The Prospective Wife. Kim Lawrence

just a sucker for a pretty face…’

      ‘Pretty doesn’t really do her justice.’

      ‘I find it hard to see past the simpering smile.’

      Kat’s bosom swelled with indignation—she’d never simpered in her life! Her fingers tightened around the doorhandle.

      ‘Matt!’ Joe ejaculated, shocked by the irreverence.

      Matt remained unrepentant. ‘My mother is totally unscrupulous when it comes to getting what she wants, and at the moment she wants a grandchild. She’s always thought no man can resist a cleavage.’ His expression was grim as he reflected on the callous machinations of his manipulative parent.

      ‘To tell you the truth, Matt, as far as cleavages go I’ve always thought much the same myself.’ Joe admitted.

      Despite the pain he was enduring, Matt’s lips twitched. ‘Under that choir-boy façade, Joe Casey, there lurks the soul of a debauched swine.’

      ‘Chance would be a fine thing. You can’t tell me you don’t find her at all attractive?’ Joe regarded his friend with open scepticism.

      On the point of walking in, Kat paused. She found her own hesitation predictable and pathetic, but what girl, she reasoned, could resist hearing whether a man—even if she didn’t like him—found her fanciable…?

      ‘She’s got all the right equipment, but it’s the cabbage scenario.’

      ‘Cabbage?’ Joe’s tone echoed the sort of bewilderment Kat was feeling.

      ‘During my formative years everyone—nannies, parents, schoolteachers—they were all constantly telling me how good it was for me. Naturally I developed a loathing for the stuff which lasts to this day.’

      ‘So you want a woman who is bad for you?’

      ‘You’re missing the point, Joe. I don’t want one someone thinks I should want.’

      That was what you get for eavesdropping! Kat had never been likened to cabbage before—she’d have remembered.

      She wouldn’t have been human if she hadn’t allowed her mind to dwell on the pleasant picture of Matt Devlin a helpless victim of her irresistible charms. It would have been petty to dwell for too long on the image of his despair when she rejected him.

      His antagonism made perfect sense now. No wonder he was acting like a real pain in the posterior if he thought his mother had sent her here to land a husband! This was an embarrassing mistake she could easily correct.

      Her upbeat expression as she walked into the room didn’t even hint that she cared about the cabbage thing.

      ‘You’ve got it all wrong. I don’t want to marry you… For heaven’s sake, I don’t even like you!’