The Marriage Miracle
Liz Fielding
Matilda Lang is terrified when she feels herself falling for hotshot New York banker Sebastian Wolseley. An accident three years ago has left her in a wheelchair, and Sebastian's the man who can make, or break, her heart….Sebastian is compassionate, sexy and, most importantly, he treats her like a desirable woman. It would take a miracle for Matty to risk her heart after what she's been through. But Sebastian knows he's the man who can help this brave woman embrace life and love–and persuade her to say "yes" to his proposal of marriage!
Harlequin Romance
is thrilled to present another wonderful book from award-winning author
Liz Fielding
Liz will keep you captivated for hours with her contemporary, witty and feel-good romances….
About A Surprise Christmas Proposal:
“Liz Fielding’s newest is simply a gem. Sophie is Bridget Jones without self-pity, and Gabriel’s a hero any woman would love to find in her stocking.”
—Romantic Times BOOKclub
About City Girl in Training:
“One of the best Harlequin Romances this reviewer has ever read. This story is exciting, fresh, innovative and a breath of fresh air, yet it is told in the traditional sweet tone of the line, which will make this book appeal to all readers.”
—Romantic Times BOOKclub
For a few minutes, he’d talked to her as if she was whole. Saying things that no one else would have dreamed of saying. Asking her if she tap-danced….
And even when he’d realized that tap dancing was not, never would be, part of her repertoire he hadn’t changed, hadn’t started talking to her as if she was witless. Dinner with him would have been a rare pleasure. Sitting together at a candlelit table, she could have pretended for a few dizzy hours that on the outside she was like any other woman. The way she was deep inside. With the same longings. The same desire to be loved, to have a man hold her, make love to her.
She closed her eyes for a moment, shutting out the reminders that she was not, would never be, like other women. Then, with a deep breath, she opened them again.
He’d been there, in her head since the moment he’d taken her hand, held it a touch too long. Been there the minute she’d stopped concentrating on something else.
In A Wife on Paper Francesca Lang’s dreams came true when Guy Dymoke stole her heart. In this equally emotional story by award-winning author Liz Fielding, will Francesca’s cousin Matty find the same success with the man of her dreams…?
The Marriage Miracle
Liz Fielding
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Liz Fielding started writing at the age of twelve, when she won a writing competition at school. After that early success there was quite a gap—during which she was busy working in Africa and the Middle East, getting married and having children—before her first book was published in 1992. Now readers worldwide fall in love with her irresistible heroes and adore her independent-minded heroines. Visit Liz’s Web site for news and extracts of upcoming books at www.lizfielding.com
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER ONE
FUNERALS and weddings. Sebastian Wolseley hated them both. At least the first had absolved him from attending the more tedious part of the second. And gave him a cast-iron excuse to leave the celebrations once he’d done his duty by one of his oldest friends.
The last thing he felt like doing was celebrating.
‘You look as if you could do with something stronger.’
He turned from his depressed contemplation of the glass in his hand to acknowledge the woman who’d broken into his thoughts. She was the sole occupant of a table littered with the remains of the lavish buffet. The only one who had not decamped to the marquee and the dance floor. From the cool, steady way she was looking at him he had the unsettling notion that she’d been watching him, unnoticed, for some time. But then she wasn’t the kind of woman you’d notice.
Her colouring was non-descript, mousy. She was too thin for anything approaching beauty, and her pick-up line was too corny to hook his interest. But her features were strong, her eyes glittered with intelligence and it was more than just good manners that stopped him from putting down the glass and walking away.
‘Do you tap dance for an encore?’ he asked.
She lifted her eyebrows, but she didn’t smile. ‘Tap dance?’
‘You’re not the cabaret? A mind-reading act, perhaps?’ He heard the biting sarcasm coming from his mouth and wished he’d walked. He had no business inflicting his black mood on innocent bystanders. Or sitters.
‘It doesn’t take a mind-reader to see that you’re not exactly focussed on this whole “til-death-us-do-part” thing,’ she countered, still not smiling, but not storming off, offended, either. ‘You’ve been holding your glass for so long that the contents must be warm. In fact, I’d go so far as to suggest that you’d look more at home at a wake than at a reception to celebrate the blessing of a marriage.’
‘Definitely a mind-reader,’ he said, finally abandoning the barely touched glass on her table. ‘Although I have a feeling that the wake I’ve just left will by now be making this party look sedate.’
And then he felt really guilty.
First he’d been rude to the woman, and when that hadn’t driven her away he’d tried to embarrass her. Apparently without success. She merely tilted her head slightly to the side, reminding him of an inquisitive bird.
‘Was it someone close?’ she enquired, rejecting the usual hushed, reverential tone more usually adopted when speaking to the recently bereaved. She might just as easily have been asking him if he’d like a cup of tea.
Such matter-of-factness was an oddly welcome respite from the madness that had overtaken his life in the last week and for the first time in days he felt a little of the tension slip away.
‘Close enough. It was my mad, bad Uncle George.’ Then, ‘Well, he was a distant cousin, actually, but he was so much older…’
She propped her elbows on the table, framing her chin with her hands. ‘In what way was he mad and bad?’
‘In much the same way as his namesake, Byron.’
Even in the dusky twilight of a long summer evening, with only candles and the fairy lights strung from the trees for illumination, her face had no softness, nothing of conventional prettiness, but her fine skin was stretched over good bones. The strength, it occurred to him, came from within. She wasn’t flirting with him. She was interested.
‘Mad, bad and dangerous to know. Such a temptation for foolish women. So, was the riotous wake an expression of relief?’ she continued earnestly. ‘Or a celebration of a life lived to the full?’
Too late now to walk away, even if he’d wanted to, and, pulling out the chair opposite her, he sat down.
‘That rather depends on your point of view. The family tended to the former, his friends to the latter.’
‘And you?’
He sat back. ‘I’m still struggling to come to terms with it,’ he said. ‘But how many people, knowing that they have weeks left, would take the trouble to arrange the kind of theatrical exit that would bring joy to their friends and scandalise their family? The kind of extravagant wake that people will be talking about for years?’
‘Theatrical?’ She looked thoughtful. ‘Are we talking black horses? Ostrich plumes?’
‘The works. Queen Victoria would have been proud,’ he said. ‘Although whether she would have been amused by a wake at which nothing but smoked salmon, caviar and vintage champagne is served, I’m not so sure.’
‘Sounds good to me.’
‘Yes, well, he wanted everyone to have a damn good time; an instruction which his many friends are, even now, taking to their hearts.’
‘That doesn’t sound mad or bad to me, but rather wonderful. So why aren’t you?’
‘Having a damn good time?’ Good question. ‘Perhaps because I’m in mourning for my own life.’ She waited, apparently the perfect listener, recognising that he needed someone to talk to, knowing that sometimes only a stranger would do. ‘I’m the one he nominated to clear up the empties—metaphorically speaking—when the partying is done.’
‘Really?’ She didn’t miss the oddity that he’d choose a much younger, apparently distant relative. ‘You’re a lawyer?’
‘A banker.’
‘Oh, well, that’s a good choice.’
‘Not if you’re the banker in question.’
She pulled a face. Not exactly a smile, but oddly cheering nonetheless. ‘Obviously the reckoning is about more than a few crates of champagne.’
‘I’m afraid so. But you’re right—it’s terribly bad manners to bring my troubles to a wedding. I really hadn’t intended doing more than putting in an appearance to toast the happy couple, and I’ve done that. I should call a taxi.’
