His Christmas Bride. HELEN BROOKS

her empty mug. When she raised them, Zak was looking straight at her.

      ‘You’re clearly wiped out, I’d better be going,’ he said softly. He stood to his feet. ‘Thanks for the coffee and cake.’

      Flustered, Blossom rose a moment later, furious that her cheeks had turned pink when there was no logical reason for it. ‘I’ll let Greg know you called by when he comes home.’

      ‘Tell him I won’t expect him in until Melissa’s home and feeling herself again while you’re at it,’ he said lazily as she led the way to the front door. ‘There is nothing brewing in the pipeline that can’t keep for a week or two.’

      ‘Right.’ She nodded. She felt ridiculously out of her depth. What was it about this man that made her feel she’d regressed to the painful teenage years, when she’d been gawky, awkward and tongue-tied? Whatever it was, she could do without it. She opened the front door and stood aside for him to exit the house. Instead he stopped in front of her.

      His eyes unfathomable, he murmured, ‘It’s been nice meeting you. Do I take it you’ll be sticking around for a day or two?’

      It was a simple question, so why the agitation in her breast? ‘Until I’m not needed,’ she confirmed. ‘It’s the least I can do.’

      ‘That won’t prove difficult work-wise?’

      She shook her head. ‘As luck would have it, I’ve just finished a pretty extensive spell of work and had promised myself a break.’

      ‘We might see each other again, then. If anything crops up I need to speak to Greg about.’ He smiled a slow smile.

      He was the head of a major electronics firm and he was talking about face-to-face contact? Without pausing to consider how it sounded, she said, ‘Have you got Greg’s mobile number?’

      He continued to regard her for another moment before his eyes crinkled at the corners. ‘Do I take that as a polite way of saying I wouldn’t be welcome?’ he asked mildly.

      The pink in her cheeks had turned to a fiery red that would have rivalled a boiled lobster. Her embarrassment wasn’t helped by the fact that he seemed to find her amusing rather than offensive. ‘Of course not,’ she said tightly. ‘I was just checking you could contact him if you needed to, that’s all.’

      ‘Just checking.’ Two words, but they carried a huge amount of disbelief.

      ‘Absolutely.’ She stared straight back into the blue eyes.

      ‘Right.’ His tone had not changed. He held her gaze for one more eternal moment, and then stepped out of the house and walked towards a low-slung sportscar parked at the side of the pebbled front garden. It was a beauty, an Aston Martin, in a delicate shade of silver grey, gleaming in the summer twilight.

      Blossom wondered why she hadn’t noticed it when he had arrived, and wouldn’t admit it was because she’d had eyes for nothing but him. She shut the front door, not waiting to see him drive away, and then stood leaning against it as she strained her ears. There was the sound of a car door shutting, the throb of a powerful engine and then the scrunchy noise of tyres on stone. He was leaving, so why was her heart still thudding?

      It was only when all was quiet that she became aware she had been holding her breath. Letting it out in a great sigh, she straightened. That was that. He had gone. Undoubtedly with the impression that Melissa’s twin sister was a cold, hard and somewhat rude career woman without a romantic bone in the whole of her body.

      ‘And I’m not.’ She spoke aloud into the quiet, slumbering hall where the only sound was the steady ticking of the magnificent antique grandfather clock in the far corner. Was it her imagination, or was it staring at her with a reproachful look on its superior face?

      Blossom stuck out her tongue in a manner which belied her thirty-four years, resolving to put Zak Hamilton and his possible opinion of her out of her mind. She had more than enough to cope with as it was in the forseeable future; the whirling dervish that was her nephew would be waking at the crack of dawn, if the weekend she’d babysat Melissa’s children before was anything to go by. And, once Harry was awake, the world had no choice but to follow.

      She squared her shoulders, breathed in and out very deeply, and made her way into the sitting room to clear away the mugs and plates.

      CHAPTER TWO

      ANNOYINGLY, once Blossom was lying under the tastefully scented, crisp linen sheets in the generous double bed in Melissa’s guest room, sleep became an impossibility. She found herself embroiled in a minute-by-minute post-mortem of the whole day, right from when Greg had first called her.

      The crazy dash to the house, Greg’s poor little wan face, the frantic pace that had ensued with the children, not to mention the mistakes she’d made in dealing with Harry—and overall the awful knowledge that her sister was in terrible pain and she couldn’t help her. That had been excruciating.

      Finally, when she couldn’t keep him at bay a moment longer, she allowed Zak Hamilton to walk through the door of her mind. This resulted in a distinctly harrowing, squirmingly hot and embarrassing twenty minutes when she replayed every word he had said and she had said, every gesture, every look. She did this several times. More than several. It got worse, not better.

      When she couldn’t stand it a moment longer, Blossom slid out of bed and walked into the en suite, running herself a hot bath and adding a liberal amount of bath oil which magically promised to soothe and calm in equal measures. Stripping off the practical ‘I’m dealing with children’ pyjamas she had bought especially for her last babysitting endeavour, she surveyed herself in the full-length mirror to one side of the deep cast-iron bath before climbing into the perfumed water.

      Only someone as effortlessly slim as Melissa could think having a mirror you couldn’t avoid when you were naked was a good idea, she reflected ruefully as she inched her bottom slowly into water which seemed to be a good few degrees hotter than she had thought. Not that she was a two-ton Tessie by any means. She just wasn’t naturally willowy like her sister.

      She was now resting on the bottom of the bath, and breathed out thankfully. It had been obvious from an early age she took totally after their mother, whereas Melissa had inherited their father’s to-die-for genes. Yet it had been apparent to anyone within a five-mile radius of their parents that their father had worshipped the ground his sweet but homely wife walked on.

      Blossom’s face took on a tender quality. She was so glad her parents had lived long enough to see Harry and Simone before they had been killed in a multiple car-crash three months after the twins had been born. They’d been so thrilled Melissa had achieved her heart’s desire. She and Melissa had had the best of childhoods, and their parents had continued to be utterly supportive even after she and her sister had left home—Melissa to married life, and Blossom to follow her career in London. She had always dreamed she’d find a relationship similar to the one her parents had had one day, a love which would lead to marriage, perhaps even children, whilst her career was put on hold for a short time.

      And then, a few months after her parents had died, Dean had come along just when she’d been beginning to doubt there would ever be a Mr Right among all the Mr Wrongs she’d dated in the past. She hadn’t known then that, if all the Mr Wrongs in the world had been gathered up into one bundle, they wouldn’t be as wrong as Dean had been.

      Blossom tried to close her mind against the memories now pouring in, but it was too late; she had opened Pandora’s box.

      They had met at a fashion shoot; he had been one of the male models, and she had been bowled over by his dark Latin looks and smouldering charm. As he had intended she should be.

      They had married two months to the day they had met, and already her photographs had begun to open doors for him. She had established good contacts over the years, and she had used every last one of them for Dean. He was her husband, her love; there was nothing she wouldn’t have done for him.

      She had been so looking forward to their first Christmas