The Prospective Wife

‘I’m terminating your contract, Blondie.’

That was the best news she’d heard for some time, and it was on the tip of her tongue to tell him so when she recalled the promise Drusilla had wrung out of her. Concentrating on the state of her debts made it easier to retain her composure.

‘My name is Kathleen Wray. You can call me Miss Wray, or, at a push, Kat. I don’t answer to Blondie. And I’m not leaving until your mother tells me my services are no longer required.’ Her rigid stance faded as her stormy grey eyes softened. ‘Pride is all well and good, Mr Devlin,’ she announced in a kindly way. ‘But, whether you like it or not—’ she cast a swift professional eye over his tall, broad-shouldered figure ‘—you do need me.’

Matt looked baffled by her response.

‘Are you slow or what…?’ He didn’t need this, not now. He was in pain, hot, tired and had a damned hank of hair in his eyes and no free hand to push it away. As always the mortifying consequences of illness made him mad enough to yell and curse. It took a lot of self-control to restrain his inclination to indulge in both.

‘It’s probably the pain that’s making you so tetchy.’ She kept her tone objective, not that it made his reaction any the less hostile. From the way his eyes flashed and his jaw tightened, she assumed he took any reference to his physical weakness as a direct insult; some men were like that.

‘I’m not in pain!’ Matt bellowed, throwing self-restraint to the winds. The muscles down his left leg chose that precise moment to go into painful spasm. Matt swore under his breath and gritted his teeth against the pain.

‘I told you you shouldn’t have gone into the office.’ There was a concerned note in his friend’s voice.

‘Save your sanctimonious I-told-you-sos.’ Matt closed his eyes and forced himself not to fight the wave of pain. Experience had taught him tensing up only prolonged the spasms.

‘You didn’t bring him straight here from the hospital…?’

‘He wouldn’t let me.’

‘I really don’t see there was much he could do to stop you!’ Kat responded crisply.

Her eyes were compassionate as she looked at the tall figure who was obviously suffering considerable pain. When he tried to shrug off the supportive hand she placed beneath his elbow she diplomatically pretended not to notice his efforts to dislodge her light grip.

‘You don’t know Matt,’ Joe returned wryly.

Kat resisted the childish impulse to assure him she didn’t want to.

‘Let’s get him inside, shall we?’ Matt heard the bimbo say, just before he had to endure the ultimate indignity of being hustled like a baby through the door between his best friend and Blondie.

Dear God, it had been bad enough when those damned nurses had fussed and fretted; this was more than flesh and blood could be expected to take!

‘When did he last take his medication?’

Matt lifted his dark head from the brocade-covered chaise-longue they’d deposited him on. ‘What are you asking him for? I’m not dumb!’ he snarled.

‘We should be so lucky,’ his friend breathed quietly.

‘What was that, Joe…?’ Matt growled.

‘When did you last take any pain relief?’ You didn’t need to be psychic to figure out that wiping the sheen of perspiration from his furrowed brow would not go down well. Fortunately his colour was looking more healthy than it had outside.

Kat’s eyes slowly worked their way up the strong column of his throat to his lean, angular face. Though pale after his hospitalisation, Matthew Devlin had the sort of olive skin tones that would darken given the first hint of sunlight.

She had a sudden and deeply distracting image of him stretched out on a beach, his skin gleaming with a healthy glow. She gave her head the tiniest of shakes to dispel the unprofessional hallucination.

She gave a whimsical but worried grin. Just as well he didn’t have a personality to match his looks or she might have trouble staying impersonal! If someone had forced her to produce a fantasy lover he would have looked remarkably similar to Matthew Devlin—which just went to show that looks weren’t everything!

‘I need a drink, not a pill. Pass me a Scotch, Joe.’

Kat wondered if he ever said please as she laid a restraining hand on Joe’s arm.

‘I don’t suppose there’s any reason you can’t have both, but it depends on what sort of painkillers you’re taking.’

‘I’m not taking pain relief…I don’t need crutches of any sort,’ he announced with scornful and not strictly accurate distaste.

Lips compressed into a stubborn white line, he rose to his feet. Deliberately ignoring the crutches and his audience’s combined concern, he walked over to the drinks cabinet and poured himself a whisky.

Kat was pretty sure that every step he took was agony, but the only external evidence of this in his drawn face were the beads of sweat that appeared across his upper lip. The man had guts—she had to hand him that. It was just a pity he didn’t channel his energies into something more constructive than thumbing his nose at the world in general and her in particular!

He lifted the glass in a mocking salute before downing the amber liquid in one swallow.

‘A pill to go to sleep, another to wake…I’m not buying into that merry-go-round. I thought pain was the body’s way of telling a person something.’

Matt had been the soul of restraint up until very recently. Even when they hadn’t known how bad the spinal damage was, and life in a wheelchair had been a nightmare possibility, he’d managed to retain control of his stiff upper lip.

It had been the killing slowness of the whole convalescence thing that had finally made him snap. He was used to setting himself a goal and working towards it; he didn’t see why getting back to full fitness should be any different, but the blasted medics were constantly holding him back.

‘Going on the evidence so far, I rather doubt you’ve been listening to your body at all this morning, Mr Devlin.’

She’d seen his type before—though not quite so spectacularly packaged—the sort of man who’d push himself and his body to the limit of endurance and beyond. That sort of willpower was all very laudable, and probably made the person successful at anything he set his mind to—but it also made him a terrible patient!

‘My mother may think I need the attentions of some sultry little nursey…’

To Kat’s intense discomfort he did that undressing thing with his eyes again. She didn’t doubt for a second it was meant to unsettle her, but she’d not give him the satisfaction of showing how well the crude tactics worked.

‘…but I can assure you I don’t. So ignoring the fact I’ve fired you isn’t going to change my mind.’

It wasn’t a comfortable experience being pinned down by those arrogant eyes but Kat knew it would be fatal to back down at this point. However, facing down this man was proving to be one of the hardest things she’d ever done. It made her shudder to think how difficult it would be to thwart him when he was fully fit. She didn’t think she’d ever come across anyone who had such an ingrained aura of command.

‘I’m a physio, not a nurse.’

‘If you say so…’

Did the man think she was pretending, for God’s sake? Kat repressed the strong inclination to dig out her certificates and wave them under his infuriating nose.

‘Ignoring the fact you’ve got pain isn’t going to make it go away,’ she responded serenely.

Did she think he didn’t know that? Matt ground his teeth.

‘And being rude and unreasonable isn’t going to make me go away, either. I’ve worked with some very difficult children…’

A choking noise emerged from Joe’s throat. Matt was too stunned to notice his friend’s heaving shoulders.

‘Are you suggesting I’m acting like a child?’ he grated incredulously.

‘You’re only a child to your mother, Mr Devlin,’ she explained kindly. ‘To me you’re simply a client.’