The Prospective Wife

‘But…’ He stopped himself just in time from blurting out the information that Devlin senior, who had even more financial clout than his son, had forbidden any member of staff to mention. ‘I’d have thought the accident…’ he protested mildly.

‘It would take more than a near-death experience to make my father change his mind, Andrew. As far as he’s concerned I stopped being his son the day I didn’t do as he wanted. I’m the competition now…and he’d like nothing better than to ruin me.’

Andrew Metcalf was shocked by this cold-blooded analysis even though he knew it wasn’t strictly true.

‘Well, that’s not likely to happen, is it?’ he responded uncomfortably.

Despite the fact that after the somewhat mysterious departure of his more experienced partner the City had predicted disaster, it was well known that the airline Matt had started from very humble beginnings was now causing the big players who had scoffed—none louder than Matt’s own father, Connor Devlin—serious headaches.

‘Worried about your share dividend, Doc?’

Andrew grinned. He could afford to. Fair Flights was one of the financial success stories of the decade. ‘Actually, I do have a small sum invested.’

‘Then I’ll probably make you a very rich man,’ Matt announced with a total lack of modesty.

‘The rates we charge here and the amount of hardware in that leg, Matt, you already have…’

‘I’ve never actually done any private sector work, and to be honest it’s never really appealed.’

Despite her indifferent tone Kat was well aware she couldn’t afford to be picky when it came to jobs. In fact it was all she could do not to kiss the woman’s hand-made Italian shoes!

Kat’s anxiety began to mount as she watched Drusilla Devlin’s china-blue eyes drift around the forlorn-looking, half-empty sitting-room. Supposing I sounded too uninterested? It was one thing not wanting to come over as a charity case; it was another playing hard to get!

‘But you need work…?’

Kat felt a wave of relief. For a nasty moment there she’d thought she’d talked herself out a job.

‘Don’t we all?’

Well, not all, Kat silently conceded, realising that she was almost certainly speaking to someone who didn’t need to work. The chauffeur-driven limo Drusilla had driven up in had been ample proof of that.

Kat’s own situation wasn’t desperate, but it could get that way…and fast. Her godfather was executor of her mother’s estate and, even though he’d tried to break the news as gently as he could, Kat had been shocked to learn of the full extent of her mother’s debts. Kat had genuinely thought the gambling thing was in the past.

Apparently she wasn’t legally obliged to pay back the undocumented amounts of cash—some of them large—that her mother had borrowed from friends and family over a twelve-month period, but Kat was determined to pay back every penny!

It was a weight off her mind that the house had sold so swiftly; unfortunately this piece of good luck had left her without a roof over her head.

With very little in her bank account—the extended leave she’d taken to care for her mother during her final stages of her illness had been unpaid—she needed a job and somewhere to live.

Now here was a friend of Mum’s who, up until last month, they hadn’t seen for years, offering her both. It had to be fate!

She nudged the edge of a half-full packing case with the toe of her trainer. It was filled with the stuff the auctioneers hadn’t wanted.

‘People always want good physios, and I’ve heaps of experience. I’ll get a new job easily enough,’ she assured her affluent-looking visitor on an earnest, upbeat note.

‘But not your old one.’

‘No,’ Kat confirmed with a regretful sigh. ‘I knew they couldn’t hold it open indefinitely, but that might be a blessing in disguise.’

Drusilla wasn’t surprised to hear it. Five minutes after she’d met Kathleen Wray she had realised that her old friend’s daughter was as resiliently optimistic as she was beautiful. A few discreet enquiries into the girl’s financial situation, added to what Amy had told her, had revealed she’d need every ounce of that youthful resilience.

‘I’ve worked in the same hospital since I qualified—not exactly bold and adventurous.’

Drusilla wondered if Matthew would find the girl’s smile as enchanting as she did. A frown tugged at her seamless brow as she contemplated her son’s choice of female companionship.

‘I always meant to travel,’ Kat explained, her eyes shining with enthusiasm as visions of exotic sun-kissed shores rose tantalisingly before her eyes. ‘I just never got around to it somehow…’ The smile faded. ‘There’s nothing to keep me here any more.’

Drusilla caught up the young woman’s hand in a comforting clasp. ‘You did everything you could for Amy, my dear,’ she insisted warmly. ‘And you must take comfort from the fact that in the end she was here amongst all the familiar things that were dear to her, and with the daughter I know she loved very much.’

The motherly patting on the arm made Kat’s wide-spaced grey eyes fill with tears—not that Drusilla Devlin, with her designer clothes, glossy hair and impossibly youthful face, was like any mother she knew.

‘You’re very kind. You say this job would only be short term…? It is a live in post…?’ That would solve her immediate problem.

Drusilla clapped her prettily kept hands in delight. ‘You’ll do it for me? Excellent!’

‘There is a job, isn’t there? You’re not just inventing one because you feel sorry for me…?’ Her doubts emerged gruffly as she wiped a hint of moisture from the corner of her eye. ‘Mum didn’t ask you to watch out for me…?’

Drusilla laughed. ‘Oh, there’s a job all right; you’ll definitely earn your money, my dear. Incidentally, you’ll be working for me, not Matthew.’

Kat nodded. That was understandable. If the man had been in hospital for six months it was likely he didn’t have the spare cash to pay for a private physiotherapist, and it was equally obvious his mother did.

‘I suppose it will be some time before he’ll be able to get back to work…I mean, pilots need to be very fit, don’t they?’

‘Pilots…?’

‘You did say he was piloting a helicopter when he was injured?’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

Drusilla was looking a bit uncomfortable and Kat cursed her own insensitivity at referring to the accident.

‘You’d probably be better off getting someone else,’ she felt impelled to point out. ‘You know I’ve specialised in working with children for several years now.’

‘That might come in very handy when dealing with Matthew,’ Matthew’s mother reflected drily. ‘At heart most men are little boys.’

Kat’s fuzzy mental image of an over-indulged mummy’s boy intensified.

‘The problem is he’s never had a day’s illness in his life and he’s not making the most patient patient, poor dear. He needs cheering up, and small wonder! That terrible accident was bad enough, but then that awful girl proceeded to dump him.’ The blue eyes flashed with maternal ire. ‘I suppose we ought to be grateful she waited for him to be taken off the critical list before she went ranting on hysterically to those awful newspapers about him never walking again! “Horribly disfigured,” I ask you…!’

Kat’s grey eyes softened with sympathy. ‘I didn’t know… They can do marvellous things with facial reconstruction.’

‘Heavens, no; there was hardly a mark on his face. Obviously you don’t escape such a horrific accident with no scars,’ Drusilla conceded. ‘But the main problem was being forced to lie flat on his back with the spinal injury for so long; he’s had far too much time to brood. I knew the moment I saw you that you were just the girl for the job!’

‘Let’s hope your son thinks the same.’

It seemed strange to Kat that her new patient wasn’t having any say in the choice of his physio, but then for all she knew he might be the sort of man who let Mummy buy his socks for him!

There were a lot of men out there who still relied heavily on their mothers well into their thirties—she’d met one or two herself. She sometimes wondered if something about her screamed ‘substitute mother’ they certainly seemed to gravitate towards her.