A Convenient Proposal

'Then how would you put it?' she snapped fiercely.

'I mentioned that lane of yours is a nightmare in bad weather; they agreed it was practical for you to come here if we could get them a room somewhere; we did… That's it,' he finished cheerfully. 'I don't think it even occurred to them that you might be happy to share my room after we've only been seeing each other for a couple of months,' he added with suspect reasonableness. 'They're a little old-fashioned that way.'

'I wouldn't be happy to share your room,' she shot back indignantly, 'of course I wouldn't. We aren't even seeing each other, not really.'

'Quite.' He smiled at her, a shark-like smile. 'So what's the problem?'

The problem was that she had suddenly found herself sharing a home with Quinn! And as problems went that was a mighty big one.

She stared at him, totally at a loss for words. He must realise? she asked herself silently. Even if he didn't want any involvement of even the most casual kind, he must understand that this wasn't fair on either of them? Either of them? The thought mocked her. You, you mean, her mind jibed nastily. Quinn is quite able to take you or leave you; he's proved that more than once. Whereas you…

Her chin rose a notch and her face straightened into cool, proud remoteness. 'The problem is exactly what I said before,' she said evenly. 'I don't want people thinking we are sleeping together when we are not.'

'Candy, the whole reason my parents have taken the room at the pub is because you are going to be in the guest bedroom,' Quinn said with insulting patience. 'That's what people will think. If anyone has to worry about their reputation it's me, not you. My renown as a love 'em and leave 'em type is going to take a bit of hammering, don't you think? People will be expecting to hear wedding bells next,' he said with deprecating self-mockery.

She stared at him a moment more and then sighed irritably before she said, 'You've got an answer for everything, you know that, don't you?'

'Not everything.'

She was startled by the bitterness evident in his voice and for a moment she forgot the matter in hand and said urgently, 'Quinn, what's the matter?'

'You. You're the matter.'

It was the last answer, the very last answer she had expected, and her heavily lashed eyes opened wide with shock. 'Me?' she whispered faintly. 'What have I done?'

'What have you done?' He brushed an angry hand over his face in the same manner he used to rake back his hair, and the gesture told her he was truly thrown off balance. And angry. He was definitely angry.

And then she watched him gain control, and in that instant she knew, she just knew, as surely as black was black and white was white, that he had been playing a part ever since she had met him. She didn't exactly know which part, she admitted silently, but a part nevertheless. She had caught glimpses of the real man—brief, tantalising glimpses that had come and gone so quickly she hadn't been able to pin them down—but that was all. And a second or two ago had been one of them.

'You haven't done anything, Candy.' He was calm now, and very much Quinn Ellington, cool and self-assured man of the world, again. 'Come and say hallo to the dogs now you're here, and then we'd better get back upstairs; the parents'll be wanting to leave.'

He was just like Harper. One thing on the outside and quite another within. And then in the next moment she fiercely repudiated the thought No, he wasn't like Harper—he wasn't remotely like Harper. Harper had been a vain, handsome, egotistical fraud, intent on taking the easy path through life whatever the cost to anyone else. And Quinn wasn't like that.

She didn't have time to think anything else. Quinn had opened the door to the surgery kitchen, where the dogs slept at night, and an avalanche of small furry bodies had poured out into the corridor in a frenzy of delight and wagging tails.

They spent some minutes with the dogs before Quinn shooed the pack into the long walled garden that was now several inches deep in snow. The lot of them went madly leaping into the new exciting white stuff that had transformed their playground, and immediately began a wild game of tag that had them jumping like gazelles and careering around as though they had springs on their paws.

'Crazy kids.' Quinn stood watching them for a moment, his hands thrust into the pockets of his jeans and his mouth twisted in an indulgent smile. 'We'll leave them to tire themselves out for a while.'

'Quinn, I'd really prefer your parents to stay here and me to go to the Saddler's Arms, or even the rooms above the garage,' Candy said quickly before she lost the opportunity as he shut the back door.

'I wouldn't.' His voice was faintly husky as he looked down into her earnest face, the dim light from the sixty-watt bulb in the corridor giving her eyes the look of deep midnight-blue pools and picking out shafts of gleaming copper in her luxuriant hair.

'But—'

'No buts.' He touched her half-open lips with a light finger. 'And you're not going back to the cottage either, before you suggest it. It's a sight too remote at the best of times, but with the prediction of the worst weather we've had for years…'

'It's not remote, not really.' He was too close, much too close, and she was finding it difficult to be the impersonal friend he demanded in the very limited space within the corridor. 'Essie lived there by herself,' she added a little breathlessly.

'You're not Essie.'

It could have been insulting or demeaning or unflattering, but it was none of those things. The air was fairly crackling between them and his voice had been soft and deep with a warmth that made her feel deliriously cared for and hopelessly confused.

Quinn was breathing hard, his big muscled chest rising and falling beneath its covering of charcoal silk and his long lean legs slightly apart as he reached out and drew her into him. 'I want you to stay, all right?' he said thickly as he stroked her hair in an absent-minded caress, letting the smooth, silken strands run through his fingers as he looked down into her uplifted face.

His thighs were hard against hers, and with a little shock of pleasure she realised his body was betraying his desire. He moved, pressing her back against the wall of the corridor, holding her there with his body as he bent his mouth to hers.

And she welcomed his kiss, wanted it, her lips immediately opening beneath his and allowing him the intimacy he demanded with his probing tongue.