Fiance Wanted Fast!

Look and feel like a limp rag, however, and you could guarantee that the most attractive man you had ever seen in the flesh would turn up on the doorstep!

When she looked at him properly, she could see that he wasn’t actually that handsome—his features were too irregular for classic good looks—but he had a quirky, mobile face with eyes so blue and so alive that somehow that was all that you noticed.

Phoebe was distinctly unnerved by the sheer vibrancy of the man. He had that relaxed yet vivid air of someone who spent his life in the sun. Just looking at him was like getting a blast of ozone. He was the sort of man who ought by rights to be at the helm of a yacht or plunging into the ocean waves with a surfboard under his arm, not standing in this grey south London street evidently wondering why she was staring at him.

Recollecting herself, Phoebe stepped back and held open the door. ‘You’d better come in,’ she said awkwardly.

Gib stayed where he was on the doorstep. ‘The thing is, I’ve got a bit of a problem,’ he admitted, and turned to indicate the taxi which was waiting in the street with its meter ticking at a rate of knots.

‘I lost my wallet somewhere between LA and the arrivals hall at Heathrow. I think someone might have lifted it in the baggage hall, but anyway it’s gone. I reported it to the police and have cancelled all my cards but I thought the best thing I could do would just be to get a taxi here and hope someone was in.’

He looked back at Phoebe with a rueful smile that she was sure was perfectly calculated to have most females swooning at his feet. ‘You wouldn’t have some cash to pay the taxi driver, would you? I’ll pay you back, of course, as soon as I’ve sorted something out.’

Phoebe forced herself to resist the smile. It was just a little too like Slimy Seb’s, who only ever came round when he wanted something and who was always patting his pockets and discovering that he had ‘forgotten’ his wallet, knowing quite well what a soft touch Kate was.

This Gib looked as if he was out of the same mould, one of those cocky, charming types that thought all they had to do was smile and everyone else would fall over themselves to do whatever they wanted. Phoebe didn’t trust men like that. She had met too many of them, and seen too many friends like Kate hurt by their selfish behaviour to ever succumb herself.

Gib was watching her expression and reading her lack of enthusiasm without difficulty. ‘Hey, it’s no problem,’ he said. ‘I’ll just get the taxi to take me to Josh’s office. I’m sure I’ll find someone there to bail me out.’

It was lucky that he had mentioned Josh. As Bella’s best friend, Josh spent a lot of time in the house, and Phoebe was very fond of him. If Josh vouched for Gib, she had better not leave him to sort out his own problems the way she was strongly tempted to do.

‘There’s no need for that.’ She managed a brittle smile. ‘I’ll just go and get my purse.’

‘Thanks, I really appreciate that,’ said Gib as the taxi drove off. ‘I’ll let you have the money back tomorrow.’

That was what Seb always said to Kate, too.

‘Everything’s a bit of mess,’ said Phoebe stiffly as she led the way to the kitchen at the back of the house. ‘We were going to tidy up for you tonight.’

They had planned a special welcoming meal as well. Bella was doing the shopping on her way home, but of course spontaneous types like Gib never thought of how they might mess up anyone else’s plans, did they?

‘Hey, I didn’t want anyone to go to any trouble,’ said Gib, alarmed by her frosty manner. ‘Josh said you’d just treat me like a friend and let me muck in with the rest of you.’

‘Now that you’ve turned up early, it looks like that’s what you’re going to have to do,’ said Phoebe, carrying the kettle over to the sink to fill it.

Gib eyed her warily, picking up on the hostility but not quite sure what he had done to provoke it. Maybe she was cross like this with everyone, which would be a crying shame with that warm, creamy skin and that lush mouth, he thought and then remembered that he wasn’t supposed to be thinking like that. All you’ve got to do is be a friend, Josh had said. What could be easier than that?

Clicking on the kettle, Phoebe turned to face him, and Gib looked quickly away. ‘Nice kitchen,’ he said.

It was a big, cluttered room with fitted cupboards at one end and at the other a shabby sofa and deep armchair covered with an ethnic-looking throw. In the middle was an antique pine table submerged beneath a welter of half-read newspapers, magazine cuttings, recipe books and files with papers spilling out of them. Gib spotted an iron, a collection of nail varnishes, a sequin bag, and—he did a double take—yes, a huge tabby cat curled up in a nest of papers.

