A Convenient Proposal

by Helen Brooks

  She sat up abruptly, brushing back her mass of silky red hair with an impatient hand. Last night, when he had sat beside her on one of Marion's cosy two-seater sofas after dinner, his hard thigh pressed close to hers and his arm stretched out casually at the back of her, which brought him even closer, she had decided that once Christmas was over she would tell him the deal was off.

  She hugged her knees, her azure-blue gaze narrowed across the room. There might be women out there who could treat Quinn Ellington in a buddy-buddy fashion— although she doubted it—but she wasn't one of them. Whenever she was with him she felt such a see-saw of emotions she didn't recognise herself. Awkward, elated, unwanted, cherished, gauche or shamefully wanton! The list was endless and each one contradictory. She had never felt any of this with Harper.

  She had been happy with Harper, happy and comfortable. There had been none of these exhausting swings of emotion that left her confused and miserable each time Quinn left. Harper hadn't disturbed something deep inside like Quinn did.

  She paused abruptly in her thinking, her stomach churning faintly as though her mind was trying to tell her something her heart didn't want to hear. Her brow wrinkled and she dismissed the unease firmly. The difference was because Harper had been her fiancé and Quinn was— Well, she didn't know what he was exactly, she admitted ruefully. Boyfriend? Definitely not, by his own volition. Companion? Certainly the most disconcerting one she had ever had. Friend? No, she couldn't look on Quinn as a friend, whatever he said. Friends didn't disturb your sleep pattern and send you half crazy.

  'Enough, Candy Grey.' She spoke out loud into the room and then wagged her head lugubriously at herself. He'd got her talking to herself now, first sign of madness! Yes, she would definitely call off this ridiculous farce once Christmas was over. She had known Quinn for two months, and in that time she had come to realise he was a highly discriminating and intelligent individual on top of everything else. He would understand the game had gone on long enough, but just in case he was put out at all she wouldn't rock the boat before the holiday was over. She owed him a pleasant and relaxed Christmas.

  Candy worked for the rest of the day. She had finished the painting Quinn had admired some two weeks before and had decided to do a series of snow scenes which could either be sold as a collection or individually. It was warm and snug in the cottage, with the fire sending red and gold flames flickering cosily up the chimney and the cats playing at her feet, but there had been the smell of snow in the air when she had fetched more logs and coal from the potting shed earlier. The sky was low and heavy with it, she thought about four in the afternoon, when she peered out of the cottage window as the light began to fail rapidly. It looked as if all the forecasts of a white Christmas were going to come true.

  It was just as the first fat white flakes began to fall from the laden sky some twenty minutes later that she heard Quinn's Discovery in the lane outside the cottage, and she raised her head from cleaning her paints in surprise. As far as she knew Quinn had been going to pick her and the cats up at ten in the morning. Whatever was he doing here now? Had he come to tell her the arrangement was off for some reason?

  She refused to accept the bitter pang of disappointment which accompanied the thought and instead walked to the door, opening it just as Quinn reached the doorstep.

  'Hi.' Quinn's flagrant masculinity was very pronounced today, with the black denim jeans and bulky waist-length black leather jacket he was wearing, and the word came out breathlessly, although she did better with, 'Don't tell me. The local animal population has decided they need you more than me tomorrow?' as she forced a bright smile.

  He smiled in return—a warm and fascinatingly sexy smile, Candy thought a touch resentfully—as he said, 'Not at all. May I come in?'

  'Oh, yes, of course, come in. I was just going to make a coffee,' she added quickly, 'would you like one?'

  'Would a drowning man refuse a helping hand?'

  'Here, help yourself.' She passed him the tin of chocolate chip cookies across the breakfast bar as Quinn seated himself on one of the high stools on the sitting room side of the bar, and after switching on the kettle and spooning coffee into two china mugs she turned to face him again. 'Hard day?' she asked carefully.