He didn’t move.
‘Would a decent single-malt whisky help lay your ghosts?’
There was nothing of the mouse about her eyes, he decided. They were an unusual colour, more amber than brown, with a fringe of thick lashes, and her mouth was wide and full. He had a sudden notion to see it smile, really smile.
‘It might,’ he conceded. ‘I’m prepared to give it a try if you’ll join me.’ Then he looked towards the heaving marquee and wished he’d kept his mouth shut. The last thing he wanted to do was push his way through the joyful throng to the bar.
‘No need to battle through the dancing hordes,’ she assured him. ‘Just go through those French windows and you’ll find a decanter on the sofa table.’
He glanced towards the house, then at her, this time rather more closely.
‘Making rather free with our host’s hospitality, aren’t you?’ he suggested, vaguely surprised to discover that he was the one grinning.
‘He wouldn’t object. But in this instance the hospitality is mine. I live in the garden flat,’ she said, offering her hand. ‘Matty Lang. Best woman and cousin to the bride.’
‘Sebastian Wolseley,’ he replied, taking it. Her hand was small, but there was nothing soft about it and her grip was firm.
‘The big-shot New York banker? I wondered what you’d look like when I was writing the invitations.’
‘You did?’ He recalled the exquisite copperplate script that had adorned the gilt-edged invitation card to the blessing of the marriage of Francesca and Guy Dymoke and the reception they were holding in their garden to celebrate the fact. ‘Isn’t it the bride’s job to write the invitations?’
‘I’ve no idea, but in the event the bride had other things on her mind at the time.’
‘Oh, well, so long as she has time to concentrate on her marriage I don’t suppose it matters who writes them. She runs her own company, I understand.’
‘She didn’t have much choice,’ Matty replied, rather less cordially, and it occurred to him that he must have sounded unnecessarily critical.
‘No?’ he asked, not especially interested in who’d written the invitations or why. But he’d been rude—wedding celebrations tended to bring out the worst in him; good manners demanded that he allow his victim to put him right.
‘No,’ she repeated. ‘But on this occasion she wasn’t upstairs, busily drumming up some brilliant new PR stunt, she was in the throes of childbirth.’
‘That would certainly count as a legitimate excuse,’ he agreed.
Perhaps deciding that she’d overreacted slightly, Matty Lang lifted her shoulders in a minimal shrug. ‘To be honest, I did feel a bit guilty afterwards. She really wanted to write them herself. But I had to do something to keep my mind occupied and I’d have only been in the way upstairs.’
‘You did them quite beautifully,’ he assured her. ‘I hope she was properly grateful.’
‘Gratitude doesn’t come into it.’ Then, ‘Are you and Guy close friends?’ she asked, not that easily appeased. ‘Or is this duty visit simply the gloss on a thoroughly bloody day?’
‘I didn’t say it was a duty visit. Merely that I hadn’t intended to stay for long. As for friendship, well, Guy and I bonded at university over our mutual interest in beer and women…’ Realising that was perhaps not the most tactful thing to say at the man’s wedding celebrations, he took a verbal sidestep and went on, ‘But you’re right; we haven’t seen nearly enough of one another in the last few years. I live…’ lived, he mentally corrected himself, lived ‘…in New York. And Guy never stayed put in one place long enough for me to catch up with him.’
‘He’s a regular stay-at-home these days, I promise you,’ she assured him.
‘Good for him.’ Then, ‘Why?’
‘Why is he a regular stay-at-home?’
‘One look at his wife answers that question,’ he replied. ‘Why did you want to know what I look like?’
‘Oh, I see. Well, as best woman I get the pick of the unattached males.’ At which point he was amused to see the faintest touch of a blush colour the cheeks of the very cool Miss Lang. ‘Guy, I have to tell you, was no help,’ she went on quickly. ‘The best he could come up with for you was “tallish and darkish”. Friends you might be, but my enquiry regarding the colour of your eyes met with a total blank.’
‘No? Well, to be honest I couldn’t say what colour his are, either, but it’s been a while since we’ve been in the same country.’
‘His excuse was that he’d left gazing into your eyes to the countless females who trailed after you. But even if he had been that observant, I can well understand his difficulty.’
‘Okay, I’m hooked. In what way are my eyes difficult?’
‘They’re not difficult, just changeable. At first sight I would have said they were grey, but now I’m not so sure.’ Then, ‘Drink?’ she prompted. ‘Add a little water to mine. Not too much.’
‘Are you sure you shouldn’t be doing your best woman duty and strutting your stuff with the best man?’
There was just the tiniest hesitation before she said, ‘Would you believe he’s married? To the most gorgeous redhead you’ve ever seen. I ask you, what’s the point of a best man who isn’t available for the best woman to have her wicked way with? I can’t believe someone as smart as Guy could get it so wrong.’
‘Shocking,’ he said, almost but not totally certain that she was kidding. Women usually smiled at him. This one didn’t. He’d changed his mind about her flirting, she was flirting, quite outrageously, but she didn’t smile, or bat her eyelashes, or do anything that women usually did. He wasn’t exactly sure what she was doing, but she’d got his full attention. ‘Definitely time for that drink.’ Then, since flirting under any circumstances should not be a one-way transaction, ‘Unless I can offer myself as a substitute?’
‘For the best man?’
‘Since you’ve been so badly let down,’ he confirmed.
Guy had asked him, but he hadn’t anticipated being in London at the time…
‘Are you suggesting that we disappear into the shrubbery and fool around, Mr Wolseley?’
Her gaze was steady as a rock, and that wide mouth hadn’t so much as twitched. For a moment he found himself floundering, as if he’d stepped unexpectedly out of his depth.
He took a slow breath to steady himself and said, ‘Well, to be honest, that’s a little fast for me, Miss Lang. I like to get to know a girl before I take her clothes off. And I prefer to do it in comfort.’
‘That’s no fun. Not entering into the spirit of the thing at all.’
‘I don’t have to know her that well,’ he said seriously. ‘A dance or two—dinner, maybe? Once that hurdle is passed and we get to first-name terms I’m perfectly willing to be led astray.’
‘But only in comfort.’
‘I like to take my time.’
Without warning her face lit up in the kind of smile that took the sting out of his day, so that dancing with her seemed like the best idea he’d had for a long time.
‘You like to dance?’ she asked.
He had the oddest feeling that he was being tested in some way. ‘Yes, but we can pass if you’re hungry. Go straight to dinner.’
‘And are you good?’
Definitely being tested.
‘At dancing?’
‘That’s what we were talking about,’ she reminded him.
‘Was it?’ He didn’t think so, but he played along. ‘I decline to answer that question on the grounds that it might incriminate me.’
‘Come, come. No false modesty, please.’ She lifted her head, listening to the music coming from the marquee, then shook her head. ‘No, that’s a waltz. Everyone can waltz. Can you foxtrot?’
‘Hasn’t that been banned?’ he enquired.
‘Too advanced for you, hmm? How about a tango, then?’
‘Without treading on your toes? That I couldn’t guarantee. But give me a rose to clutch beneath my teeth and I’m willing to give it a try.’
Her laugh was wholehearted and her mouth didn’t disappoint. ‘Well, that’s certainly the best offer I’ve had for quite a while, but don’t panic. Nothing is getting me out of this chair for the rest of the evening.’