The kitchen run by his housekeeper at home had gleaming steel surfaces and was so intimidatingly tidy that Gib rarely ventured in there. This room was messier and a lot less hygienic, he thought, glancing at the cat, but infinitely more inviting. The kind of room where you could sit down with a bottle of wine and relax without worrying about what anyone else was thinking of you.

‘It’s the warmest room in the house,’ said Phoebe, looking around and trying to see it through his eyes. ‘We spend all our time in here, as you can probably tell.’

‘Whose is the cat?’

‘Kate’s.’ Phoebe regarded it without affection. ‘She’s got the softest heart in the world. She’s always coming back with these poor bedraggled creatures she’s rescued, and then we all have to run around finding homes for them, but no one will take that cat, worse luck. Anyway, it probably wouldn’t go,’ she sighed. ‘It’s much too comfortable here. Kate spoils it, and Bella and I are terrified of it. Which reminds me,’ she added, ‘be careful when you come down in the mornings. It bites your ankles until you feed it!’

Josh hadn’t mentioned savage cats when he made his bet, Gib thought a little sourly. He hadn’t mentioned Phoebe’s frosty manner either. Gib just hoped that there weren’t any other nasty surprises in store for him.

As if understanding that they were talking about it, the cat got to its feet and stretched. Seeing the size of it, and the ferocious-looking teeth, Gib gave it a wide berth, but it only gave him a contemptuous stare and jumped off the table to land with a thud on the kitchen floor.

Phoebe watched it stalk out of the room and for the first time ever she warmed to it. Here at least was one other creature unlikely to be impressed by Gib’s smile and spontaneity. Kate and Bella were bound to fall for his charm, but Gib would find that she and the cat were made of sterner stuff!

CHAPTER TWO

PHOEBE had been pouring boiling water into a teapot, and now got out a couple of mugs. ‘Kate and Bella will be back later,’ she said. ‘Would you like some tea?’

‘Great,’ he said with the suggestion of a smile. ‘Now I know I’m back in England!’

‘How long have you been away?’

Gib thought a bit. ‘Nearly eighteen years now.’

‘That’s a long time,’ said Phoebe, trying to calculate how old that made him. It was difficult to tell just by looking at him. He had the solidity of an older man, and there were definite creases around the edges of his eyes. He had to be in his late thirties at least, but he had a disconcerting mixture of dynamism and lazy good humour that seemed to belong to someone much younger.

She wished Kate or Bella would come home. Something about him made her feel tongue-tied and awkward and—worse—boring. It was a feeling that reminded her all too painfully of that terrible time when she had wept as she had asked Ben ‘why?’, and he had told her that Lisa was sweet and feminine and fun.

Not like her.

Gib was obviously fun, too.

‘What do you do?’ she asked stiltedly. Too bad if he thought it was a boring question. She was just being polite. That was what boring people did.

Gib didn’t roll his eyes at the banality of her conversation, but he wasn’t very forthcoming either. ‘Oh, this and that,’ he said vaguely as he picked up his mug.

Silence didn’t seem to bother him at all. Phoebe stirred her tea unnecessarily and sought for something else to say. ‘Are you going to be working while you’re here?’ she managed eventually.

‘I’m looking into setting up a couple of projects.’

It all sounded a bit vague to Phoebe, but if he wanted her to think he had a flourishing business with projects on the go, let him. She knew how sensitive men were about their success or lack of it, and she wasn’t that interested anyway.

Gib was looking around him with interest, apparently unconcerned by her awkward attempts to make conversation. Phoebe couldn’t get over how blue his eyes were, and she studied him surreptitiously, wondering if he wore contact lenses to make them that colour, only to flush with annoyance when he caught her looking at him and smiled.

Phoebe jerked her gaze away. He obviously thought she couldn’t keep her eyes off him. How smug could you get? Really, he was just like Seb.

Typical, she thought glumly. The one attractive man to swim into her orbit since Ben, and he turned out to rub her up the wrong way right from the start. Bella and Kate were always urging her to find someone new to help her get over Ben, and she knew that she ought to make more of an effort, but a man like Gib—always supposing he was available—was the last thing she needed. She wanted someone kind and reliable, someone she could trust, not someone who made her feel twitchy and inadequate just by sitting there, no matter how attractive he was.