  'Long day.' He grimaced. 'I was called out to Breedon's farm at two in the morning and haven't been to bed since. Old man Breedon has this big four-year-old chestnut Beautiful beast of a horse, but like many highly-strung animals he has his likes and dislikes, and one of the latter is needles.'

  'And you had to…?'

  'Inject him, yes. He'd managed to rip his shoulder on a loose piece of wood in his stable. Breedon had been out on some sort of shindig with the local golf fraternity and looked in on the horse before he went to bed. He'd had a skinful—Breedon, not the chestnut,' he added, with a grin that made her knees go weak, 'and in his intoxicated state decided he couldn't wait until a more civilised hour to call out the vet Anyway, once I'd done the job he was so grateful he decided I had to sample a taste of some old malt whisky he'd got, and then we sat before the fire talking for hours, and his wife is always up early and does a full cooked breakfast…'

  'A few hours' sleep would have done you more good.'

  'I hate getting into a cold bed at some unearthly hour in the morning when I've been out,' he said matter-of-factly as he bit into another cookie after shrugging off the leather jacket.

  Of course. He'd probably be remembering what it had been like when his wife was alive to welcome him back into her arms. The shaft of pain was as sharp as it was unexpected, and it caused her voice to be abrupt as she said, 'Is this a social call, or was there something specific you wanted to see me about?'

  'Both.'

  Clear as mud! But then every moment with Quinn was like this, so perhaps she shouldn't expect anything different? Candy asked herself silently. She waited until he had finished the biscuit and then said, 'Well?' before he reached for another.

  'You've heard the forecast?' He nodded towards the window as he spoke, through which they could see the snow coming down in a thick white mantle now.

  'Yes?'

  'They say we're in for a packet, so I was thinking…' He paused, taking a long gulp of the coffee she had just handed him, 'I was thinking it would be easier all round if you came tonight and planned to stay for a couple of days. This lane isn't great at the best of times, but after a heavy fall of snow it's plain murder.'

  'Stayed?' She stared at him blankly. 'With you, do you mean?'

  'No, with the village postman,' he returned drily. 'Of course with me. Who else?'

  She could think of at least a hundred people she would prefer to stay with rather than Quinn, and what would people think? She spoke the last out loud as she said, 'I couldn't possibly, Quinn. People would assume…'

  'Yes?' He surveyed her over the rim of his mug, his black eyes glittering. 'What would people assume?'

  'That we were, well, sleeping together,' she said uneasily.

  'Would that be so terrible?' he murmured cryptically. 'We are supposed to be in a relationship, don't forget.'

  Right, she had had just about enough of this, Candy thought militantly. The cheek of the man was colossal. 'But we aren't, are we?' she bit back tightly. 'And in spite of this modern age in which we live I don't particularly want my reputation to be—' She stopped abruptly.

  'What?' he asked with genuine bewilderment.

  'Sullied.'

  'Sullied?' He was eyeing her now as though she was mad. 'What on earth are you talking about, Candy? People don't care a jot about that sort of thing these days.'

  'I do.' She had gone very white but she was looking straight into his irritable face. 'I do, Quinn.'

  'I don't believe I am hearing this,' he rasped exasperatedly. 'You'll be telling me next you don't believe in sex before marriage!' And then, at the look on her face, 'Good grief, you don't, do you?'

  To hide her acute embarrassment and the surge of pain sweeping through her Candy gla
red at him, her eyes stormy and dark as she spat, 'What I believe and don't believe is nothing at all to do with you.'

  'I disagree.'

  'Tough!'

  'Now look here, Candy—'

  And then she knew she was going to lose it, big time. It was the superior look on his handsome face, the almost condescending stance he was taking. It was too much for Candy's over-sensitised nerves.

  'You have no idea—no idea at all, do you?' she bit out with savage fury. 'I had to live with the results of what an immoral lifestyle can do to someone.'

  'Immoral?' He stiffened, his face darkening. 'I'm not talking about immorality for crying out loud.'

