Christmas Child

It simply wasn’t going to happen.

Passing through the hall on her way to the study, she slid the silk-covered buttons of her jacket from their moorings and shrugged out of it. The thought of what she was going to have to say to James was making her overheat. She’d be throwing away something so very precious.

Her throat closed up, everything inside her tightening. It was as if she were going to the dentist for a particularly gruelling session of deep-root fillings! Only worse.

She turned to head for the study and the phone but the sound of the main door opening had her swinging back, the sound of James’ voice startling her violently.

‘So you are here. I was worried; you didn’t answer my calls, Mattie—’

His voice faded. Mattie stared at him. Framed by the blackness of the night beyond the open doorway, he looked mysterious, dangerous and compellingly gorgeous. How could she tell him she wouldn’t marry him when she wanted him, adored him, with every atom of her being?

Yet she must. She knew she must.

He was staring back at her, his slightly hooded silver eyes sliding down from her face, covering the pert, rounded breasts revealed by the skinny-rib V-necked top that matched the discarded jacket, taking in the flatness of her tiny waist, the slight flare of hips and slenderness of thigh covered in creamy-looking leather.

He was looking at her as if he’d never seen her before, as if what he saw mesmerised him. As if he really and truly enjoyed what he was seeing. It was obvious from his riveted expression that he didn’t find the transformation shocking, pathetic or funny!

For the first time he was seeing her as a real woman. A desirable woman?

Certainty blossomed fiercely in Mattie’s heart. Fiercely and intoxicatingly sweetly. Her good intentions disappeared into the dark winter night. She wasn’t going to quit on him. Oh, however could she have harboured such a defeatist thought? The slide of his eyes over her body was like the physical touch of a lover; it made her flesh tingle, made her heart swell with yearning.

Sexual interest—the dawning of awareness of her on his part—was something solid and hopeful to work on. Perhaps, given time, he could fall in love with her.

Without taking his eyes off her, James pushed the door back into its frame, shutting out the night. Mattie, dressed as she was, without the shapeless, dowdy things she normally went around in, was a shattering revelation. Five-two of slender, seductively curving perfection. All woman, and then some.

The niggling anxieties that had brought him dutifully down here tonight hardened into something very much sharper than concern over the well being of a fellow human, something he couldn’t put a name to.

‘So where were you?’ His voice sounded harsh and accusing to his own ears, but he couldn’t help that. She hadn’t returned a single one of his calls over the last few days, and she obviously hadn’t come down with a bad dose of flu or fallen down the stairs and been lying around with a broken limb because she couldn’t get to a phone and there’d been no one home to help her. By the look of her she’d been out, strutting her stuff while her father and the housekeeper had both been away.

Yes! Mattie resisted the impulse to punch the air. He sounded like a suspicious husband—jealous, even!

She gave him a slow smile, lowering her lashes.

James came closer, sucking in his breath. ‘I left messages but you didn’t bother to return them. When I got back this evening from a site visit in York I phoned again. Still no answer. I drove down because I was worried. So where were you?’

That smile, dammit, made his blood pressure rise angrily. The subtle, bronzy tones of that apparently expertly applied lipstick made her even, pretty teeth almost impossibly white and her generous mouth definitely sultry.

Hell, she never wore the stuff as far as he knew. Just the lightest smudge of pale pink if she was going out somewhere she deemed merited the effort.

He was more than annoyed with her, Mattie thought. He was spitting mad! Never before, in all the time she’d known him, had he displayed any emotion other than mild brotherly affection—or a rather patronising amusement—where she was concerned.

She was getting there!

‘Your call this evening must have coincided with my driving to Lewes to meet Dad’s train,’ she said soothingly. ‘And before that, Dawn and I were in London, shopping for my trousseau.’ And thank heaven she’d been too busy getting herself hot and bothered about her new image to even think of listening for messages during the twenty-four hours she’d been back here, she thought elatedly.

If she had done so, this evening as she’d intended she would have returned his calls and told him the wedding was cancelled.

The close brush with might-have-been made her voice breathless as she said, ‘I’m sorry you were worried; as you can see, there was no need. But it was thoughtful of you to go to the trouble to check up on me. Now come on through to the kitchen. I’ll fix you some supper and you can sleep over. You won’t want to drive back to town tonight.’

Something was fizzing through her veins. Sheer, gut-twisting excitement, the certainty that—thanks to Dawn’s pestering—James was seeing her as a real flesh-and-blood woman for the first time ever, that there was something here she could build on if only she could be patient, or clever, enough. Whatever, for possibly the first time in her life she felt gloriously liberated, invulnerable.

Ungritting his teeth, James followed, his eyes annoyingly glued to her neat little backside so lovingly covered by butter-soft leather.

When, and how, had his old friend Matts changed from a quiet, mouse-like, studious, vague and innocently sexless creature into a woman who would make any red-blooded male suddenly overdose on testosterone?

The comfortable, undemanding paper marriage he’d proposed was going to take some honouring. But it was what she’d agreed to, what she was expecting, and if he wasn’t prepared to call the whole thing off, then that was the way it was going to have to be.

Shouldn’t be too difficult, though, he glumly assured himself as he sat at the kitchen table, tossed back the whisky she’d given him and watched her beat eggs for the omelette she’d offered to make.