A Scandalous Engagement. CATHY WILLIAMS

hours after the phone call, Jade had completely forgotten the plumber.

      She was still at the table in the kitchen, the only room in the house where disorder was allowed because there were no priceless furnishings that could be accidentally damaged, her slim fingers skimming over the paper in front of her as she experimented with various layouts for a children’s book. She was becoming more confident by the day. It had made no difference that she had studied art at college for two years after leaving school. All that had been years ago, and the first time she had re-entered the art school in London she had been as nervous as if she had never glimpsed the inside of one in her life before. She had stared at pastels and paintbrushes and cartridge paper with the fear of someone suddenly crippled by stage fright. But time was beginning to do its thing. Time and the talent which she had thought had been abandoned for ever by the wayside when all her dreams had turned sour.

      She sat back, frowning, and gazed at what she had accomplished over the past few days. The illustrations were lively, but they lacked detail. No matter. She would go back over them and painstakingly begin to put the detail in. It was the bit she loved most. The loving strokes that turned the sketches into the finely etched drawings which she would then paint over in watercolour. She bent her head so that her shoulder-length buttermilk-blonde hair dipped across her face and was raising her hand to begin her work when the doorbell went.

      For half a minute she chose to ignore it, but when the ringing turned into banging she distantly remembered the wretched plumber and reluctantly dropped her pencil and walked to the front door.

      Of course the damned man would choose this very minute to pay his visit. Well ahead of the time he had given them. Wasn’t that just typical? Jade thought irritably, gritting her teeth together. Hadn’t she said that they operated in another hemisphere when it came to time?

      ‘All right!’ she yelled, when one bang threatened to bring the door down. Whoever was hammering on the door was certainly no small, retiring type. ‘I’m coming!’

      She worked her way through the three locks and yanked open the door, scowling in anticipation of the brute on the other side. Her chocolate-brown eyes were confronted by a chest and, as they quickly travelled upwards, by the most powerfully impressive man she had ever set eyes on before in her life.

      He was swarthy, and something about the set of his features and the angular planes of his face lifted him from the merely handsome into the realm of dangerously sensual. His thick hair was very dark, almost black, and in contrast his blue eyes were the ice-blue colour of the sky in winter. She felt an instant and fleeting jolt of unaccustomed awareness surge through her like a sudden electric shock, and she almost took a step backwards, surprised and unsettled by her reaction.

      She was still scowling furiously as she met his eyes, though, and was incensed to see that he was scowling back at her. The nerve! So plumbers were in short supply, but who did this one think he was?

      She also noted, in passing, that he was not dressed in plumber’s overalls. Not unless plumber’s garb in London ran along the lines of a trench coat with cream-coloured wool jumper and khaki trousers. Good grief. She only hoped that he hadn’t come out to inspect the site and was considering sending in one of his chaps at a later date. Last seen, the leak in Andy’s bedroom had been dripping slowly but persistently into a saucepan which they had strategically placed underneath and had shown no signs of letting up.

      ‘Good of you to answer the door,’ the man said coldly. ‘Didn’t you hear the doorbell first time around?’

      Jade was almost too angry to speak coherently. She stuck her hand on one slim hip and gave him a withering look which failed to do the trick.

      ‘You’re early,’ she said, through gritted teeth. ‘And I was busy in the kitchen.’

      ‘I’m early?’ For a second the scowl disappeared, replaced by a look of astonishment which only managed to make him look more aggressively good-looking, then he was scowling again, this time with somewhat more insolence, allowing his eyes to rake over her and making no attempt to conceal the fact.

      Jade abruptly turned away. This was the last thing she was in line for. A lecherous plumber with the manners of a warthog and enough of an over-sized ego to consider himself above overalls and tool kit.

      ‘You’d better come in,’ she said, not that he was standing on ceremony by waiting outside. Oh, no, he was stepping right through the front door, wet shoes and all. ‘And wipe your feet,’ she ordered. ‘You’re not dripping mud into this house. In fact, you might as well take your shoes off and leave them by the door.’ She gave his shoes a scathing look and was frustrated but not surprised to see that they were as out of character as the rest of his outfit. She was no connoisseur of men’s shoes, but these didn’t look as though they had spent their lifetime being dragged through mud.

      ‘Just exactly who are you?’ he asked, looking at her narrowly and not, she noticed, removing his shoes.

      ‘Jade Summers,’ Jade replied, bristling. ‘And in case the name doesn’t ring a bell, I’m the person you’ve come to see about this plumbing job.’ She looked him squarely in the face, which necessitated her straining her neck upwards because frankly, to her five foot six, the man was a hulking giant.

      ‘Plumbing job.’ He continued to stare at her, then he stroked his chin thoughtfully with one finger.

      ‘Ah! So you remember, do you?’ she said sarcastically. ‘Andy, Mr Greene, got in touch with you last night to come and mend a leak?’

      ‘A leak…’

      ‘Would you mind not repeating everything I say?’ She flashed him another of her specialty cold, quenching smiles which, again, had no effect. ‘And I’m beginning to doubt whether you’re competent to handle the job, Mr…’ He inclined his head to one side while she tried to rack her brains for the name Andy had tossed at her at eleven-thirty the night before. ‘Mr Wilkins. You’re hardly dressed appropriately, and you don’t seem to know anything about leaks. Shouldn’t you be asking a few pertinent questions by now? Like Where exactly is your leak, madam? Or Perhaps you’d care to wait while I just fetch my tools?’ She folded her arms and looked at him with narrow-eyed suspicion. ‘I take it you are a qualified plumber…?’

      ‘I have lots of qualifications,’ the man replied coolly, outstaring her so that she was forced to look away.

      ‘Good.’ She knew he had. Andy had randomly picked one from the Yellow Pages with the biggest advertising space and she vaguely recalled seeing a few letters here and there after his name. ‘In that case…’ She eyed the trench coat. ‘Maybe you’d like to divest yourself of your coat and follow me upstairs.’

      ‘Divest? That’s a complicated word for… I beg your pardon. I got the name, but not what your position is here…’

      He didn’t sound like a plumber either. Not that she had any idea what plumbers sounded like, since she had never, fortunately, had to cross paths with one. This specimen was obviously a university-educated one, hence the arrogance.

      ‘That’s because I didn’t mention it, and it’s none of your business anyway. You just need to know that I’m in charge.’ She couldn’t believe she had just said that. Firm she could be, and had had to be for years, working as personal assistant, first of all, then upward bound until she had virtually been all but running the small company she had worked for ever since she’d moved to London two and a half years previously. But tyrannical? Never in a million years.

      But what other way to go was there in this situation? Whether this Wilkins man was the boss of his own company or merely an employee with an over-inflated sense of himself, he needed a bit of discipline.

      ‘Follow me,’ she ordered, looking at his stylish and, more ominously, clean clothes in a jaundiced way. She would give him the benefit of the doubt, but if he had come prepared to fix a leaking ceiling, then she would eat her hat. If she’d possessed one. And there was no point asking her to lead him to the nearest spanner, or whatever tools he needed, because she had no idea where she would find any in the house, and she