His Pretend Wife. Lucy Gordon

      

      “Please stay. Let my son live with you and Hetta,” Andrew asked.

      “But it’s you he wants.”

      “I’ll visit as often as I can.”

      “That’s not enough.”

      He met her eyes. “Then I’ll move back in.”

      “Let us understand each other,” she said in a voice that was steadier than she felt. “You wish me to be your housekeeper and childminder.”

      “Very well. Housekeeper and childminder.”

      “All right,” she said very quietly. “I’ll do it.”

      It would be hard. He saw her as a convenience. But at least now she would not have to leave him—yet.

      LUCY GORDON cut her writing teeth on magazine journalism, interviewing many of the world’s most interesting men, including Warren Beatty, Richard Chamberlain, Roger Moore, Sir Alec Guinness and Sir John Gielgud. She also camped out with lions in Africa, and had many other unusual experiences which have often provided the background for her books. She is married to a Venetian, whom she met while on holiday in Venice. They got engaged within two days.

      Two of her books have won the Romance Writers of America RITA^® Award, Song of the Lorelei in 1990, and His Brother’s Child in 1998 in the Best Traditional Romance category.

      You can visit her Web site at www.lucy-gordon.com

      His Pretend Wife

      Lucy Gordon

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      CONTENTS

      PROLOGUE

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER TEN

      CHAPTER ELEVEN

      CHAPTER TWELVE

      PROLOGUE

      HE WOULD never have known her.

      He would have known her anywhere.

      Andrew caught only the briefest glimpse of the woman, at the far end of the hospital corridor, but it was enough to revive memory, as soft as a bird’s wing fluttering past his face.

      She looked nothing like Ellie, who’d been young and luscious as a ripe peach. This was a thin, pale woman, who looked as though life had thrown everything at her, and left her exhausted. Yet there was a hint of Ellie in the resolute set of her head and the angle of her jaw. The bird’s wing fluttered again, and vanished.

      He couldn’t afford sentimentality. He was a busy man, second in command of the Heart Unit of Burdell Hospital. Ultimately he could only be satisfied with heading the team, but there was no shame in being second when the chief was Elmer Rylance, a man of international eminence. Soon he would retire and Andrew would step into his shoes.

      He’d fast-tracked, giving everything to his work, allowing no distractions, as a broken marriage could testify. He was young for his position, although he didn’t look it. His tall figure was still lean, his features handsome, and there was no grey in his dark hair, but his face had a gaunt look from too many hours spent in work, and not enough spent in living. And there was something about his eyes that spoke of an inner withering.

      He had only time for a glimpse of the woman, enough to show that she was with a child, a little girl of about seven, on whom her eyes were fixed with an anguished possessiveness with which he was all too familiar. In this place he’d seen a thousand mothers look at their children like that. And usually his skill sent the two of them home happy. But not always. He turned swiftly into his office.

      His secretary was there before him, the list of appointments ready waiting on his desk, along with the necessary files, the coffee being made, exactly as he liked it. She was the best. He only employed the best, just as he only bought the best.

      The first patient on his list was seventeen, the age that Ellie had been. There the likeness ended. His patient was weary with illness. Ellie had been an earth nymph, vibrant with life, laughing her way through the world with the confidence of someone who knew she was blessed by the gods, and laughter would last for ever.

      ‘Mr Blake?’ Miss Hasting was eyeing him with concern.

      He shook himself out of his reverie. ‘I’m sorry, did you speak?’

      ‘I asked if you’d seen the test results. They’re just here…’

      He grunted, annoyed with himself for the moment of inattention. That was a weakness, and he always concealed weakness. Miss Hasting was too well disciplined to notice. She was a perfectly functioning machine. Like himself.

      Ellie’s beauty had been wild and overflowing, making him think of wine and sun, freedom and splendour: all the good things of life that had been his for such a brief time.

      He switched the thought off as easily as he would have switched off the light behind an X-ray. He had a heavy day ahead.

      Besides, it hadn’t been her.

      ‘Time for me to start on my ward rounds,’ he told Miss Hasting briefly. ‘Make a call to…’ For five minutes he gave brisk instructions.

      When he went out into the corridor again the woman was gone.

      He was glad of that.

      CHAPTER ONE

      SHE would have known him anywhere, any time. Down the length of the corridor. Down the length of the years.

      Years that had changed her from a flighty, blinkered young girl who’d thought the world danced to her merry tune, to a bitter, grieving woman who knew that the world was something you had to fight. And you could never, ever really win.

      She’d been partly prepared, seeing his name on the hospital literature. Andrew Blake was a common name, and it might not have been him, but she knew at once that it was. Just two words on the page, yet they had brought before her the rangy young man, too tense, too thoughtful, a challenge to a girl who’d known any man could have been hers if she’d only snapped her fingers. So she’d snapped. And he’d been hers. And they’d both paid a bitter price.

      She’d planned a glamorous, if ill-defined, career for herself. She would earn a fortune and live in a mansion. The reality was ‘Comfy ’n’ Cosy’, a shabby boarding house in a down-at-heel part of London. The paint peeled, the smell of cabbage clung, and the only thing that was ‘comfy’ was the kindness of her landlady, Mrs Daisy Hentage.

      Daisy was peering through the torn lace curtains when the cab drew up, and Elinor helped her daughter onto the pavement. Once Hetta would have protested, ‘I can manage, Mummy!’ And there would have been a mother/daughter tussle, which would have made Elinor feel desperate. But now Hetta no longer argued, just wearily did as she was told. And that was a thousand times worse.

      Daisy had the front door open in readiness as they slowly climbed the stone steps. ‘The kettle’s on,’ she said. ‘Come into my room.’ She was middle-aged, widowed, and built like a cushion.

      She scraped a living from the boarding house, which sheltered, besides Elinor and her daughter, a young married couple, several assorted students, and ‘that Mr Jenson’ with whom she waged constant war about his smoking in bed.

      When the house