Woman To Wed?

‘Ah... so it is true... Someone—and I’m afraid I simply cannot reveal my source—happened to be walking past the door and overheard you.

‘I don’t know if it’s true, but I have heard rumours that there are plans to run a book on the odds of the three of you being unattached by the time Sally and Chris celebrate their first anniversary.’

‘Oh, there are, are there?’ Claire retorted fiercely. ‘Well, for your information... I shall never marry again, Hannah she said, more quietly and seriously. The laughter died from her friend’s eyes as she listened to her. ‘John was a wonderful husband and I loved him dearly.’

‘You’ve only been widowed for two years,’ Hannah reminded her gently. ‘One day some man is going to walk into your life, set your heart pounding and make you realize that you’re still very much a woman. Who knows? It could even be this American,’ she teased wickedly.

‘Never,’ Claire declared firmly, and she meant it.

She had her own reasons for knowing that there could never be a second marriage or any other kind of intimate relationship for her, but that was something she could not talk about to Hannah, or to anyone else. That was something she had only been able to share with John, and was just one of the reasons why she still missed him so desperately.

John had known her as no one else, man or woman, had or ever could, especially no other man—most especially another man.

As he boarded his flight for Heathrow Brad Stevenson was frowning. He hadn’t wanted to take up this appointment in Britain; in fact he had done every damn thing he could to try to get out of it, and in the end it had taken the combined appeal of the president of the company himself and the retired chairman to persuade him to change his mind.

As he had faced his two uncles across the boardroom table he had protested that he was quite happy where he was, that the last thing he wanted was to be sent across the Atlantic to sort out the problems they were having with the British-based offshoot of their air-conditioning company, which they had insisted on buying into, against his advise.

‘OK,’ he had said at the time, ‘so right now Britain is sweltering in a heatwave and everyone wants air-conditioning. Next summer could be a different story and you’ll be left with a warehouse full of unwanted conditioners and a long, long haul until the next hot spot.’

It had taken all his powers of persuasion then to get certain British organisations to agree to fit the air-conditioning systems in their business premises, and by doing so he had managed to avert the financial disaster with their British distribution outlet which he had predicted, but enough was enough. The thought of spending God alone knew how much time rescuing the ailing outlet to get it running efficiently and profitably was enough to make him grind his teeth in angry frustration.

How the hell had those two old guys guessed that he had intended to take the easy way out and oh, so slowly ease himself out of the business and out of the task of eventually having to step into their shoes, which he could see looming ominously ahead of him?

He was thirty-eight years old and there were things that he wanted to do, things he needed to do, that did not involve running a transatlantic company.

There was that boat out on the lake that he still had only half built, for instance; that voyage he had been promising himself that he would make ever since his high-school days when he had earnestly traced the voyage of Christopher Columbus through the Indies and the rich, Spanish-owned lands of South America.

Yes, there were things he wanted to do, a life he wanted to live, now that he was finally able to do so—now that the last of his siblings had finally left home and got settled.

‘You watch; you’ll be the next,’ Sheri, the second youngest of the family, had teased him. ‘Now that you’ve not got all of us at home to fuss over you’ll be looking around for a wife...raising a family with her, starting the whole thing over again...’

‘Never,’ he had said firmly. ‘I’ve done all the child-raising I plan to do with you five.’

Sheri had given him a serious look. ‘Has it really been so bad?’ she had asked him quietly, and then, answering her own question, had said softly, ‘Yeah, I guess at times it must have been. Not from our point of view but from yours. We’ve given you a hard time over the years but you’ve always stood by all of us, supported us... loved us... It hasn’t really put you off finding someone of your own, though, has it, Brad? Having your own kids?

‘I mean, look at all of us... All of us married and all of us with kids except for Doug, and he’s only just got married. My bet is, though, that he and Lucille won’t want to wait very long. You’ve been so good to all of us; I hate to think—’

‘Then don’t,’ Brad had advised her firmly, and after one look at him Sheri had acknowledged that there were times when, for all his great love for them, it was best not to push her eldest brother too far.

