Her Hand in Marriage. Jessica Steele

so long, had woken up with a vengeance, clearly not wanting her daughter’s ‘escort’ to think her offspring had spent years in total idleness. ‘I was—very—down, and would have been lost without Rom,’ she went on to explain.

      Romillie had never heard her mother talk like this, and, aware that Naylor’s glance had switched from her mother and on to her, started to feel a little embarrassed. ‘Mum, please,’ she protested.

      ‘It’s true, darling,’ Eleanor said affectionately. ‘You’ve had to be strong for both of us.’

      Thankfully Lewis entered the conversation just then, to gently enquire, ‘How are you progressing now, Eleanor?’

      ‘Getting there,’ she replied, favouring him with a warm smile. ‘With my daughter’s help, I’m getting there. Romillie has taken this job well below her capabilities because it’s near enough to home that she can return in her lunch hour—or be with me inside fifteen minutes if I start to get a little bit panicky.’

      Romillie by that time was feeling dreadfully torn—as well as embarrassed. On the one hand it was so good to hear her mother—if a little hesitantly—opening up. But on the other, recalling how only last Wednesday her parent had wondered if she had been put off men, Romillie could not help but think was she now trying to show Naylor, lest Romillie show him her ‘negative’ side, that her daughter really did have a caring, positive side. Oh, grief!

      But she did not believe for a moment that Naylor was aware of her embarrassment, or was endeavouring to take the attention off her when, quite pleasantly he glanced over to her mother and enquired, ‘And how about your own work, Eleanor?’

      ‘I hadn’t picked up my brushes in I don’t know how long, but I’ve recently done a few small pieces, nothing major,’ she responded, and Romillie drew a relieved breath to have the limelight taken off her. ‘But I do believe I’m getting the itch to get back to it again,’ her mother, to Romillie’s delight, stated.

      ‘You wouldn’t like to make a portrait of me your first assignment, I suppose?’ Lewis asked. And, when Eleanor turned to him as if ready to refuse, ‘Mind, you’d have to make me look good,’ he added, and laughed with Eleanor when she laughed. And Lewis explained, ‘Apparently all past chairmen have to be hanged in the boardroom. Many say not before time,’ he joked.

      All in all, given that she had been overwhelmingly embarrassed by her mother singing her praises, Romillie thought the evening had been most successful. Her mother had smiled and laughed with Lewis, and in fact, as Romillie sat beside Naylor Cardell on the journey home, she could not remember the last time she had seen her mother so buoyant.

      Naylor pulled his car up on the drive of her home, and out of courtesy both men got out of the car. The evening, in Romillie’s view, should have ended there. So she did not thank Naylor Cardell when he chose to extend it. Though it was plain that his interest was not in her—not that she wanted it to be, for heaven’s sake—because it was to her mother that he addressed his question.

      ‘I wonder, Eleanor,’ he said as the four of them stood on the drive, ‘if you would be kind enough to show me some of your work?’

      She looked about to politely turn down the request. Then she looked from him to her daughter, and Romillie had to endure that feeling of embarrassment again. For it seemed to her that while it might appear obvious to anyone else that since—if she accepted—her mother had been commissioned to paint a portrait of his company’s chairman, it was likely someone on the board would want to see something of her work, Romillie saw it differently. From her mother’s point of view one very agreeable man was taking an interest in her man-wary daughter. It was time for a mother to wake up and do something about it. In this small case—since Naylor obviously wanted to prolong the evening—agree.

      ‘I haven’t got very much I can show you in the way of work I used to do, but there are a few paintings scattered about in my studio—as well as several I didn’t want to sell. Come in,’ she invited. ‘My studio’s on the south-west facing side of the house.’

      As they went along the hall, pausing to study one rather lovely landscape Eleanor had painted many years previously, Romillie, very much needing to be on her own, decided she was not needed on this part of the tour.

      ‘I’ll make some coffee,’ she mumbled to anyone interested to hear, and headed for the kitchen.

      Had she hoped to have some peace from this situation that was more or less of her own making, she soon discovered it was not to be. She had not so much as lifted down the coffee jar when she heard a sound nearby, and turned her head to find that Naylor Cardell had joined her.

      ‘Want any help?’ he enquired, his good-looking face giving away nothing of what he was thinking or feeling.

      Romillie shook her head. ‘No thanks.’ She turned to face him, and releasing a pent-up breath, ‘We should never have done it,’ she stated flatly.

      ‘Oh, come on!’ Naylor argued. Though he conceded, ‘We probably wouldn’t have, had I not provoked you by calling you selfish. And for that I do apologise—’

      ‘Oh, grief, don’t!’ Romillie butted in to protest, remembering again the way her mother had been singing her praises. ‘I know we meant well by trying to get my mother and Lewis to get to know each other more outside the home—’ that, after all, had been what this ‘foursome’ had been about ‘—but now my mother thinks you and I are—um—interested in each other.’

      ‘A natural assumption, surely?’

      ‘She probably thinks you’ve sloped away specifically to see me.’

      ‘Given that our aim is to have Lewis and Eleanor break down a few walls, is that such a bad impression to give?’ he enquired urbanely.

      Romillie sighed. ‘It will be when I don’t see you again.’

      ‘Sorry to be obtuse,’ Naylor commented, seeming to fill their not so small kitchen, ‘but I can’t see what you’re getting at.’

      She thought him anything but obtuse. Indeed, to be in the position he was at Tritel Incorporated in his mid-thirties, showed he must be as sharp as a tack.

      Then she suddenly saw something else. ‘You knew I was embarrassed, didn’t you? At dinner, when my mother was busy setting you right about my selfish streak?’

      ‘It occurred to me you weren’t feeling too comfortable,’ he admitted.

      Romillie stared at him. Somehow she had never thought of him as sensitive. But he had to be to have picked up how she was feeling. Not only that, but in that sensitivity he had taken the conversation away from her and given her chance to recover by asking her mother about her work.

      ‘You’re nicer than I first thought,’ Romillie admitted slowly.

      ‘Steady,’ he warned. Theirs was not the sort of relationship where either had been complimentary to the other. But then he smiled, a most wonderful smile, and all of a sudden Romillie’s heart seemed to quicken up its beat.

      It was a totally new experience for her, and she looked away from him, feeling oddly tongue-tied. ‘I know my mother was only thinking of me,’ she said hurriedly when she found her voice. ‘But that’s purely because—’ Romillie came to an abrupt halt. Good heavens, Naylor Cardell might have shown himself to be nicer than she had thought, but there was no need to go overboard and tell him…

      ‘Because?’ Naylor pressed when she did not go on.

      ‘Nothing,’ she said. And then realised that the next chairman of Tritel Incorporated did not believe in ‘nothing’ answers.

      ‘So tell me,’ he insisted.

      ‘I’d better make a start on this coffee.’

      ‘Eleanor was only thinking of you when she was telling me how special you are because…?’

      Romillie looked at him, unsmiling. To hold out any longer