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SOS: Convenient Husband Required

by

Liz Fielding
Winning a Groom in 10 Dates

by

Cara Colter

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Whirlwind dates and shotgun weddings!

But what happens when convenient romance becomes real?

Find out in:

SOS: CONVENIENT HUSBAND REQUIRED

by Liz Fielding

WINNING A GROOM IN 10 DATES

by Cara Colter

Enjoy our new 2-in-1 editions of stories by your favourite authors—for double the romance!

SOS: Convenient Husband Required

by

Liz Fielding

Dear Reader

Welcome back to Maybridge, a town I created back in 1994. SOS: CONVENIENT HUSBAND REQUIRED is the sixth of my books to be set there (the full list is on my website), and if it existed it would undoubtedly be one of the most romantic places in Britain.

Along with the nearby city of Melchester, the villages of Little Hinton and Upper Haughton, I have created a world of my own from the places I grew up in. There’s the river, the regenerated industrial areas, and the vibrant arts and crafts centre in a huge old coaching inn, with delightful boutiques around the cobbled courtyard.

May Coleridge comes from an old Maybridge family—the ones who lived in ‘the big house’—but she fell in love with Adam Wavell, who comes from the other end of the social scale, when they were both in high school. Now the tables are turned. Adam is rich and powerful while May is about to lose everything. Adam can’t quite escape his past, his family, or the memory of May’s sweet kisses, no matter how hard he tries. Nor can he rid himself of the memory of his humiliation at the hand of May’s grandfather. Or her coldness in the years since then.

He’s sure that a temporary marriage of convenience will give him closure, but being close to May rekindles feelings he’d thought dead. Can a convenient marriage become something more?

Walk through the park with them and watch them fall in love all over again.

Warmest wishes

Liz

LIZ FIELDING was born with itchy feet. She made it to Zambia before her twenty-first birthday and, gathering her own special hero and a couple of children on the way, lived in Botswana, Kenya and Bahrain—with pauses for sightseeing pretty much everywhere in between. She finally came to a full stop in a tiny Welsh village cradled by misty hills, and these days mostly leaves her pen to do the travelling. When she’s not sorting out the lives and loves of her characters she potters in the garden, reads her favourite authors, and spends a lot of time wondering ‘What if…?’ For news of upcoming books—and to sign up for her occasional newsletter—visit Liz’s website at www.lizfielding.com

For my patient, long-suffering husband, who unfailingly keeps his sense of humour through all the crises, the rubbish meals when the deadline escapes me, and makes me believe on those horrible days when the confidence falters. He is my hero.

Chapter One

MAY COLERIDGE stared blankly at the man sitting behind the desk, trying to make sense of what he’d told her.

Her grandfather’s will had been simplicity itself. Apart from the bequests to local charities, everything had been left to his only living relative. Her.

Inheritance tax would mop up pretty much everything but the house itself. She’d always known that would happen, but Coleridge House was the only home she’d ever known and now, because of a clause in some centuries old will, she was about to lose that too.

‘I don’t understand,’ she said, finally admitting defeat. ‘Why didn’t you tell me all this when you read Grandpa’s will?’

‘As you’re no doubt aware,’ Freddie Jennings explained with maddening pomposity —as if she hadn’t known him since he’d been a kid with a runny nose at kindergarten—‘my great-uncle took care of your grandfather’s legal affairs until he retired. He drew up his last will after the death of your mother—’

‘That was nearly thirty years ago,’ she protested.

He shrugged. ‘Believe me, I’m as shocked as you are.’

‘I doubt that. Jennings have been the Coleridge family solicitor for generations,’ she said. ‘How could you not know about this?’

Freddie shifted uncomfortably in his chair. ‘Some of the Coleridge archives were damaged during the floods a few years ago. It was only when I applied for probate that this particular condition of inheritance surfaced.’

May felt as if she’d stepped into quicksand and the ground that she was standing on, everything that had been certain, was disintegrating beneath her feet. She had been so sure that this was a mistake, that Freddie has got his knickers in a twist over nothing, but it wasn’t nothing. It was everything.

Everything she’d known, everything she’d loved was being taken away from her…

‘The last time this clause would have been relevant was when your great-grandfather died in 1944,’ he continued, as if that mattered. ‘Your grandfather would have been told of the condition then.’

‘In 1944 my grandfather was a fourteen-year-old boy who’d just lost his father,’ she snapped, momentarily losing her composure at his attempt to justify their incompetence. ‘And, since he was married by the time he was twenty-three, it wouldn’t have been an issue.’ And by the time it had become one, the stroke that had incapacitated him had left huge holes in his memory and he hadn’t been able to warn her. She swallowed as an aching lump formed in her throat, but she refused to let the tears fall. To weep. ‘People got married so much younger back then,’ she added.

‘Back then, there wasn’t any alternative.’

‘No…’

Her mother had been a beneficiary of the feminist movement, one of that newly liberated generation of women who’d abandoned the shackles of a patriarchal society and chosen her own path. Motherhood without the bother of a man under her feet was the way she’d put it in one of the many articles she’d written on the subject.