She didn’t care to think what would have happened to them if Brad hadn’t been there to take charge when Mom and Dad had been killed. There were six years between him and Amy, the next eldest, who had been twelve then, but no more than a year to eighteen months between Amy and the rest of them, going right down to Doug, who had been only just five. The accident had happened twenty years ago.

Brad had tried his best to get out of going to Britain to act as his uncle’s right arm and troubleshooter, even resorting to what he had privately admitted was the unfairly underhanded ploy of laying down a set of criteria on how he wanted to live whilst he was in Britain, which he’d known full well would be virtually impossible to fulfil. Or, rather, which he had assumed would be virtually impossible to fulfil. He had not reckoned with the British distributor having a widowed sister-in-law who could, apparently, provide him with exactly the homely living accommodation he had specified.

Brad was grimacing to himself as he took his seat on the plane, but the stewardess still cast a dazzling and very approving smile in his direction. Unusually for a first-class passenger, he was wearing a pair of soft, well-worn denims and an immaculate white T-shirt that revealed the firm, tanned muscles of his arms—and hid what she suspected would prove to be the equally tanned and certainly equally firm muscles of his torso.

Generally speaking, she didn’t care for such dark haired and formidable-looking men; macho was all very well in its way, but she preferred something a little softer, a little more malleable. In this particular hunk’s case, however, she was willing to make an exception, she decided enthusiastically.

It was true that those grey eyes looked as though they could hold a certain stern frostiness if required to do so, but there was no denying the sexual appeal of those thickly curling dark eyelashes or the hawkish, downright sexiness of that male profile with its warmly curved bottom lip.

‘Miss, miss... we’re Row F; where is that, please...?’ Reluctantly she turned her attention to the middle-aged couple approaching her. Just her luck, she thought—it was a busy, fully booked flight and she doubted that she would get any spare time to flirt with their sexy solitary passenger.

Brad was aware of the stewardess’s interest but chose to ignore it. He was not in the market for a relationship right now—of any kind. What he wanted more than anything else was to get this business in Britain all cleared up and functioning profitably so that he could hightail it back to the States and tell his uncles politely but firmly that there was no point in them looking to him to step into their shoes.

He wanted out. What he had in mind for his future was not another twenty-odd years worrying over the fate of the family business and its employees, but the freedom to pursue his own life and his own dreams.

What he had in mind was to leave work altogether, to finish building that boat of his, and then, who knew what...? To sail it around the world, maybe...? To do, in short, all the things he had never had the opportunity to do when he was younger, when he had been busy and too preoccupied with raising his brothers and sisters. He deserved some time for himself, didn’t he?

He wondered briefly what the elderly widow would be like. Not too fussy and house-proud, he hoped. He was beginning to regret using that particular delaying tactic and he wondered how quickly he would be able to make his excuses to his landlady and explain that he had changed his mind and decided that it might be better if he rented himself an apartment. He had certainly never expected Tim Burbridge to come up so quickly with someone who so closely fitted all his criteria.

Worrying about hurting his prospective landlady’s feelings by telling her that he had changed his mind should have been the last thing on his mind, he told himself as the plane started to lift into the sky.

Somewhere over the Atlantic he fell asleep. The stewardess paused to watch him, wondering enviously if there was already a woman in his life and how it must feel to wake up beside him every morning. Sighing regretfully, she moved further down the aisle.

CHAPTER TWO

CLAIRE was having a bad day. In fact, it had been a bad day from the moment she had woken up and remembered that this evening she was due to meet her prospective lodger for the first time. Irene had rung to stress to her how important it was that Tim’s new boss was made to feel welcome and at home.

‘I’ll do my best,’ Claire had promised meekly, but she had felt that Irene was going a touch too far when she’d informed her that she had borrowed from a friend with American connections a recipe book containing favourite traditional American recipes.