He frowned. He’d escaped the marquee once he’d done his duty, fully intent on leaving, but what was she doing out here on her own?
‘Is it such hard work being a best woman?’ he asked.
‘You wouldn’t believe how tough. The hen party was an epic of organisation, and a bride doesn’t get to look that perfect without someone to ensure she gets the attention she deserves on her big day.’
He followed her gaze to where the bride stood arm-in-arm at the entrance to the marquee with her groom, getting some air, chatting to friends. ‘You did a great job. Guy’s a lucky man,’ he said.
‘He deserves his luck. And Fran deserves him.’
That had been said with feeling, and he glanced back at her. ‘You’re close?’
‘More like sisters than cousins,’ she agreed. ‘We’re both only children from the kind of dysfunctional families that give marriage a bad name.’
‘Believe me, if you had a family like mine you’d realise that’s not all bad news,’ he assured her. Then, because he didn’t want to go there, he said, ‘I’ll go and fetch that Scotch.’
Matty didn’t take her eyes off Sebastian Wolseley as he walked away from her. Tall, wide-shouldered, with beautifully cut dark hair that lifted in tiny ruffles in the light breeze, he might have stepped from any woman’s fantasy. And his eyes changed from a dull slate to deep blue-green when he smiled—like the sea when the sun shone.
He was a pleasure to look at, and she’d been watching him ever since he’d slipped late into the reception. Seen the warmth with which he’d been greeted by Guy. But, although he was present in body, he’d clearly been somewhere else in spirit.
‘Matty…’ Toby, her cousin’s three-year-old son, pushed between her and the circular table, dragging at the floor-length cloth and causing mayhem amongst the glasses as he leaned against her knees, laying his head on her lap. ‘Hide me.’
‘From what?’
‘Connie. She says I have to go to bed.’
She rescued Sebastian’s glass as it rolled towards the edge of the table, spilling champagne in a wide semicircle as it went. The stem was still warm from his hand…
‘Have you had a good day?’ she asked, setting it upright, giving her full attention to Toby.
He yawned. ‘Mmm.’
He was already half asleep and she looked around, hoping to see Fran’s housekeeper, Connie. He wouldn’t have given her the slip so easily before the arrival of his baby sister, but he was no longer the dead centre of his small world. Maybe, overwhelmed by an occasion when his mother was the focus of attention, he needed a little one-to-one reassurance.
Ignoring the smears of chocolate decorating his cheek, she lifted him up onto her lap, nestling him against her shoulder.
‘You know, you did a great job today, taking care of the rings. I was so proud of you.’
He snuggled closer. ‘I didn’t drop them, did I?’
‘No.’ She gave him a hug. ‘You were a star.’
Sebastian walked up a shallow ramp into an inviting room softly lit by a single lamp. On the left was a drawing board, a computer workstation—a mini studio lit by a floor-to-ceiling window.
Matty Lang was an artist? He looked around, half expecting to see her work on the walls, but she favoured woven fabric hangings rather than conventional pictures. Or maybe that was her medium. There was nothing on the drawing board to give him a clue.
There was something about the set-up that didn’t look quite right, but what with jet lag, an excess of family disapproval at the funeral and the realisation that while it was possible to dispense with the ‘noblesse’, the ‘oblige’ was inescapable, his wits were not at their sharpest.
Whisky, on top of the single glass of champagne he’d drunk to toast the memory of George, was probably not his wisest move, but he wasn’t driving and, since wisdom was not going to change anything, he might as well behave like a fool. It wouldn’t be the first time.
On his right there was a large sofa, angled to look into the garden. It was flanked with end tables—one loaded with books, the other with the remotes for a small television set and hi-fi unit.
It looked desperately inviting, and he would have given a lot just to surrender to its comfort and stretch out for five minutes, eyes closed. He resisted the temptation and instead poured a small amount of Scotch into two glasses. He walked into the kitchen, took mineral water from the fridge and added a splash to both glasses before carrying them back outside.
And immediately he saw what, if he hadn’t been so involved in his own problems, he should have noticed from the beginning. What the ramp—instead of a step—should have alerted him to.
Realised what had been missing from her workstation. But then why would she need a conventional chair? Because the reason Matty Lang wasn’t dancing had nothing to do with exhaustion from her best woman duties.
It was because she was in a lightweight, state-of-the art wheelchair.
The tablecloth, which had hidden the wheels from the casual observer, had been pulled askew, and for a moment he hesitated, lost in a confusion of embarrassment, as he remembered asking her if she tap-danced, and sheer admiration for her completely unfazed response.
He’d enjoyed her sense of humour, but now he could appreciate it for what it truly was. Not just dry, but wicked, as she’d teased him about his invitation to dance. Precious little self-pity there.
She glanced up and caught him staring. Made a tiny moue with her lips, acknowledging the truth.
‘I’m not sure I should be giving you this,’ he said, handing her a glass. ‘I wouldn’t want you to get a ticket for being drunk-in-charge. Especially since you’ve got a passenger on board.’
She took a sip, rewarded him with a smile for not losing his head and bolting and, hampered by the child she was holding, gave him back the glass. ‘Can you put that on the table for me?’ Then, ‘Have you met Toby?’
‘No, I haven’t had that pleasure…’ He put down the glasses and folded himself up so that he was on the boy’s level. ‘Although I’ve heard all about you.’ He offered his hand. ‘I’m Sebastian. How d’you do?’
The child took his hand and shook it formally. ‘I’m Toby Dymoke,’ he said. ‘Twice.’
‘Twice?’
‘It was my daddy’s name, and it’s my new daddy’s name, too.’
‘Well, that’s handy. Not having to remember a new one.’
‘They were brothers. I’m a brother, too. I’ve got a baby sister.’
‘Really? Me too. At least, I’ve got three of them, although they’re not babies any more. Great, isn’t it?’
‘Great,’ Toby said, and with an expert wriggle slid down. ‘I’m going to find her now.’ And he ran off.
There was a momentary silence. Then Matty said, ‘You have three sisters?’
‘Three older sisters, actually. Bossy, Pushy and Lippy.’
‘Not that great, then?’
‘Hardly the hero-worshipping kind who trailed after me, the way they do in the storybooks,’ he admitted.
‘They gave you a hard time?’
‘Gave? You should have been at George’s funeral. Just because I’m his executor they blame me for the “entire tasteless performance”. I’m quoting, you understand.’
‘I understand.’
She had a way of not smiling, but making you feel as if she was. Inside.
‘And for the fact that there was no dry sherry.’
She pulled her lips back in an attempt to stop herself from laughing out loud, then apologised. ‘I’m sorry. It’s not at all funny.’
‘It should have been.’ He thought, actually, that if she’d been there to share the joke it would have been bearable.
‘What about your parents?’ she asked, distracting him.
‘What? Oh, my mother looked tragic and drank the champagne; my father harrumphed and said that it was a bit of a rum do.’
‘And your sisters were a complete embarrassment?’
‘Nothing new there.’
‘While you, of course, were always the perfect brother. No frogspawn in their face cream, no spiders in their slippers, no itching powder in their beds.’
‘Frogspawn in their face cream?’
‘Forget I said that. That one is reserved for wicked stepmothers.’
‘You did that to your stepmother?’
‘Oh, I did all of them. But then I’m not nice.’
‘That rather depends on what prompted it.’
‘My father married her, poor woman. That was enough.’ Then, when he didn’t respond, ‘I told you. I’m not nice.’