As for her, well, she’d had other priorities.

‘You have to admit that it’s outrageous, Freddie. Surely I can challenge it?’

‘I’d have to take Counsel’s opinion and even if you went to court there is a problem.’

‘I think we are both agreed that I have a problem.’

He waited, but she shook her head. Snapping at Freddie wasn’t going to help. ‘Tell me.’

‘There can be no doubt that this restriction on inheritance would have been explained to your grandfather on each of the occasions when he rewrote his will. After his marriage, the birth of your mother, the death of your grandmother. He could have taken steps then to have this restriction removed. He chose to let it stand.’

‘Why? Why would he do that?’

Freddie shrugged. ‘Maybe because it was part of family tradition. Maybe because his father had left it in place. I would have advised removal but my great-uncle, your grandfather came from a different age. They saw things differently.’

‘Even so—’

‘He had three opportunities to remove the entailment and the Crown would argue that it was clearly his wish to let it stand. Counsel would doubtless counter that if he hadn’t had a stroke, had realised the situation you were in, he would have changed it,’ Freddie said in an attempt to comfort her.

‘If he hadn’t had a stroke I would be married to Michael Linton,’ she replied. Safely married. That was what he used to say. Not like her mother…

‘I’m sorry, May. The only guarantee I can give is that whichever way it went the costs would be heavy and, as you are aware, there’s no money in the estate to cover them.’

‘You’re saying that I’d lose the house anyway,’ she said dully. ‘That whatever I do I lose.’

‘The only people who ever win in a situation like this are the lawyers,’ he admitted. ‘Hopefully, you’ll be able to realise enough from the sale of the house contents, once the inheritance tax is paid, to provide funds for a flat or even a small house.’

‘They want inheritance tax and the house?’

‘The two are entirely separate.’

She shook her head, still unable to believe this was happening. ‘If it was going to some deserving charity I could live with it, but to have my home sucked into the Government coffers…’ Words failed her.

‘Your ancestor’s will was written at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The country was at war. He was a patriot.’

‘Oh, please! It was nothing but an arm twisted up the back of a philandering son. Settle down and get on with producing the next generation or I’ll cut you off without a shilling.’

‘Maybe. But it was added as an entailment to the estate and no one has ever challenged it. There’s still just time, May. You could get married.’

‘Is that an offer?’

‘Unfortunately, bigamy would not satisfy the legal requirements.’

Freddie Jennings had a sense of humour? Who knew?

‘You’re not seeing anyone?’ he asked hopefully.

She shook her head. There had only ever been one boy, man, who’d ever lit a fire in her heart, her body…

‘Between nursing Grandpa and running my own business, I’m afraid there hasn’t been a lot of time to “see” anyone,’ she said.

‘There’s not even a friend who’d be prepared to go through the motions?’

‘I’m all out of unattached men at the moment,’ she replied. ‘Well, there is Jed Atkins who does a bit for me in the garden now and then,’ she said, her grip on reality beginning to slip. ‘He’s in his seventies, but pretty lively and I’d have to fight off the competition.’

‘The competition?’

‘He’s very much in demand with the ladies at the Darby and Joan club, so I’m told.’

‘May…’ he cautioned as she began to laugh, but the situation was unreal. How could he expect her to take it seriously? ‘I think I’d better take you home.’

‘I don’t suppose you have any clients in urgent need of a marriage of convenience so that they can stay in the country?’ she asked as he ushered her from his office, clearly afraid that she was going to become hysterical.

He needn’t have worried. She was a Coleridge. Mary Louise Coleridge of Coleridge House. Brought up to serve the community, behave impeccably on all occasions, do the right thing even when your heart was breaking.

She wasn’t about to become hysterical just because Freddie Jennings had told her she was about to lose everything.

‘But if you are considering something along those lines,’ he warned as he held the car door for her, ‘please make sure he signs a prenuptial agreement or you’re going to have to pay dearly to get rid of him.’

‘Make that a lose/lose/lose situation,’ she said. Then, taking a step back, ‘Actually, I’d rather walk home. I need some fresh air.’

He said something but she was already walking away. She needed to be on her own. Needed to think.

Without Coleridge House, she would not only lose her home, but her livelihood. As would Harriet Robson, her grandfather’s housekeeper for more than thirty years and the nearest thing to a mother she’d ever known.

She’d have to find a job. Somewhere to live. Or, of course, a husband.

She bought the early edition of the local newspaper from the stand by the park gates to look at the sits vac and property columns. What a joke. There were no jobs for a woman weeks away from her thirtieth birthday who didn’t have a degree or even a typing certificate to her name. And the price of property in Maybridge was staggering. The lonely hearts column was a boom area, though, and, with a valuable house as an incentive, a husband might prove the easiest of the three to find. But, with three weeks until her birthday, even that was going to be a tough ask.

Adam Wavell looked from the sleeping infant tucked into the pink nest of her buggy to the note in his hand.

