‘DINNER?’ Jane swallowed nervously. ‘Some time,’ she said. ‘You asked them to come to dinner some time so that you could get acquainted.’ He didn’t answer. ‘Please tell me that you didn’t ask my parents to dinner tonight.’
‘Well, I will if you insist. But they’ll still be here at six-thirty.’ He put Shuli down so that she could stroke the dog. ‘I wouldn’t have asked them, Jane, but it was clear that your mother thought I had something to hide.’
‘No! Why on earth would she think that?’ But it explained why Mark had come home early. He hadn’t been able to raise her on the phone so he’d been forced to come home to ensure there’d be something to eat. No wonder he’d been mad. She wasn’t exactly over the moon herself. ‘What could we possibly have to hide?’ she asked, the edge to her voice sharp enough to cut glass. Then, with a little wail of anguish, ‘Did you say six-thirty?’
‘I did.’
‘But that’s…’ She couldn’t voice what she thought. Not with Shuli listening. ‘That’s so early!’
‘The plan was to let Shuli win them round.’ He looked down at the child, who was sitting on the floor chattering away to Bob. ‘If they fall for her—’
‘Oh, they will.’ Who wouldn’t love the child on sight? ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to complain. It’s really sweet of you to make such an effort, especially when I’ve dropped you in it so comprehensively.’
‘But?’ he prompted. ‘I’m sure I sensed a “but” in there somewhere.’
She gave a little shrug. ‘Well, just for future reference you might like to make a note that I need a minimum of two weeks’ notice to cook for my mother.’
‘Two weeks?’
‘One week to plan and one week to panic.’
‘For heaven’s sake, what kind of man do you take me for? I had Patsy call a caterer and order dinner for four at eight.’
‘A caterer?’ Jane covered her face with her hands and moaned pitifully. How could so much go wrong in one day?
‘Of course. Caroline always used a caterer—’
Caroline? This marriage might not be the romance of the century but she was a person in her own right, not some pale stand-in for his dead wife. ‘I am not Caroline,’ she said, through gritted teeth.
‘No,’ he said. And with a sweeping glance that took in mud, dog and the cut-off jeans she’d worn to bath him, he made it clear that she would never measure up.
She wasn’t about to try. She was her own woman.
‘Caroline would never have wasted half an hour, let alone half a day, on a mongrel pup.’
‘No? Well, I did tell you to advertise for the perfect woman, but you couldn’t face the hassle so you settled for me. Live with it.’ She tugged on her bottom lip with her teeth to stop the hot tears that threatened to overwhelm her. ‘Just as I’ll have to live with my mother telling me, at length, how my four beautiful sisters can cope with their children, their sparkling careers and a positive menagerie of pets and still manage to cook dinner for their parents.’
‘Your sisters haven’t been married for little more than twenty-four hours,’ Mark returned sharply. ‘Even your mother must suspect that you’d have more interesting things to do than cook.’
‘Why? You went to work this morning. Business as usual.’
Mark felt as if he’d been sandbagged. What had he said to provoke that reaction? They’d discussed what they’d do and they’d done it. Hadn’t they? It occurred to him that perhaps ‘discussed’ was rather overstating the case. He’d said how it would be and she hadn’t demurred. That didn’t mean she was totally happy with the situation.
And, remembering how her face had lit up when he’d told her about her sister’s baby, he wondered just how many assumptions he’d been guilty of making.
Maybe he should have spent a little more time working on the details of this arrangement and less time congratulating himself on his good fortune.
‘Oka-a-ay…’ he said. ‘Why don’t we try that again? Start from the beginning? I’ll go out, drive around the village and then, when I come back, I’ll say, Hi, honey, I’m home. Had a nice day? And you’ll say, Don’t ask, and then you’ll tell me anyway, and I’ll say, You think you’ve had a bad day? Just wait until you hear what happened to me…’ He reached out and cradled her cheek, turning her face towards him. ‘You wouldn’t be laughing by any chance?’ he asked hopefully.
‘No…I mean yes…’ Her cheeks flushed a hot pink. ‘Actually, I don’t know what I mean.’ Then, ‘Mark?’ He waited. ‘I’m really sorry about the dog.’ She gestured at the kitchen. ‘The mess in here.’ She took a shaky breath. ‘He dug a hole in your lovely garden, too.’ She pulled her lips against her teeth, clearly afraid that this would be the final straw.
His garden. His kitchen. His house. And he hadn’t exactly helped by walking in and demanding why she hadn’t been there to answer the phone. She was his wife, not his secretary. It was time he started treating her like one.
‘Our lovely garden, Jane. This is our home. And our dog.’
‘You mean it?’ Her eyes lit up. ‘He can stay?’
‘Whatever you want is fine by me. Honestly.’ He bent and ruffled the pup’s ears. ‘He is a very nice dog. Different. A slightly eccentric choice, perhaps—’
‘He chose us.’
‘So he did.’
‘It’s rather like that old nursery rhyme. The farmer needs a wife…the wife needs a dog…’ She stopped, realising just in time that the rhyme didn’t go quite like that. ‘First you get an ugly duckling wife, and then you get a dog to match.’
He looked up, irritated by the way she’d put herself down. ‘I didn’t say that, nor should you. So what if neither of you ever fledge into swans? You’ll make very fine ducks.’