He shook his head and, taking his cue from her about being direct, unemotional, he said, ‘It wasn’t your character I was thinking about. It just occurred to me that if you managed to fish for frogspawn you can’t always have been in a wheelchair.’
‘You think a wheelchair would have stopped me? If I couldn’t have managed it myself, I would have persuaded someone else to get it for me.’
‘Fran?’ he asked, glancing in the direction of the bride, who smiled at him before leaning close to Guy to whisper something in his ear.
‘I wouldn’t have told her why I wanted it,’ she assured him. ‘She is much nicer than me. But it wasn’t necessary. The wheelchair has only been part of my life since a combination of speed, black ice and an absence of due care and attention led to a close encounter with a brick wall.’
There was no self-pity in her words. It was a throwaway line with a matching smile—a practised defence against unwanted sympathy, he guessed—and she did it so well that he knew most people would grab at the opportunity to smile with her and move on.
Having seen what she could really do with a smile when she meant it, he wanted to know what had really happened—what she really felt.
‘How long?’ he asked.
‘Three years.’ And for a moment he glimpsed something the smile was supposed to hide. Not the three years that had passed, but the lifetime to come. Then, filling the silence while he thought about that, she said, ‘Don’t look so tragic. It could have been a lot worse.’
Forcing himself to match her matter-of-factness, he replied, ‘Of course it could. You could be dead.’ And then, remembering that momentary glimpse of something darker between the smiles, he wondered.
But Matty laughed, provoked out from behind the lurking shadows. ‘Cheery soul, aren’t you? Actually, I was being rather more down-to-earth about my condition.’ Seeing his confusion, she grinned. ‘It’s an incomplete lower spine injury, which means I can at least use the bathroom just like anyone else.’
‘Oh, well, I can see how that’s a bonus. Although you’d have been in trouble if you’d been a man.’
She laughed out loud. ‘I like you, big-shot banker. Most of the people here would have taken to their heels by now.’
‘Is that why you do it?’
‘Do what?’ she enquired innocently.
‘Test people?’
‘I only test the patronising ones who talk over my head. The ones who ask Fran if it’s okay for me to have a drink—as if, because I can’t stand up, I’m incapable of carrying on a normal conversation. The ones who speak to me as if I’m hard of hearing.’
He glanced around at the empty terrace and then back at her. ‘You seem to have got it down to a fine art.’
‘Lots of practice. But once we get this far I do like to get the bathroom thing out of the way, since sooner or later people start to worry about it. I find being open and direct makes for a more relaxing conversation.’
‘Liar. You just want to make them squirm.’
‘Are you squirming?’
‘What do you think?’ Then, ‘How about sex?’
‘Now?’ she asked, as if he’d just propositioned her. ‘I thought you were a man who liked to get to know a woman first.’
‘I’m open to persuasion. So, is it a problem?’
‘Nothing is a problem if you want it badly enough, Sebastian. For instance, I’m assured that, if I was prepared to strap myself into braces and put myself through several circles of hell, I could get up off my backside and stand on my own two feet. Even walk, after a fashion, although no one is promising it would be much fun, or even a remotely practical way to get about. Nothing as simple, or graceful, as my chair.’ Again there was that wry little smile. ‘And if you can’t tango, what’s the point?’
He didn’t buy that, not for a minute, but she’d changed the subject and he didn’t press it. Instead, picking up the lead she’d trailed to draw him away from the dark side of her life and back into the light, he asked, ‘What would you have done if I’d been up for the foxtrot?’
‘Oh, please! Most men’s eyes glaze over at the first mention of a simple waltz.’
‘You didn’t give me a chance to glaze,’ he objected.
‘No, but then I was certain a man like you would know that you can smooch to a waltz. No one under sixty has the first idea how to foxtrot,’ she went on, ‘so I knew I was safe with that one.’
‘So, we delay the dance until you’ve decided that I’m worth the effort. I’ll just call a cab and we’ll go somewhere quiet for dinner.’
Even as he took out his cellphone it occurred to him that he had no idea if she could manage a cab. Or whether any of the restaurants he knew were wheelchair accessible. And while he hesitated, confronted by a reality that was quite new to him, Guy came to his rescue.
‘Matty, Fran wants you in the marquee. Apparently she’s got some journalist slavering to look at that alphabet book you made for Toby.’
‘She’s what? It’s her wedding reception, for heaven’s sake!’
‘Hey, don’t blame me. I’m just the messenger. Since she’s discovered how good she is at business I get the feeling that nothing is going to stop her from taking over the world.’
‘I know,’ she said, backing away from the table. ‘To be honest I find it just a little bit scary.’
As Sebastian moved to accompany her, Guy, hand on his shoulder, detained him. ‘Oh, no. My lovely wife has plans for you, too.’ Then, as if suddenly aware that he’d interrupted something, ‘You don’t mind if I borrow him for a moment, do you, Matty?’
‘You can keep him, darling. I’ve been neglecting my duties for long enough.’ She extended her hand in a gesture that clearly said goodbye. ‘Lovely to meet you, Sebastian.’
He held it rather than shook it. ‘I thought we were going to have dinner?’
‘Thanks, but it’s been a long day. Next time you’re in London, perhaps.’ As if to emphasise her dismissal, she disentangled her fingers and, with a little wave, said, ‘Try and be kinder to your sisters; I’m sure you needed bossing. And give my love to New York.’
She didn’t wait for a response, but executed a neat ninety-degree turn and moved swiftly along the path. He watched her until she had been swallowed up in the crowd of people milling around the entrance, then he turned back to Guy.
‘She’s some woman.’
‘Yes, she is. I’m sorry if I broke up something…’
‘No. You heard her. We’ll have dinner next time I’m in London.’
Guy grinned. ‘She doesn’t know you’re staying?’
‘I don’t believe I mentioned it.’
Most people had deserted the gathering dusk of the garden for the flower-scented warmth of the marquee, and Matty paused for a moment in the entrance, assailed by a sudden ache in her throat as she watched couples wrapped in each other’s arms swaying to the music.
She had so loved to dance. Loved the intimacy of being close to a man, her arms about his neck, while he whispered hot desire in her ear.
She shivered a little, looked back to where she’d been sitting. But as the crowd shifted she could see that the terrace was empty and, as she remembered the whispered exchange between Guy and Francesca, it took all her will-power to resist the feeling that Sebastian had sent out some kind of ‘rescue me’ signal.
She’d liked him. Wanted to believe he was better than that. And dinner, once, would have been special. But then he’d have gone away. And even if he hadn’t—
‘There you are,’ Fran said, appearing at her side, saving her from her thoughts. ‘Susie Palmer, the reporter who wrote that first piece about my business, wants to meet you—talk about Toby’s alphabet book.’
‘You gave her a copy?’
‘Forgive me for being a smug mother, but I wanted her to know that you’d made the original for Toby.’
‘If I was Toby’s mother I’d be smug. Has Connie found him, by the way? He was running around in his pyjamas a little while ago.’
‘Forget Toby for a moment. This woman has it in her power to give you the kind of publicity money can’t buy.’
She wanted to tell Fran that she didn’t want any kind of publicity. She wanted to say, Don’t do this to me. I’m not you…
But her cousin was glowing with happiness, wanting so much to include her in her joy, so instead she smiled and said, ‘Well, don’t just stand there. Lead the way.’
CHAPTER TWO
‘FOREST FAIRIES?’