Sorry, sorry, sorry. I know I should have told you about Nancie, but you’d have shouted at me…

Shouted at her. Shouted at her! Of course he would have shouted at her, for all the good it had ever done.

‘Problem?’

‘You could say that.’ For the first time since he’d employed Jake Edwards as his PA, he regretted not choosing one of the equally qualified women who’d applied for the job, any one of whom would by now have been clucking and cooing over the infant. Taking charge and leaving him to get on with running his company. ‘My sister is having a crisis.’

‘I didn’t know you had a sister.’

No. He’d worked hard to distance himself from his family.

‘Saffy. She lives in France,’ he said.

Maybe. It had taken only one call to discover that she’d sublet the apartment he’d leased for her months ago. Presumably she was living off the proceeds of the rent since she hadn’t asked him for money. Yet.

Presumably she’d moved in with the baby’s father, a relationship that she hadn’t chosen to share with him and had now, presumably, hit the skids.

Her occasional phone calls could have come from anywhere and any suggestion that he was cross-examining her about what she was doing, who she was seeing only resulted in longer gaps between them. It was her life and while she seemed happy he didn’t pry. At twenty-nine, she was old enough to have grown out of her wildness and settled down. Clearly, he thought as he reread the letter, he’d been fooling himself.

I’ve got myself into some real trouble, Adam…

Trouble. Nothing new there, then. She’d made a career of it.

Michel’s family set their bloodhounds on me. They’ve found out all the trouble I was in as a kid, the shoplifting, the drugs and they’ve used it to turn him against me. He’s got a court order to stop me taking Nancie out of France and he’s going to take her away from me…

No. That wasn’t right. She’d been clean for years…

Or was he still kidding himself?

A friend smuggled us out of France but I can’t hide with a baby so I’m leaving her with you…

Smuggled her out of France. Ignored a court order. Deprived a father of access to his child. Just how many felonies did that involve? All of which he was now an accessory to.

Terrific.

One minute he’d been sitting in his boardroom, discussing the final touches to the biggest deal in his career, the next he was having his life sabotaged—not for the first time—by his family.

I’m going to disappear for a while…

No surprise there. His little sister had made a career of running away and leaving someone else to pick up the pieces. She’d dropped out, run away, used drugs and alcohol in a desperate attempt to shut out all the bad stuff. Following the example of their useless parents. Making a bad situation worse.

He’d thought his sister had finally got herself together, was enjoying some small success as a model. Or maybe that was what he’d wanted to believe.

Don’t, whatever you do, call a nanny agency. They’ll want all kinds of information and, once it’s on record, Nancie’s daddy will be able to trace her…

Good grief, who was the father of this child? Was his sister in danger?

Guilt overwhelmed those first feelings of anger, frustration. He had to find her, somehow make this right, but, as the baby stirred, whimpered, he had a more urgent problem.

Saffy had managed to get her into his office without anyone noticing her—time for a shake-up in security—but that would have to wait. His first priority was to get the baby out of the building before she started screaming and his family history became the subject of the kind of gossip that had made his—and Saffy’s—youth a misery.

‘Do you want me to call an agency?’ Jake asked.

‘An agency?’

‘For a nanny?’

‘Yes…No…’

Even if Saffy’s fears were nothing but unfounded neurosis, he didn’t have anywhere to put a nanny. He didn’t even have a separate bedroom in his apartment, only a sleeping gallery reached by a spiral staircase.

It was no place for a baby, he thought as he stared at the PS Saffy had scribbled at the end of the crumpled and tear-stained note.

Ask May. She’ll help.

She’d underlined the words twice.

May. May Coleridge.

He crushed the letter in his hand.

He hadn’t spoken to May Coleridge since he was eighteen. She and Saffy had been in the same class at school and, while they hadn’t been friends—the likes of the Wavells had not been welcome at Coleridge House, as he’d discovered to his cost—at least not in the giggly girls, shopping, clubbing sense of the word, there had been some connection between them that he’d never been able to fathom.

But then that was probably what people had thought about him and May.

But while the thought of the untouchable Miss Coleridge changing the nappy of a Wavell baby might put a shine on his day, the woman had made an art form of treating him as if he were invisible.

Even on those social occasions when they found themselves face to face, there was no eye contact. Only icy civility.

‘Is there anything I can do?’

He shook his head. There was nothing anyone could do. His family was, always had been, his problem, but it was a mess he wanted out of his office. Now.

‘Follow up on the points raised at the meeting, Jake.’ He looked at the crumpled sheet of paper in his hand, then folded it and stuffed it in his shirt pocket. Unhooked his jacket from the back of his chair. ‘Keep me posted about any problems. I’m going home.’

It took a kitten to drag May out of her dark thoughts.

Her first reaction to the news that she was about to lose her home had been to rush back to its shabby comfort—no matter how illusory that comfort might be—while she came to terms with the fact that, having lost the last surviving member of her family, she was now going to lose everything else. Her home. Her business. Her future.

Once home, however, there would be no time for such indulgence. She had little enough time to unravel the life she’d made for herself. To wind down a business she’d fallen into almost by accident and, over the last few years, built into something that had given her something of her own, something to live for.

