Borrowed Bachelor

‘But you said she’s going to get better.’

‘Sam will walk again. But there’ll probably be a limp. We won’t be able to do the dangerous kind of work we’re used to doing together.’

Rick reached over and topped up her glass and promptly changed the subject. ‘The people like you whose business involves weddings—the caterers, florists, photographers…Do you all form some kind of a cooperative? Recommend each other? That sort of thing?’

‘Oh—um—are you planning a wedding?’ Maddy stammered, still grappling with the startling realisation that, rather than harbouring a criminal, she was entertaining a celebrity.

‘No, not at all. But I thought maybe Sam should think about that line of work—some kind of functions photographer. Videos perhaps.’

‘Oh. I see,’ Maddy said quietly.

And she saw a lot more. It suddenly made complete sense why the taciturn Rick Lawson, who’d shunned her all week, had suddenly turned up on her doorstep. He was no more interested in ‘good neighbourly relations’ now than he had been on Monday.

That winning smile he’d beamed on her mere minutes ago had been a weapon—a weapon he frequently used in front of the camera. He could switch it on whenever he needed to win the hearts of viewers worldwide. And tonight he’d turned it on for her, because he wanted to appease his guilty conscience by finding a suitable career alternative for his partner. He was simply sussing her out as a possible link for Sam’s future employment.

And why she should be so utterly disappointed by that thought puzzled Maddy totally.

Rick stood up. ‘Why don’t you have the last of this wine while I wash the dishes?’

Startled, Maddy jumped to her feet. She hadn’t expected Rick Lawson to belong to the dish-washing variety of male. She’d hardly met a man who had. At home, her father had always had more important things to do than household chores and her brothers had helped him on the farm, leaving the kitchen to her mother and herself. More recently, while her fiancè had enjoyed her cooking on many occasions, she knew Byron would have had a blue fit if she’d so much as waved a tea towel at him.

‘You don’t need to wash up,’ she told Rick. ‘There are only a couple of plates and a pot.’

But he ignored her protests, gathered up the plates and headed for the kitchen. ‘I insist.’

Maddy followed him, clutching her wineglass. She leant against a cupboard and watched with interest as Rick flicked on the hot-water tap and squeezed some detergent into the sink. She had to admit that her interest was fuelled by more than simple curiosity about a man tackling a household chore. The muscles flexing in Rick’s shoulders and arms as he moved, the way detergent bubbles clung to the light hair on his strong forearms and the neat way his jeans outlined his behind were all points worthy of inspection.

She set down her drink, reached for a tea towel and furiously scrubbed at a plate. There was no point in wasting time contemplating Rick Lawson’s physique when the only interest he’d shown in her was as an employment agency for his girlfriend.

‘Do you have a pot-scrubber?’ he asked as he frowned at the baked-on dregs of beans sticking to the bottom of the saucepan.

‘Sure,’ Maddy mumbled, feeling ridiculously flustered and frantic. It was so weird to be sharing a domestic chore with a virtual stranger. ‘Under the sink. I’ll get it for you.’

He stepped slightly to one side so that she could rummage around in the cupboard. How could the scouring gear have vanished? It was always in a little plastic bucket at the front of the cupboard. On her haunches, she stuck her head deeper into the rather untidy jumble of cleaning gear.

At last she saw the scourer right at the back of the cupboard. As she reached for it, her phone chose to ring and Maddy automatically straightened. Her head hit the drainpipe. ‘Ouch!’ she wailed as she staggered backwards and fell against Rick’s legs.

‘Whoa,’ he chuckled, and his wet, soapy hands grasped her shoulders. ‘Are you OK?’

Maddy nodded and he helped her up while the phone continued its insistent ringing. ‘I should get that,’ she muttered. But she was too late. As she headed across the kitchen, her answering machine cut in and her caller’s voice was broadcast through the small flat.

‘Hello, Madeline. Surprise, surprise. It’s Byron.’

Maddy froze mid-step. Her heart thumped frantically and her chest tightened as if her childhood asthma had returned. She wanted to run to the phone and snatch it up, but her feet wouldn’t carry her quickly. She staggered across the kitchen as if she were fighting her way through dense forest. Byron? What on earth did he want?

She didn’t want to know.