‘How do you know Josh?’ she asked, when he made no effort to break the silence. ‘You don’t seem at all like him.’

‘Don’t I?’ Gib looked amused. ‘That depends how you think of Josh, I guess.’

‘Josh is wonderful,’ said Phoebe firmly. ‘He’s mainly Bella’s friend, of course, but Kate and I love him. He seems so quiet, but he’s one of the nicest people I know. He never shows off or boasts about how good he is at what he does. He’s just steady and reliable and safe. Anything could happen, and you could always rely on Josh to know what to do.’

It was funny, she thought irrelevantly. Josh was just the kind of man she needed, but it had never crossed her mind to think of him as anything other than Bella’s friend.

‘Yes, he’s very competent,’ agreed Gib, reflecting wryly that he clearly hadn’t made much of an impression so far. He wondered how Phoebe had decided that he was not quiet, or nice, or reliable like good old Josh. All he had done was admire her kitchen and accept a cup of tea.

‘I met Josh in Ecuador,’ he went on, thinking that this was not the time to challenge her for being unreasonable. ‘He was leading an expedition up Mount Chimburazo, and I went along.’

She stared at him in surprise. ‘You’re a mountaineer?’

Gib smiled and shook his head, his blue, blue eyes looking directly into Phoebe’s. ‘No, I just like a challenge,’ he said.

Trapped by the intense blue gaze, Phoebe felt a wave of heat wash through her, and she swallowed, jerking her eyes away with an effort.

There was something disconcerting about him, she thought with an edge of desperation. His presence seemed to fill the room, sucking in all the air until it was hard for her to breathe. His eyes were too bright, his teeth too white, and he was too vibrant, too unsettling, too everything.

Phoebe felt unbalanced, a bit dizzy, and, desperate for something to break the suddenly jarring atmosphere, she pushed her papers out of the way.

‘Sorry about all this mess. I was just trying to do some work before the others got home.’

Gib twisted his head on one side to get a glimpse of the papers. ‘What is that you do?’

‘I’m a production assistant for a company that makes programmes for television,’ said Phoebe, unable to keep the pride from her voice.

Of course, being little more than a dogsbody at her age wasn’t that much to be proud about, but Phoebe had wanted to get into television production for as long as she could remember, and she was determined to make a success of it. Dogsbody was just the first step on the ladder, she reminded herself frequently. It was unfortunate that had ended up with a prima donna of the first order as her immediate boss, but Purple Parrot Productions was her big break, and it was worth putting up with Celia for that.

‘We make documentaries mostly,’ she told Gib.

‘What are you working on at the moment?’ he asked politely.

You never show any interest in my job, Mallory had complained. You have no idea how to talk to a woman as a person in her own right. You only ever think about one thing.

Which was absolute rubbish, of course, thought Gib. He was perfectly capable of talking to a woman seriously. Look at him now, asking Phoebe about her job and listening to her answer and not even thinking about the curve of her mouth or the silky sheen of her hair as she pushed it impatiently behind her ear.

Suddenly realising that he had lost track of what she was saying, Gib tuned in again to hear something about banking.

‘You’re making a programme about a bank?’

‘I thought it was a pretty dull idea too,’ said Phoebe, unsurprised by his reaction, ‘but actually, it’s more interesting than you’d expect. This isn’t an ordinary bank. It was set up by some guy who made a fortune on the currency markets then took everyone by surprise by setting up an ethical bank.’

Gib put down his mug. ‘What?’

‘I know, it sounds like a contradiction in terms, doesn’t it?’ Phoebe had relaxed a bit in talking about her job. ‘I think it just means that it only invests in community-based projects in developing countries. I’ve done some research on the internet, and it sounds really good. It should make an interesting programme.’

‘Is that right?’ said Gib in an odd voice.

‘The only trouble is that my boss is insisting that the focus of the programme should be on the guy who set it all up.’

‘Really? Who’s that?’

‘J.G. Grieve,’ she told him. ‘Everyone refers to him as JGG, and he’s famous for not giving interviews to the media.’ Picking up a printout from a website, she studied it ruefully. ‘I’ve tried all these contact numbers, but I always get the same message: the bank is happy to support any publicity about the projects, but not about JGG himself.’

‘So what else do you know about this guy?’

