The Prospective Wife (8 page)

Her stomach a riot of butterflies, she got to her feet just before he reached the shallow flight of steps that led into the pool. A thick uncomfortable silence fell as their eyes eventually collided. Her own showed a worrying tendency to cling to his strong lean face.

‘Seen enough…?’

For a moment she went rigid with shock; then it slowly dawned on her that it hadn’t been an accusation. She could have wept with relief.

How convenient that she had a legitimate reason to look at his body. It was part of her role.
A tough job but somebody had to do it!

‘You’ve kept your muscle tone very well—’ she told him in a cool tone that suggested her scrutiny had been completely clinical ‘—considering,’ she finished weakly.

‘Considering I’m as weak as a kitten.’ He glanced down with impatience at a body which had once responded obediently to every demand, no matter how harsh, he made of it.

‘
Considering
the long-term bed-rest, traction and sundry restrictions you’ve endured,’ she corrected him firmly. ‘Actually, I’m impressed,’ she admitted lightly. Just how impressed was something she was going to keep to herself. ‘I was expecting it to be much worse.’

He laid the ebony-topped cane down. For a second she thought he was going to ignore the arm she automatically held out for his support. The wry smile that twitched the corners of his mouth didn’t touch the bleak aspect of his blue eyes as his arm came down to rest lightly on her forearm.

The cool dryness of his flesh contrasted with the sticky heat of her own. A sliver of sexual awareness sliced through her; the neat concoction combined with his proximity spooked her so badly it was hard not to follow her gut instinct and turn tail. This was sexual attraction on a scale she’d not encountered before.

‘You make it sound as though I ought to be grateful.’

Ignoring the solid lump of panic lodged behind her breastbone, Kat smiled. ‘I’m already over my permitted number of platitudes for one day,’ she retorted drily.

‘You’ve got a limit?’ His eyes widened with mock shock. ‘That makes you a very unusual angel of mercy.’

‘I bet you gave the nursing staff hell!’ she accused huskily. And I bet they came running back for more!

The devilish glint in his eyes intensified. ‘A man’s got to do something to amuse himself when he’s stuck in bed all day,’ he confessed, displaying no signs of remorse for his alleged behaviour.

It made Kat’s blood run cold—which, on sober reflection, was probably better than a constant simmer—to imagine him amusing himself at her expense. A woman, who swore she hated him, being turned into a mass of seething hormones by his bad blue eyes? With his twisted sense of humour, he’d never be able to resist a joke like that!

‘You look a lot better than you did last night.’ In retrospect, she wondered whether it had been such a good idea—in the interest of peace and harmony—to have brought up the subject of the previous night. She wasn’t sure he was the sort of man who’d like anyone to see him with his defences down.

‘Ah, last night; I wondered how long you could resist saying, “I told you so”?’

‘I was just making an observation. I’m sure you already realise how stupid you were being yesterday without me rubbing it in.’

Kat already regretted letting her sharp tongue run away with her, but much to her surprise Matt didn’t seem to mind; there was an amused, almost appreciative gleam in his eyes.

‘I’m only just realising what a soul of restraint you are, Kathleen.’

Their eyes clashed and suddenly the humour fizzled away, leaving an almost electrical charge in its place. Kat was the first to look away.

‘Hold on a minute,’ she requested curtly, pulling one arm elbow-first out of the oversized tee-shirt. ‘Grab on there,’ she suggested, indicating her free shoulder with her chin, ‘while I get this off.’ A quick wriggle and it was over her head.

Matt expelled his breath in long luxurious sigh. It hardly mattered that this was no skin fest; he hadn’t been this close to a skimpily clad female for some time. The racing-backed swimsuit she wore was black, the unadorned high-necked type that competitive female swimmers wore to flatten their natural buoyancy aids in the hope it would shave a few micros of a second off their times.

Even accounting for the design factor and reinforced Lycra, there was no disguising the fact Kat had a knock-out figure; from whichever angle you looked at her there was no mistaking she was
all
female! There would be absolutely no chance of a man grazing himself on her hipbones—a bloke got tired sometimes of females trying to starve their curves into submission.

