glare that said she was willing to defend her credentials between both men. ‘You see, she went to school with my mum and she knew I was in a bit of a fix…moneywise…’ An uncomfortable flush mounted her smooth cheeks as she hastily skipped over this subject.

‘I can’t help but feel it might have been simpler all round if she’d just given you the money, not foisted you on me.’

Kat’s eyes widened in indignation. ‘I don’t take charity!’

‘A girl with principles,’ he drawled.

‘You find that funny?’ she snapped from between clenched teeth.

‘I find it commendable,’ he replied with such patent insincerity that Kat felt like hitting him over the head with one of his crutches. She didn’t normally have such violent inclinations, but he was an extremely trying man.

‘I’m more than capable of working for my money…’

‘And is this…project paying very well?’

This was one nasty insinuation too many, as far as Kat was concerned. ‘Let’s just say that I’d need to be getting an awful lot more if the job description included trying to get romantic with you! I don’t mean to be rude—’

‘You do surprise me—’

‘—but you did ask,’ she finished defiantly. ‘And I don’t know why you’re acting so offended. Nobody’s suggested you’re stupid and avaricious enough to agree to marry someone if you were paid enough!’

‘I don’t think my mother paid you.’

He didn’t add that the prospect of being his wife would be financial inducement enough for a lot of women… Maybe not this woman…? Definitely not this woman! It had been some time since he’d met a starry-eyed idealist, which no doubt accounted for the fact it had taken him so long to recognise this one. In his opinion, idealism was a dangerously unpredictable trait.

Her brows shot up in elaborate surprise. ‘You think I’d do it for free?’ she flung back childishly.

For the first time she glimpsed a flicker of genuine humour in his electric blue eyes.

‘I think she was relying on propinquity and my natural charm to do the job,’ he responded drily. He smiled and provided her with a brief but dazzling flash of that charm. ‘You look dubious…but, you see, mothers,’ he explained gravely, ‘are notoriously blind when it comes to their off-spring.’

‘I didn’t mean to be—’

Matt waved aside her protest with a faint movement of his long tapering fingers. ‘Personal…I know. For someone who is keen on professional detachment, you cram in more insults per minute than anyone else I’ve ever met.’

‘But…’

‘Calm down, that’s not bad.’

‘It isn’t?’

‘I can’t abide boot-lickers,’ he announced blandly. ‘Let’s say for one minute that you can swear hand on heart—’ his focus shifted to the region where that organ was housed, and lingered there ‘—that you’re only here to continue the torture inflicted on me by members of your profession in the clinic.’

Kat let out a silent sigh of relief as his eyes finally lifted. She just hoped and prayed her top was thick enough to hide the tingling activity of her nipples.

‘That doesn’t alter the fact that if I decide I need a resident nurse or physio I’d prefer one of my own choosing…’

Kat was still too preoccupied by the inexplicable behaviour of her body to summon up the necessary energy to fight him on this; besides, as much as she needed this job, she wasn’t about to beg.

‘It won’t take me long to pack.’ She made a conscious effort to belatedly put a bit of dignity back into the proceedings. Actually, some things were worse than being in debt—things like being eaten up with lust for a man you didn’t even like!

‘I thought you needed the job…?’

Anyone would think he gave a damn! Kat fixed him with an angry incredulous stare. He definitely was the most perverse man she’d ever encountered.

‘She does, she does…’

Kat had almost forgotten the other man’s presence.

‘Your concern for my well-being is touching, Joe. I’m well aware that it wouldn’t suit your plans if I went for a male physio built like a barn…’ Matt taunted his lust-sick friend with idle affection.

Joe blushed and glanced uncomfortably in Kat’s direction. ‘If you weren’t ill…’

‘Don’t sulk in front of the lady, Joseph…’

‘I wasn’t sulking!’

Kat, happy to be distracted from the wantonly indiscriminate behaviour of her own body, gave a weak indulgent smile as she watched the two men good-naturedly bicker; the rapport between them obviously went deep.

An extraordinary notion occurred to her, and her jaw dropped as her eyes darted rapidly from one man to the other and back again. It couldn’t be, could it? As unlikely as the explanation seemed, it would explain why his mother felt Matt wasn’t going to get a wife without a lot of encouragement.

‘Heavens, I didn’t realise!’ she blurted out, without thinking. Her mind was racing. Why hadn’t that possibility occurred to her before? After all, one of the most masculine, straight-looking men she knew was gay.