Preoccupied with her own problems, she failed to notice the oddly grim look around Gib’s mouth. ‘Not much,’ she said. ‘Just that he’s very rich.’

‘He’s not that interesting then, is he?’

‘That’s what I think,’ she agreed, ‘but Celia—my boss—is insistent that I’ve got to arrange an interview somehow. Working on this programme is my big break, so I’ve got to track him down somehow. I’m just not quite sure how I’m going to go about it,’ she confessed.

Gib looked at her across the table and suddenly his expression relaxed and his mouth quirked. ‘Well, I’ve been in the States for a while,’ he said. ‘I know some people. Maybe I could ask around and see if anyone knows anything else about him?’

Phoebe looked back doubtfully. She couldn’t imagine that someone like Gib would have the kind of contacts she needed, but she supposed it was kind of him to offer.

‘Well, thanks,’ she said awkwardly, ‘but I’m sure I’ll get through to someone in the bank eventually.’

Gib grinned at her as he picked up his mug once more. ‘Suit yourself,’ he said.

There was a silence. Phoebe sipped her tea and tried not to feel rattled by the way he was sitting at her table, looking as if he had always sat there. His presence filled the kitchen, which seemed to have shrunk around them alarmingly.

‘I gather from Josh that you’re my landlady,’ said Gib after a while. ‘Thanks for letting me stay.’

When he smiled his eyes looked bluer than ever. Phoebe was more than ever convinced that they couldn’t possibly be real. She looked away from them with an effort.

‘That’s all right,’ she muttered.

‘Are there any rules I should know about?’

Phoebe considered the question. ‘Not really,’ she said at last, ‘but don’t, whatever you do, tell Kate about any stray animal you’ve noticed unless you want to find it sleeping on your bed.’

‘Is that it?’

‘It’s not a good idea to talk to me before I’ve had a cup of coffee in the morning, but that’s advice rather than a rule,’ she admitted. ‘Kate and Bella don’t take any notice of it.’

‘Well, that seems easy enough,’ said Gib. ‘I ought to be able to manage that.’

He produced another of those unnervingly attractive smiles that seemed to linger in the air long after he had stopped, and Phoebe found herself getting to her feet abruptly. ‘Shall I show you to your room?’

‘It’s not very big, I’m afraid,’ she told him, opening a door off the upstairs landing.

‘Not very big’ was something of an understatement, reflected Gib, squeezing into the room behind Phoebe. It was not very big in the way the Sahara was not very wet, or the South Pole was not very hot.

An average cupboard might have been a better description, or possibly a large box. It had a four-foot bed, a built-in wardrobe, and a couple of shelves fixed to the wall. With the two of them standing on the only available floor space, there was absolutely no room for anything else.

‘Out of interest, how long did your last room-mate live here?’ asked Gib dryly.

‘About a year. She was the last to move in, so she got the smallest room.’

Gib was glad to hear it. He would hate to think that anyone was sleeping in anything smaller!

‘Caro didn’t care,’ said Phoebe a little defensively She could tell from his expression that he was less than overwhelmed with the room. ‘She spent most of the time at her boyfriend’s flat. They’ve just got married, which is why we’re looking for someone to take her place.

‘Obviously the rent is lower because you wouldn’t have so much space,’ she went on stiffly, ‘but of course you don’t have to take the room if it’s too small.’

‘No, no, it’s fine,’ Gib reassured her, perceiving that he had got off on the wrong foot. ‘I haven’t got much stuff. I travel light.’

Phoebe could believe it. He didn’t look like the kind of man who bothered with baggage in any shape or form.

Part of her envied people like Gib who drifted carelessly through life avoiding commitment and responsibility and leaving others to clear up the broken hearts and disappointment they inevitably left in their wake, but another part was intimidated and more than a little irritated by them too.

‘Yes, well, it’s not as if you’re staying for ever, is it?’ she said briskly, wishing that Gib would move. The room was small enough at the best of times without him standing there vibrating with energy.

Short of climbing on the bed, which risked looking suggestive, let alone ridiculous, there was no way she could get past him without pressing intimately against him. The thought made Phoebe tense and shiver at the same time.

It was a sinful waste from one point of view, because it was a very long time since she had been this close to an attractive man, but there was something about the way he seemed constantly on the verge of exploding into action that made Phoebe nervous and edgy. Touching him, however inadvertently, seemed an action that would be downright rash.