  'That all depends on how you look at it,' she hissed furiously. 'My grandmother slept with a whole string of boyfriends before she married my grandfather, and then they had only been together for a short while before she ran off to Canada with his best friend when she realised she had fallen pregnant with the other man's child—my mother. He stayed around for a few months but he was soon gone, and then it was open house. Any man, any time! When Xavier was born my grandmother didn't have a clue who the father was and I don't think she even cared either. It was my mother who brought him up, and then when she was fourteen some drunken pig my grandmother had brought back to the house raped her. She died nine months later, bringing me into the world.'

  'Candy, stop this.' Quinn was appalled; not by what she was revealing but by the look of raw pain on her face.

  'Our name was notorious in the town where we lived.' Candy knew she ought to stop, but no power on earth could have prevented her from spilling it all. 'I was always known as the granddaughter of the Grey woman, even after Xavier had made his first million and moved us to the sort of place he had only dreamt of as a child living in dirt and squalor. Give a dog a bad name and it's kinder to hang him. That's what I learnt.'

  'Not all people are like that, Candy.'

  'I made up my mind as a teenager, when the first boyfriend to take me out groped me in the back of his car thinking I was like my grandmother, that I would never let any man treat me like that again,' Candy raged. 'He got nasty when I said no, and he said bad things, awful things, about my mother too. No one believed she had been raped, or if they did it was the general opinion she must have asked for it, being my grandmother's daughter.'

  'But your fiancé wasn't like that, surely?' Quinn asked quietly. He wanted to go and comfort her, to take her in his arms and soothe the desperate pain and anguish, but he knew it would be the wrong time for any physical contact And he was experiencing his own emotional upheaval too. It bothered him more than he would have thought possible that she had been hurt like this.

  'Harper?' It was so bitter it made him flinch. 'Oh, Harper was a sweetheart all right. He never put a foot wrong—or a hand,' she added with acidic sarcasm. 'He respected me; he wanted to cherish and look after me; he wanted me for his wife. What he really wanted was a free meal ticket for the rest of his life! He knew Xavier thought the world of me and it was common knowledge, before Xavier met Essie, that he was against marriage. Harper thought I would get it all one day.'

  'But he didn't see why he should miss out until our wedding night and so he played around, often, but he got caught with one of his affairs—the woman got pregnant That was the news he gave me the night of the crash, and it was through shouting at me, because I wouldn't go back on my decision that we were finished, that he didn't notice the lorry that had jackknifed across the road until it was too late. He swerved, went off the road, and the rest—as they say—is history.'

  Quinn swore, softly but with such intensity that it jerked Candy out of the near hysteria into trembling silence.

  'I'm sorry, Candy.' His voice was deep and sincere and carried a pain all of its own. 'I'm sorry you met such a low-down rat when you were too young to recognise him for what he was, and I'm sorry he broke your heart. But don't let him break your inner strength.'

  'I won't.' Her lower lip was wobbling but she was determined she wasn't going to cry as she looked back at him. She couldn't believe she had told him the one thing she had sworn never to tell a living soul, and she would have given anything to take it back now the storm of rage and bitterness had blown itself out. He had told her he didn't want to get involved with her, he had made it so plain she would never have any part in his life beyond that of temporary 'friend', and here she had blurted out her worst humiliation and pain.

  'Look, I should have told you straight off. My parents are at my house.' Quinn had called Harper a rat but he was acknowledging if there were any prizes going in that area he'd be first in line. Why hadn't he told her straight away that they wouldn't be alone? he asked himself, already knowing the answer but disliking the bitter taste it left on his tongue. Because she had annoyed him with her obvious distaste at the possibility people might assume their relationship was a serious one, serious enough for her to stay with him for a few days anyway. Pride, stinking male pride, he told himself silently, and the result was he had damn near broken her. But he just hadn't known she was so damaged.

  'Your parents?' She was openly astonished and he couldn't blame her. 'You mean they are staying with you?'

  'Just for a couple of days.' He had never felt such a heel. 'So if you want to come no one would think anything.'

