Kitabı oku: «The Prospective Wife», sayfa 2

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

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

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

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

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

‘I’m a physio, not a nurse.’

‘If you say so…’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Matt glared at his oldest friend with intense dislike.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Metcalf. His doctor’s called Metcalf.’

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

‘And the clinic is…?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Pretty doesn’t really do her justice.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER TWO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘It’s not personal or anything.’

His sardonic stare underlined the stupidity of her stilted announcement.

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

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

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

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

‘I’m sure she had her reasons.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘A girl with principles,’ he drawled.

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

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

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

‘And is this…project paying very well?’

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

‘You do surprise me—’

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

‘I don’t think my mother paid you.’

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

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

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

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

‘I didn’t mean to be—’

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

‘But…’

‘Calm down, that’s not bad.’

‘It isn’t?’

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

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

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

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

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

‘I thought you needed the job…?’

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

‘She does, she does…’

Kat had almost forgotten the other man’s presence.

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

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

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

‘I wasn’t sulking!’

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

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

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

‘Realise what?’ Matt asked

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Dr Metcalf forgot to mention your mood swings.’

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

‘Sounds like good old Andrew was very obliging…’

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

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

‘Is that a threat or a promise?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It sounded reasonable…

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

‘Then that’s settled.’

‘Your mother said that you—’

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

‘Is that a problem, Mr Devlin?’

‘Nobody calls me Mr Devlin.’

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

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

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

‘Matt. And you’re…?’

‘Kat.’

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

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

‘Kathleen… Irish…?’

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

‘On my mother’s side,’ she confirmed.

‘Me, too.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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