A New Year Marriage Proposal. Kate Hardy

just laughed, and again he had a vision of the way she’d laughed on his doorstep, tipping her head back.

      Down, boy, he told his libido sharply.

      All the same, he couldn’t take his eyes off her as she stood by the hob, stirring vegetables in a wok. Did she have the faintest clue how gorgeous she was?

      The radio was playing a song he really loathed: ‘Santa, Bring My Baby Home for Christmas.’ A super-sweet Christmas song that always meant the festive season was on its way. Quinn’s least favourite time of year. Funny, he’d expected Carissa to listen to opera or highbrow stuff, not a singalong pop station. Which just went to show that you shouldn’t assume things about people.

      ‘That song’s so terrible,’ he said, rolling his eyes. ‘Talk about cheesy. And sugary.’

      ‘Rather a mix of metaphors,’ she said drily.

      ‘You know what I mean.’ He sang along with the chorus. ‘“I wish, my baby, you were home tonight; I wish, my baby, I could hold you tight. Santa, bring my baby home for Christmas; Santa, bring my baby home to me.”’ He grimaced. ‘It’s terrible!’

      ‘Well, hey.’ She spread her hands. ‘Meet the original baby.’

      ‘What?’ He wasn’t following this conversation. At all. Or was she teasing him, the way she had about the wheatgrass shot? Did she just have a weird sense of humour?

      ‘My dad wrote that song,’ she said. ‘About me.’

      He blinked. ‘Your dad?’

      ‘Uh-huh. Pete Wylde. The Wylde Boys,’ she expanded.

      He was silenced momentarily. Carissa Wylde was the daughter of the late musician Pete Wylde. And Quinn hadn’t made the connection. At all.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I...um...’

      ‘You hate Dad’s music.’ She shrugged. ‘Each to their own taste.’

      ‘No, I do like some of his stuff. Just not the Christmas song. And I’m digging myself a deeper hole here.’ He blew out a breath. ‘I really don’t mean to insult you, Carissa.’

      ‘It’s OK. I won’t hold it against you.’

      Her voice was neutral and her face was impassive, and he didn’t have a clue what she was thinking. ‘So your father actually wrote the song for you?’

      ‘My first Christmas,’ she said. ‘I was only a few weeks old. I was in hospital for a week with a virus that meant I couldn’t breathe very easily, and I had to be fed by a tube until I was better. The only way Dad coped with it was to bring his guitar to the hospital, sit by my bed and play me songs. That’s why he wrote “Santa, Bring My Baby Home for Christmas”.’

      And now Quinn understood for the first time what the song was actually saying. Pete Wylde had wanted his tiny baby daughter home for her first Christmas, safe and well and in his arms. It wasn’t a cheesy love song at all. It had come straight from the heart.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. And not just because he’d insulted her. Because he was envious. What would it be liked to be loved and wanted so much by your family? It was something he’d never had. His mother had been quick enough to dump him on his aunt and uncle, and he’d always felt a bit like a spare part in their home. Which was probably why he was antsy about getting attached to anyone now: it was something he’d never really done.

      ‘You don’t need to like the song,’ she said with a smile. ‘Though plenty of people do. It makes shedloads of royalties every Christmas.’

      But Quinn was pretty sure that money wasn’t what motivated Carissa Wylde. ‘And?’

      ‘Dad arranged to put half the royalties from the song in a trust,’ she said. ‘Which has been enough to fund the building and equipping of a new children’s ward, including an intensive care unit. All state-of-the-art equipment—and we’ll be able to keep it that way in the future.’

      ‘The ward that needs a virtual Santa.’ It dawned on him now. ‘You’re the client.’

      ‘Uh-huh.’

      ‘So do you do PR for anyone else?’

      She frowned. ‘PR?’

      ‘That’s what you do, isn’t it? PR?’

      ‘No. I’m a lawyer,’ she said.

      So he’d been right first time round. ‘Oh.’

      ‘Sit down,’ she said, ‘or if you want you can grab the corkscrew from the drawer and open that lovely wine you brought. Third drawer on the right.’

      She was letting him off the hook. And he was grateful. ‘Thank you.’ He opened the wine while she served up the tuna and the vegetables. Porcelain flatware, he noticed, and she served the vegetables in dishes rather than just sharing them out onto their plates. Carissa Wylde did things formally. Completely the opposite of how he did things, outside work. He was quite happy to eat pizza straight out of the box or Chinese food straight from the carton.

      ‘Well.’ She stripped off the apron, folded it and placed it on the worktop, no doubt ready to be transferred to the washing machine. Then she sat down opposite him and lifted her glass in a toast. ‘Here’s to the opening of the Wylde Ward and our virtual Santa.’

      ‘The opening of the Wylde Ward and the virtual Santa,’ he echoed, and smiled at her. ‘It’s nice that it’s named after your dad.’

      ‘And my mum,’ she pointed out.

      ‘That’s nice,’ he said again, feeling horrendously awkward and not quite sure how to deal with this. Things had suddenly become a lot more complicated.

      ‘Help yourself before it gets cold.’ She indicated the food.

      What he’d thought would be plain vegetables had clearly been cooked with a spice mix. A gorgeous one. And the polenta fries were to die for. ‘If you ever get bored with being a lawyer,’ he said, ‘I think you’d make a good chef.’

      ‘Cook,’ she corrected. ‘Maybe.’

      ‘Didn’t you ever think about being a musician? I mean, given what your dad did?’

      She shook her head. ‘I can play the piano a bit, but I don’t have that extra spark that Dad had. And life as a musician isn’t an easy one. In the early days, he and Mum lived pretty much hand to mouth. He was so lucky that the right break came at the right time.’ She paused. ‘What about you? Do you come from a long line of inventors?’

      Quinn didn’t have a clue who his father was. And the family he’d been dumped on...well. He’d just been a burden to them. The unwanted nephew. One who definitely hadn’t planned to spend his career working in their corner shop, which in turn had made him even more unwanted. ‘No.’

      He’d sounded shorter than he’d meant to, because it killed the conversation dead. She just ate her tuna steak and looked faintly awkward.

      In the end, he sighed. ‘Why is it I constantly feel the need to apologise around you?’

      ‘Because you’re being a grumpy idiot?’ she suggested.

      ‘You don’t pull your punches, do you?’ he asked wryly. ‘I hope I never end up in court in front of you.’

      ‘I’m a solicitor, not a barrister,’ she said. ‘Gramps’s chambers would’ve taken me on as a pupil but...’ she pulled a face ‘...I didn’t really want to do all the performance stuff. Wearing the robes and the wig, doing all the flashy rhetoric and showing off in front of a jury. I prefer the backroom stuff—working with the law, with words and people.’

      ‘So it’s in the family? Being a lawyer?’

      ‘On my mum’s side, yes. I think Gramps was a bit disappointed that she never became