SOS: Convenient Husband Required / Winning a Groom in 10 Dates. Liz Fielding

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      ‘Wouldn’t it be easier to give me his number? Cut out the middle sidekick.’

      ‘And miss out on having you shout at me?’

      First the blow to the solar plexus, then a jab behind the knees and she was going down…

      ‘That’s all part of the fun,’ he added.

      Fun. Oh, right. She was forgetting. She was the clown…

      ‘My legs are muddy. I really need to take a shower,’ she added before he took it upon himself to wash them, too. More specifically, she needed to get some clothes on and get a grip. ‘There’s a kettle in the kitchenette if you want to make yourself a drink before you go.’

      She didn’t give him a chance to argue, but dumped Nancie in his arms and, closing her ears to the baby’s outraged complaint, shut the door on him.

      She couldn’t lock it. The lock had broken years ago and she hadn’t bothered to get it fixed. Why would she when she shared the house with her invalid grandfather and Robbie, neither of whom were ever going to surprise her in the shower?

      Nor was Adam, she told herself as, discarding what little remained of her modesty, she dumped her filthy shirt in the wash basket, peeled off her underwear and stepped under the spray.

      It should have been a cold shower, something to quench the fizz of heat bubbling through her veins.

      Since it was obvious that even when she was ninety Adam Wavell would have the same effect on her, with or without his trousers, she decided to forgo the pain and turned up the temperature.

      Chapter Three

      ADAM took a long, slow breath as the bathroom door closed behind him.

      The rage hadn’t dimmed with time, but neither had the desire. Maybe it was all part of the same thing. He hadn’t been good enough for her then and, despite his success, she’d never missed an opportunity to make it clear that he never would be.

      But she wasn’t immune. And, since a broken engagement, there had never been anyone else in her life. She hadn’t gone to university, never had a job, missing out on the irresponsible years when most of their contemporaries were obsessed with clothes, clubbing, falling in and out of love.

      Instead, she’d stayed at home to run Coleridge House, exactly like some Edwardian miss, marking time until she was plucked off the shelf, at which point she would do pretty much the same thing for her husband. And, exactly like a good Edwardian girl, she’d abandoned a perfect-fit marriage without hesitation to take on the job of caring for her grandfather after his stroke. Old-fashioned. A century out of her time.

      According to the receptionist who’d been raving about the garden design course, what May Coleridge needed was someone to take her in hand, help her lose a bit of weight and get a life before she spread into a prematurely middle-aged spinsterhood, with only her strays to keep her warm at night.

      Clearly his receptionist had never seen her strip off her skirt and tights or she’d have realised that there was nothing middle-aged about her thighs, shapely calves or a pair of the prettiest ankles he’d ever had the pleasure of following up a flight of stairs.

      But then he already knew all that.

      Had been the first boy to ever see those lush curves, the kind that had gone out of fashion half a century ago, back before the days of Twiggy and the Swinging Sixties.

      But when he’d unbuttoned her shirt—the alternative had been relieving her of Nancie and he wasn’t about to do that; he’d wanted her to feel the baby clinging to her, needing her— he’d discovered that his memory had served him poorly as he was confronted with a cleavage that required no assistance from either silicon or a well engineered bra. It was the real thing. Full, firm, ripe, the genuine peaches and cream experience—the kind of peaches that would fill a man’s hand, skin as smooth and white as double cream—and his only thought had been how wrong his receptionist was about May.

      She didn’t need to lose weight.

      Not one gram.

      May would happily have stayed under the shower until the warm water had washed away the entire ghastly morning. Since that was beyond the power of mere water, she contented herself with a squirt of lemon-scented shower gel and a quick sluice down to remove all traces of mud before wrapping herself in a towel.

      But while, on the surface, her skin might be warmer, she was still shivering.

      Shock would do that, even without the added problem of the Adam Wavell effect.

      Breathlessness. A touch of dizziness whenever she saw him. Something she should have grown out of with her puppy fat. But the puppy fat had proved as stubbornly resistant as her pathetic crush on a boy who’d been so far out of her reach that he might as well have been in outer space. To be needed by him had once been the most secret desire shared only with her diary.

      Be careful what you wish for, had been one of Robbie’s warnings from the time she was a little girl and she’d been right in that, as in everything.

      Adam needed her now. ‘But only to take care of Saffy’s baby,’ she muttered, ramming home the point as she towelled herself dry before wrapping herself from head to toe in a towelling robe. She’d exposed enough flesh for one day.

      She needn’t have worried. Adam had taken Nancie through to the sitting room and closed the door behind him. Clearly he’d seen more than enough of her flesh for one day.

      Ignoring the lustrous dark autumn gold cord skirt she’d bought ages ago in a sale and never worn, she pulled on the scruffiest pair of jogging pants and sweatshirt that she owned. There was no point in trying to compete with the girls he dated these days. Lean, glossy thoroughbreds.

      She had more in common with a Shetland pony. Small, overweight, a shaggy-maned clown.

      What was truly pathetic was that, despite knowing all that, if circumstances had permitted, May knew she would have still succumbed to his smile. Taken care of Saffy’s adorable baby, grateful to have the chance to be that close to him, if only for a week or two while her mother was doing what came naturally. Being bad by most people’s standards, but actually having a life.

      Nancie began to grizzle into his shoulder and Adam instinctively began to move, shushing her as he walked around May’s private sitting room, scarcely able to believe it had been so easy to breach the citadel.

      He examined the pictures on her walls. Her books. Picked up a small leather-bound volume lying on a small table, as if she liked to keep it close to hand.

      Shakespeare’s Sonnets. As he replaced it, something fluttered from between the pages. A rose petal that had been pressed between them. As he bent to pick it up, it crumbled to red dust between his fingers and for a moment he remembered a bunch of red roses that, in the middle of winter, had cost him a fortune. Every penny of which had to be earned labouring in the market before school.

      He moved on to a group of silver-framed photographs. Her grandparents were there. Her mother on the day she’d graduated. He picked up one of May, five or six years old, holding a litter of kittens and, despite the nightmare morning he was having, the memories that being here had brought back into the sharpest focus, he found himself smiling.

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