Holiday With The Best Man. Kate Hardy

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      Though even at the safety of his desk he found it hard to concentrate on his work. Instead of opening the file for his current project, he found himself thinking of a quiet, dark-haired woman with the most amazing cornflower-blue eyes—and he was cross with himself because he didn’t want to think about her in that way. Right now he couldn’t offer a relationship to anyone. Who knew when he’d be ready to date again—if ever.

      * * *

      Grace sorted through the contents of Bella’s shoeboxes at Roland’s kitchen table, putting everything in neat piles so she could file them away properly in a binder. She tried to focus on what she was doing, but the mundane task wasn’t occupying anywhere near enough of her head for her liking. It left way too much space for her to think about the man who’d unexpectedly come to her rescue.

      And now she was seeing Roland Devereux in a whole new light. He’d been cold and taciturn when she’d first met him. She would never have believed that he was a man with vision. A man who could create such a stunning modern design, which somehow didn’t feel out of place in its very traditional setting; he’d merged the old and the new perfectly to get the best of both worlds.

      She couldn’t resist taking a swift break and looking him up on the Internet. And she liked what she saw on his company website, especially the way they paid attention to detail. Although the houses they built were prefabricated, the designs didn’t feel as if they were identikit; from the gallery of pictures of the finished houses, Grace could see that Roland’s company had added touches to each one to make it personal to the families who’d wanted to build them. And not only was he great at design, he’d worked with conservation officers on several projects. One in particular involved an eco extension that had enhanced the old building it was part of, rather than marring it, and he’d won an award for it.

      There was much more to Roland Devereux than met the eye.

      And she had to push away the memory of that moment when he’d flirted with her in the kitchen. Right now, her life was too chaotic for her to consider adding any kind of relationship to the mix. And, although Roland seemed to live alone, for all she knew he could already be committed elsewhere.

      So she’d just put this evening down to the kindness of a stranger, and consider herself lucky that her brother-in-law had such a good friend.

      * * *

      Roland had already left for the day when Grace got up the next morning, even though she’d planned to be at her desk by eight. He’d left her his spare door key along with a note on the table asking her to set the house alarm, giving her the code. He’d added, Call me if any problems.

      She texted him to say that she’d set the alarm and thanked him for the loan of his key, then headed for the office. At work, she explained the situation to her boss, who was kind enough to let her reorganise her work schedule so she could meet the loss assessor at the flat.

      But the news from the loss assessor wasn’t good. It would take a couple of weeks to dry out the flat, even with dehumidifiers, and there was a chance they might need to take all the plaster off the walls to stop mould developing, and then re-plaster the walls. Which in turn would take time to dry. And the landlord would probably have to look into replacing the plumbing completely in the very near future. And that meant even more disruption.

      How could a burst pipe cause so much chaos?

      And she could hardly invite herself to stay with Roland for an unforeseeable amount of time. Her parents lived too far out of London for her to be able to commute from their place, and she knew her friends didn’t have the room to put her up, so she’d just have to find a room in a budget hotel. Hopefully Roland wouldn’t mind her leaving her stuff in his garage for another day or so until she could organise storage.

      She called in to a specialist wine shop to buy a thank-you gift for him on her way back to the office, then worked through her lunch hour and left late that evening to make up the time she’d had to take out to meet the assessor. When she returned to the house in Docklands, Roland was in the kitchen, making himself a coffee.

      ‘Hi. Coffee?’ he asked, gesturing to the machine.

      ‘Thanks, but I’m fine. Oh, and I got this for you.’

      She handed him the bottle bag, and he blinked in surprise. ‘What’s this?’

      ‘To say thank you,’ she said. ‘I have no idea if you prefer red or white wine, so I played it safe and bought white.’

      ‘That’s very kind of you,’ he said.

      But she noticed that he hadn’t even opened the bag to look at the wine. ‘Sorry. Obviously I should’ve gone for red.’

      ‘Actually, I don’t drink,’ he said.

      Grace wished the ground would open up and swallow her. ‘I’m so sorry.’ And she wasn’t going to ask him why. It was none of her business.

      ‘You weren’t to know.’ He opened the bag and looked at the label. ‘Montrachet is lovely. I know a certain woman who will love you to bits for bringing this.’

      His girlfriend? Grace squashed the seeping disappointment. So not appropriate. And it raised another issue. ‘I hope your girlfriend doesn’t mind me staying.’

      ‘No girlfriend. I was talking about my little sister,’ Roland said. ‘Just because I don’t drink, it doesn’t mean that I make everyone else stick to water.’

      And the little rush of pleasure at discovering he was single was even more inappropriate. ‘Uh-huh,’ she said, knowing she sounded awkward, and wishing yet again that she could be as open and spontaneous as her sister.

      ‘So how did it go with the loss assessor?’ he asked.

      ‘Not great.’ She told him what the loss assessor had said. ‘So if you don’t mind me staying here again tonight, I’ll sort out a hotel room for tomorrow night onwards. I’ll find a storage place, and it shouldn’t take me too many trips to ferry all my stuff there.’

      ‘Why go to all that trouble when I’ve already said you can stay in my spare room and store your stuff here?’ he asked.

      ‘Because I can’t impose on you for an open-ended amount of time,’ she explained. ‘I know you’re my brother-in-law’s best friend, but this is way beyond the call of duty, and I’d rather stand on my own two feet.’

      ‘Noted,’ he said, ‘but you said yesterday that you’d made some choices that made life a bit up in the air for you. I think we all have times like that, when we could maybe use a friend.’

      ‘You’re offering to be my friend?’

      He looked at her, his dark eyes full of questions, and suddenly there didn’t seem to be enough air in the room.

      Was he offering her friendship...or something else? She didn’t trust her judgement to read the situation properly.

      And then Roland said, ‘Yes, I think I’m offering to be your friend.’

      ‘But we don’t know each other,’ she pointed out.

      ‘I know, and I admit I took you the wrong way when I first met you.’

      She СКАЧАТЬ