Sebastian closed his eyes. Maybe this was all a bad dream, he thought. Maybe, if he concentrated very hard, he’d wake up in the pastel-free zone of his loft apartment…
Nothing doing.
When he opened them, the display of neon-bright, fairy-bedecked birthday cards was still there.
A week ago he’d been sitting in his Wall Street office, the fate of major corporations in his hands. All it had taken was one phone call to change his life from the American dream to a British farce. He just wished Matty Lang were here to see what the ‘big-shot New York banker’ had come to.
She, he was certain, would have enjoyed the joke. With her there he might have been able to see it for himself.
‘They were our most profitable line…’
Blanche Appleby, Uncle George’s secretary since time immemorial, hesitated, unsure exactly how to address Sebastian now that he was a head taller than her and, in his real life, the vice-president of an international bank.
He let the image of Matty’s smile fade. ‘It’s still Sebastian, Blanche.’
She relaxed a little. ‘It’s been a good many years since I called you that.’
‘I know, but you don’t have to go all formal on me just because I’ve grown a few feet. I’m still going to need you to hold my hand on this one. I know nothing about the greeting card business.’ Knew nothing and cared less. But he was stuck with it.
‘What about the staff?’
‘I’ll talk to them all later, when I have a better idea what’s—’
‘No. What do you want them to call you?’
He stifled a groan. Life was so much simpler in the US. There he was simply Sebastian Wolseley, a man defined by what he did and how well he did it rather than by the fact that one of his ancestors had been the mistress of Britain’s merriest monarch.
As Viscount Grafton, his title was a courtesy one, one of his father’s spares, passed on at birth to keep him going until he inherited the big one. He’d made damn sure that no one in New York knew about it. And perhaps that was a small upside.
Baiting minor aristocracy was a blood sport in the British media; any coverage of his involvement in Coronet Cards was likely to be of the mocking variety. Since it would be the Viscount they were mocking, he might just get away with it.
It would be worth any amount of mockery if it meant no one in New York discovered that he’d put his career at the bank temporarily on hold to rescue Forest Fairies from fiscal disaster.
‘What did the staff call George?’ he asked.
‘Everyone but the senior staff just called him Mr George.’
Paternal respect for the Honourable George, what else?
‘Maybe in another twenty years,’ he said. ‘For now I’d prefer it if everyone just called me Sebastian.’
‘Everyone?’ She sounded slightly shocked.
‘If you’d pass that on.’
‘Well, if that’s what you want.’
‘I do.’ Then, since there was no point in putting off the inevitable, he indicated the display of birthday cards, paper plates, napkins and balloons strewn across the conference table that took up one end of the office. ‘You say these were Coronet’s bestselling lines?’
Maybe he should have made more effort to hide his disbelief.
‘You’ve never seen the television programme?’ she asked, surprised.
‘I don’t believe so.’
‘No, well, I don’t suppose they’re on American television.’ Her tone suggested that their transatlantic cousins didn’t know what they were missing. ‘They were very popular here, which is why George bought a twenty-five-year licence to use the characters on a range of cards and party products.’
That got his attention. ‘Did you say twenty-five?’
‘Forest Fairies parties have been very popular with three-to six-year-old girls.’
‘George bought the rights to produce this stuff for twenty-five years?’ he persisted. ‘How much did it cost the company?’
‘It was a very good deal,’ she said, instantly protective. ‘The line was the mainstay of the business for several years.’
The fact that she appeared to be referring to all this success in the past tense finally got through. ‘Was?’
‘Sales have declined somewhat since the TV programme was dropped from the schedules,’ she admitted.
Sebastian was torn between relief that there would be fewer Forest Fairies in the world and despair that the one item keeping the company afloat was in decline.
It was a close call.
Distracted by a howl of frustration, Matty gave up any pretence of working. All morning she’d been stopping her mind from wandering off to think about Sebastian Wolseley. The sexy way his eyes had creased as his face had relaxed into a smile. The way his eyes changed colour.
Back in New York, he’d still be asleep, and that was a tantalising thought, too. It was so easy to imagine him lying with his face in a pillow, his long limbs spread-eagled across a wide bed.
She saw him in one of those vast loft apartments, with light flooding in from floor-to-ceiling windows across acres of floor space, ‘An Englishman in New York’ playing on an expensive stereo.
And she smiled. So few people were able to handle the wheelchair without embarrassment, but he’d passed every test with flying colours.
The journalist who’d been so anxious to interview her about her work hadn’t been able to get away fast enough. Promising to phone. And maybe she would. ‘Plucky wheelchair-bound woman illustrates cute book…’ had to be a bigger story than one about just any ordinary, able-bodied woman illustrating a cute book.
Or maybe it had been her fault. Maybe the woman’s carefully phrased questions had been in such sharp contrast to Sebastian’s matter-of-fact attitude that she’d been unusually difficult. Prickly, even.
But for a few minutes he’d talked to her as if she was whole. Saying things that no one else would have dreamed of saying. Asking her if she tap-danced…
And even when he’d realised that tap-dancing was not, never would be, part of her repertoire he hadn’t changed—hadn’t started talking to her as if she was witless. Dinner with him would have been a rare pleasure. Sitting at a candlelit table, she could have pretended for a few dizzy hours that on the outside she was like any other woman. The way she was deep inside. With the same longings. The same desire to be loved, to have a man hold her, make love to her.
She closed her eyes for a moment, shutting out the reminders that she was not, would never be, like other women. How dared he joke with her, talk as if she could get up and dance as soon as she made the effort?
Then, with a deep breath, she opened them again. It was unfair to blame him. She’d seen him staring into his glass as if into an abyss and just hadn’t been able to keep her mouth shut. She’d only got herself to blame for her disturbed nights.
Because it wasn’t just this morning that she’d been thinking about him. He’d been there, in her head, since the moment he’d taken her hand, held it a touch too long. Been there the minute she’d stopped concentrating on something else.
But Monday was a working day. She couldn’t afford to allow her mind to wander when she had a tight deadline, and she picked out a fresh pastel and concentrated on the illustration in front of her.
‘Go on, Toby, you can do it!’
She looked up again just in time to catch Toby’s attempt at scaling the brightly coloured climbing frame set up in the garden. It was a bit of a stretch, and he was finding it frustratingly hard to reach the top. She leaned forward in her chair, physically encouraging him with her body, yearning to be out there, giving him the boost he needed. Her frustration, unable to find any other outlet, vented itself on the paper in front of her, and with a few swift strokes of the colour in her hand Hattie Hot Wheels, her cartoon alter ego, was lunging from her wheelchair, arms outstretched, as she flew to Toby’s side, scooping him up and lifting him up.
Another triumph for her superheroine, whose special powers allowed her to convert frustrated helplessness into action…
Then Fran placed a steadying hand at Toby’s back, in case he should falter, smiling encouragement, and, putting in a big effort, he finally made it. Of course he did. Why would Toby need a fantasy superheroine when he had a mother with two good arms and legs?
‘Matty!’ Toby, spotting her from his vantage point, wobbled as he gave her an ecstatic two-armed wave from the top, and her heart rose to her throat. ‘Look at me!’
‘Oh, bravo, Toby!’ she called, waving back. ‘How did you get all the way up there?’
‘I climbed. All by myself.’
‘No!’ she said, doing the whole amazed thing. ‘But it’s so high! How did you do it?’
‘Do you want to see?’ he asked.
‘You betcha I want to see.’