‘There’s a recipe in it for pot-roast, which, apparently, they love, and one for pecan pie and—’

Hurriedly thanking her, Claire had quickly brought the telephone conversation to an end. In the brief time which had elapsed since Irene had used strong-arm tactics to make her agree to help she had already begun to regret her decision, but, as yet, she had been unable to find the courage or the excuse to rescind it.

She liked Tim, who was a gentle, amiable man, technically brilliant in his field but slow to express himself verbally, unaggressive in his approach to others. She liked Irene as well, of course, but...

The small hand tugging on her arm distracted her from her private thoughts. She smiled lovingly and patiently as she waited for Paul to say something to her. He was the oldest of the children who attended the school, and whilst mentally extremely clever and quick, suffered very badly from cerebral palsy.

All the children were special in their own way but she had a particularly soft spot for Paul.

It was a lovely, warm, sunny spring day and, knowing how much they enjoyed the treat, she had taken Paul and one other child for a walk in the local park.

Everything had been all right until Janey, a Down’s syndrome girl, had seen the ice-cream van parked by one of the exits from the park.

Both of them, of course, had wanted an ice cream, especially Janey, whose wide, loving smile touched Claire’s heart every time she saw her, as did her loving hugs and cuddles.

Several other children and adults had already clustered around the van, waiting to be served, and Claire had had no inkling of what was to come as she’d joined them, although, as she had told herself bitterly later, she should have done. She was not, after all, completely unfamiliar with the cruelty with which people could sometimes treat those whom they perceived as different from themselves.

It had been a young woman who’d started it, quickly pulling her own child out of the way when pretty, brown-eyed Janey had tried to reach out and touch the girl’s blonde ringlets.

‘Keep away; don’t you dare touch her,’ she had screamed, her daughter now frightened and screaming too. Janey had also started to cry, but it had been the look of resigned knowingness in Paul’s eyes that had hurt Claire most of all—that and the awareness that she could not protect him from that knowledge.

As the other woman had led her screaming child away she’d turned round and shouted to Claire.

‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Kids like that should be with their own sort, not allowed to mix with normal kids.’

It had been Paul—bright, clever and pitifully physically limited Paul—who had asked her on the way back, ‘What did she mean, Claire—our own sort...?’

She had wanted to cry then. But not in front of them. To have done so would have demeaned everything that they struggled so hard to achieve, everything that they were, but she would cry later in the privacy of the staff loo.

Now, as she walked Janey and Paul back through the park to their respective homes, Janey ‘helping’ to push Paul’s chair, she hesitated when Paul asked if they could stop for a while to watch several children playing football.

Janey was starting to get tired and they still had several minutes before Paul’s mother would be home from her part-time job, so they headed for a nearby bench.

A man was seated on it, watching the young foot-ballers. A parent? Claire wondered. An odd feeling, unfamiliar and, because of that, all the more disconcerting, threw her very much off balance as she glanced at him. It wasn’t, surely, those warmly tanned, hard-muscled male forearms revealed by the immaculate white T-shirt that were having such an extraordinary effect on her, was it?

Hastily she assured herself that it couldn’t possibly be. Other women might be susceptible to that kind of arrant male sexuality, but she most certainly wasn’t. Quite the opposite. Open male sexuality was something she invariably found distasteful, alarming...sometimes even threatening.

It certainly didn’t normally have the effect of making her glance want to linger and examine...to explore...

A sudden flush of embarrassed, self-conscious heat flooded her body. What on earth had come over her? No wonder the man was frowning as he looked from the children to her and then back again to the children, watching them, studying them...his frown deepening as he started to stand up and walk away from them.

At her side Paul made a small, distressed sound, focusing Claire’s thoughts and emotions on his feelings rather than her own, and a huge fierce wave of protective anger swamped her as she recognised the reason for Paul’s pain.

Without giving herself time to think, she told Janey quietly but firmly to wait with Paul and then ran after the man, catching hold of his arm so that he stopped and turned round to look at her.

‘How dare you do that?’ she exploded. ‘How dare you walk away from us like that...? Hurt them like that? They are human beings, you know, just like us. No, better than us, because they accept and love us. Have you any idea how much it hurts them when people do what you’ve just done? Have you no compassion...no understanding...?’

