by Betty Neels
She wandered along, staring into the shops, stopping at a coffee bar, where she had hard work in repelling the advances of a cheerful young man who was apparently much taken with her looks. He told her so, in English, after she had informed him coldly that she couldn’t understand Dutch. It took determination to shake him off. Phoebe plunged into Vroom and Dreesman, at the bottom of the Kalverstraat, going through its departments without seeing anything of them. By now they would be back in Delft. She pictured them sitting in his lovely house, discussing her; Maureen at her most charming, cleverly putting spokes in Paul’s small, futile wheel. Well, it wasn’t her business any more, only before she left Delft, she would go and see Mijnheer van Vliet and make sure that he did something about Rex—perhaps he could tell Lucius once she had gone—in the nicest possible way, of course.
Phoebe wandered on again and in company with dozens of other women, lunched in the balcony restaurant of the Bijenkorf. It was a nice store, she decided, so she would spend an hour or so exploring its departments, have tea, and then catch a train. It wouldn’t matter if she went to bed early; heaven knew she was tired enough.
She was in the kitchenware department, studying a colourful display of saucepans, when she became aware that Lucius was standing beside her, so close that the sleeve of his jacket brushed her arm. A tide of feeling rushed over her; it was ridiculous that his presence beside her should have the power to melt all her carefully built-up resentment, her unhappiness even; to give her an overwhelming desire to cast herself into his arms, whatever he thought of her. Unable to bear it a moment longer, she snatched up a saucepan and studied it with all the interest of a good housewife on the lookout for a bargain. ‘Go away!’ she said fiercely.
She had lifted the lid and was peering inside when Lucius took it from her with the utmost gentleness and put it down.
‘Phoebe, we must talk.’ His voice was harsh and urgent.
She wasn’t a girl to give in at the drop of a hat. She picked up a small steel object and gave it her full attention. He took that from her too. ‘A hard-boiled egg slicer,’ he remarked blandly. ‘I imagine it to be a useful kitchen tool.’
‘Hard-boiled eggs should be sliced by hand,’ Phoebe snapped, aware that the conversation, such as it was, was leading them nowhere.
‘Indeed? I’m sure you are right.’ She thought she detected laughter in his voice now. ‘May we talk?’
‘No,’ said Phoebe coldly. ‘I’ve nothing to say to you.’
‘Good, for I have a great deal to say to you.’
‘I shan’t listen,’ she told him defiantly, and shot him a furious glance.
‘Yes, you shall listen, my darling heart. I was angry this morning …’
Her mind registered the glorious fact that he had called her his darling heart even while she said in a voice squeaky with indignation: ‘Angry? You wanted to wring my neck!’
‘Your lovely neck,’ he corrected her, ‘and now listen to me so that you will understand why I was angry. When I got home and found Maureen’s note and heard what she had to say on the telephone, I lost my temper—I don’t often do that, Phoebe, but you see while I had been in England I had dreamed—oh, a great many dreams—of you, of course, and then when Maureen told me that you had made it up with this young doctor in England and pointed out that you were so very English and I was so very Dutch—and wrapped up in my work, and perhaps a little old—it seemed to me that I had dreamed too much.’ He turned to look at her. ‘It was like coming back to a nightmare—you gone, Paul gone. I could think of nothing else, and then I found you and I remembered the young doctor.’
‘And you wanted to wring my neck—well, of all the …!’ She paused: a saleswoman, a hawk-eyed, bustling woman, was peering at them from the other side of the saucepans, her dark eyes suspicious. She gave Phoebe a sharp glance and spoke to Lucius, who spoke to her in a smooth voice and actually made her laugh. When she had gone, Phoebe demanded:
‘What did you say?’
‘She suspected us of being shoplifters, I imagine. I told her that as a young wife, setting up house, you needed time to decide upon your purchases.’
Phoebe chuckled, quite forgetting that they were in the middle of a quarrel. ‘Oh, Lucius, how could you? Now I’ll have to buy something.’
‘Buy anything you wish, my darling, only let me have my say. You see, Paul told me everything on the way back to Delft. I never knew, never even guessed—why didn’t you tell me? I can understand why Paul was afraid to tell me, but you—surely you could have said?’
She stared hard at a shelf loaded with frying pans, blinking back sudden tears. ‘Maureen said that she was going to marry you and I didn’t know if—if you loved her, so I couldn’t say anything, could I?’ She sniffed and looked at him and away again. ‘Maureen said …’ she began again.
‘My dearest dear, have we not had enough of Maureen? You seem obsessed by her, which I assure you I am not. She was Paul’s governess, that was all. I found her good at the job. I thought, heaven help me, that he liked her, that she was kind to him—that was why I allowed her to do much as she wished. It seemed to me that his happiness was more important than the unwelcome visitors she sometimes invited into my house, but once and for all, my darling, I must tell you that never once did I contemplate marrying her.’
He turned her round to face him and said gravely: ‘I may be absent-minded and perhaps a little blind to what is going on around me, but there are some things of which I am very sure—my love for you, Phoebe; you are my life and my future. Do you suppose you could surmount the difficulties of marrying a Dutchman and bear with my occasional lapses of memory? Will you marry me, my darling?’