‘Well, thanks. I think.’
‘Swans hiss and bite, Jane. Ducks are friendly and eager to please. I know which I’d rather live with.’
She took a deep breath, as if she might argue, then she said, ‘Okay, you win the bunch of onions for the weirdest compliment of the month. But be very sure about the dog. Say the word and I’ll take him back to the RSPCA right now. They’ll find him a home, I’m sure. Eventually. But if he stays, he stays for good.’
Like the wife? ‘He’s got a home.’ Mark looked around at the disordered kitchen. ‘I’ve got a home.’
‘But—’
‘But nothing.’ Her forehead had puckered in an anxious little frown and instinctively he reached out to smooth it away with the pad of his thumb. He didn’t want her anxious, or worried. He certainly didn’t want her in a stew because the kitchen, for once in its immaculate life, didn’t look like a feature from some glossy magazine. On an impulse he placed a light kiss in the wide space between her eyes. ‘A tidy house is a place where nothing happens, Jane,’ he said, close enough to see the faint gold freckles that dusted her nose. ‘Believe me. I know.’
The dining room was ready for their guests. Bob was behaving like a graduate from obedience school. Shuli had been fed, bathed and dressed in her pretty new frock.
Clipping back her hair in the ebony clasp, Jane critically regarded her appearance in a long mirror, smoothing the simple, unadorned grey dress over her hips before slipping the diamond ring Mark had bought her in place next to her wedding ring.
It wouldn’t be enough. Her mother, already suspicious, was as sharp as knives. And her father, having spent thirty-five years in medical practice, had developed an intuitive gift for spotting when something was not quite as it should be. Which was why she’d spent the last fifteen minutes carefully eradicating any trace of her presence from the guest suite.
But she’d need to do a lot more than that to create the right impression when her mother asked to see around the house. As she undoubtedly would.
She could hear Mark outside, playing with Shuli and the puppy. She slipped into his bedroom, heart beating overtime and feeling like a guilty trespasser. But she had no time to waste worrying about that.
She put the silver-backed hairbrush she’d inherited from her grandmother on the heavy antique dressing table, adding a few hairpins and a jar of moisturiser for effect. The electric toothbrush her mother had bought her, but she’d never used, was propped conspicuously beside Mark’s own toothbrush in his bathroom. Her new white towelling bathrobe was hung on the door beside its twin. His and hers.
Then she turned to the bed. The tender little kiss he’d given her had fired her imagination, and for a moment she held the slinky silk nightdress against her cheek, imagining herself wearing it. Imagining how it would feel to have Mark slip the shoestring straps from her shoulders so that it fell to the carpet, to puddle around her feet. She imagined him touching her, lifting her onto the huge bed that dominated the room—
Jolted from her dreams by the crunch of her father’s car tyres against the gravel, she quickly tucked the nightdress beneath one of the pillows, leaving just a tiny trail of black silk visible to catch the alert eye. Even then she lingered, her hand against the cool fresh linen, before the sound of the doorbell sent her racing downstairs.
Mark looked up as Jane hurried down the stairs. She’d been a bundle of nerves and he was convinced that she was going to look so pale and guilty that her parents would think he was some kind of fiend. Instead her cheeks were faintly flushed, her eyes dark and sparkling—the perfect picture of a new bride.
For a moment he experienced again the same moment of shocked surprise that had seized his breath when he’d seen her first thing that morning. Before she’d realised he was there. Of looking at someone he’d worked with five days a week for the last two and a half years, a person he’d thought he knew, and realising that there was an undiscovered woman beneath the façade of the efficient secretary he’d taken for granted.
He wanted to tell her that, to let her know. He wanted to say how lovely she looked. But if he said that she’d think he was simply being kind. Nothing could be further from the truth.
‘You look…special,’ he said. Then, ‘I thought you might have worn the same outfit as yesterday.’
‘Yesterday’s outfit wouldn’t do, Mark. It offers too much scope for speculation. Now, this dull little dress serves a dual purpose.’ She ran a hand over the flat surface of her abdomen, drawing attention to her body. The gesture was innocent of provocation and yet it concentrated his mind totally on her slender waist, the gentle flare of her hips. ‘It hides nothing, comprehensively proving that you were speaking the plain, unvarnished truth when you told my mother that I’m not pregnant.’
‘What? Oh, right.’ He forced himself to concentrate. ‘You said a dual purpose?’
‘There is nothing to distract from this.’ She held up her left hand and moved it so that the diamonds flashed in a beam of sunlight. ‘As far as the outside world is concerned there’s nothing more convincing of a man’s sincerity than his generosity with pure carbon.’ The doorbell sounded again but he didn’t move. ‘I don’t think they’re going away, Mark,’ she prompted. Still he didn’t move. ‘You’re really going to have to open the door.’
‘I can’t fool you, can I?’ He stretched out his hand. ‘You know I’m scared to death. Will you hold my hand?’
‘Like this?’ She placed her fingers on his.
‘No, I think we should make it really convincing.’ And he tightened his grip and pulled her close, then put his arm around her before throwing open the door.
Pressed against Mark’s freshly ironed shirt, bombarded with the shock of his body hard against hers, an elusive hint of aftershave, the warmth of his hand keeping her close, Jane had to struggle for breath. ‘Mum, Dad…this is Mark…’