New Year Wedding For The Crown Prince. Meredith Webber

you?’ he asked.

      Jo shook her head.

      ‘Not a word, and apparently there’s enough solidarity in the village that no one else ever talks about her. I know there has to be a reason because although Dottie’s a bit eccentric—well, pretty eccentric—she’s not irrational.’

      She sighed, shook her head, and bent over to pick up a glass bauble from a box of decorations that stood by the tree, hanging it on a low branch before turning back to Charles.

      ‘Dottie and I usually have grilled cheese on toast for supper, but if you haven’t had dinner and would like something more substantial, there are lamb cutlets and plenty of salad things.’

      Charles shook his head.

      ‘Grilled cheese on toast sounds fantastic. Takes me back to student days when it was one of the few things I could cook—cheese on toast, beans on toast, eggs on toast!’

      That won another smile, which was so open and honest and full of good humour that it caught at something in his chest—just a hitch, nothing more...

      You cannot be attracted to a very pregnant stranger, he told himself as he followed her to the kitchen, narrowly missing the bucket in the entry.

      But the sway of her hips mesmerised him...

      It had to be abstinence. How long since he’d been with a woman? The experience of the match his father had promoted, with a young woman who had a very dubious family connection to the old Russian royalty, had been enough to put him off women for life.

      Well, for several months at least!

      She’d been nice enough, attractive enough, but her conversation began and ended with horses and although he quite liked horses and rode occasionally himself, as a conversational topic, they were way down his list of favourites.

      He doubted the woman with the swaying hips would talk horses.

      ‘There’s the toaster, and the bread’s in the cupboard underneath it. You can do the toast while I grate the cheese. I think it melts better grated. Do you like relish or chutney under the cheese? My dad used to slice up pickles under his.’

      Jo only just stopped herself from explaining how her mother had liked Vegemite, and she herself didn’t mind the pickles. After all, there was only so much conversational mileage you could get out of grilled cheese on toast. And it had all been a very long time ago.

      The memory of that time made her shudder—so much sadness, so much despair and emptiness and loss.

       Don’t think about it now—concentrate on toast but don’t babble on.

      She was embarrassed, that was why she’d been talking so much and there were no points for guessing why!

      This man’s presence—or perhaps her own hyper-awareness of him—was embarrassing her. For some peculiar reason, she’d felt his eyes on her as she’d walked to the kitchen. Not casually on her, but studying her, although that was ridiculous. She’d been imagining things. Why would a man like him be studying a slightly damp, very untidy, very pregnant woman like her?

      For a start, being thirty-eight weeks pregnant would announce her as unavailable!

      She hauled butter and cheese out of the refrigerator, then milk for Dottie’s cocoa, relish in case Charles wanted it, the bottle of pickled gherkins to slice for under her cheese, set it all on the scrubbed wooden table in the centre of the big kitchen, then turned to their guest.

      He was waggling the handles on the doors of the toaster.

      ‘You realise I’m touching something my mother probably touched. This toaster has to be at least fifty years old.’

      Jo grinned at him.

      ‘At least,’ she agreed, ‘and it doesn’t flip open when the toast is done so you have to stand there and watch it and open it before it burns then turn it to do the other side.’

      He gave her a ‘can you believe it’ look and a shake of his head before turning to watch his toast.

      Setting the grill in the oven—which was probably older than the toaster—to high, Jo grabbed the grater and a wooden board and began her job.

      And if she glanced at their visitor from time to time it was only to see he wasn’t burning the toast.

      Wasn’t it?

      He’d found plates and soon delivered a pile of perfectly browned toast to the table.

      Toast done, she set him to buttering it—although that meant he was standing close to her, and the discomfort that caused had to be because he was a stranger...

      Surely!

      She was slicing gherkins when her belly tightened.

      Braxton-Hicks! Her body’s practice contractions. She moved a little, knowing that usually stopped them, and kept grating. Charles was now piling grated cheese on the toast he’d buttered.

      ‘I’ve done two slices each, will that be enough?’ he said.

      Jo turned to face him, saw a smile lurking in his dark-enough-to-drown-in eyes, and hesitated, her mouth suddenly so dry she couldn’t speak.

      She had to be imagining whatever it was that was zapping between them.

      Had to be!

      ‘You might want more than two slices,’ she finally managed, ‘and I have sliced pickles under my cheese.’

      ‘Like father, like daughter,’ he teased, and she blessed the distraction of another twinge in her belly.

      She would hate to think she was anything like her father...

      Although maybe that was unfair. He’d been a good and loving father up until her mother had died and it probably hadn’t been his fault he’d gone to pieces then...

      Charles had turned away to put more bread in the toaster, apparently deciding he might need more than two slices, and Jo used the respite from his presence to slide the cheese-laden slices under the grill.

      The extra hormones that pregnancy had sent spinning through her body—they must surely be the cause of her...

      Her what?

      Distraction, she decided, and said it firmly enough in her head to pretend she meant it.

      Well, it could hardly be anything more than that, now, could it? She’d seen tall, dark and handsome men before and had never felt the slightest attraction, and so what if his broad shoulders curved in to a neat waist, and his jeans clung to neat buttocks?

      She heated milk on the stove for Dottie’s cocoa, vowing for the fiftieth time she’d buy a microwave for the house next time she was in town. She put on the kettle for tea and turned to Charles.

      ‘Would you like tea or coffee?’

      He smiled—she wished he wouldn’t—and said, ‘Could I please have cocoa? This has taken me back to student days and it seems right I should be drinking cocoa.’

      Jo tore her eyes away from his face. What had she been waiting for, another smile? She poured more milk into the pot on the stove, told the visitor to watch the toast under the grill while she found mugs for the three of them. Even Dottie, to whom tea must be served in fine china cups, drank her cocoa from a mug, and a mug of tea was far more satisfying as far as Jo was concerned.

      Charles, who was proving quite proficient in the kitchen, had found more plates and was cutting a couple of bubbling, lightly browned cheese toasts into fingers.

      ‘Two for Dottie, two with pickles for the pregnant lady, and I’ll look like a pig eating four, but it seems a very long time since breakfast.’

      ‘You haven’t eaten since breakfast?’ Jo said in disbelief, but the milk was close to boiling, and she had cocoa to make, so she could hardly pursue the conversation.