AllFreeNovel
Share Us
His hands were still shaking as he drew the cork, his eyes drawn unwillingly to the grace of slender, naked arms as she ladled what looked like pheasant in a rich red wine sauce onto a plate, adding tiny wedges of crispy roast potatoes.
‘Greens?’ she asked, the small, long-fingered hand that held the silver server hovering over a dish of broccoli. A small smile played at the corners of her mouth.
He nodded curtly, pouring wine. Why had he never noticed the enchanting dimple at the side of her mouth? Because he’d never really looked at her before, he told himself wryly, just accepted the way she looked—at least, the way she used to look—as he would accept the shape, size and colour of an old piece of furniture that had been hanging about the place for years.
He had never seen her potential, never even thought about it. But Dawn had, drat the woman, leaving him with warning bells clanging in his brain, loud enough to permanently deafen him.
‘Mrs Briggs is a wonderful cook,’ Mattie said as they sat down. ‘But, as you told me, she is slowing down. And I’m next to hopeless. So, as I see it, the best way to jump the hurdle of large-scale business entertaining, with almost no notice, is for me to suss out various catering establishments—the sort that work at the speed of light—and make arrangements with them. Mrs Briggs and I can manage the table settings, flowers and so on. I can’t see there’d be any problem. Can you?’
‘What?’ James shook his head to clear the red mist from his eyes. He had barely heard a word she’d been saying, he’d been looking at the way the candlelight enhanced her, casting warm shadows over exposed flesh, deepening the mystery of her, glancing off those high cheek-bones, intensifying the pouty shape of her mouth.
‘Sorry,’ he muttered hoarsely. ‘I’m sure you can work something out. And talking of work, when will you be starting your next project? Did you choose a room for your study?’
This he could handle. He metaphorically grasped the subject with both hands. With her work to engross her everything would return to normal. He was pretty damn sure it would. Out would go the fancy stuff she’d taken to wearing—the soft, lemon-yellow suit she’d worn to the civil ceremony of marriage yesterday and had been particularly fetching—and back would come the comfortable sludge of baggy sweaters, droopy skirts or shapeless old jeans that always seemed several sizes too large.
He’d be out of temptation’s way. The temptation to discover her, know every delicious inch of her, find out for himself whether that ultra feminine body, those sensually full lips would live up to the promise that seemed to be exuding from every pore of her skin.
He shifted his chair closer to the table. Allowing his thoughts along that particular road was having the expected yet, under the circumstances, disastrous effect on a certain part of his anatomy.
But, ‘No,’ she said, laying down her cutlery. ‘Mrs Briggs and I did carry my boxes of stuff up to one of the spare rooms, out of the way. And I’ve been in touch with the agency I use and told them I won’t be taking on any more projects for a while. I want to be a proper wife to you, James.’
A proper wife! Did she know what she was saying?
The way she was looking at him through her lashes, dimpling slightly, would suggest so. He picked up his wineglass and drained it. He was getting overheated again, overreacting. Matts didn’t have a seductive, teasing or wily bone in her body.
And she confirmed it. ‘My job description as your wife includes acting as your hostess, arranging your social diary. Now I’m not used to that sort of thing, as you know. I’ve led a very quiet life. But I won’t let you down, I’ll get my head around it. And for the sake of appearances, I do think it would be politic for us to be seen around together. Act the part of any normal, newly-married couple. Not that this marriage is normal,’ she quickly assured him, ‘but we don’t want everyone—and that means everyone who knows about what happened with Fiona—to know it, too. So we do need to spend a lot of time together.’ She gave him a soft, commiserating smile. ‘Pudding?’
‘No. No, thank you.’ He shook his head distractedly while she served herself a generous slice of bilberry tart, smothering it with fresh cream.
Spend a lot of time together? Wasn’t that why he’d gone into the office today—to put himself out of reach of temptation?
The temptation to make love to his own wife!
The situation was getting farcical. It was time he told her as it was.
‘Matts—perhaps we should have some plain speaking.’ His voice sounded distinctly hoarse. He cleared his throat. ‘We both know what we want out of this marriage. Comfortable companionship for starters, nothing more, nothing less. The business staying in the family, as it were. For you, a good home, the freedom to pursue your career, to run my home as you see fit without having to
play second fiddle and gooseberry to your father and Emily Flax—I think we both know which way that particular wind’s blowing, don’t we? And for me, a wife to deter the hordes of women on the make out there. As I told you, quite frankly, I’ve had it up to here—’ he slashed a line across his throat ‘—with kiss-me-quick, gold-digging harpies. Anything female under fifty, for that matter!’
‘Oh.’ she widened her eyes and laid down her spoon. ‘I’m nowhere near fifty!’
‘Of course not. But you’re not female, either.’
‘I’m not?’ Thick lashes fluttered. The tip of a pretty pink tongue captured a speck of cream from the corner of her mouth.
James shuddered. Lord, was he ever making a pig’s ear of this!
‘What I meant was,’ he said desperately, ‘that I’ve never thought of you as being a female. Just Mattie, brainy and studious. Comfortable to be with and, unlike others of the female sex, totally undemanding of male time and attention. I mean—’ he leaned his arms on the table, warming to the subject, needing to get his message through to her ‘—have you ever given me come-hither looks, asked me if the shade of lipstick you were wearing suited you? No, of course you haven’t. Asked me if whatever it was you were wearing would look better without a bra? No, of course—’ He choked off the words. Why the dickens had he used that example when it was perfectly obvious she wasn’t wearing one?
He made a huge effort to pull himself together, to take control of a situation that was in danger of getting out of hand. ‘Look, what I’m trying to say is I’ve always thought of you as a kid sister.’
‘When you thought of me at all,’ she came back snippily.
Sharp, that. He sucked a deep breath in between his teeth. Hell, no way did he want to hurt her feelings. And of course he’d thought of her. Often. As a little mouse, stuck in her ivory tower. Poring over her books. As different from the brittle, glittery, ultra-sophisticated females who had drifted in and out of his life as it was possible to be.
But anything less mouse-like than his newly-wedded wife was hard to imagine! That was the crux of the matter.
‘Naturally, I’ve thought of you,’ he assured her quickly. ‘After all, I’ve known you for ever. I watched you grow up, applauded louder than anyone when you got your degree, and earlier,’ he reminded her, because suddenly he couldn’t bear it if she thought that she’d never been more than a shadowy, insignificant non-entity in the background of his business partner’s life, ‘when the mother you hadn’t seen or heard of for years was killed on the streets of Manchester by that joy-rider, my first thought after going with your father to formally identify the body was to comfort you. So, yes, Mattie, I have thought of you.’