To Claire’s horror she could feel her eyes starting to flood with tears, her anger starting to die away as quickly as it had arisen. What on earth had got into her? She had never in her whole life behaved so aggressively to anyone as she was to this man. It was simply not in her nature—or so she had always thought.

Thoroughly shaken by her own behaviour, and ashamed of her outburst, she turned to go but, to her shock, instead of letting her walk away the man reached out and took hold of her, imprisoning her shoulders with his strong grip.

Later, reflecting on the incident, her face burning with chagrined dismay and guilt, she wouldn’t be able to understand or explain her own lack of reaction at being thus confined, or her own lack of fear, because she certainly didn’t feel any.

Shock, yes. Outrage, yes. But fear? No.

‘let go of me,’ she demanded, struggling to break free.

But he refused to comply, giving her a gentle little shake and telling her in a soft, slow American accent, ‘Will you quit yelling at me for a breath, woman, and listen to me...?’

Listen to him.

‘No, I will not,’ Claire stormed back at him, her rage flooding back. ‘Let me go!’

‘Not until you’ve let me have my say, you little firebrand. You’ve had yours and now it’s my turn...’

‘Let me go,’ Claire insisted, glowering up at him.

He had the most amazingly warm grey eyes, thickly fringed with dark, curly lashes. Her breath caught in a small gasp, the look in his eyes somehow mesmerising her, so that when he cursed softly under his breath and lowered his head—his mouth—towards her own she simply stood there, her own lips softly parted... waiting... knowing...

Just before his lips touched hers, she thought she heard him mutter, ‘Seems to me like there’s only one way to silence a feisty lady like you,’ but, since her attention was focused far more on what he was doing rather than what he was saying, she couldn’t be too sure.

It was a long time since she had been kissed by a man as if she was a woman, Claire acknowledged—a very, very long time. In fact, she couldn’t remember ever being kissed quite so...quite so...

Her heart started to hammer frantically against her ribs as the firm, warm pressure of a kiss meant to impose silence on her somehow or other became the slow and deliberate exploration of her mouth by lips that seemed to sense, to know...to understand... She felt herself starting to respond, her own lips suddenly pliant and soft.

With a small, outraged cry Claire wrenched herself away, her face burning not just with indignation and shock but with something far more intimate and far more worrying.

‘Look, I’m sorry...I never meant... I didn’t intend...’ he started to apologise.

‘You had no right,’ Claire stormed, but he wouldn’t let her finish, shaking his head and agreeing firmly.

‘No, I didn’t, and I’m sorry. I overstepped the mark... It should never have happened... It’s just that you made me so damned mad, ripping up at me like that...

‘I didn’t walk away from you because of the kids,’ he told her quietly. ‘Or at least not in the way that you meant. That bench over there is pretty small—not much room for me and the three of you, and so I did what I thought was the gentlemanly thing and decided to move on to give you your own space. It’s the kinda thing we do where I come from,’ he told her pointedly.

Claire could feel her flush deepening. She had never . felt more mortified or embarrassed in her life, and not just because she had totally misjudged his actions.

She turned to walk back to the children, who were still waiting patiently and anxiously by the bench, and as she did so she realised that the man had fallen into step beside her. As they reached Paul’s wheelchair he crouched down beside him and, giving him a warm smile, told him conversationally, ‘I spent a few months in one of those a good while back.’

Whilst Claire watched, Paul’s small, thin face glowed with happy colour as he slowly showed his new friend all the things his chair could do.

Janey didn’t miss out on the unexpected attention either, disengaging her hand from Claire’s and going up to Paul’s chair, flirting coyly.

It was only later, when Claire had delivered both children to their respective homes and she had time to herself to review the entire incident, that a horrid thought struck her.

That man, the American, he couldn’t possibly be Tim’s new boss and her prospective lodger, could he? No, of course he couldn’t, she reassured herself. Tim’s boss wouldn’t be sitting on his own in a small park watching children, dressed in a T-shirt and a pair of faded jeans... He wouldn’t, would he?