And by the time he’d done it for a third time, just to prove to his apparently sceptical godmother that it wasn’t just a fluke, he could indeed manage it ‘all by himself’.
Her smile faded as she saw the half-finished picture she’d just ruined with her cartoon. Deliberate vandalism? Or was that just a load of psychological mumbo-jumbo?
She’d illustrated dozens of romantic stories for women’s magazines, and while she’d known from the beginning that this one—a wide, deserted beach with the distant lovers silhouetted against the setting sun—was going to be tough, she was a professional. This was her living, and she couldn’t afford to turn down commissions just because they tugged at painful memories.
‘Come and join us, Matty,’ Fran called, encouraging her to play truant. ‘It’s going to rain tomorrow.’
It was hard to resist such siren calls, but every minute spent with Toby was a wrenching reminder of how much she’d lost in the split-second lapse that had robbed her of that future. And Fran’s new baby, joy that she was, just made things worse.
Matty was beginning to feel as if she was trapped on the wrong side of the glass, a spectator to a life she was denied. If only she could afford to move away, get out of London and make a new kind of life. One that wasn’t just a fantasy.
When the phone began to ring, it was almost a relief to call back, ‘Maybe later,’ before turning to pick up the receiver.
‘Matty Lang.’
‘Hello, Matty Lang.’
For a moment her heart seemed to stop beating. It was as if her mind, conjuring up the image of the sleeping man, had somehow woken him.
When it started again, very slowly, she said, ‘Hello, Sebastian Wolseley.’ Then, ‘You’re an early riser. Isn’t it some unearthly hour of the morning in New York?’
‘That is true. But here in London it’s just coming up to eleven o’clock.’
No, well, she hadn’t really thought he was calling from the other side of the Atlantic just to say hello. That would have been totally ridiculous.
‘You said you’d have dinner with me when I came back, but I wondered if you might be able to make lunch? I’ve booked a table at Giovanni’s.’
Giovanni’s? A restaurant so famous that it didn’t have to bother with anything as functional as an address. The kind of restaurant where the rich and famous went to be seen. And it was nearly eleven now.
She had two hours to shower, change, find a parking space. Her hair! She…
She was living in cloud-cuckoo land. Getting carried away.
She never went anywhere without checking it out first. Calling the restaurant to make sure it was wheelchair accessible. That the cloakroom wasn’t upstairs. That, even if it was on the ground floor, she wouldn’t get stuck in the loo door.
Okay, she could still do that.
But she wouldn’t.
‘I said perhaps,’ she reminded him. ‘When you came back. You haven’t been anywhere.’
‘On the contrary, I went to Sussex yesterday,’ he said, and she could see the teasing spark that would be lighting his eyes, the tiny lift at the corner of his mouth that presaged a smile. ‘Command invitation to lunch with the family.’
‘Why is it that I find it hard to believe that you’d respond to anyone’s command?’
‘Well, I did want to borrow a car.’
‘Your family has spare cars lying around?’
‘It’s old. Just taking up space in the garage. I wish I’d taken you with me.’
‘I’m jolly glad you didn’t.’
‘You’re right. Dead boring. Utterly selfish to even consider it. So, anyway, I’ve been somewhere, and now I’m back.’
‘You know I didn’t mean that.’
‘I don’t recall you stipulating a destination. Doesn’t Sussex count?’
It counted. That was the problem. She wanted to have lunch with him.
It would be so easy, sitting opposite him, surrounded by luxury, pretending that they were just two people having lunch together. But then he’d get up and walk away.
She’d already had that dream, but then she’d woken up.
‘I’m really sorry, Sebastian, but I’ve got a deadline that’s getting tighter by the minute. I’m afraid lunch today will have to be a sandwich. But thank you for asking.’
And then, before he could say anything else, she gently replaced the receiver on the cradle.
Sebastian sat back and acknowledged that he could have handled that better.
Giovanni’s, it occurred to him, had been his first mistake.
He’d really wanted to see her, talk to her, but instead of saying so he’d thrown out an invitation to lunch with him at a moment’s notice at the fanciest restaurant he could think of. Few women of his acquaintance could have resisted.
But she wasn’t like other women, and he hadn’t given a single thought as to what she might prefer. Or even that she might have a full and busy life without a moment to spare for him.
Nothing new there. He’d been treating women in that casual, take it or leave it manner for years.
The decent women had left it, the minute they realised he wasn’t offering more. Only the users had hung around: the ones who’d wanted to be seen in smart restaurants, mixing with high-stake players. And that had been just fine. Everyone had got what they wanted without the bother of pretending that they were engaging in anything but the most superficial of relationships.
Nothing messy to interfere with the only thing that really mattered to him. His career.
‘Sebastian, is your phone off the hook?’ Blanche asked, then, seeing him sitting with the receiver in his hand, ‘Oh, you’re making a call.’
He looked up. ‘It’s finished,’ he said, replacing the receiver. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘Our biggest buyer wants to set up a meeting with you. George always used to take him out to lunch, make a fuss of him.’
‘That sounds like fun. What do we talk about?’
‘Next year’s range.’
‘Have we got one? Why haven’t I seen it?’
The way she lifted her shoulders spoke volumes. ‘George let things go a bit towards the end.’ She sat down rather suddenly in the chair facing his desk. ‘I still can’t get used to not seeing him…’ She waved in his direction as she groped for a handkerchief in her pocket.
‘I’m sorry, Blanche, you worked for George for a long time. This must be hard for you.’
‘I was very fond of him. He was a gentleman.’
He wondered if she’d be quite so warm towards him if she knew about the gaping hole in the pension fund. He fervently hoped she’d never have to find out.
‘You can’t know how grateful we all are that the family has decided to keep the company going. They were never actually enthusiastic about it—the company—were they?’
‘Not exactly,’ he agreed. ‘But then they were never exactly enthusiastic about George, either.’
George hadn’t had to work, but he’d never been content to play the role he’d been born to. Had had no taste for hunting, shooting or fishing.
They’d had that—along with so much else—in common.
‘We all thought the company would be wound up,’ she went on, ‘and obviously we’d have understood. Business hasn’t exactly been booming in the last couple of years. But it would have meant early retirement for most of us. I know some people can’t wait, but not me. What on earth would I do with myself?’
There were worse things than early retirement, Sebastian thought. But if he could get the business back to the point where he could find a buyer and use to the money to fund annuities for the staff, she and the rest of George’s loyal staff would never have to face that prospect.
‘You can imagine how pleased we all were when we heard you were going to step into the breach, so to speak.’
‘Yes, well, there won’t be any business unless we do something about next year’s range. Where do we start?’
‘It’s a bit late. The lead time for orders—’
‘Blanche, if I’m going to buy this man an expensive lunch, I’d like to have something to sell him while he’s feeling replete and satisfied.’ She didn’t exactly leap in with suggestions. ‘Where do new designs come from?’ he asked. ‘Did George ever commission an artist to come up with a high-concept design that could be developed into a range of products? Or did he rely on them to come to him?’
‘He hasn’t commissioned anything in a while, but George had a lot of contacts. He always managed to come up with something.’
‘That isn’t a lot of help to me.’
‘No. I’m sorry.’ She gave herself a little shake. ‘You could look in George’s ideas cabinet.’ She gestured in the direction of a plan chest, tucked away in the corner of the office. ‘He sometimes bought things he thought would be useful and tucked them away. For a rainy day, he used to say. I guess it’s here.’ And this time her tears overflowed.