‘Realise what?’ Matt asked

‘It’s all right,’ she explained soothingly. ‘One of my best friends is gay, and his parents found it hard to accept at first too, but they came round eventually and…’

‘Gay!’ Joe, his eyes round, looked at his hand, innocently resting on Matt’s shoulder, and with a horrified snort jerked it away.

Kat smiled in what she hoped was an open-minded nonjudgmental sort of way as she tried to analyse her somewhat ambivalent response to this discovery. There didn’t seem any harm now to acknowledge that the prospect of treating a man who she found so physically attractive—in a butterflies-in-the-belly…tingly sort of way—had been bothering her. She ought to be feeling much happier…much less cheated… Cheated? Where had that come from?

She kept her attention carefully trained on Joe. ‘You don’t owe me any explanations,’ she told him warmly.

Joe looked with smouldering resentment at his friend who, after a startled pause, had begun laughing.

‘This is your fault,’ he accused wildly. ‘I told you you should have got a haircut.’

‘I had no idea that sexual orientation had any direct connection with hair length.’

‘Stop mucking around, will you?’ Joe yelled. ‘Tell her…we’re not!’

‘It’s no good, Joe, she’s guessed!’ Matt intoned dramatically.

‘Cut it out, Matt!’ Joe begged, looking slightly sick. He felt unable to take this slur on his masculinity as lightly as his friend seemed to.

It was slowly dawning on Kat that yet again she’d jumped to the wrong conclusion.

‘Oh, God!’ she groaned. ‘I’ve got it wrong, haven’t I?’

‘Sorry, Miss Wray, but we’re both strictly hetero…’ If she got any redder there was a good chance she’d spontaneously combust, he thought, watching her discomfort with a degree of spiteful pleasure.

‘This could be a double bluff to get me where you want me…’ Matt mused thoughtfully.

Which presumably was flat on his back and helpless! The mental image that accompanied this maverick thought of her astride his prone body had enough detail to deepen the colour in her already pink cheeks significantly. She didn’t normally fantasise about having a man at her mercy!

‘But I’m inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt.’

Kat’s mouth fell ajar with shock and dismay. ‘You are?’

‘Unless, of course, you want to reveal that you actually find me and this broken body irresistible…?’ It bothered him like hell to detect the faint note of self-pity in his voice. As far as he was concerned, self-pity had no constructive value and therefore no place in his life. Self-pity was for losers.

‘Heavens!’ Kat exclaimed, so thoroughly thrown off balance by this remarkable change in his attitude that she forgot about professional reticence.

‘Dr Metcalf forgot to mention your mood swings.’

It was what he hadn’t forgotten to tell her that interested Matt, whose eyes narrowed to suspicious slits.

‘Sounds like good old Andrew was very obliging…’

With an exasperated sigh, Kat planted her hands on her softly rounded hips. A little toss of her head made the honey-gold ponytail dance in a way that charmed at least one of the men watching her performance.

‘Don’t start with that again, or I’m out of here…’ God, when will I learn to control my tongue? If he called her bluff, the schedule she’d worked out to repay the last of the debts would have to go out of the window. She crossed her fingers firmly.

‘Is that a threat or a promise?’

Kat heaved a sigh of relief. ‘Your mother had warned him that I’d probably be ringing…’

‘That’s Mum, all right. She thinks of everything.’

Kat loftily ignored this acid interjection. ‘As I was saying,’ she continued frostily, ‘Dr Metcalf merely supplied me with medical details.’ She didn’t mention that during the course of their telephone conversation the doctor’s grudging admiration for his patient had come across clearly.

‘It’s always handy to know that someone is likely to throw a wobbler if you mention wheelchair,’ she added slyly.

She let this sink in for a moment and watched from under the sweep of her lashes for Matt’s reaction. A slow grin slowly spread over his face; it filled his eyes with an unexpected and dangerously attractive warmth.

‘Do you really think you’re such a great catch?’ she grouched.

So it wasn’t tactful, but a girl had her breaking point! And it was something that Kat felt needed saying; this man had an entirely too great an opinion of himself! So what if he had a smile that could melt a girl’s bones?

Matt wasn’t a vain man, but he did take some things for granted and one of them was, to put it crudely—as Joe had, on more than one occasion—his pulling power! Without realising it, over the years he had come to expect a certain degree of appreciation from females.

