SOS: Convenient Husband Required / Winning a Groom in 10 Dates. Liz Fielding

actually said. Not that it had been a possibility once she’d dropped out of school even if she’d wanted to. She hadn’t been blessed with her mother’s brain and school had been bad enough. Why would anyone voluntarily lengthen the misery?

      When she’d begun to take over the running of the house, she’d used her grandmother’s elegant little desk in her sitting room, but her business needed a proper office and she’d since converted one of the old pantries, keeping this room as a place of refuge for when the house was filled with guests. When she needed to be on her own.

      ‘Shut the door,’ she said as Adam followed her in with the buggy. ‘Once they’re in the conservatory talking ten to the dozen over a cup of coffee, they won’t hear Nancie even if she screams her head off.’

      For the moment the baby was nuzzling contently at her shoulder, although, even with her minimal experience, she suspected that wasn’t a situation that would last for long.

      ‘The bathroom’s through there. Wash off the mud and I’ll do the necessary with the antiseptic wipes so that you can get on your way.’

      ‘What about you?’

      ‘I can wait.’

      ‘No, you can’t. Heaven knows what’s lurking in that mud,’ he replied as, without so much as a by-your-leave, he took her free hand, led her through her bedroom and, after a glance around to gain his bearings, into the bathroom beyond. ‘Are your tetanus shots up to date?’ he asked, quashing any thought that his mind was on anything other than the practical.

      ‘Yes.’ She was the most organised woman in the entire world when it came to the details. It was a family trait. One more reason to believe that her grandfather hadn’t simply let things slide. That he’d made a deliberate choice to keep things as they were.

      Had her mother known about the will? she wondered.

      Been threatened with it?

      ‘Are yours?’ she asked.

      ‘I imagine so. I pay good money for a PA to deal with stuff like that,’ he said, running the taps, testing the water beneath his fingers.

      ‘Efficient, is she?’ May asked, imagining a tall, glamorous female in a designer suit and four-inch heels.

      ‘He. Is that too hot?’

      She tested it with her fingertips. ‘No, it’s fine,’ she said, reaching for the soap. ‘Is that common? A male PA?’

      ‘I run an equal opportunities company. Jake was the best applicant for the job and yes, he is frighteningly efficient. I’m going to have to promote him to executive assistant if I want to keep him. Hold on,’ he said. ‘You can’t do that one-handed.’

      She had anticipated him taking Nancie from her, but instead he unfastened his cuffs, rolled back his sleeves and, while she was still transfixed by his powerful wrists, he took the soap from her.

      ‘No!’ she said as she realised what he was about to do. He’d already worked the soap into a lather, however, and, hampered by the baby, she could do nothing as he stood behind her with his arms around her, took her scratched hand in his and began to wash it with extreme thoroughness. Finger by finger. Working his thumb gently across her palm where she’d grazed it when she’d fallen. Over her knuckles. Circling her wrist.

      ‘The last time anyone did this, I was no more than six years old,’ she protested in an attempt to keep herself from being seduced by the sensuous touch of long fingers, silky lather. The warmth of his body as he leaned into her back, his chin against her shoulder. His cheek against hers. The sensation of being not quite in control of any part of her body whenever he was within touching distance, her heartbeat amplified so that he, and everyone within twenty yards, must surely hear.

      ‘Six?’ he repeated, apparently oblivious to her confusion. ‘What happened? Did you fall off your pony?’

      ‘My bike. I never had a pony.’ She’d scraped her knee and had her face pressed against Robbie’s apron. She’d been baking and the kitchen had been filled with the scent of cinnamon, apples, pastry cooking as she’d cleaned her up, comforted her.

      Today, it was the cool, slightly rough touch of Adam’s chin against her cheek but there was nothing safe or comforting about him. She associated him with leather, rain, her heartbeat raised with fear, excitement, a pitiful joy followed by excruciating embarrassment. Despair at the hopelessness of her dreams.

      There had been no rain today, there was no leather, but the mingled scents of clean skin, warm linen, shampoo were uncompromisingly male and the intimacy of his touch was sending tiny shock waves through her body, disturbing her in ways unknown to that green and heartbroken teen.

      Oblivious to the effect he was having on her, he took an antiseptic wipe from the first aid box and finished the job.

      ‘That’s better. Now let’s take a look at your arm.’

      ‘My arm?’

      ‘There’s blood on your sleeve.’

      ‘Is there?’ While she was craning to see the mingled mud and watery red mess that was never going to wash out whatever the detergent ads said, he had her shirt undone. No shaky-fingered fumbling with buttons this time. She was still trying to get her tongue, lips, teeth into line to protest when he eased it off her shoulder and down her arm with what could only be described as practised ease.

      ‘Ouch. That looks painful.’

      She was standing in nothing but her bra and pants and he was looking at her elbow? Okay, her underwear might be lacy but it was at the practical, hold ’em up, rather than push ’em up end of the market. But, even if she wasn’t wearing the black lace, scarlet woman underwear, the kind of bra that stopped traffic and would make Adam Wavell’s firm jaw drop, he could at least notice that she was practically naked.

      In her dreams…Her nightmares…

      His jaw was totally under control as he gave his full attention to her elbow.

      ‘This might sting a bit…’

      It should have stung, maybe it did, but she was feeling no pain as his thick dark hair slid over his forehead, every perfectly cut strand moving in sleek formation as he bent to work. Only a heat that began low her belly and spread like a slow fuse along her thighs, filling her breasts, her womb with an aching, painful need that brought a tiny moan to her lips.

      ‘Does that hurt?’ he asked, looking up, grey eyes creased in concern. ‘Maybe you should go to Casualty, have an X-ray just to be on the safe side.’

      ‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s fine. Really.’

      It was a lie. It wasn’t fine; it was humiliating, appalling to respond so mindlessly to a man who, when he saw you in public, put the maximum possible distance between you. To want him to stop looking at her scabby elbow and look at her. See her. Want her.

      As if.

      These days he was never short of some totally gorgeous girl to keep him warm at night. The kind who wore ‘result’ shoes and bad girl underwear.

      She was more your wellington boots kind of woman. Good skin and teeth, reasonable if boringly brown eyes, but that was it. There was nothing about her that would catch the eye of a man who, these days, had everything.

      ‘You’re going to have a whopping bruise,’ he said, looking up, catching her staring at him.

      ‘I’ll live.’

      ‘This time. But maybe you should consider giving up climbing trees,’ he said, pulling a towel down from the pile on the rack, taking her hand in his and patting it dry before working his way up her arm.

      ‘I keep telling myself that,’ she said. ‘But you know how it is. There’s some poor creature in trouble and you’re the only one around. What can you do?’

      ‘I’ll give you my cell number…’ He tore open another