Worst of all, she’d have to tell Robbie.

Give notice to Patsy and the other women who worked for a few hours a week helping with the cleaning, the cooking and who relied on that small amount of money to help them pay their bills.

There’d be no time to spare for the luxury of grieving for the loss of their support, friendship. Her birthday was less than a month away. The birthday. The one with a big fat zero on the end.

Yesterday that hadn’t bothered her. She’d never understood why anyone would want to stop the clock at ‘twenty-nine’.

Today, if some fairy godmother were to appear and offer her three wishes, that would be number one on the list. Well, maybe not number one…

But, while fairy godmothers were pure fantasy, her date of birth was a fact that she could not deny and, by the time she’d reached the last park bench before home, the one overlooking the lake that had once been part of the parkland surrounding Coleridge House, her legs had been shaking so much that she’d been forced to stop.

Once there, she’d been unable to find the will to move again. It was a sheltered spot, a sun trap and, despite the fact that it was the first week in November, pleasantly warm. And while she sat on this park bench she was still Miss Mary Louise Coleridge of Coleridge House. Someone to be respected.

Her place in the town, the invitations to sit on charitable committees were part of her life. Looked at in the cold light of day, it was obvious that it wasn’t her they wanted, it was the Coleridge name to lend lustre to their endeavours. And Coleridge House.

No one would come knocking when she didn’t have a grand room where they could hold their meetings, with a good lunch thrown in. An elegant, if fading house with a large garden in which to hold their ‘events’.

It was the plaintive mewing of a kitten in distress that finally broke through these dark thoughts. It took her a moment to locate the scrap of orange fur clinging to the branch of a huge old beech tree set well back from the path.

‘Oh, sweetie, how on earth did you get up there?’

Since the only reply was an even more desperate mew, she got to her feet and went closer.

‘Come on. You can do it,’ she cooed, standing beneath it, hoping to coax it back down the long sloping branch that came nearly to the ground. It edged further up the branch.

She looked around, hoping for someone tall enough to reach up and grab it but there wasn’t a soul in sight. Finally, when it became clear that there wasn’t anything else for it, she took off her jacket, kicked off her shoes and, skirting a muddy puddle, she caught hold of the branch, found a firm foothold and pulled herself up.

Bitterly regretting that he’d taken advantage of the unseasonably fine weather to walk in to the office, Adam escaped the building via his private lift to the car park. He’d hoped to pick up a taxi at the rank on the corner but there were none waiting and he crossed the road to the park. It was a slightly longer way home, but there was less chance of being seen by anyone he knew.

Oblivious to the beauty of the autumn morning, he steered the buggy with one hand, using the other to call up anyone who might have a clue where Saffy was heading for.

His first action on finding Nancie had been to try her mother’s mobile but, unsurprisingly, it was switched off. He’d left a message on her voicemail, asking her to ring him, but didn’t hold out much hope of that.

Ten minutes later, the only thing he knew for certain was that he knew nothing. The new tenants of the apartment, her agent—make that ex-agent—even her old flatmate denied any knowledge of where she was, or of Michel, and he had no idea who her friends were, even supposing they’d tell him anything.

Actually, he thought, looking at the baby, it wasn’t true that he knew nothing.

While the movement of the buggy had, for the moment, lulled her back to sleep, he was absolutely sure that very soon she would be demanding to be fed or changed.

Ask May. She’ll help.

Ahead of him, the tall red-brick barley twist chimneys of Coleridge House stood high above the trees. For years he’d avoided this part of the park, walked double the distance rather than pass the house. Just seeing those chimneys had made him feel inadequate, worthless.

These days, he could buy and sell the Coleridges, and yet it was still there. Their superiority and the taint of who he was.

Asking her for help stuck deep in his craw, but the one thing about May Coleridge was that she wouldn’t ask questions. She knew Saffy. Knew him.

He called Enquiries for her number but it was unlisted. No surprise there, but maybe it was just as well.

It had been a very long time since he’d taken her some broken creature to be nursed back to health, but he knew she’d find it a lot harder to say no face to face. If he put Nancie into her arms.

It is not high, May told herself as she set her foot firmly on the tree. All she had to do was haul herself up onto the branch and crawl along it. No problem…

Easy enough to say when she was safely on the ground.

Standing beneath the branch and looking up, it had seemed no distance at all. The important thing, she reminded herself, was not to look down but keep her eye on the goal.

‘What on earth are you doing up there, Mouse?’

Sherbet dabs!

As her knee slipped, tearing her tights, she wondered how much worse this day could get. The advantage that she didn’t have to look down to see who was beneath her—only one person had ever called her Mouse—was completely lost on her.

‘What do you think I’m doing?’ she asked through gritted teeth. ‘Checking the view?’

‘You should be able to see Melchester Castle from up there,’ he replied, as if she’d been serious. ‘You’ll have to look a little further to your left, though.’