It wasn’t as if he had any illusions about what attracted many women, and in Matt’s view it wasn’t the fascination of his blue eyes! He had money and power, and a particular sort of woman liked men who could provide them with those things. How else did you explain hordes of drop-dead gorgeous lovelies on the arms of men old enough to be their grandfathers?

Despite normally evincing a healthy cynicism for that sort of adulation, now, reading the scorn in Kat’s wide eyes, he decided that uncritical worship might not be so bad after all! Just how hard, he speculated, his lips settling into a brooding line of dissatisfaction, would it be to replace that superior disdain with indiscriminate drooling desire…? Now that might be the sort of therapy he needed!

‘You were going, I think, Joseph,’ Matt said without taking his eyes off Kat.

‘I was…?’ It occurred to Joe that, as far as the woman of his dreams was concerned, he had never really been there at all—he tried to take the fact he wasn’t making any contribution towards the electric atmosphere in the room philosophically.

‘Don’t worry, I think I’ll be quite safe in Miss Wray’s capable hands.’

Matt couldn’t ignore the stimulating effect this the image had on his jaded imagination… It was the undies question rearing its ugly head again. Were lingerie fetishes a normal result of several months of enforced celibacy…? There could be a paper in this for good old Dr Metcalf…

Kat could hardly believe the startling alteration in his manner. He sounded suspiciously like a normal, rational human being; there was even a hint of beguiling warmth in his voice!

‘You don’t mind me being here?’ Kat discovered she felt rather ambivalent about this breakthrough. She did have the offer of several temporary beds… Would you really prefer to be a burden on your friends? she asked herself sternly.

‘I want to throw those—’ his electric blue gaze lit momentarily on the discarded crutches ‘—out for good. If you can speed up the process I’d be a fool to object, wouldn’t I.’

It sounded reasonable…

‘Yes, you would.’ It seemed that he was no longer fearful that she would seduce him… How did you go about seducing someone…? With her rudimentary grasp of the subject, she’d probably produce a seduction routine that would have him laughing some more. She still felt like wincing when she thought about the sound of his deep, uninhibited amusement at her expense.

‘Then that’s settled.’

‘Your mother said that you—’

Matt didn’t much want to know what his mother said. ‘I thought you two were on first-name terms…?’ Matt interrupted her flow.

‘Is that a problem, Mr Devlin?’

‘Nobody calls me Mr Devlin.’

Kat’s mobile features screwed up in an uneasy frown. ‘I’m not sure I’m comfortable using your first name…’ She wasn’t sure why she felt so strongly about this… It wasn’t as if she was renowned for her formality.

‘I’m sure we all want you to be comfortable…’ he responded smoothly.

Then why, she wondered, does everything you do appear to be specifically designed to make me feel uneasy…? ‘No, I’m sure it will be fine…Matthew…’

‘Matt. And you’re…?’

‘Kat.’

‘Which is short for what…? Katherine…?’

‘Kathleen,’ she supplied, feeling a strange reluctance to divulge any personal information, no matter how innocuous, to this man.

‘Kathleen… Irish…?’

When he wasn’t barking orders or sounding paranoid, Matthew Devlin had a sinfully attractive voice, the sort of voice that had a colour and texture—in this case, midnight-blue and velvet—when you closed your eyes to appreciate the husky resonance. Kat didn’t close her eyes, but it was a close call!

‘On my mother’s side,’ she confirmed.

‘Me, too.’

‘I know. They went to school together, but they hadn’t seen each other for years and years,’ she added swiftly, in case it got him started on the conspiracy theory again. ‘Not until…recently.’

Matt didn’t need to be hit on the head with evasion to recognise it. He’d always been good at picking up on things people didn’t say; it was a trait that had done him no harm in his business dealings. He felt his curiosity stir as he wondered about what Kat was leaving unsaid.

Kat was sorry to see Joe go. She’d felt he might be a useful ally in hostile territory. Kat was realistic; she had her foot in the door, but she was pretty sure that this was only the first hurdle—she soon discovered her instincts were right.

‘I’ll use the room I always do, thank you, Elizabeth. If you could have my bags moved upstairs at some point I’d be grateful.’ Despite the pleasant smile he had for the housekeeper, there was no doubt Matt hadn’t liked discovering he’d been put in the ground-floor guest suite.

The housekeeper, whom Kat had had down as the unemotional type, had all but wept with joy at seeing Matt. There was no accounting for taste! She now cast a look of urgent appeal in Kat’s direction as she left the room.