The sound of her clearing her throat noisily brought his eyes reluctantly from softly rounded thigh level to her pink-cheeked, predictably indignant face. The clear grey eyes were spitting sparks and her cute nose was twitching with temper.

‘Shall I give you a twirl, or have you seen enough?’

He saw no harm in playing out the moral degenerate card—her opinion of him couldn’t get much lower—not if the expression in her eyes was any indicator.

‘Have you ever considered a bikini? The skimpy sort?’ he mused, elaborating with some pleasure on the theme, ‘Triangles tied together…’

She snorted and did that flouncy cross thing with her head and her ponytail smacked her in the eye… One eye watering, she blinked rapidly and took an angry step away from him. Being an observant man, he noticed the bounciness extended to other areas.

This awakening sexual interest was probably a sign that he was getting back to normal. As Kathleen had a habit of saying…it was nothing personal. Nice try, mate, but just who are you kidding? Not himself, that was for sure—not with a piece of self-deception that flagrant!

‘I was just being a dutiful friend. Joe will expect a full report…I take it you did notice my
heterosexual
friend, Joe, was deeply smitten?’

‘Don’t be daft…’

Actually, Joe fell in and out of love at regular intervals, so Matt wasn’t reading too much into it. The thought that maybe Joe wasn’t the only one a little smitten occurred, only to be speedily dismissed. If a bit of mild flirtation would make his convalescence any less tedious, where was the harm? The girl had made herself a legitimate target the moment she’d announced he left her cold…a blatant lie…and she’d only have herself to blame if he made her eat her words.

Would she recognise Joe if she met him in the street? Kat was ashamed to acknowledge she couldn’t be sure. It was all Matt’s fault; he was the sort of man that tended to be the cynosure of attention without even trying. The Joes of this world, worthy and
nice
to a man, faded into insignificance; there was no justice. God, I’m so shallow!

‘And don’t blame poor Joe for your lecherous tendencies!’ she advised contemptuously. Riding high on a wave of moral superiority, she blithely ignored the jarring note of hypocrisy in her comment.

After all, she reasoned, the circumstances were totally different. Matt had not been around scantily clad females for some time, so you couldn’t really take his interest personally, whereas she didn’t stare hungrily at just
any
man!

A distracted dreamy expression flitted across her disapproving features… He
had
looked hungry… Recalling that hard
male
expression made her stomach muscles spasm painfully.

‘
Poor
Joe?’ He clicked his tongue. ‘That doesn’t sound promising.’

His laughter, low and effortlessly sexy, was a wake-up call for a dreamy Kat. When he’d looked at her like
that
he’d just been responding in the preconditioned male response to weigh up any female that came within ogling distance. It was no more complicated than the blinking reflex. Men were pretty primitive creatures when you came right down to it!

Be realistic! Why would
he
—her eyes swept resentfully up the length of his long, lean, spectacular body—look at
me?

Kat had few illusions about her figure. The hour-glass shape might have excited admiration during an era less fixated by androgynous slenderness, but by today’s standards she knew she would be considered positively gross by the purist. She’d decided a long time ago she wasn’t about to punish and starve her body to sculpt it to fit in with some media-hyped ideal.

‘I feel sure that Joe would appreciate your efforts on his behalf, but shall we get back to what we’re actually here for?’ Matt conceded her point with a shrug. ‘Actually, I don’t think you can have been so bad a patient as you make out. It wasn’t luck that kept your muscle tone; you must have been pretty diligent about your exercises.’

‘I live to work my quadriceps,’ he agreed drily. ‘That’s why I opted for pool work this morning. Hydrotherapy has a slightly lower tedium quotient. You don’t have a problem with that, do you?’

‘Not at all; it’s a good idea. Though I’m not used to working in anything this…big.’ She finished lamely.

It was pointless trying to explain to anyone who found it normal to have an Olympic-sized swimming pool that she found the opulence of her surroundings slightly intimidating.

‘You probably find it difficult to believe, but I used to be in pretty good shape.’

Used to be!
Was he serious? As far as Kat could tell, he still was—and then some!