She was in enough trouble simply looking ahead. She’d never been good with heights—something she only ever seemed to remember when she was too far off the ground to change her mind.

‘Why don’t you come up and point it out to me?’ she gasped.

‘I would be happy to,’ he replied, ‘but that branch doesn’t look as if it could support both of us.’

He was right. It was creaking ominously as she attempted to edge closer to the kitten which, despite her best efforts not to frighten it further, was backing off, a spitting, frightened orange ball of fur.

It was far too late to wish she’d stuck to looking helpless at ground level. She’d realised at a very early age that the pathetic, Where’s a big strong man to help me? routine was never going to work for her—she wasn’t blonde enough, thin enough, pretty enough—and had learned to get on and do it herself.

It was plunging in without a thought for the consequences that had earned her the mocking nickname ‘Mouse’, short for ‘Danger Mouse’, bestowed on her by Adam Wavell when she was a chubby teen and he was a mocking, nerdy, glasses-wearing sixth-former at the local high school.

Her knee slipped a second time and a gasp from below warned her that Adam wasn’t the only one with a worm’s eye view of her underwear. A quick blink confirmed that her antics were beginning to attract an audience of mid-morning dog-walkers, older children on their autumn break and shoppers taking the scenic route into the town centre—just too late to be of help.

Then a click, followed by several more as the idea caught on, warned her that someone had taken a photograph using their mobile phone. Terrific. She was going to be in tomorrow’s edition of the Maybridge Observer for sure; worse, she’d be on YouTube by lunch time.

She had no one to blame but herself, she reminded herself, making a firm resolution that the next time she spotted an animal in distress she’d call the RSPCA and leave it to them. That wasn’t going to help her now, though, and the sooner she grabbed the kitten and returned to earth the better.

‘Here, puss,’ she coaxed desperately, but its only response was to hiss at her and edge further along the branch. Muttering under her breath, she went after it. The kitten had the advantage. Unlike her, it weighed nothing and, as the branch thinned and began to bend noticeably beneath her, she made a desperate lunge, earning herself a cheer from the crowd as she managed to finally grab it. The kitten ungratefully sank its teeth into her thumb.

‘Pass it down,’ Adam said, his arms raised to take it from her.

Easier said than done. In its terror, it had dug its needle claws in, clinging to her hand as desperately as it had clung to the branch.

‘You’ll have to unhook me. Don’t let it go!’ she warned as she lowered it towards him. She was considerably higher now and she had to lean down a long way so that he could detach the little creature with the minimum of damage to her skin.

It was a mistake.

While she’d been focused on the kitten everything had been all right, but that last desperate lunge had sent everything spinning and, before she could utter so much as a fudge balls, she lost her balance and slithered off the branch.

Adam, standing directly beneath her, had no time to avoid a direct hit. They both went down in a heap, the fall driving the breath from her body, which was probably a good thing since there was no item in her handmade confectionery range that came even close to matching her mortification. But then embarrassment was her default reaction whenever she was within a hundred feet of the man.

‘You don’t change, Mouse,’ he said as she struggled to catch her breath.

Not much chance of that while she was lying on top of him, his breath warm against her cheek, his heart pounding beneath her hand, his arm, flung out in an attempt to catch her—or, more likely, defend himself—tight around her. The stuff of her most private dreams, if she discounted the fact that it had been raining all week and they were sprawled in the muddy puddle she had taken such pains to avoid.

‘You always did act first, think later,’ he said. ‘Rushing to the aid of some poor creature in distress and getting wet, muddy or both for your pains.’

‘While you,’ she gasped, ‘always turned up too late to do anything but stand on the sidelines, laughing at me,’ she replied furiously. It was untrue and unfair, but all she wanted right at that moment was to vanish into thin air.

‘You have to admit you were always great entertainment value.’

‘If you like clowns,’ she muttered, remembering all too vividly the occasion when she’d scrambled onto the school roof in a thunderstorm to rescue a bird trapped in the guttering and in danger of drowning, concern driving her chubby arms and legs as she’d shinned up the down pipe.

Up had never been a problem.

He’d stood below her then, the water flattening his thick dark hair, rain pouring down his face, grinning even as he’d taken the bird from her. But then, realising that she was too terrified to move, he’d taken off his glasses and climbed up to rescue her.

Not that she’d thanked him.

She’d been too busy yelling at him for letting the bird go before she could wrap it up and take it home to join the rest of her rescue family.

It was only when she was back on terra firma that her breathing had gone to pot and he’d delivered her to the school nurse, convinced she was having an asthma attack. And she had been too mortified—and breathless—to deny it.

He was right. Nothing had changed. She might be less than a month away from her thirtieth birthday, a woman of substance, respected for her charity work, running her own business, but inside she was still the overweight and socially inept teen being noticed by a boy she had the most painful crush on. Brilliant but geeky with the family from hell. Another outsider.

Well, he wasn’t an outsider any more. He’d used his brains to good effect and was now the most successful man not just in Maybridge, but just about anywhere and had exchanged the hideous flat in the concrete acres of a sink estate where he’d been brought up for the luxury of a loft on the quays.