‘Why don’t you go and have a cup of tea, or something, while I check it out?’ he suggested, helping her to her feet and moving her towards the door, utterly helpless in the face of her grief.
‘I’m so sorry…’
‘It’s okay. I understand. Really.’ Unfortunately he understood only too well. ‘Why don’t you take an early lunch?’
He leaned back against the door for a moment. He hadn’t realised until now that Blanche had been in love with George, too. But he’d bet any amount of money that the old rogue had been well aware of her feelings and had taken full advantage of them. Yet more pressure to come up with the goods.
He turned to the plan chest—not that he had any desire to examine its contents. He didn’t even want to be in this country, but there was no point in putting off the inevitable.
The first drawer contained some old botanical drawings. Foxed, and a bit tattered at the edges, the only thing in their favour, as far as he could see, was that they were out of copyright by a century or two.
But what did he know?
The second drawer offered a series of brightly coloured nursery rhyme characters.
As he continued through the drawers he realised that he was doing no more than going through the motions.
He could look at a set of books and have a pretty fair idea of whether they belonged to a company on the way up or on the way out. Coronet Cards had been doing little more than ticking over for the last three years. If he’d been asked for an unbiased opinion, he’d have suggested either finding a buyer—a company who might be prepared to take over the company in order to add the Coronet trademark to their list—or winding it up before it began to make serious losses.
Since, for the moment, neither of those options was open to him, he had no choice but to try and turn it around. But it hadn’t taken more than one morning in the office to realise that he needed help.
And, once again, it was Matty Lang’s face that swam into view.
‘Are you okay?’
Matty looked up from her second attempt at the beach scene. Fran was standing in the open doorway, her baby on her shoulder, her forehead wrinkled in a look of concern.
‘I’m fine,’ she lied. ‘Or I would be if I could remember what a beach looked like.’
‘We could open up the sandbox,’ she offered. ‘I’m sure Toby would be more than willing to refresh your memory.’
‘Thanks, but I think I’ll pass on that one. Where is he?’
‘Baking with Connie. Brownies, I think.’
‘Thanks for the warning.’
‘Her cooking has improved a lot,’ Fran chided, but with a grin.
‘So why are you hiding out down here, interrupting me?’
The grin widened into laughter. ‘Okay, I can take a hint. But don’t work too hard.’
‘Work?’ With a broad gesture, Matty took in her drawing board and computer bench. ‘You call this work? I sit here in the warm and dry, turning out pretty pictures for a living. What’s so hard about that?’
‘Even doing the things we love can get hard if we don’t have a break, Matty.’ Then, ‘Why don’t we all go down to the coast tomorrow so that you can refresh your memory?’
No…
‘I thought you said it was going to rain tomorrow.’
‘That was when I was trying to get you outside today. You look a bit pale. You did so much to make the blessing special for us. I can’t help feeling that you overdid it.’
‘What tosh. You should be away somewhere on a honeymoon, Mrs Dymoke, indulging in love’s young dream with the gorgeous Guy instead of worrying about me.’
‘Oh, please. We’d been married nearly a year before we managed the blessing and reception. At this rate we’ll be love’s pensioners before we get around to a honeymoon.’
‘You should make some time for yourselves, Fran.’
‘Just kidding. But it’s a bad time to go away. Besides, why waste this lovely weather when we have the perfect excuse to escape to the sun in January?’ She dropped a kiss on her sleeping babe’s brow. ‘And this little one will be more manageable by then, too.’
‘It’s going to be a family honeymoon?’
‘Absolutely. But we’re staying in a house belonging to someone Guy knows. It has a full complement of staff, apparently, and I’ve been assured that I shall not be called upon to change as much as a single nappy.’
‘The best of all possible worlds, then. It sounds bliss.’
‘It will be, but I wish—’
‘You’ve got everything you could ever wish for, Fran,’ Matty intervened, before her cousin could voice her guilt at leaving her behind. ‘And for once I’ll be able to get on with some work without having to put up with a constant stream of interruptions.’ As if to mock her, her doorbell rang. ‘Now what?’
She lifted the entryphone. ‘Yes?’
‘Meals on Wheels, ma’am. Since you wouldn’t come to lunch with me, I’ve brought lunch to you.’
Fran’s eyes widened. ‘Is that Sebastian Wolseley?’ she whispered.
‘It must be,’ Matty replied, with remarkable composure considering her insides had clenched into a nervous fist at the sound of his voice. ‘He’s the only man I’ve turned down lunch with today.’
‘You did what?’
‘Treat them mean, keep them keen,’ she said, with a fair attempt at a laugh. Not that she imagined Fran was fooled for a minute by her apparent carelessness.
She shouldn’t care, but it was a long time since she’d thought about a man—thought about a man in connection with herself, that was—for more than five minutes. She’d wasted a lot more than five minutes on Sebastian Wolseley, which suggested that she did. Care.
‘It seems to be working,’ her cousin replied, apparently amused. ‘Is leaving him standing on the doorstep part of the plan?’
She was tempted. She’d said she was busy and he’d taken no notice. That was bad, wasn’t it? He hadn’t listened to what she was saying and that showed a lack of respect…or something.
The warmth spreading upwards towards her cheeks suggested that respect was the last thing she wanted from him.
That his unwillingness to take no for an answer was much more appealing.
Dangerous, but appealing, and she buzzed him in. Then, as Fran headed for the French windows, Matty said, ‘Excuse me, just where do you think you’re going?’
‘You think I’m going to hang around and play gooseberry?’ Fran asked, as Sebastian appeared from the hall and joined them. Then she gracefully extended a hand, accepting a kiss on her cheek, and said, ‘Hello, Sebastian. How’re you settling into the flat? Is there anything you need?’
‘Everything’s fine, thank you, Francesca. I’m very grateful to you. Even the most comfortable hotel loses its charm after a week.’ He looked at the baby in her arms. ‘This is Toby’s sister, I take it?’ He held out a finger for the baby to clutch.
Matty watched as Fran said, ‘Say hello, Stephanie.’ The baby blew a bubble and earned herself a full-throttle smile. ‘Say goodbye, Stephanie.’ Then, ‘Guy will give you call later in the week to organise supper one evening soon.’
‘I look forward to it.’
‘And if you change your mind about tomorrow, Matty, give me a call,’ she said, before stepping out in the garden, leaving her alone with Sebastian.
‘Tomorrow?’ he asked, finally dragging his gaze from the lovely Madonna-like image of mother and child and turning to look directly at Matty.
She shrugged, reminding herself that it wasn’t at all attractive to begrudge a baby one of his smiles. ‘Fran suggested a day at the coast. I told her I was too busy. She listened.’
‘I listened. You said you were planning a sandwich.’ He offered her the kind of brown recycled paper carrier bag used by expensive organic bakers. ‘I thought I’d save you the trouble of making it.’
She had two alternatives: keep looking at him, or take the carrier and look inside that. She took the carrier. And kept on looking at him.
‘Is it my imagination,’ she asked, after a silence that stretched seconds too long, ‘or are sandwiches heavier than they used to be?’
‘Not noticeably. But since I had no idea what you’d prefer—you might, for instance, be a vegetarian, or allergic to shellfish, or hate cheese—I thought I’d better bring a selection.’
‘That was thoughtful.’
‘I’m a thoughtful man. Ask anyone.’
