The Prospective Wife

There was a startled pause, during which Kat prayed for the ground to open up and swallow her.

“I have to tell you there are some serious flaws in your seduction technique, Miss Wray,” Matt Devlin told her.

Kat’s cheeks grew hotter as she squirmed under Matt’s scrutiny….

About the Author

KIM LAWRENCE
lives on a farm in rural Anglesey, Wales. She runs two miles daily and finds this an excellent opportunity to unwind and seek inspiration for her writing! It also helps her keep up with her husband, two active sons and the various stray animals that have adopted them. Always a fanatical consumer of fiction, she is now equally enthusiastic about writing. She loves a happy ending!

Books by Kim Lawrence

HARLEQUIN PRESENTS®

2123—HIS SECRETARY BRIDE (2-in-1)

2147—WIFE BY AGREEMENT

2161—THE SEDUCTION SCHEME

2171—A SEDUCTIVE REVENGE

2209—A CONVENIENT HUSBAND

Kim Lawrence

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CAUGHT between a rock and a hard place the unfortunate orderly began to sweat. He’d met some real hard cases in his time, but this black-haired bloke, who even on crutches towered over him, could have given the hardest of those tough characters a run for their money! It was something about those eyes, he concluded with a shudder, as he became unable to maintain eye contact with those electric blue orbs any longer.

Truth to tell, he’d always felt slightly scornful of his colleagues, who tended to be intimidated by some of the rich and famous patients who stayed at the exclusive clinic. It was a matter of pride with him…no obsequious grovelling to the spoilt and pampered. He was polite, but he didn’t treat them any differently than he would the ordinary man in the street. In his own defence there was no way this bloke was going to be mistaken for a man in the street, and that circumstance had nothing whatever to do with money.

‘Sister said…’ he began to protest weakly.

‘Take the wheelchair away.’

No shouting, no red-faced blustering, but he still managed to put an indefinable
something
into his voice that made your blood run cold.

‘Sister Nash said you’ve got to leave in a wheelchair.’

Matthew Devlin permitted himself a thin-lipped smile and remained blissfully unaware that the streetwise young man in front of him found it deeply sinister.

‘Sister Nash knows my opinion of wheelchairs.’

The redoubtable Sister Nash knew Matt’s opinion on a lot of subjects; they’d had many a clash of wills over the past few weeks.

‘Listen, mate.’ The harassed orderly made a last-ditch man-to-man appeal. ‘Maybe you don’t need the wheelchair, maybe you do; I don’t know. I do know you won’t be here tomorrow, but I will and so will Sister Nash. She can make life a misery.’

‘Thanks, Martin. I’ll see Mr Devlin off the premises.’

The orderly turned with an expression of relief to see Andrew Metcalf standing in the doorway.

‘Cheers, Doc!’ He gave him a grateful look and didn’t hang around to find out if his appeal had found a sympathetic ear.

‘Well, Matt, harassing my staff to the bitter end, I see…’

Matthew Devlin snorted. ‘That’s pretty rich, coming from you! If it’s not beneath your dignity—’ he nudged a slim leather briefcase with his toe ‘—carry that for me.’ As much as he hated asking for help, sometimes there was no alternative.

The curt unfriendly tone didn’t have any visible effect on the surgeon, who had a pretty shrewd idea of the frustration his patient was feeling.

‘I doubt if it’s on my job description but what the hell…for my favourite patient, why not?’

‘Is sarcasm in the job description?’ Matt gritted, swinging his crutches into action. Even though this posture robbed him of several inches, he was still a good head taller than the other man.

‘You’re in a hurry,’ the doctor observed, increasing his pace to keep up with the cracking pace Matt had set. ‘Anyone would think you didn’t like us…’

‘If I ever develop a yen to live in a police state you’ll be the first person I think of, Doc,’ Matt promised grimly.

‘I suppose I’d be wasting my breath telling you not to discharge yourself…?’ Matt delivered a look that could have withered grapes on the vine. The doctor gave a philosophical shrug. ‘You can’t blame me for trying. You are, after all, one of my most amazing success stories. I’d hate to see you blow all that hard work for the want of a bit of patience.’

Matt’s smile was wintry. He’d made heavy inroads during the past few months into his limited patience reserves. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t do anything to ruin your reputation as a miracle-worker.’

Andrew Metcalf inclined his head in acceptance of the back-handed compliment. His expression was wry; he knew he was good, possibly the best, but he was a realist, and as much as he would have liked to claim all the credit for himself he knew that the speed and completeness of Matt’s recovery owed more to the man’s remarkable determination and steely willpower than anything else.

‘Back door to avoid the press…?’ He knew the routine; the clinic had had its fair share of celebrity patients.

‘I don’t see why I should make their lives easier, do you? Joe’s brought the car around.’

His doctor could see the reasoning behind this logic; he was pretty sure he might be a bit paranoid too if his personal life had been served up for public consumption as often as Matt Devlin’s had.

‘If you’re so bothered about security I’m surprised you’re not staying with your parents. Don’t they even have their own drawbridge…?’

‘Not to mention a moat, castle, and the best part of a village,’ Matt drawled languidly. ‘But no son… At least, not as far as my father’s concerned.’