She quickly disentangled herself, clambered to her feet. He followed with far more grace.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked. ‘No bones broken?’

‘I’m fine,’ she said, ignoring the pain in her elbow where it had hit the ground. ‘You?’ she asked out of politeness.

She could see for herself that he was absolutely fine. More than fine. The glasses had disappeared years ago, along with the bad hair, bad clothes. He’d never be muscular, but he’d filled out as he’d matured, his shoulders had broadened and these days were clad in the finest bespoke tailoring.

He wasn’t just fine, but gorgeous. Mouthwateringly scrumptious, in fact. The chocolate nut fudge of maleness. And these days he had all the female attention he could handle if the gossip magazines were anything to judge by.

‘At least you managed to hang onto the kitten,’ she added, belatedly clutching the protective cloak of superiority about her.

The one thing she knew would make him keep his distance.

‘I take no credit. The kitten is hanging onto me.’

‘What?’ She saw the blood seeping from the needle wounds in his hand and everything else flew out of the window. ‘Oh, good grief, you’re bleeding.’

‘It’s a hazard I expect whenever I’m within striking distance of you. Although on this occasion you haven’t escaped unscathed, either,’ he said.

She physically jumped as he took her own hand in his, turning it over so that she could see the tiny pinpricks of blood mingling with the mud. And undoing all her efforts to regain control of her breathing. He looked up.

‘Where’s your bag?’ he asked. ‘Have you got your inhaler?’

Thankfully, it had never occurred to him that his presence was the major cause of her problems with breathing.

‘I’m fine,’ she snapped.

For heaven’s sake, she was nearly thirty. She should be so over the cringing embarrassment that nearly crippled her whenever Adam Wavell was in the same room.

‘Come on,’ he said, ‘I’ll walk you home.’

‘There’s no need,’ she protested.

‘There’s every need. And this time, instead of getting punished for my good deed, I’m going to claim my reward.’

‘Reward?’ Her mouth dried. In fairy tales that would be a kiss…‘Superheroes never hang around for a reward,’ she said scornfully as she wrapped the struggling kitten in her jacket.

‘You’re the superhero, Danger Mouse,’ he reminded her, a teasing glint in his eyes that brought back the precious time when they’d been friends. ‘I’m no more than the trusty sidekick who turns up in the nick of time to get you out of a jam.’

‘Just once in a while you could try turning up in time to prevent me from getting into one,’ she snapped.

‘Now where would be the fun in that?’ he asked, and it took all her self-control to keep her face from breaking out into a foolish smile.

‘Do you really think I want to be on the front page of the Maybridge Observer with my knickers on show?’ she enquired sharply. Then, as the teasing sparkle went out of his eyes, ‘Don’t worry. I’m sure I’ll survive the indignity.’

‘Having seen your indignity for myself, I can assure you that tomorrow’s paper will be a sell-out,’ he replied. She was still struggling with a response to that when he added, ‘And if they can tear their eyes away from all that lace, the kitten’s owners might recognise their stray.’

‘One can live in hopes,’ she replied stiffly.

She shook her head, then, realising that, no matter how much she wanted to run and hide, she couldn’t ignore the fact that because of her he was not only bloody but his hand-stitched suit was covered in mud.

‘I suppose you’d better come back to the house and get cleaned up,’ she said.

‘If that’s an offer to hose me down in the yard, I’ll pass.’

For a moment their eyes met as they both remembered that hideous moment when he’d come to the house with a bunch of red roses that must have cost him a fortune and her grandfather had turned a garden hose on him, soaking him to the skin.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said, her insides curling up with embarrassment, killing stone dead the little heart-lift as he’d slipped so easily into teasing her the way he’d done when they were friends.

She picked up her shoes, her bag, reassembling her armour. But she wasn’t able to look him in the eye as she added distantly, ‘Robbie will take care of you in the kitchen.’

‘The kitchen? Well, that will be further than I’ve ever got before. But actually it was you I was coming to see.’

She balanced her belongings, then, with studied carelessness, as if she had only then registered what he’d said, ‘See?’ she asked, doing her best to ignore the way her heart rate had suddenly picked up. ‘Why on earth would you be coming to see me?’

He didn’t answer but instead used his toe to release the brake on a baby buggy that was standing a few feet away on the path. The buggy that she had assumed belonged to a woman, bundled up in a thick coat and headscarf, who’d been holding onto the handle, crooning to the baby.

Chapter Two

‘ADAM? What are you doing?’

‘Interesting question. Mouse, meet Nancie.’

‘Nancy?’

‘With an i and an e. Spelling never was Saffy’s strong point.’

Saffy Wavell’s strong points had been so striking she’d never given a fig for spelling or anything much else. Long raven-black hair, a figure that appeared to be both ethereal and sensual, she’d been a boy magnet since she hit puberty. And in trouble ever since. But a baby…

‘She’s Saffy’s baby? That’s wonderful news.’ She began to smile. ‘I’m so happy for her.’ The sleeping baby was nestled beneath a pink lace-bedecked comforter. ‘She’s beautiful.’