But his message continued, his voice sounding a little thinner than she remembered. ‘I understand Cynthia has told you our news, Maddy. About our engagement. We’d really love you to do all the flowers for our wedding. Please give us a call. Same number. Bye.’

How long she stood there, staring at the answering machine, her hands clasped as if in prayer while her heart galloped a chaotic route around her rib cage, she couldn’t tell.

A discreet cough disturbed her wretched thoughts. Rick stood beside her.

‘You’re finished?’ she whispered.

‘I could well ask you the same question,’ he replied. ‘You look as if you’ve been totally finished—done in, done over. I take it that wasn’t good news?’

‘No.’ She tried to smile but somehow the muscles around her mouth wouldn’t cooperate. ‘It was—I mean—it—it’s just another job.’

‘Of course it isn’t just another job,’ he said, his voice all deep and gravelly. ‘You’re a really shocking shade of pale. You look like you’ve just had a close encounter with a vampire.’

She stared at him for a long moment. ‘In a way I have,’ she whispered, the aftershock of Byron’s bombshell still sending sickening waves shooting through her.

He guided her towards the sofa. ‘You need to sit down.’

Maddy slumped onto the sofa and Rick sat beside her, watching her carefully. ‘You don’t have to tell me about the vampire if you don’t want to,’ he said. ‘You should probably save it for your boyfriend. What time does he get back?’

‘Oh—um—not till late,’ she mumbled. She managed a weak smile. ‘Don’t worry about me, Rick. I know you don’t want to get embroiled in my personal problems.’

Rick eyed her shrewdly. ‘There’s no such animal, is there?’

‘What?’

‘This boyfriend. I’m no Sherlock Holmes, but there’s absolutely no evidence of a bloke in this flat. If he does exist, he must be the neatest fellow who ever walked this planet—and be very clever at slipping in and out of this place when no one’s around. I haven’t seen hide nor hair of him in a week.’

Maddy plucked at a loose thread in the fabric on her sofa. There was absolutely no point in trying to cover up any longer. ‘No,’ she sighed. ‘There’s no new boyfriend.’ Then she hastily added, ‘At the moment.’

‘You just wanted to shut up that woman in the shop the other day,’ Rick conceded. ‘She was one nasty piece of work.’

Maddy could have kissed Rick. It felt so good to realise he understood. He had read Cynthia like a book. ‘It was all I could think of on the spur of the moment,’ she admitted.

With lazy nonchalance, Rick settled himself lower on the sofa. ‘This Byron fellow who rang tonight is your ex-fiancè. Right?’

Maddy nodded. ‘He—well, he called our engagement off just six weeks ago. And now—he’s engaged again!’ As a fresh wave of anger surfaced, Maddy clenched her fists. ‘And he has the gall to ring up and ask me to do the flowers for his—for crying out loud—his new wedding! But the worst thing is, he’s marrying Cynthia Graham!’

Rick’s eyes widened and Maddy couldn’t help noticing that up close, and when he wasn’t scowling, they were very nice eyes—grey with unusual little flecks of vivid blue. ‘The woman in the shop?’

She nodded.

‘So you know the bride quite well?’

Bride? The word brought sudden, stinging tears to her eyes. Six weeks ago she had been dreaming of being a bride. They hadn’t quite set a date. Byron hadn’t wanted to commit himself to a definite time frame. There were so many things to consider, he’d said. But still she’d been dreaming of an elegant white gown and a happy country-style wedding at home on her parents’ farm.

‘Yes.’ Maddy hugged her folded arms across her chest and drew in an angry breath, which emerged seconds later as a long, frustrated sigh. ‘Since the eighth grade when I arrived at boarding school. I really don’t know why I hadn’t already expected this. Cynthia has always wanted everything I ever wanted.’ She outlined for Rick a potted history of Cynthia’s competitive endeavours over the past decade.

Rick slanted her a sardonic half-smile. ‘She sounds like a real honey.’

His sarcasm was like balm to her smarting wounds. ‘Oh, she’s a sweetie,’ Maddy agreed. ‘The only area where she couldn’t compete with me was music.’ Maddy couldn’t resist a tiny grin. ‘I’m no singing star, but Cynthia didn’t have a musical bone in her body. At university she auditioned for our college choir—after I was accepted, of course. But the conductor told her she should confine her vocal talents to the bathroom, but to ensure that it had been soundproofed first.’