The doctor looked at his patient’s perfectly proportioned, rather stern profile and wondered if he cared. You never could tell with Matt.

‘But…’ He stopped himself just in time from blurting out the information that Devlin senior, who had even more financial clout than his son, had forbidden any member of staff to mention. ‘I’d have thought the accident…’ he protested mildly.

‘It would take more than a near-death experience to make my father change his mind, Andrew. As far as he’s concerned I stopped being his son the day I didn’t do as he wanted. I’m the competition now…and he’d like nothing better than to ruin me.’

Andrew Metcalf was shocked by this cold-blooded analysis even though he knew it wasn’t strictly true.

‘Well, that’s not likely to happen, is it?’ he responded uncomfortably.

Despite the fact that after the somewhat mysterious departure of his more experienced partner the City had predicted disaster, it was well known that the airline Matt had started from very humble beginnings was now causing the big players who had scoffed—none louder than Matt’s own father, Connor Devlin—serious headaches.

‘Worried about your share dividend, Doc?’

Andrew grinned. He could afford to. Fair Flights was one of the financial success stories of the decade. ‘Actually, I do have a small sum invested.’

‘Then I’ll probably make you a very rich man,’ Matt announced with a total lack of modesty.

‘The rates we charge here and the amount of hardware in that leg, Matt, you already have…’

‘I’ve never actually done any private sector work, and to be honest it’s never really appealed.’

Despite her indifferent tone Kat was well aware she couldn’t afford to be picky when it came to jobs. In fact it was all she could do not to kiss the woman’s hand-made Italian shoes!

Kat’s anxiety began to mount as she watched Drusilla Devlin’s china-blue eyes drift around the forlorn-looking, half-empty sitting-room. Supposing I sounded
too
uninterested? It was one thing not wanting to come over as a charity case; it was another playing hard to get!

‘But you need work…?’

Kat felt a wave of relief. For a nasty moment there she’d thought she’d talked herself out a job.

‘Don’t we all?’

Well, not all, Kat silently conceded, realising that she was almost certainly speaking to someone who didn’t need to work. The chauffeur-driven limo Drusilla had driven up in had been ample proof of that.

Kat’s own situation wasn’t
desperate,
but it could get that way…and fast. Her godfather was executor of her mother’s estate and, even though he’d tried to break the news as gently as he could, Kat had been shocked to learn of the full extent of her mother’s debts. Kat had genuinely thought the gambling thing was in the past.

Apparently she wasn’t legally obliged to pay back the undocumented amounts of cash—some of them large—that her mother had borrowed from friends and family over a twelve-month period, but Kat was determined to pay back every penny!

It was a weight off her mind that the house had sold so swiftly; unfortunately this piece of good luck had left her without a roof over her head.

With very little in her bank account—the extended leave she’d taken to care for her mother during her final stages of her illness had been unpaid—she needed a job and somewhere to live.

Now here was a friend of Mum’s who, up until last month, they hadn’t seen for years, offering her both. It had to be fate!

She nudged the edge of a half-full packing case with the toe of her trainer. It was filled with the stuff the auctioneers hadn’t wanted.

‘People always want good physios, and I’ve heaps of experience. I’ll get a new job easily enough,’ she assured her affluent-looking visitor on an earnest, upbeat note.

‘But not your old one.’

‘No,’ Kat confirmed with a regretful sigh. ‘I knew they couldn’t hold it open indefinitely, but that might be a blessing in disguise.’

Drusilla wasn’t surprised to hear it. Five minutes after she’d met Kathleen Wray she had realised that her old friend’s daughter was as resiliently optimistic as she was beautiful. A few discreet enquiries into the girl’s financial situation, added to what Amy had told her, had revealed she’d need every ounce of that youthful resilience.

‘I’ve worked in the same hospital since I qualified—not exactly bold and adventurous.’

Drusilla wondered if Matthew would find the girl’s smile as enchanting as she did. A frown tugged at her seamless brow as she contemplated her son’s choice of female companionship.

‘I always meant to travel,’ Kat explained, her eyes shining with enthusiasm as visions of exotic sun-kissed shores rose tantalisingly before her eyes. ‘I just never got around to it somehow…’ The smile faded. ‘There’s nothing to keep me here any more.’

Drusilla caught up the young woman’s hand in a comforting clasp. ‘You did everything you could for Amy, my dear,’ she insisted warmly. ‘And you must take comfort from the fact that in the end she was here amongst all the familiar things that were dear to her, and with the daughter I know she loved very much.’

The motherly patting on the arm made Kat’s wide-spaced grey eyes fill with tears—not that Drusilla Devlin, with her designer clothes, glossy hair and impossibly youthful face, was like any mother she knew.

‘You’re very kind. You say this job would only be short term…? It is a live in post…?’ That would solve her immediate problem.

Drusilla clapped her prettily kept hands in delight. ‘You’ll do it for me? Excellent!’

‘There is a job, isn’t there? You’re not just inventing one because you feel sorry for me…?’ Her doubts emerged gruffly as she wiped a hint of moisture from the corner of her eye. ‘Mum didn’t ask you to watch out for me…?’