‘Is she?’

He leaned forward for a closer look, as if it hadn’t occurred to him, but May stopped, struck by what he’d just done.

‘You just left her,’ she said, a chill rippling through her. ‘She’s Saffy’s precious baby and you just abandoned her on the footpath to come and gawp at me? What on earth were you thinking, Adam?’

He looked back then, frowning; he stopped too, clearly catching from her tone that a grin would be a mistake.

‘I was thinking that you were in trouble and needed a hand.’

‘Idiot!’ For a moment there she’d been swept away by the sight of a powerful man taking care of a tiny infant. ‘I’m not a child. I could have managed.’

‘Well, thanks—’

‘Don’t go getting all offended on me, Adam Wavell,’ she snapped, cutting him off. ‘While you were doing your Galahad act, anyone could have walked off with her.’

‘What?’ Then, realising what she was saying, he let go of the handle, rubbed his hands over his face, muttered something under his breath. ‘You’re right. I am an idiot. I didn’t think.’ Then, looking at the baby, ‘I’m way out of my depth here.’

‘Really? So let me guess,’ May said, less than amused; he was overdoing it with the ‘idiot’. ‘Your reason for dropping in for the first time in years wouldn’t have anything to do with your sudden need for a babysitter?’

‘Thanks, May. Saffy said you’d help.’

‘She said that?’ She looked at the baby. All pink and cute and helpless. No! She would not be manipulated! She was in no position to take on anyone else’s problems right now. She had more than enough of her own. ‘I was stating the obvious, not offering my services,’ she said as he began to walk on as if it was a done deal. ‘Where is Saffy?’

‘She’s away,’ he said. ‘Taking a break. She’s left Nancie in my care.’

‘Good luck with that,’ she said. ‘But it’s no use coming to me for help. I know absolutely nothing about babies.’

‘You’ve already proved you know more than me. Besides, you’re a woman.’ Clearly he wasn’t taking her refusal seriously, which was some nerve considering he hadn’t spoken to her unless forced to in the last ten years. ‘I thought it came hard-wired with the X chromosome?’

‘That is an outrageous thing to say,’ she declared, ignoring the way her arms were aching to pick up the baby, hold her, tell her that she wouldn’t allow anything bad to happen to her. Ever. Just as she’d once told her mother.

She already had the kitten. In all probability, that was all she’d ever have. Ten years from now, she’d be the desperate woman peering into other people’s prams…

‘Is it?’ he asked, all innocence.

‘You know it is.’

‘Maybe if you thought of Nancie as one of those helpless creatures you were always taking in when you were a kid it would help?’ He touched a finger to the kitten’s orange head, suggesting that nothing had changed. ‘They always seemed to thrive.’

‘Nancie,’ she said, ignoring what she assumed he thought was flattery, ‘is not an injured bird, stray dog or frightened kitten.’

‘The principle is the same. Keep them warm, dry and fed.’

‘Well, there you are,’ she said. ‘You know all the moves. You don’t need me.’

‘On the contrary. I’ve got a company to run. I’m flying to South America tomorrow—’

‘South America?’

‘Venezuela first, then on to Brazil and finally Samindera. Unless you read the financial pages, you would have missed the story. I doubt it made the social pages,’ he said.

‘Samindera,’ she repeated with a little jolt of concern. ‘Isn’t that the place where they have all the coups?’

‘But grow some of the finest coffee in the world.’ One corner of his mouth lifted into a sardonic smile that, unlike the rest of him, hadn’t changed one bit.

‘Well, that’s impressive,’ she said, trying not to remember how it had felt against her own trembling lips. The heady rush as a repressed desire found an urgent response…‘But you’re not the only one with a business to run.’ Hers might be little more than a cottage industry, nothing like his international money generator that had turned him from zero to a Maybridge hero, but it meant a great deal to her. Not that she’d have it for much longer.

Forget Adam, his baby niece, she had to get home, tell Robbie the bad news, start making plans. Somehow build a life from nothing.

Just as Adam had done…

‘I’ve got a world of trouble without adding a baby to the mix,’ she said, not wanting to think about Adam. Then, before he could ask her what kind of trouble, ‘I thought Saffy was living in Paris. Working as a model? The last I heard from her, she was doing really well.’

‘She kept in touch with you?’ Then, before she could answer, ‘Why are you walking barefoot, May?’

She stared at him, aware that he’d said something he regretted, had deliberately changed the subject, then, as he met her gaze, challenging her to go there, she looked down at her torn tights, mud soaked skirt, dirty legs and feet.

‘My feet are muddy. I’ve already ruined my good black suit…’ the one she’d be needing for job interviews, assuming anyone was that interested in someone who hadn’t been to university, had no qualifications ‘…I’m not about to spoil a decent pair of shoes, too.’

As she stepped on a tiny stone and winced, he took her by the arm, easing her off the path and she froze.

‘The grass will be softer to walk on,’ he said, immediately releasing her, but not before a betraying shiver of gooseflesh raced through her.

