LITMIR.BIZ

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of turning basic raw ingredients into palatable meals. She deserved some credit, she thought grumpily as she pushed the vacuum cleaner around the house with more passion than purpose and was thrusting it back into its cupboard in the kitchen when James walked in.

      ‘Ready to go?’ She sounded calm, sensible. Inside she was a mess. She would miss him dreadfully. She probably wouldn’t see him again for months. Only last night she’d happened, in passing the sitting-room door, to hear her father tell him that he’d travel up to the London head office in a day or two to discuss the funding for the Spanish project with him and their company accountant. So he wouldn’t be dropping by in the near future.

      ‘Almost.’ He closed the door behind him and leaned against it, his arms folded over his chest, as if barring her exit. Mattie took one look at him—he was so beautiful, even the worn old denim jeans and ancient leather jacket couldn’t detract from the lean, powerful elegance of his tall, whippy frame—and looked swiftly away.

      She really did have to stop thinking this way. She’d managed to keep her emotions off the boil for years, tucking them away, refusing to let them churn her up. She could do it again. Hell’s teeth, of course she could!

      Closing the cupboard door, she turned again to face him, smoothing down the smothering folds of the unflattering borrowed overall.

      ‘Can I get you a coffee before you go?’ That was better—she’d subdued the painful lump in her chest that might have made speech impossible. She was back to being calm and helpful.

      ‘Not for me.’ He levered his hard frame away from the door, walked towards her, his silver eyes intent. ‘There’s something I want to ask you. And before you jump down my throat, I want you to consider it carefully, bring your usual unruffled intelligence into play.’

      He stopped walking, left a few feet of space between them, smiling wryly as that well-known puzzled little frown appeared between her eyes. The idea had come to him suddenly, and it was a good one. He’d thought about it long and hard since it had occurred to him last night, after his discussion with Edward.

      It made good, practical sense. And he knew his Mattie. Once she got used to the thought of having to uproot herself she would see that.

      ‘Mattie,’ he said levelly. ‘Will you marry me?’

      CHAPTER TWO

      SOMETHING scary had happened to her, Mattie thought wildly. A sudden rush of blood to her head, maybe? It had boiled her brain, sent her loopy, made her hear things.

      James proposing? To her?

      ‘Mattie?’

      Even through the shock of fearing herself to have suffered a mortal affliction, she was bright enough to detect a note of wry amusement when she heard one. So that was it. A joke. An unfunny joke.

      Oh, how dared he? It would serve him right if she took him seriously, flung herself at him, dewy-eyed and babbling about big white wedding dresses and having his babies. All those barren, hopeless years of loving this man didn’t stop her from wanting to punish him!

      But common sense eventually did just that. Pretending to take him seriously would hurt her more than it hurt him. Winding her arms around him, covering his face with kisses, would be torture.

      She uprooted her feet from the floor and trudged to the sink to fill the kettle. She needed coffee, even if he didn’t. At least she was moving now, thinking clearly. She said flatly, ‘Be careful, James. Jokes like that could rebound on you. You might be taken seriously.’

      ‘I meant it, Matts,’ he said from right behind her.

      She froze. Everything inside her turned into stone. This was not possible. How could he mean it?

      Lifting his hands, he took her shoulders, turning her to face him, and that brought her to life, blood coursing madly through her veins at his touch. She shrugged his hands away. He had never touched her before, not even accidentally, and much as she might crave this small intimacy she couldn’t handle it, not right now, not if she were to find out what his agenda was.

      ‘Has this got something to do with Fiona dumping you?’ she asked, her brain clearing. ‘She jilts you, so you immediately get engaged to someone else, just to show her she’s not the only pebble on the beach?’

      Her heart twisted painfully. Was she right? Could he be that cruel? Would he use her like that, just to get his own back on the woman he loved? Buy her a flash engagement ring, make sure the whole world knew about it, then quietly break the whole thing off when the dust of Fiona’s public jilting had settled?

      ‘Well?’ she demanded. ‘No slick answer for once?’ His bleak silence spurred her on to angry sarcasm. ‘Or have you suddenly fallen madly in love with me? Somehow that would take a lot of swallowing!’

      James glanced at the discreet face of his Rolex. He’d meant to spend the afternoon back in his apartment, going through a raft of paperwork. This was going to take longer than he’d thought.

      ‘You sell yourself short, Mattie. You really should break the habit.’ The words emerged on a breath of impatience, softened by slight amusement. ‘And no,’ he went on with no inflexion whatever, ‘I have no more “fallen madly in love” with you than you have with me. In fact, I don’t think the condition actually exists.’

      He resigned himself to the loss of a full afternoon’s useful work. He’d been over-optimistic when he’d imagined he could put his reasons for marriage in front of her in two minutes flat, and it would only take another three or four for her first-class brain to accept that the reasons and terms were both workable and desirable. Far from looking receptive, her face was screwed up in what could be nothing else but suppressed fury.

      ‘All I ask is that you take time to listen to what I have to say. To kick off—’ The sound of Edward letting himself in through the utility adjoining the kitchen made him bite his words off. Hell! He hadn’t expected his partner back so soon. He’d scripted this as a rational, businesslike discussion, over in a few minutes, and it was rapidly turning into a farce.

      His jawline grim, he narrow-eyed the older man as he walked into the room, blowing his fingers, his face ruddy from exercise in the bitingly cold air.

      ‘So you decided to stay for lunch after all?’ Edward hazarded. ‘Thought you’d be well on your way by now. And, Mattie, if you’re cooking, nothing for me. Getting a paunch.’

      ‘Actually,’ James drawled, thinking on his feet, mentally postponing that paperwork until later, much later, ‘I’m taking Matts out to lunch, as a thank you for all the hard graft she’s put in over the past few days.’ His narrowed eyes impaled her with silver command. ‘Go get your coat.’

      Her instinct was to tell him not to dish out his orders in that brisk, authoritative voice, as if she were some lowly employee. Tell him to ask her nicely, and she’d think about it. But she’d controlled her emotions where James was concerned for more years than she cared to remember and she’d be a fool to give way to the need to snap and shout, indulge in a verbal stand-up fight.

      He would simply turn his back on her, walk straight out, and she’d never discover what in damnation he’d been thinking about when he’d come out with that unbelievable proposal of marriage.

      Besides, his eyes were positively glacial when he bit out, ‘Scoot, Mattie. We don’t have all day.’

      The tone of his voice sent shivers down her spine. She had heard he was a force to be reckoned with, a man no one but an out-and-out fool would dare to cross, but in all the time she had known him she had never been afraid of him, or had the feeling that he was taking control of her life.

      She went, almost tripping over her own feet, leaving the room before he could say or do anything else to add to her sense of angry confusion.

      Of course she wasn’t afraid of him, she told herself as she pulled Mrs Flax’s overall over her head and searched in the hall cupboard for her serviceable waxed jacket. Afraid of what

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