A Convenient Proposal

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CHAPTER EIGHT

The next few months were ones of hectic activity. When Quinn had placed the exquisite diamond and sapphire star on Candy's finger on New Year's Eve he'd made it clear he envisaged a spring wedding, but within the week her agent had confirmed a small exhibition of her work in London for the end of April.

She had expected Quinn to object to the timing when she told him the news, but he had merely nodded slowly, his eyes narrowing, and had drawled, 'Fine. Excellent opportunity for you to get established here now it's going to be your permanent home. We'll set the wedding date for the middle of May, and apart from your dress and so on you can leave all the arrangements to me and concentrate on the exhibition. Okay?'

'But it means I'm going to be working flat out to get ready in time. You do understand that?' she had said quietly.

'Of course.' His tone had been almost distant, as though the last thing that concerned him was the possibility that he wouldn't see much of her, and it had caused Candy's chin to rise a notch and her mouth to tighten.

Fine. If he didn't care about not seeing her she was blowed if she would care about not seeing him either! But of course it didn't work like that in practice.

She had expected, once they were officially engaged, that Quinn would assume it entitled him to full seduction rights, but if anything, on the one or two occasions their busy schedules allowed them to meet each week, he was more distant and controlled than he had been before the engagement.

It didn't seem to worry him at all that they were ships that passed in the night, but it caused Candy many sleepless nights of tossing and turning, especially if she had seen him that evening.

Candy knew, taking into account all she had revealed about her past and the way she had rejected his physical advances, that she ought to be appreciative of his restraint and command of his physical desire, but she wasn't.

If she could have convinced herself Quinn was struggling and finding it hard to withstand her appeal it might have been easier, but he seemed content with the friendly, practically platonic relationship they shared And it was driving her bananas!

She wanted him. In every single way she wanted him, physically, mentally and emotionally, and more than that she wanted him to want her too. But as the weeks went by fierce pride came to her rescue and enabled her to erect some barriers—flimsy, but nevertheless barriers all the same—against her deepest needs. She found Quinn wasn't the only one who could hide behind a mask.

And the deadline of the exhibition proved a blessing. She ate, slept and breathed her art, and apart from one weekend in March, when she drove up to Oxford at Quinn's mother's invitation and the two women went shopping for Candy's wedding dress, she worked non-stop at her painting.

Spring came early, and by the time the exhibition was due the air was warm and scented with clouds of May blossom.

Quinn insisted on driving Candy up to London at the beginning of the exhibition week and stayed with her for a day or so until work commitments prevailed, and she was grateful for the way his presence eased her into the exacting, difficult but very successful few days.

Too grateful, she told herself once he had gone home and she realised how much she missed him. She couldn't afford to rely on Quinn for emotional support, or at least no more than she would any other friend. Independence, friendship coupled with self-reliance and autonomy—that was the arrangement.

By the end of the exhibition Candy had made some valuable contacts and sold a considerable amount of her work, as well as taking an important commission that would keep her busy until the end of the year. The whole exercise had been a triumph, but with the wedding looming and just seven days away she was more keyed up than ever.

So all in all it wasn't really surprising, when Xavier and Essie arrived a couple of days early in the middle of the week, that Candy burst into tears of relief and joy and a whole host of other mixed-up emotions at the sight of them on her doorstep.

Xavier reacted with typical manly bewilderment and fluster, but Essie ushered her into the cottage and sat with her on the sofa, hugging her, soothing her and generally picking up the role of surrogate mum which she had assumed after the accident. Once Candy had made inroads into a box of tissues and Xavier had bumbled about in the kitchen making them all a cup of tea, the three of them saw the funny side of it, or at least Candy thought Essie had. Until the two women went upstairs for Essie to have a preview of the dress.

'Okay, what's wrong?' There was no amusement on Essie's beautiful face as she contemplated her husband's niece. 'And don't give me the same line as downstairs, that you were just so pleased to see us and tense about the wedding. I know there's more.'

'Oh, Essie.' Candy was sitting with the ravishingly lovely dress in her hands, and now she looked down at the cream Thai silk on her lap—the sleeveless, pencil-slim design and classical cut moulded to her figure as though it had been specially made for her—and sighed loudly. 'It's all so complicated.'

'It usually is,' said Essie, with all the wisdom of her changed shape. The baby was due in seven weeks and she was big. 'Especially if a man's involved. And Quinn is quite a man.'

'Tell me about it.'

'No, you tell me,' Essie probed gently.

Her lonely childhood and troubled upbringing had not been conducive to making close friends, but Candy knew Essie's history—an abusive, violent stepfather followed by a disastrous love affair when the other woman had been at university—and she knew if anyone could understand the tangle she had got herself into Essie would.

'You won't tell Xavier?' she asked pleadingly.

'Not if you don't want me to.'

And so Candy found herself telling Essie how she had come to be marrying the man she loved knowing he couldn't return the emotion, and the look on Essie's face by the time she'd finished made Candy bite her lip hard to prevent herself crying all over Essie's pretty blouse again. 'Don't be too sympathetic, Essie,' Candy warned chokingly. 'I'm a bit hormonal at the moment.'

'I'm not surprised.' Essie was frowning now. 'And I'm amazed at Quinn; I thought better of him.'

'It's not his fault.' Quite why she was defending him she didn't know, Candy thought ruefully. 'He doesn't know I love him and he thinks this arrangement is as much for my benefit as his.'