The door closed and Kat could no longer keep a hold on her tongue. She was too exasperated by this point to wrap up her criticism in sugar-coated terms. So far, during their cosy getting to know one another chat, he had vetoed every tentative suggestion she’d made, for no reason as far as she could see other than pig-headed awkwardness, plain and simple.

‘I suppose that’s one way to prove you’re in control. Lay down the law, watch them jump and don’t worry,’ she soothed nastily. ‘Even if they think what you’re saying is stupid they’re not likely to say so!’

Kat had never met a more obstinate individual! For the life of her she couldn’t understand why the staff here seemed so delighted to have him staying—it was bizarre. The housekeeper in particular seemed a very sensible woman, which made her reaction to Matt all the more incomprehensible.

Perhaps the man had hidden depths…? No, Kat decided, with an angry sniff, if he did have depths they were probably murky. Either it was case of mass hypnotism or the whole place must be particularly susceptible to blue eyes; there was no other explanation.

The thought drew her own angry eyes back to his. There was no escaping the fact that his eyes were very blue. Kat herself had found her own gaze repeatedly drawn towards his thickly lashed deep-set eyes as their conversation had become increasingly one-sided. Right now, the main expression she could see in those azure depths was shock… Perhaps he didn’t expect the paid help to answer back?

Matt settled back in his seat and reached for a slice of carrot cake, looked at it with a look as jaded as his palate, and then put it back on the plate untouched.

‘I take it I shouldn’t expect you to feel equally stifled when it comes to the subject of my stupidity.’

‘Are you going to eat that?’

‘Why, do you want it?’ He held out the plate towards her. So far she’d gone through two slices and several of the wafer-thin smoked salmon sandwiches.

‘Very funny.’ Her lips twisted with impatience. ‘You never think about other people, do you?’

‘Not feeling hungry puts me in the selfish and heartless category…?’ Why was he surprised? She seemed able to imbue his most innocent action with sinister intent. ‘Your logic is interesting—bizarre, but interesting.’ Interlacing his fingers, he rested his square chin thoughtfully on them. ‘I feel sure you’re about to fill in the gaps for me.’

‘The afternoon tea.’ She waved her hand over the rather grand spread. ‘I bet everything here is your favourite,’ she accused.

Kat watched as his blue eyes swept over the food on the delicate china plates. Now that she’d pointed it out, he recognised favoured titbits from his schooldays. His shoulders lifted in a negligent concessionary shrug.

‘Hah! I’m right!’ she crowed.

‘If you’ve got a point to make, I think now is the time to make it.’

‘You don’t see, do you?’ She shook her head disapprovingly. ‘A lot of people went to a great deal of trouble to do something nice for you, because for some reason they seem to care about you. How do you think they’re going to feel if this lot goes back the kitchen untouched…?’

The troubled frown that flickered across his face was barely discernible before his expression grew impatient. ‘I haven’t liked sweet things since I was twelve years old.’

Her arms folded across her chest and she wondered whether he had a better nature to appeal to. ‘You don’t like…and I suppose that makes it all right to ride roughshod over people’s feelings?’

His narrowed blue eyes drilled into her. ‘We’re not talking cakes here, are we?’

‘Your mother has gone to a lot of trouble specially preparing those rooms for you.’

This was obviously the point where he was meant to be overcome by remorse and self-loathing.

‘My mother isn’t going to lose any sleep over where I choose to sleep,’ he drawled languidly.

‘Well, if you’re not bothered about hurting Drusilla’s feelings…’

‘You have a nasty habit of putting words into a man’s mouth…’ His eyes dwelt for a long distracted moment on the lush curves of her kissable lips… Other things might taste more palatable on his tongue than her acid recriminations.

‘Consider the practicalities. Just how exactly do you expect to get upstairs to your usual bedroom?’ she asked him. ‘Crawl…?’ Tact and compassion had their place, but not when dealing with Matt Devlin. Empathy wasn’t going to get her anywhere with this man, but brutal practicality might.

She wanted to play hard ball…fine. Matt suspected he’d had more practice at the pastime than Blondie here.

‘I can’t carry you. I suppose you could employ some muscular young man…’

‘I thought we’d already established I’m not into muscular young men…’ he drawled.

Kat ignored this interruption designed to distract her, even though the reminder made her flush. ‘But I expect your mother thought you’d prefer to be more independent.’

‘You think I’m ungrateful…?’ With a twisted smile he watched her struggle with the temptation to rip his character to shreds some more.

‘I’ve seen the suite, and it’s conveniently close to the pool and gym… Nothing could be more suitable.’

