The Last-Minute Marriage. Marion Lennox

right. To what do we owe this honour?’ He glanced at Peta and his wide smile was a welcome all by itself. ‘A lady. Of course. And a lady of taste. I can sense that already. I bet you could wrap yourself around one of my specials and not even think about counting calories.’

      ‘I bet I could.’ In the face of Sam’s friendliness she seemed to finally relax—just a smidgeon. ‘Tell me what’s good.’

      ‘What’s good? In this establishment everything’s good. Tell you what…’ He cast a sideways glance at Marcus and got an almost imperceptible nod for his pains. Sam’s deli was famous in this city and his reputation was richly deserved. He sensed what people needed and he provided it. You came to Sam’s for comfort food and friendliness and good humour. Sam provided it in bucketloads. ‘Why don’t I bring you my specials?’ he told them. ‘My lunch works. You sit back, think of nothing except what you need to talk about and let me worry about your meal. It’s what I do best.’

      Think of nothing except what they needed to talk about…

      It seemed there was nothing to talk about. Or Peta didn’t seem to think there was. The food that Sam brought them was wonderful: a vast, steaming bowl of clam chowder— Sam’s speciality, handed down from his grandma, who’d invented clams herself, he told them—and some sort of corn flapjacks that were truly spectacular.

      It was good food. No. It was great food, Marcus conceded, and he found himself wondering why it had been so long since he’d been here. He sat back, enjoying the food but also enjoying the buzz. The place was full of students and young mothers and academics and artists who looked as if they didn’t have a buck to their name. All of them were attacking their food the same way Peta was. This was food to be relished at every mouthful.

      And while she ate, he found himself thinking of the date he’d been on last night. Elizabeth was a corporate lawyer—a good one. She was smart and sophisticated and beautiful. But she’d toyed with her salad, she’d drunk half a glass of wine and refused dessert.

      Her beautiful waistline came at a cost, Marcus had thought, and though she’d invited him up to her magnificent apartment afterwards for coffee, coffee was all they’d had. He’d felt no desire to take things further.

      But now…sitting on the far side of the table and watching Peta devour her chowder and relish every mouthful of her flapjacks, he thought he’d rather have this contented silence than smart conversation. Genuine enjoyment.

      ‘What?’ she demanded suddenly, and he looked a question.

      ‘I beg your pardon?’

      ‘You’re looking at me like I’m an interesting kind of bug. I don’t like it.’

      ‘You’re Australian,’ he told her. ‘What do you expect?’

      ‘You’ve never met an Australian?’

      ‘Not one who likes clam chowder as much as you do.’

      ‘It’s the best.’ She smiled up at him and he blinked. Whew! That smile was enough to knock a man sideways.

      Where had it come from? It was a killer smile. Wide and white and there was a dimple right at the corner of her mouth…

      Yeah, right. Get a grip, Benson, he told himself. You need involvement here like a hole in the head.

      He needed any involvement like a hole in the head.

      ‘You want to tell me why you need to see Charles Higgins?’ he asked and her smile faded. He was aware of a sharp stab of regret. Damn, he shouldn’t have mentioned it.

      But it was why they were here. It was important. And, to tell the truth, he was intrigued.

      This girl had just knocked back a gift of a three-thousand dollar suit. Just like that. Would any other woman he knew do that? It wasn’t as if it had come with strings. It would have been a gift, pure and simple.

      ‘You might have knocked me down, but it was partly my fault,’ she told him, and it was as if she’d read his thoughts. ‘I don’t want to be beholden. To anyone. You spend three thousand bucks on a suit for me and I’ll feel sick about it for the rest of my life. And Charles will know it’s a front.’

      ‘Charles knows you?’

      ‘I told you. He’s my cousin.’

      ‘Then why…?’

      She could see where his thoughts were heading and she was way ahead of him.

      ‘You think because I’m family I should have an entrée with him.’

      ‘Something like that.’

      ‘I’m over here because my aunt died,’ she told him. ‘Charles’s mother. I spent the last few days sitting by Aunt Hattie’s bedside. I haven’t seen Charles. Hattie is due to be buried tomorrow. Charles may or may not come to the funeral. He’s certainly not paying for it.’

      ‘So…’ He took a wild guess. ‘You’re not a close family?’

      ‘I’m a very close family,’ she told him, and took another mouthful of her flapjack. Difficult conversation or not, she wasn’t forgetting that she was truly enjoying this food. But her voice, when she spoke again, held more than a trace of bitterness. ‘I’m so close I’m practically glue,’ she added. ‘Good old Peta. She’ll do the right thing. The family thing. But not Charles.’

      ‘So why do you need to see him?’

      She took a deep breath. She seemed to brace herself. Her fork was set down and her chin tilted in a gesture he was starting to recognise.

      ‘Aunt Hattie and my father owned half our family farm each,’ she told him. ‘My father left us his half when he died ten years back, and the agreement was always that Hattie would do the same. She hasn’t. She’s left her half to Charles. So I need him…’ Her voice faltered then, as if accepting the sheer impossibility of what she was about to suggest. ‘I need him to agree not to sell it. To let me farm it until…until I’m free.’

      ‘Free?’

      She looked up at him and her eyes were blind with a pain he couldn’t begin to understand. ‘The farm is all I have,’ she told him. ‘It can’t mean anything to Charles. It’s just money. He must see that to do anything but let me live there would be desperately unfair.’ She bit her lip and then picked up her soda, trying desperately to move past a pain that seemed well nigh unbearable. ‘But that’s nothing to do with you. Charles is my cousin. My problem. You’ve given me a feed. Now I’ll clean myself as best I can, go back and try to face him one more time—and if I can’t I’ll go home. But at least I’ll have tried.’

      He couldn’t bear it. The look of pain. The defiance. David and Goliath, and Goliath was Charles Higgins… She had to let him take the next step with her. ‘You can’t face him alone,’ he told her.

      ‘Of course I can.’

      ‘There’s no of course about it,’ he growled. ‘Charles is a slime-ball. Maybe he’s different with family but he’s still a slime-ball. Okay, I might be off the track with my offer of three-thousand-dollar suits but my instincts are right. We’ll get you something neat to wear and I’m coming in with you. I might not get you more than an interview but I can get you that.’

      ‘How?’

      ‘For a start, I own the building he rents office space in.’

      She stared. ‘You’re kidding.’

      ‘I’m not. Regrettably. I’ve already decided not to renew his lease when it expires but he doesn’t know that. I can apply pressure.’

      ‘But…’

      ‘Finish your soda,’ he told her, aware at the back of his mind of his total amazement that he was doing this. That he was getting more and more involved. ‘We mustn’t keep Charles waiting now, must we?’

      They