Assuming that she was cold, he removed his jacket, placed it around her shoulders. It swallowed her up, wrapping her in the warmth from his body.

‘I’m covered in mud,’ she protested, using her free hand to try and shake it off. Wincing again as a pain shot through her elbow. ‘It’ll get all over the lining.’

He stopped her, easing the jacket back onto her shoulder, then holding it in place around her. ‘You’re cold,’ he said, looking down at her, ‘and I don’t think this suit will be going anywhere until it’s been cleaned, do you?’

Avoiding his eyes, she glanced down at his expensively tailored trousers, but it wasn’t the mud that made her breath catch in her throat. He’d always been tall but now the rest of him had caught up and those long legs, narrow hips were designed to make a woman swoon.

‘No!’ she said, making a move so that he was forced to turn away. ‘You’d better send me the cleaning bill.’

‘It’s your time I need, May. Your help. Not your money.’

He needed her. Words which, as a teenager, she’d lived to hear. Words that, when he shouted them for all the world to hear, had broken her heart.

‘It’s impossible right now.’

‘I heard about your grandfather,’ he said, apparently assuming it was grief that made her so disobliging.

‘Really?’ she said.

‘It said in the Post that the funeral was private.’

‘It was.’ She couldn’t have borne the great and good making a show of it. And why would Adam have come to pray over the remains of a man who’d treated him like something unpleasant he’d stepped in? ‘But there’s going to be a memorial service. He was generous with his legacies and I imagine the charities he supported are hoping that a showy civic send-off will encourage new donors to open their wallets. I’m sure you’ll get an invitation to that.’ Before he could answer, she shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. That was a horrible thing to say.’

But few had done more than pay duty visits after a massive stroke had left her grandpa partially paralysed, confused, with great holes in his memory. Not that he would have wanted them to see him that way.

‘He hated being helpless, Adam. Not being able to remember.’

‘He was a formidable man. You must miss him.’

‘I lost him a long time ago.’ Long before his memory had gone.

‘So, what happens now?’ Adam asked, after a moment of silence during which they’d both remembered the man they knew. ‘Will you sell the house? It needs work, I imagine, but the location would make it ideal for company offices.’

‘No!’ Her response was instinctive. She knew it was too close to the town, didn’t have enough land these days to attract a private buyer with that kind of money to spend, but the thought of her home being turned into some company’s fancy corporate headquarters—or, more likely, government offices—was too much to bear.

‘Maybe a hotel or a nursing home,’ he said, apparently understanding her reaction and attempting to soften the blow. ‘You’d get a good price for it.’

‘No doubt, but I won’t be selling.’

‘No? Are you booked solid into the foreseeable future with your painters, garden designers and flower arrangers?’

She glanced at him, surprised that he knew about the one-day and residential special interest courses she ran in the converted stable block.

‘Your programme flyer is on the staff notice-board at the office.’

‘Oh.’ She’d walked around the town one Sunday stuffing them through letterboxes. She’d hesitated about leaving one in his letterbox, but had decided that the likelihood of the Chairman being bothered with such ephemera was nil. ‘Thanks.’

‘Nothing to do with me,’ he said. ‘That’s the office manager’s responsibility. But one of the receptionists was raving about a garden design course she’d been on.’

‘Well, great.’ There it was, that problem with her breathing again. ‘It is very popular, although they’re all pretty solidly booked. I’ve got a full house at the moment for a two-day Christmas workshop.’

Best to put off telling Robbie the bad news until after tea, when they’d all gone home, she thought. They wouldn’t be able to talk until then, anyway.

‘You don’t sound particularly happy about that,’ Adam said. ‘Being booked solid.’

‘No.’ She shrugged. Then, aware that he was looking at her, waiting for an explanation, ‘I’m going to have to spend the entire weekend on the telephone cancelling next year’s programme.’

Letting down all those wonderful lecturers who ran the classes, many of whom had become close friends. Letting down the people who’d booked, many of them regulars who looked forward to a little break away from home in the company of like-minded people.

And then there were the standing orders for her own little ‘Coleridge House’ cottage industry. The homemade fudge and toffee. The honey.

‘Cancel the courses?’ Adam was frowning. ‘Are you saying that your grandfather didn’t leave you the house?’

The breeze was much colder coming off the lake and May really was shivering now.

‘Yes. I mean, no…He left it to me, but there are conditions involved.’

Conditions her grandfather had known about but had never thought worth mentioning before the stroke had robbed him of so much of his memory.

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

‘What kind of conditions?’ Adam asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Flapjacks!’

‘What?’

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

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

‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘What about you?’

‘I can wait.’

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

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

Had her mother known about the will? she wondered.

Been threatened with it?

‘Are yours?’ she asked.

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

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

‘He. Is that too hot?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘My arm?’

‘There’s blood on your sleeve.’

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

‘Ouch. That looks painful.’

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

In her dreams…Her nightmares…

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

‘This might sting a bit…’

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

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

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

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

As if.

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

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

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

‘I’ll live.’

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