She was just going to have wait until he moved.

Concentrating on breathing shallowly, she stood as close to the window as she could while Gib looked round. Given the size of the room, that didn’t take long, but it felt like hours before he went back out onto the landing.

‘Can I see the rest of the house?’ he asked, and Phoebe was so relieved to be able to breathe properly again that she gave him a guided tour.

‘It’s a nice house,’ said Gib as they went back downstairs. ‘How long have you lived here?’

‘A couple of years. I bought it with my fiancé, as he was then.’ Phoebe was quite proud of the coolness in her voice. ‘We lived here together for a year, and then Ben decided to move back to Bristol with someone he’d met, so I took over the mortgage.’

Gib didn’t need to know about the anguish and the heartache and the long, long months of misery she had endured since Ben had left.

‘I couldn’t afford to live here on my own, so I had to take in lodgers, and it was just lucky that Kate was looking for somewhere at the same time. We were students together, and she knew Bella from school. Caro was a friend of Bella’s, so it all worked out perfectly until Caro decided to get married. We’re not sure where we’re going to find anyone who fits in as well as she did,’ she confessed as they went back into the kitchen.

‘Can’t you advertise?’

‘We could, and that’s probably what I’ll end up doing, but it’s hard to know what to put when you’re really looking for someone who’ll be a friend and not just a tenant.’

Mindful of his bet with Josh, Gib pricked up his ears at the key word. ‘How do you know if someone is a friend?’ he asked casually.

‘That’s just it, you don’t,’ said Phoebe. ‘You can’t tell who’s going to be a good friend and who isn’t. It’s just something that clicks between you.’

Absently, she began piling her papers together to clear the table a bit, while she thought about Gib’s question. ‘I suppose a friend is someone who’s easy to talk to, who laughs at the same things. Someone who’s just going to fit in and be comfortable sitting around and talking all evening without wanting to organise us or worrying about how long it is since anyone got the hoover out.’

It was a bit vague, but Gib reckoned he could do all of that.

‘Perhaps you should put that in your advert,’ he suggested.

‘I don’t know that it would be much help. You could get someone who said they were able to do all those things, but you still might not get on. It’s a funny thing, friendship,’ Phoebe mused. ‘I don’t think you can ever pin down the magic ingredient which makes you really like some people and not others.’

So much for picking up pointers from Phoebe! Gib sighed to himself. She was clearly not including him in her category of those with that special magic ingredient that would make him a friend!

Not yet, anyway.

Phoebe might be more of a challenge than he had anticipated, but challenges were there to be met. Gib wasn’t giving up yet. He had a bet to win!

‘How are you getting on with Gib?’

Josh and Phoebe were sitting on the sofa, while at the other end of the kitchen Bella and Kate busied themselves with the welcoming supper they had planned for Gib. Bella had told him that they were treating his welcome like the Queen’s birthdays, so that he not only had the real one when he arrived, but the official dinner to mark the occasion a day later.

No effort was being spared. The table had been ruthlessly cleared of its clutter and ransacking the cupboards had revealed no less than four plates, in varying states of repair but with recognisably the same pattern.

‘One of us can have the plate with the bunnies running round the edge,’ said Bella breezily. ‘We’ll need to use one of the folding chairs from the garden, too.’

Now she and Kate were fussing over some elaborate starter, while Gib opened some wine and Phoebe and Josh, assigned to washing-up duty, had retired to a safe distance.

Phoebe looked over at Gib who was manipulating the corkscrew with practised ease. His head was bent and the lights gleaming on his hair made it look fairer than usual.

‘Kate and Bella are completely smitten,’ she told Josh.

‘But not you?’

Phoebe looked away from Gib. ‘I certainly wouldn’t describe myself as smitten with him,’ she said.

‘Why, what’s he done?’

That was the thing. Gib hadn’t done anything. She couldn’t even hold the taxi fare incident against him. He had repaid her in full without prompting that morning.

How could she explain to Josh how unsettling Gib was? He had only been in the house a day, but he was already firm friends with Bella and Kate, and lounged around the kitchen as if he had lived there for ever. Phoebe ought to have been relieved that he was fitting in so well, but instead she found herself edging nervously around him, as if afraid he was about to explode into action at any second.