An Enticing Proposal. Meredith Webber

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      Lucia grimaced but she left the sunny sitting room where she spent most of each day—lying on the couch watching soaps on TV—and turned towards the bathroom. Paige watched her go and wondered, not for the first time, what on earth had prompted her to take the girl-woman in.

      Instinct.

      Ironic that the same inbuilt warning system had sent up flares when she’d first seen Lucia’s husband! Only then they’d signalled ‘danger’ instead of ‘help’.

      ‘I will see him,’ Lucia announced when she returned, dressed in loose-fitting tan trousers and a golden yellow mohair sweater—looking stunning for all her poor health. ‘I will see him here and tell him I cannot go home.’

      Paige sighed but didn’t argue, going downstairs to the kitchen and fixing a sandwich for the two of them, counting off the calories in Lucia’s meal and writing them down so she knew how many her patient-guest had eaten. In the beginning she’d tried to persuade Lucia to undertake this task for herself, but had finally given up, deciding it was more important to teach her to do her own injections and blood glucose tests.

      Huh!

      ‘OK, your turn to do the injection.’ She said this every time and every time Lucia came up with some excuse for not taking the responsibility. Paige fitted a needle to the syringe, lifted the insulin out of the refrigerator and set it on the table. ‘Just try filling the syringe, Lucia. Pull down to the mark, stick the needle through the rubber top on the bottle and press the plunger in to release the air.’

      ‘I cannot touch that needle, I might injure myself!’

      It was the usual argument—one they had four times a day—so both knew their part in it.

      ‘You can’t injure yourself if you hold it properly. Do you want to be dependent on someone else all through your pregnancy?’ Paige grinned to herself as she realised why this argument had had little effect on Lucia in the past. Given the princely husband, the younger woman had probably had swarms of servants catering to her every whim—being dependent on someone was a habit rather than a concern.

      ‘You do it, Paige, just today?’

      The voice cajoled and the brown eyes begged.

      Paige grumbled about her weakness in always giving in, and filled the syringe with the fast-acting insulin Lucia would need for her body to handle the meal she was about to eat.

      ‘But I’m not staying with you while you talk to him,’ Paige warned, determined to win one argument today. ‘You’ve got to see him on your own.’

      Lucia didn’t argue. In fact, she smiled and looked excited, flushed with a soft and youthful radiance which made Paige feel older than her twenty-five years and unaccountably depressed as she tackled her own lunch with far less gusto than her guest.

      And the depression wasn’t lifted by the stern expression on her next visitor’s face. She had sent Lucia upstairs to the sitting room and was waiting outside the house when the long black car with the consular plates drew up. Although the autumn sun was warm, she found herself shivering as he alighted. A fact that didn’t escape him.

      ‘You should be wearing a jacket,’ he chided, and moved towards her as if to wrap his arm around her shoulders. The cold was replaced by warmth and she dodged ahead, leading him towards the side door which led directly into her flat.

      ‘No wonder she ran away,’ she muttered, more to herself than him. ‘If you tell a stranger what to wear…’

      ‘Pardon?’

      ‘It was nothing.’ She reached the door and paused, then turned to face him, looking into his eyes—hoping to read his reaction to what she had to say. ‘Lucia has agreed to see you, but I’d like to say…’ The words petered out under the intensity of that blue gaze. Pull yourself together! Think of Lucia, not eyes that seem to drill into your soul. ‘She’s in a very fragile state, easily upset, both physically and emotionally. Will you remember that? Treat her gently?’

      Or eyes that darken dangerously!

      ‘And what do you imagine I intend to do to her? Throw her over my shoulder and force her to return with me? Is that how an Australian man would behave, Miss Morgan? How you would like a man to act with you?’

      Damn him—and her give-away cheeks! The image had made her go hot all over. Battling to regain control, she tried an imperious look of her own.

      ‘Australia has as many gentlemen as any other country, though they may not carry fancy titles, and, no, I wouldn’t expect any man to ride roughshod over a woman, but men can exert more than physical power.’

      ‘And women can’t?’ he countered, fixing her with a look so quizzical she wondered how she’d come to be arguing with him.

      ‘Just treat her gently,’ Paige said, turning abruptly away before her face betrayed even more of her inner chaos. She’d never felt such a physical reaction to another human being. For the first time in her life, she was beginning to understand what people meant when they talked about instant attraction. And sex appeal! Not only could she now accept its existence, but she had to acknowledge that this man had it by the bucket-load.

      Yet his wife had run away from him.

      The thought occurred to her as she walked up the stairs ahead of him, hearing his firm tread behind her, feeling his presence in the nerves down her spine, aware even of a faint whiff of some sophisticated cologne or aftershave—not a pungent or overpowering odour, but more a tantalising hint of something smooth and sleek but very masculine.

      Help! Now it seemed her thoughts were doing the running away—straight into a fantasy land.

      ‘Lucia is inside.’

      She knocked and was about to grasp the doorknob when the door flew open and a vision of loveliness in a bright mohair sweater flung herself into the waiting arms of the prince.

      Which is how all good fairytales should end, Paige reminded herself as she returned to the kitchen to play Cinderella-before-the-ball, washing the lunch dishes, working out a dinner menu, wondering what she could do about arranging nutritious meals for Lucia to take on the plane if her prince insisted she return home immediately.

      By the time footsteps sounded on the stairs, she’d not only organised what they’d have for dinner but had cleaned the kitchen thoroughly, written out a shopping list, contemplated polishing the silver and settled for washing the floor instead—anything to keep her mind off what might be happening upstairs.

      And, no, she wouldn’t take that thought any further either!

      She straightened up as the heavy footfall hesitated only fractionally at the bottom of the steps then turned unerringly towards the kitchen. One glance at the dark scowl on Marco’s face told her the reunion hadn’t gone quite the way he’d planned.

      ‘Lucia tells me you will explain her medical condition. She pleaded tiredness, a need to rest and, in fact, she does not look well. Is this a new game of hers or is she indeed ill?’

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