  'But…' She didn't understand any of this. 'Did you know they were coming?' she asked shakily. What was he thinking? What could she say? She had just made the biggest fool of herself ever, revealed all there was to know about herself, including—here she wanted to shut her eyes and sink through the floor—that she was a virgin, and all the time his parents had been sitting back at the practice?

  'Yes, I knew they were coming.'

  'Why didn't you tell me?' she asked weakly. 'Was it a last-minute thing?'

  'No, they've been coming for weeks, but I thought if I told you you would make some excuse not to come, and— and I didn't want you spending Christmas alone.'

  Xavier and Essie. The rage that swept through her now was white-hot, and made the anger of a few minutes before seem mild in comparison. They had put pressure on him, no doubt, with this nursemaiding notion that he had to keep an eye on her. It was this very thing that had caused all the trouble in the first place!

  She drew herself up now, moving away from the cupboard against which she had been leaning and walking through into the sitting room before turning to face him. 'Quinn, I wouldn't spend Christmas with you if you were the last man on earth,' she said bitterly. Pity he could keep; she didn't want it!

  'Wrong.' His eyes had narrowed as he in his turn had moved to stand in front of her, but otherwise his expression had remained exactly the same. 'You are coming.'

  'Over my dead body.'

  'Don't be childish.' The slanting of her vivid blue eyes told him that was the wrong tack to take, but he wasn't prepared for her hand to come shooting out and hit him hard across the face.

  'Get out' She had gone very white. 'Now.' And then she horrified them both by bursting into tears.

  Quite how she found herself sitting on his lap in the chair as she wailed against the charcoal silk of his shirt Candy didn't know, and at first it didn't matter. She was too devastated, too shaken by the enormity of the whole scene which had erupted, and especially her actually having had the temerity to strike Quinn, to care, but then, after a few minutes of wild sobbing, she became disturbingly aware of hard muscled flesh beneath the silk, and the soothing, guttural sounds coming from his throat.

  He was wearing the clean, sharp aftershave she had smelt before, and it was undeniably sexy. He was undeniably sexy. And the chain reaction his closeness was setting off in her body had nothing to do with comfort and friendship and all to do with something much more base and carnal.

  She swallowed hard, forcing the hiccuping sobs to quieten as she raised her head from his shoulder. I've made your shirt wet' She kept her eyes on the damp patch just under his shoulder on his chest as she spoke; she didn't dare to look at him.
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br />   'It will dry.' His voice was husky, but as she rose unsteadily to her feet he made no attempt to stop her. Quinn Ellington was coping with feelings new to him, savage, threatening feelings, and they were as emotional as they were physical. He wanted this woman. Physically he wanted her more than he had ever wanted any other woman in his life, and that included Laura. Laura had fallen into his hands like a ripe peach, and at the time he had been arrogant enough to expect it; from puberty he had found the female sex only too willing to jump into his bed.

  He had never waited for a woman before, but now he knew that was what he had been doing from day one with Candy. He had pushed the knowledge down deep somewhere, burying it under the guise of getting to know her, but really he had been biding his time. He wanted her in his bed, that was the truth of it, but she was Essie's hurt fledgling, and as such he had told himself she needed time to recover. And then…well, she would be just like all the others, of course. Fool.

  He watched her as she walked across the room with a muttered remark about washing her face, and then she had gone upstairs and he was alone.

  After all she had revealed he couldn't take her into his bed knowing that in a few months they would be going their separate ways. She was too vulnerable, too insecure after her miserable childhood and painful adolescence to do that.

  He rose from the chair; the closeness of her, the scent of her skin and the soft silk of her hair had made him rock-hard and he needed to cool down.

  Tabitha wound round his legs as he walked to the door and he bent, briefly stroking the cat and Alfie, who had darted quickly after his mother, before opening the door and stepping outside into the white, feather-soft snow-filled night The snow was falling thickly now, already the ground was a pale, sparkling carpet, and he stood outside drawing in cleansing lungfuls of the bitingly cold air before walking over to the Discovery and hauling the cat carriers he had brought from the surgery out of the back of the big vehicle.