The Prospective Wife

‘But…’

‘Calm down, that’s not bad.’

‘It isn’t?’

‘I can’t abide boot-lickers,’ he announced blandly. ‘Let’s say for one minute that you can swear hand on heart—’ his focus shifted to the region where that organ was housed, and lingered there ‘—that you’re only here to continue the torture inflicted on me by members of your profession in the clinic.’

Kat let out a silent sigh of relief as his eyes finally lifted. She just hoped and prayed her top was thick enough to hide the tingling activity of her nipples.

‘That doesn’t alter the fact that if I decide I need a resident nurse or physio I’d prefer one of my own choosing…’

Kat was still too preoccupied by the inexplicable behaviour of her body to summon up the necessary energy to fight him on this; besides, as much as she needed this job, she wasn’t about to beg.

‘It won’t take me long to pack.’ She made a conscious effort to belatedly put a bit of dignity back into the proceedings. Actually, some things were worse than being in debt—things like being eaten up with lust for a man you didn’t even like!

‘I thought you needed the job…?’

Anyone would think he gave a damn! Kat fixed him with an angry incredulous stare. He definitely was the most perverse man she’d ever encountered.

‘She does, she does…’

Kat had almost forgotten the other man’s presence.

‘Your concern for my well-being is touching, Joe. I’m well aware that it wouldn’t suit your plans if I went for a male physio built like a barn…’ Matt taunted his lust-sick friend with idle affection.

Joe blushed and glanced uncomfortably in Kat’s direction. ‘If you weren’t ill…’

‘Don’t sulk in front of the lady, Joseph…’

‘I wasn’t sulking!’

Kat, happy to be distracted from the wantonly indiscriminate behaviour of her own body, gave a weak indulgent smile as she watched the two men good-naturedly bicker; the rapport between them obviously went deep.

An extraordinary notion occurred to her, and her jaw dropped as her eyes darted rapidly from one man to the other and back again. It couldn’t be, could it? As unlikely as the explanation seemed, it would explain why his mother felt Matt wasn’t going to get a wife without a lot of encouragement.

‘Heavens, I didn’t realise!’ she blurted out, without thinking. Her mind was racing. Why hadn’t that possibility occurred to her before? After all, one of the most masculine, straight-looking men she knew was gay.

‘Realise what?’ Matt asked

‘It’s all right,’ she explained soothingly. ‘One of my best friends is gay, and his parents found it hard to accept at first too, but they came round eventually and…’

‘Gay!’ Joe, his eyes round, looked at his hand, innocently resting on Matt’s shoulder, and with a horrified snort jerked it away.

Kat smiled in what she hoped was an open-minded nonjudgmental sort of way as she tried to analyse her somewhat ambivalent response to this discovery. There didn’t seem any harm now to acknowledge that the prospect of treating a man who she found so physically attractive—in a butterflies-in-the-belly…tingly sort of way—had been bothering her. She ought to be feeling much happier…much less cheated… Cheated? Where had that come from?

She kept her attention carefully trained on Joe. ‘You don’t owe me any explanations,’ she told him warmly.

Joe looked with smouldering resentment at his friend who, after a startled pause, had begun laughing.

‘This is your fault,’ he accused wildly. ‘I told you you should have got a haircut.’

‘I had no idea that sexual orientation had any direct connection with hair length.’

‘Stop mucking around, will you?’ Joe yelled. ‘Tell her…we’re not!’

‘It’s no good, Joe, she’s guessed!’ Matt intoned dramatically.

‘Cut it out, Matt!’ Joe begged, looking slightly sick. He felt unable to take this slur on his masculinity as lightly as his friend seemed to.

It was slowly dawning on Kat that yet again she’d jumped to the wrong conclusion.

‘Oh, God!’ she groaned. ‘I’ve got it wrong, haven’t I?’

‘Sorry, Miss Wray, but we’re both strictly hetero…’ If she got any redder there was a good chance she’d spontaneously combust, he thought, watching her discomfort with a degree of spiteful pleasure.

‘This could be a double bluff to get me where you want me…’ Matt mused thoughtfully.

Which presumably was flat on his back and helpless! The mental image that accompanied this maverick thought of her astride his prone body had enough detail to deepen the colour in her already pink cheeks significantly. She didn’t normally fantasise about having a man at her mercy!

‘But I’m inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt.’

Kat’s mouth fell ajar with shock and dismay. ‘You are?’

‘Unless, of course, you want to reveal that you actually find me and this broken body irresistible…?’ It bothered him like hell to detect the faint note of self-pity in his voice. As far as he was concerned, self-pity had no constructive value and therefore no place in his life. Self-pity was for losers.

‘Heavens!’ Kat exclaimed, so thoroughly thrown off balance by this remarkable change in his attitude that she forgot about professional reticence.

‘Dr Metcalf forgot to mention your mood swings.’

It was what he hadn’t forgotten to tell her that interested Matt, whose eyes narrowed to suspicious slits.

‘Sounds like good old Andrew was very obliging…’

With an exasperated sigh, Kat planted her hands on her softly rounded hips. A little toss of her head made the honey-gold ponytail dance in a way that charmed at least one of the men watching her performance.

‘Don’t start with that again, or I’m out of here…’ God, when will I learn to control my tongue? If he called her bluff, the schedule she’d worked out to repay the last of the debts would have to go out of the window. She crossed her fingers firmly.

‘Is that a threat or a promise?’

Kat heaved a sigh of relief. ‘Your mother had warned him that I’d probably be ringing…’

‘That’s Mum, all right. She thinks of everything.’

Kat loftily ignored this acid interjection. ‘As I was saying,’ she continued frostily, ‘Dr Metcalf merely supplied me with medical details.’ She didn’t mention that during the course of their telephone conversation the doctor’s grudging admiration for his patient had come across clearly.

‘It’s always handy to know that someone is likely to throw a wobbler if you mention wheelchair,’ she added slyly.

She let this sink in for a moment and watched from under the sweep of her lashes for Matt’s reaction. A slow grin slowly spread over his face; it filled his eyes with an unexpected and dangerously attractive warmth.