Or decadent, at least as far as the leisure facilities were concerned. The Roman-styled pool-house complete with waterfall which had been converted from a stable block had taken Kat’s breath away and made her want to tear off her clothes and immerse herself in that warm inviting water… Considering what had happened, it seemed ironic that back then she’d been concerned about first impressions—being caught skinny-dipping hadn’t seemed to capture the right note!

Kat was too startled to even squeak in protest when his hand shot out and he jerked her towards the chair he sat in. Off balance, she came down heavily on one knee; she only prevented herself from falling any further by bracing a hand against the arm of his chair.

‘Is there some constructive reason you keep reminding I’m an invalid?’

She took a couple of steadying breaths and inhaled undiluted Matt scent—it was an earthy, all-male fragrance. A wave fresh of dizziness struck Kat; this man must have cornered the market in pheromones.

Her eyes slid to the fingers encircling her wrist. They were long and lean like the rest of him; their iron strength didn’t feel at all sickly to her… She, on the other hand, didn’t feel so great at all. Thready, over-fast pulse, sweaty palms—both of which he’d probably noticed—a churning sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. A wave of intense heat raised her body heat several uncomfortable degrees.

‘You’re not an invalid, but for the moment whether you like it or not you do have limitations…’ Relief washed over her. Against all the odds she’d hit just the right note of objectivity and caring.

The slight imperious tilt of his dark head was a concessionary gesture—at least, for the sake of harmony, that was the way she decided to construe it.

Their eyes clashed and the harmony theory fell apart. Kat’s ferociously pumping heart sent a surge of adrenaline around her body so fast she felt light-headed.

‘So, incidentally, do I.’ This time her voice had a faint faraway quality. The focus of her troubled gaze shifted significantly to the fingers still encircling her wrist.

Her hot vision blurred so that for a moment she couldn’t quite make out the defining line between his flesh and her own paler skin; the weak fluttery sensations low in her belly got stronger and more disturbing. It was all she could do to stop herself tearing her hand away.

‘And one of them is look, but don’t touch…?’ His extended thumb moved thoughtfully over the blue-veined inner aspect of her wrist. It must be the challenge—he’d never been able to resist one of those—that conjured up the fantasy image of Kat begging him to touch her.

The sweeping motion must have crossed over a sensitive nerve-ending because the sharp electrical thrill Kat felt shot along her arm in both directions.

His hand fell away and her delicately curved eyebrows drew into a perplexed line as a wave of relief way out of proportion with the event washed over her. She felt pretty foolish on her knees, but, given the fact she wasn’t sure if she had total control over her limbs, she didn’t have much choice but to stay put.

‘I can’t stop people looking,’ she admitted huskily.

‘So you can lay those pretty hands on me as much as you like.’ One dark brow lifted before he impatiently flicked a heavy section of dark collar-length hair from his eyes. ‘But if I reciprocate you’ll…?’

What would she do…? It was a purely academic speculation. Up until this moment he hadn’t even thought about sex… He’d forgotten what a distraction it could be, thinking… He was thinking a lot all of a sudden. He blamed it on that responsive quiver he’d felt run through her body when he’d touched her. So the lovely Kathleen wasn’t being quite honest when she’d said she didn’t fancy him… Interesting.

‘I’ll think you’ve fallen for my fatal charm,’ she suggested acidly. ‘We can all live in hope.’

Her snappy sarcasm lifted his brooding frown and brought a genuine grin to his face.

Despite her best efforts to remain dispassionate, Kat was charmed.

‘I always think that hope has an unpleasantly passive sound to it…’

Kat didn’t need telling that she was in the presence of a man who didn’t lie around hoping for things to happen; she was quite sure that he went out and made them happen. Everything about him said he needed to be in control of his own fate.

‘It’s a harmless way to while away a wet afternoon though.’

Even though Matt deeply despised the soft-focus image that lodged in his brain of her staring through some rain-drenched window he had to admit it was an absurdly attractive one.

‘And what do you hope for during those wet afternoons, Kathleen?’

He had the sort of voice that could effortlessly make a girl believe he could fulfil all her hopes. Her eyes widened with alarm as the stray thought just popped into her head from God knew where!

‘The usual things,’ she responded, gruffly evasive.

‘Like a husband, children, nice house in the suburbs…?’ he speculated. ‘The traditional female things.’

His patronising attitude really got under her skin. ‘Those being things that no man worthy of his testosterone would desire…?’