She peeked into the carrier, because continuing to stare at him was not smart. It would give him the wrong idea—or possibly the right one; whichever it was, it wouldn’t be good. Besides, looking at him was making her feel dizzy…
‘I seem to be spoilt for choice,’ she said, taking her time over her selection. Gathering her composure, the strength to dismiss him. The feelings he provoked in her pathetic body were too powerful to be ignored, laughed away. She had to protect herself. Send him away. Now.
She stared in the bag. There were more sandwiches than one person could eat in a week—even supposing that person ever wanted to eat again—but for some reason she couldn’t read the labels clearly, so she picked out the first one that came to hand. She blinked and saw that it was smoked salmon with cream cheese on dark rye bread. The man had taste; she’d give him that.
‘For future reference, Sebastian,’ she said, as she placed it on the workbench beside her. ‘In the unlikely event that you should ever be tempted to do this again. I’m not a vegetarian, I love shellfish, and I believe cheese to be the food of the gods.’ Then, handing the carrier back to him, she dug deep for a smile and said, ‘Thank you. Thoughtful indeed. I shall enjoy it later. When I’ve finished work.’
Then she quickly turned back to her drawing board in what she hoped he would understand was a gesture of dismissal. Brushed away a spot of something wet that landed on her drawing board. Waited for him to walk out of her life.
When he didn’t take the hint—she hadn’t really expected him to; if she were honest hadn’t really wanted him to—she tried just a bit harder with, ‘Can you find your own way out?’
CHAPTER THREE
SEBASTIAN shook his head. Not because finding his way out of her apartment was beyond him, but in total admiration of her insouciance.
Having been turned down for lunch, he’d gone out on a limb in his attempt to charm her but she still wasn’t having any of it.
‘You are a class act, Matty Lang.’
She had the grace to smile. ‘Thank you.’
‘Don’t thank me. It wasn’t a compliment.’
Except, of course, it was and they both knew it. He admired that kind of cool. Her ability to remain completely unimpressed by humility from a man not given to such gestures. Or maybe she recognised the truth: that he wasn’t used to taking no for an answer.
‘You won’t object if I call a cab before you kick me out?’ he asked, raising the stakes a little as he took out his cellphone.
‘You came by cab?’
‘No. Why? Do you have something against them?’
She pulled her lips tight against her teeth, as if trying very hard not to smile, trying very hard not change her mind and ask him to stay.
‘Not at all,’ she replied, once she had the smile under control. ‘I just wondered why you didn’t use your car. When you’d gone through such agony to acquire it. Of course you’d have got a parking ticket, but even so…’
‘Actually, I walked…’ Damn! No…
‘Good for you. Why don’t you just walk back?’
The smile, he could see, was making a bid for freedom. She’d enjoyed his discomfort. Would probably split her sides if he made an absolute idiot of himself trying to avoid touchy words like ‘walk’ as if they were landmines. Well, two could play at that game…
‘I’d probably faint from lack of nourishment. But don’t worry, I’ll stand out in the street if you’d prefer.’
‘After you’ve gone to such trouble to provide me with lunch?’
An errant dimple appeared just above the right-hand corner of her mouth.
‘Would I be that unkind?’ she asked.
‘Apparently,’ he said. ‘If you were in the least bit grateful you’d have invited me to join you.’
She laid a hand against her heart and said, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. Did you want to stay?’
‘Witch,’ he said, quite unable to stop himself from laughing. But then, that was why he was here. Because even when he’d been at a truly low point she’d made him smile.
‘That’s better.’
‘You prefer insults to charm?’
‘Of course. Charm is so…easy. Insults, on the other hand, have an astringent, refreshing quality. So much more honest. Sit down; make your call.’
Better, he thought, making himself at home on her sofa, scrolling through the numbers stored in his phone as if looking for a cab company, but taking his time about it.
‘So, is that the secret?’ he asked, as if more absorbed in the phone than in her answer. ‘I have to call you names if I want to spend a little time with you?’
‘You get to make one phone call,’ she told him. ‘Conversation is not included.’
Matty wasn’t fooled for a minute. Sebastian Wolseley wasn’t calling a cab, he was just going through the motions, spinning out the time, hoping she’d relent and ask him to stay.
Why?
What did he want from her?
Lunch, the sandwiches… He wouldn’t be pushing it so hard unless he wanted something.
‘I asked you to have dinner with me on Saturday,’ he went on, as if he hadn’t heard, ‘and you dismissed me in favour of chatting up a journalist.’
He pressed the call button, waited. Disconnected.
‘Engaged,’ he said in response to her unspoken question. Then, looking up suddenly and catching her staring at him, ‘I invite you for lunch at the most romantic restaurant in town and you say you’re too busy. And you’re not even going to invite me to stay and share your very brief lunch break, despite the fact that I provided the sandwiches.’
‘You said it,’ she replied. ‘I’m a witch. For my next trick, if you’re not out of here in thirty seconds, I turn you into a frog.’
‘Are you sure about that?’ He had the feeling she wasn’t fooled by his phone act, so this time he hit dial before he lifted the phone to his ear. This time it really was engaged… ‘Wouldn’t you have to kiss me to reverse the spell?’
Matty wished that didn’t sound so appealing. She was already finding it hard enough to stop herself from staring at his mouth. And now he’d put the idea into her head…
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ she said, abruptly changing the subject, desperate to drive the image from her mind. ‘You can stop pretending to call a cab.’
‘Pretending?’ he exclaimed, all shock, horror. She was not impressed.
‘Pretending. Since I’ve had nothing but interruptions all morning you might as well stay and eat one of those sandwiches. Then, when you’ve told me what you want, I’m kicking you out whether you have transport or not.’
‘What makes you think I want anything but your company?’
‘I can read minds, remember? I’ll fetch some plates. Would you like something to drink?’ she asked, manoeuvring her chair from behind the drawing board and heading for the kitchen.
‘Actually, you’ll find a bottle of perfectly chilled Sancerre on the kitchen table.’
‘Sancerre?’ She turned and gave him a stern look that suggested he was a piece of work.
He smiled back, acknowledging the fact, and said, ‘I’d offer to come and open it, but I’m far too comfortable.’
Oh, that was good. She had to bite her lip to stop herself from grinning. ‘You had no intention of leaving, did you?’
‘No, but then we both know that you weren’t really going to kick me out.’
‘My mistake was in ever letting you in.’
‘Once you answered the doorbell you had no choice.’ Perhaps realising that being smug wasn’t in his best interests, he quickly added, ‘You could never bring yourself to be that rude.’
‘I could,’ she assured him, ‘but I wouldn’t have been. I can do an excellent impression of Fran’s Greek live-in cook/housekeeper/nanny when I don’t want to be disturbed.’ And he surely disturbed her. ‘All mangled English and incomprehension. It works a treat on unwanted callers.’
She found the corkscrew, opened the bottle and, grabbing a couple of plates, rejoined her uninvited guest.
‘You’ll find glasses in the sideboard,’ she said. ‘If it’s not too much trouble.’ Then, as he unfolded himself from the sofa and opened the cupboard, ‘What flat?’
‘Flat?’ he asked, setting out the glasses and taking the wine from her.
‘Fran asked you if you’d settled into the flat.’
‘Oh, right. Guy offered me the use of his old place until I find something permanent.’
‘His old place?’ Guy didn’t have an ‘old place’. ‘Are you by any chance referring to his former home in a luxurious riverside penthouse?’
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