‘How do you know I’m not going to marry Jack?’
‘Paul told me.’
She leaned back a little against his arm and stared up into his face. ‘But he doesn’t know anything about him.’
‘Naturally not, but you told Paul that you wanted to marry me.’
She drew an indignant breath. ‘Well, really—the little horror! Just wait until I see him!’
She felt Lucius shake with silent laughter. ‘You won’t get a word in edgeways, my dearest. He was so excited when I told him that I was coming back to fetch you. He babbled about kittens and mice, he even offered, once he has a cat or so to keep Rex company, to welcome a brother or sister into the family.’
‘Oh, Lucius, darling Lucius, I’ll marry you.’ His arms tightened around her, his face was very close, but she held him away. ‘No—no, just a minute, Lucius, I know we’re not going to talk about Maureen any more, but where is she—did you see her—I …’
‘Gone. I had a talk with her when we got back, and she left the house for good, my darling. And now don’t interrupt me again.’
‘You can’t—not here—people,’ said Phoebe. He kissed her silent, and when presently she had her breath back and began: ‘I don’t think …’ he said comfortably: ‘Quite right, my darling, there is no need,’ and kissed her again.
In the car on the way to Delft she said shyly: ‘I don’t know anything about you, Lucius. Anna showed me some photos of you—have you a family?’
‘A sister,’ he told her, ‘married to a Norwegian, a brother living in Canada. My parents are visiting him.’
‘Oh—they live here, in Holland?’
‘In Friesland—Father is a doctor too. They’ll love you, my Phoebe.’
‘I hope so. When will they be back?’
‘Not for some months. We shall be an old married couple by then.’ He drew up before his house and turned to smile at her. ‘I told you that I had had dreams while I was in England; they seemed so real that I set about the business of getting a special licence. We can be married very soon, Phoebe.’
She smiled slowly. ‘Perhaps that would be a good idea—if we don’t get married quickly you might forget.’
They were standing outside the door when she asked: ‘Lucius, when we met—you know, in England—you wrote something in your no
tebook and you looked at me. What was it?’
For answer he took the little leather-bound book from a pocket, leafed through it, found what he sought and handed it to her. The writing was in Dutch, in his neat, rather spidery hand. Phoebe had picked up quite a vocabulary by now, so had little difficulty in reading it.
‘A darling English girl,’ she read aloud slowly. ‘I shall marry her.’
She closed the book gently and looked up into his face, his kind and loving face, his blue eyes very clear and steady. They would be very happy, she was quite sure of that. She said softly: ‘Oh, Lucius, I do love you,’ and saw the answer in his eyes before he turned away to unlock the door.
Harlequin®
EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT
Billionaire Mitcham Ochoa is in need of a fiancée… Enter his PA, Lila Ross! Lila’s had a crush on her boss since day one…but is pretending to be his fiancÉe one step too far?
Read on for a sneak preview of
THE BOSS’S FAKE FIANCÉE
Mitch sat on the seat across the aisle and buckled in. Pulling a sheet of paper from the breast pocket of his suit jacket, he swiveled his chair to face her and said, “Riccardo came up with this last night.”
She glanced around as if confused. “Where is Riccardo?”
“He took a commercial flight so he could get there ahead of us to pave the way for our story. He’s going to tell everyone I’m engaged. He’s going to pretend to have let it slip and tell my mom and Nanna they have to behave as if they don’t know because I wanted to surprise them.”
Lila frowned. “That’s weird.”
“No. It adds authenticity to the story. Makes it more believable.”
“Ah.”
That one syllable gave him a funny feeling that tightened his shoulders and made his eyes narrow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
She laughed. “It just meant I understood.” She laughed again. “You’re cranky in real life.”
“Yeah, well, you’re…” She was a knockout in real life. How had he not noticed this? He couldn’t remember a damned thing she’d worn to work, which meant it had to be nondescript—nothing worth remembering. Her hair had always been in those odd chopstick things. And her glasses? Thick as Coke bottles.
“You’re different too.” He finished his thought with a bunch of lame words that didn’t come out as much of a comeback.
And that was another thing. When had she gotten so sassy?
He opened the folded sheet of paper. “Riccardo decided that we should stick with the fact that you’re my assistant.” He glanced up and saw her watching him intently, clearly wanting to get her part down so she could play it. He relaxed a bit, though it did send an unexpected zing through him that she’d taken off the sunglasses. She must be wearing contacts on her smoke-gray eyes. Very sexy smoke-gray eyes that tilted up at the corners and gave her an exotic look.
He cleared his throat. “Anyway, the whole thing started with a long chat one night when we were working late.”
She caught his gaze. “We never chatted.”
“Yeah, I know.” And he suddenly felt sorry that they hadn’t. “But this is make-believe, remember?”
She smiled slightly and nodded.
Don’t miss
THE BOSS’S FAKE FIANCÉE
by Susan Meier
Available August 2017
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Copyright ©2017 Susan Meier
ISBN-13: 9781488084669
THREE FOR A WEDDING
Copyright © 1973 by Betty Neels
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