If it had been him—if it had been—she had probably solved the problem of trying to wriggle out of her agreement to offer him a temporary home. Irene would probably kill her, she decided faintly. No, not probably—Irene would kill her!

‘You look very...er...formal. Where on earth are you going?’ Hannah asked curiously, surveying the heavy calf-length black skirt that Claire was wearing, and its equally businesslike and repressive-looking tailored black jacket.

‘Dinner at Irene and Tim’s to meet my prospective lodger,’ Claire told her.

‘Help! Poor man!’ Hannah exclaimed, gulping back laughter. ‘One look at you in that outfit and he’ll think he’s moving in with a Victorian matron. Where on earth did you get that suit...?’

‘I bought it for John’s funeral,’ Claire told her quietly, adding quickly when she saw the guilty chagrin in her friend’s eyes, ‘Oh, it’s all right... I was in such a state at the time I just bought the first black suit I could find.’

‘Yes...well...for a funeral...but why are you wearing it tonight? You’ll be boiled alive in it, for one thing.’

‘Irene wants me to make a good impression on Tim’s new boss,’ Claire explained.

‘In that? You’ll terrify the life out of him,’ Hannah protested. ‘You can’t possibly wear it. What about that pretty knitted three-piece—the one with the little waistcoat? You look lovely in that...’

The oatmeal knitted outfit in question did suit her, Claire acknowledged. Sally had been with her when she had bought it and had insisted on her getting it, even though Claire herself had been inclined at first to think that it was too sexy for her.

‘I don’t think Irene would totally approve,’ Claire told Hannah hastily.

‘Irene might not but I’ll bet your new lodger certainly will,’ Hannah countered forthrightly. ‘The honour of the close is at stake here, Claire; there is no way I can allow you to go out of here wearing that suit. No way at all...’

Claire gave a faint sigh, smiling ruefully at her friend.

‘All right,’ she agreed. ‘I’ll go and get changed...’

‘Into the knit,’ Hannah prompted.

‘Into something,’ Claire prevaricated.

‘Into the knit,’ Hannah said emphatically. ‘And I shall come with you to make sure that you do.’

It was going to be easier to give in than to argue, Claire recognised, and if she didn’t she was going to be late, which would really please Irene.

‘Very well, then, the knit,’ she agreed cravenly.

There was absolutely no logical reason at all for her to fear that her American—the American of the park—might be Tim’s boss, Claire assured herself firmly as she parked her car in her sister-in-law’s drive, behind Tim’s large Volvo and the unexpectedly ordinary Ford which she assumed must belong to the American. After all, he had hardly looked as though he might be Tim’s boss and an important, high-ranking executive with a successful go-getting American company, did he? He had looked... He had looked...

Hastily Claire dismissed the startlingly explicit and detailed printout that her brain immediately produced of the American’s physical attributes and concentrated instead on the probable appearance of Tim’s boss. He would in all likelihood be an American version of Tim—middle-aged, well fed, business-suited, going slightly bald.

A kind enough man, she was sure, she acknowledged quickly. He must be, given the brief, potted history that Irene had given her, but hardly the sort to wear the casual garb of youth with such devastating sexiness—which her American had, and with far more masculinity than the vast majority of those young men who did wear it, Claire admitted as she wove her way between the closely parked cars and headed for the house.

Irene had obviously been waiting for her because she was opening the door even before Claire knocked, beckoning her inside, telling her in a low voice that Tim and Brad were in the garden.

‘Brad, apparently, is a keen gardener, so at least that’s one thing you’ll have in common,’ she told Claire firmly as she led the way through the house to the small sitting room at the back where French windows led out onto a sunken patio with steps up onto the lawn.

Two pairs of male legs were currently descending those steps, both of them suit-trouser-clad. One pair—the bulkier pair—Claire immediately recognised as belonging to Tim; the other, she decided in relief, obviously belonged to his boss.