‘How many teenage boys would list becoming a father as one of their ambitions…?’ One dark brow quirked scornfully when she didn’t respond. His broad shoulders lifted expressively. ‘I rest my case.’

‘It’s just as well one gender feels the urge to procreate or the human race wouldn’t last long.’

‘Men feel urges, all right, but it’s impregnation and not procreation that drives them,’ he explained crudely.

Kat felt herself blush like an adolescent; the fact her blushes seemed to amuse him only intensified her discomfort. She couldn’t figure out how what had started out as a perfectly innocent conversation had degenerated into something so uncomfortable.

‘Perhaps I have a higher regard for your own sex than you do.’

‘Then more fool you, Kat. Fidelity is an alien concept to the vast majority of men.’

‘Perhaps, Mr Devlin, you judge all men by your own failings…’

‘I’m an arrogant male, Kat. What makes you imagine I think I’ve got any failings?’ he drawled. His deep laughter rang out once more before his brows drew into a disapproving line. ‘And I thought we’d dispensed with the Mr Devlin.’

Kat’s tongue ran nervously over the outline of her dry lips.

‘Do I make you nervous, Kathleen?’

Wasn’t that the idea?

It was the one question she would have liked to avoid, and he’d made her face it. Resentment reflected in her eyes, she met his deceptively innocent blue gaze warily… He made her incredibly jumpy and had done from the first moment.

‘It’s hardly surprising that I don’t feel comfortable,’ she responded carefully. ‘You’ve made it quite clear I’m here under sufferance.’

Casually he flicked her softly rounded chin. ‘When you know me better…’

‘I can hardly wait!’ she mumbled.

Her face averted, Kat brushed some invisible specks off the dark grey trousers she wore beneath a white tee-shirt. She rose smoothly to her feet. It ought to give at least the illusion of superiority to look down at him… It didn’t. The slow charismatic grin that split his lean face held her dismayed gaze as surely as Superglue.

‘You’ll know I’m not big on forbearance. You’re not here because I feel charitable. It’ll be interesting to find out if you’re half as good as you say you are…’ He watched the colour mount in her cheeks. ‘Professionally speaking, of course,’ he added smoothly.

She couldn’t wait to prove her worth to this sarcastic swine… Of course, if she could have done it from the comparative safety of the neighbouring county, she’d have been even more eager! Inexplicably, she couldn’t concentrate all that well in the same room as him… Inexplicable, my foot! a small derisive voice in her head scoffed. You can’t keep your eyes off him and you’re worried to death you won’t be able to hide it when things get tactile.

‘When did you have in mind?’ she asked, her voice brisk to the point of brusqueness. ‘I’ll need to assess your capabilities, to begin with,’ she explained stolidly, ‘and work out a schedule that suits us….’

Matt rose with creditable style to his feet, unassisted. ‘There’s plenty of time for that later…’ He turned his wrist and glanced at the metal-banded wristwatch. His eyes moved to the antique gilded ormolu clock set on the mantelshelf. ‘Still slow,’ he confirmed, comparing the two times. ‘I knocked it off with a football when I was a kid; it’s never kept time since.’

In her mind’s eye Kat softened the hard angles of his face and came up with a soft childish version. Had he been a serious little boy, or a bit wild…?

‘I’m afraid I’m expecting some visitors…business. Later, I’m all yours.’ There was nothing childlike or innocent about the gleam in his eyes.

‘There are a lot of things we need to discuss,’ she choked, pulling her wayward imagination in line—it wasn’t easy.

‘Discuss away…I can give you three minutes.’

‘How kind,’ she bit back acidly. ‘I’d better talk fast then, hadn’t I? For starters, what hours do you expect me to work? When is my free time…?’

‘You’ve not started yet and you’re already asking for a day off…!’ He shook his head in mock reproof. ‘What happened to stamina? What happened to dedication?’

‘What happened to reasonable working conditions?’ she came back smartly. ‘I already feel as if I’ve been on duty for a twenty-four-hour stretch…’ Just talking to this man was amongst the most exhausting things she’d ever done. ‘I wonder why?’ No wonder Drusilla had laughed when she’d said she’d earn her money!

‘Fine; let’s get down to basics. I’m flexible. I don’t like to tie myself down to specific times; I like people around me to be flexible too.’

‘Which means what, exactly?’

‘Which means I need you to be on twenty-four-hour call.’

Have no time to call her own? Be at his beck and call night and day with no time off for good behaviour…? That was so not on!

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