Broad, powerful shoulders, washboard flat belly and snaky slim hips attached to long,
long
legs. His skin tones were naturally dark, but they still seemed pale in contrast to the dark body hair sprinkled across his broad chest. Her eyes dropped compulsively to the thin arrow of dark hair that disappeared under the waistband of his swimming trunks and her wayward stomach did a treble flip.

‘I know you’re in a hurry, but it’s all about realistic goals.’

Now that’s something you should remember, Kat, she told herself firmly. Men like Matt Devlin were not ‘realistic goals’ for girls like her; he was the type to give a girl a good time—probably a
very
good time—and disappear into the sunset.

‘Your idea of realistic, or mine?’

Kat could sympathise with his barely restrained restless impatience.

‘I’d suggest a compromise if I thought you understood the meaning of the word,’ she came back acerbically.

He grinned down at her through wolfish gritted teeth. ‘You’ve got entirely the wrong idea, Baby-face. Concession is my middle name…’

‘Baby-face…?’ She grimaced.
‘Please.’

‘It just sort of slipped out.’

‘I think I feel deeply insulted that you look at me and automatically think
Baby-face.
Unless, that is, you call all females “Baby-face”?’

He wondered what she’d do if he told her what he did think when he looked at her. For one brief, insane moment he even toyed with the idea of finding out, then common sense prevailed.

‘Not so far.’ Head on one side, he appeared to give the notion some thought. ‘But I don’t think many of them would have minded…outside the work environment, naturally. I’m strictly PC at work.’

‘I don’t think all that much of the women you know,’ she sniffed scornfully, thinking of the slinky redhead.

‘You and Drusilla in perfect harmony once more.’

‘I hardly know your mother.’ And taking everything this virtual stranger had told her—or more specifically
not
told her—as the gospel truth had got her where she was now.

He zeroed in on what seemed like a whopping great inconsistency. ‘What happened to the old family friend thing?’

Kat gave an exasperated sigh. He had to be the most suspicious person she’d ever come across, but then she supposed he had his reasons for being suspicious. The more she thought about it, the more likely it seemed to Kat that, for reasons which remained a mystery, Drusilla had been trying to set her up with her millionaire son.

‘Like I told you, she went to school with Mum, but they lost contact years ago. They met up again relatively recently.’

Drusilla had been opening a new pain control clinic at the local hospital and Kat’s mother had been one of the first patients.

‘When are you expecting your mother?’ When Drusilla did turn up Kat was going to do some straight talking; she thought she was due an explanation! Why, anything could have happened, she brooded resentfully… I could have fallen in love with the man!

‘What makes you think I am expecting her? Did she say she’d be here?’

Kat was quite relieved when his sharp interrogative tone wrenched her away from her uncomfortable introspection.

‘Not
exactly,
’ she admitted. Eyes narrowed slightly, she reviewed their last conversation. ‘But she did give the impression…’

‘Yes, she’s quite good at doing that.’

‘I’d noticed.’ Kat couldn’t help sounding bitter.

‘Interesting!’
One dark brow quirked as he contemplated the angry pink spots on her smooth cheeks. ‘Just how much do you know about the family situation?’

‘Family situation?’ she echoed airily, giving a passable imitation of not knowing what he was talking about…and furthermore not being interested.

‘Unless it’s relevant to your treatment there’s absolutely no need for me to—’

‘Like you’re not the least little bit curious…!’

His laconic drawl really got under her skin. ‘Well, of course I am! Who wouldn’t be when you’ve just implied there’s some juicy secret?’

‘Fair point.’

Kat blinked. She was beginning to recognise a sort of pattern; every time she was spoiling for a fight, he threw her off balance completely by turning all reasonable.

‘You know who my father is?’

She could tell by the way he said it that he took her affirmation as read.

‘Should I?’

Matt looked shocked, and then frankly sceptical of her reply.

‘You’re joking?’

It wasn’t until the last few years that people had stopped referring to him as Connor Devlin’s son—God, at one point Matt had even considered having his name changed by deed poll! He’d worked hard to establish himself as his own person, not a shadowy version of the old man, for so long it was vaguely disorientating to discover someone who didn’t know who the great man was!