Fiance Wanted Fast!. Jessica Hart

on the kettle, Phoebe turned to face him, and Gib looked quickly away. ‘Nice kitchen,’ he said.

      It was a big, cluttered room with fitted cupboards at one end and at the other a shabby sofa and deep armchair covered with an ethnic-looking throw. In the middle was an antique pine table submerged beneath a welter of half-read newspapers, magazine cuttings, recipe books and files with papers spilling out of them. Gib spotted an iron, a collection of nail varnishes, a sequin bag, and—he did a double take—yes, a huge tabby cat curled up in a nest of papers.

      The kitchen run by his housekeeper at home had gleaming steel surfaces and was so intimidatingly tidy that Gib rarely ventured in there. This room was messier and a lot less hygienic, he thought, glancing at the cat, but infinitely more inviting. The kind of room where you could sit down with a bottle of wine and relax without worrying about what anyone else was thinking of you.

      ‘It’s the warmest room in the house,’ said Phoebe, looking around and trying to see it through his eyes. ‘We spend all our time in here, as you can probably tell.’

      ‘Whose is the cat?’

      ‘Kate’s.’ Phoebe regarded it without affection. ‘She’s got the softest heart in the world. She’s always coming back with these poor bedraggled creatures she’s rescued, and then we all have to run around finding homes for them, but no one will take that cat, worse luck. Anyway, it probably wouldn’t go,’ she sighed. ‘It’s much too comfortable here. Kate spoils it, and Bella and I are terrified of it. Which reminds me,’ she added, ‘be careful when you come down in the mornings. It bites your ankles until you feed it!’

      Josh hadn’t mentioned savage cats when he made his bet, Gib thought a little sourly. He hadn’t mentioned Phoebe’s frosty manner either. Gib just hoped that there weren’t any other nasty surprises in store for him.

      As if understanding that they were talking about it, the cat got to its feet and stretched. Seeing the size of it, and the ferocious-looking teeth, Gib gave it a wide berth, but it only gave him a contemptuous stare and jumped off the table to land with a thud on the kitchen floor.

      Phoebe watched it stalk out of the room and for the first time ever she warmed to it. Here at least was one other creature unlikely to be impressed by Gib’s smile and spontaneity. Kate and Bella were bound to fall for his charm, but Gib would find that she and the cat were made of sterner stuff!

      CHAPTER TWO

      PHOEBE had been pouring boiling water into a teapot, and now got out a couple of mugs. ‘Kate and Bella will be back later,’ she said. ‘Would you like some tea?’

      ‘Great,’ he said with the suggestion of a smile. ‘Now I know I’m back in England!’

      ‘How long have you been away?’

      Gib thought a bit. ‘Nearly eighteen years now.’

      ‘That’s a long time,’ said Phoebe, trying to calculate how old that made him. It was difficult to tell just by looking at him. He had the solidity of an older man, and there were definite creases around the edges of his eyes. He had to be in his late thirties at least, but he had a disconcerting mixture of dynamism and lazy good humour that seemed to belong to someone much younger.

      She wished Kate or Bella would come home. Something about him made her feel tongue-tied and awkward and—worse—boring. It was a feeling that reminded her all too painfully of that terrible time when she had wept as she had asked Ben ‘why?’, and he had told her that Lisa was sweet and feminine and fun.

      Not like her.

      Gib was obviously fun, too.

      ‘What do you do?’ she asked stiltedly. Too bad if he thought it was a boring question. She was just being polite. That was what boring people did.

      Gib didn’t roll his eyes at the banality of her conversation, but he wasn’t very forthcoming either. ‘Oh, this and that,’ he said vaguely as he picked up his mug.

      Silence didn’t seem to bother him at all. Phoebe stirred her tea unnecessarily and sought for something else to say. ‘Are you going to be working while you’re here?’ she managed eventually.

      ‘I’m looking into setting up a couple of projects.’

      It all sounded a bit vague to Phoebe, but if he wanted her to think he had a flourishing business with projects on the go, let him. She knew how sensitive men were about their success or lack of it, and she wasn’t that interested anyway.

      Gib was looking around him with interest, apparently unconcerned by her awkward attempts to make conversation. Phoebe couldn’t get over how blue his eyes were, and she studied him surreptitiously, wondering if he wore contact lenses to make them that colour, only to flush with annoyance when he caught her looking at him and smiled.

      Phoebe jerked her gaze away. He obviously thought she couldn’t keep her eyes off him. How smug could you get? Really, he was just like Seb.

      Typical, she thought glumly. The one attractive man to swim into her orbit since Ben, and he turned out to rub her up the wrong way right from the start. Bella and Kate were always urging her to find someone new to help her get over Ben, and she knew that she ought to make more of an effort, but a man like Gib—always supposing he was available—was the last thing she needed. She wanted someone kind and reliable, someone she could trust, not someone who made her feel twitchy and inadequate just by sitting there, no matter how attractive he was.

      ‘How do you know Josh?’ she asked, when he made no effort to break the silence. ‘You don’t seem at all like him.’

      ‘Don’t I?’ Gib looked amused. ‘That depends how you think of Josh, I guess.’

      ‘Josh is wonderful,’ said Phoebe firmly. ‘He’s mainly Bella’s friend, of course, but Kate and I love him. He seems so quiet, but he’s one of the nicest people I know. He never shows off or boasts about how good he is at what he does. He’s just steady and reliable and safe. Anything could happen, and you could always rely on Josh to know what to do.’

      It was funny, she thought irrelevantly. Josh was just the kind of man she needed, but it had never crossed her mind to think of him as anything other than Bella’s friend.

      ‘Yes, he’s very competent,’ agreed Gib, reflecting wryly that he clearly hadn’t made much of an impression so far. He wondered how Phoebe had decided that he was not quiet, or nice, or reliable like good old Josh. All he had done was admire her kitchen and accept a cup of tea.

      ‘I met Josh in Ecuador,’ he went on, thinking that this was not the time to challenge her for being unreasonable. ‘He was leading an expedition up Mount Chimburazo, and I went along.’

      She stared at him in surprise. ‘You’re a mountaineer?’

      Gib smiled and shook his head, his blue, blue eyes looking directly into Phoebe’s. ‘No, I just like a challenge,’ he said.

      Trapped by the intense blue gaze, Phoebe felt a wave of heat wash through her, and she swallowed, jerking her eyes away with an effort.

      There was something disconcerting about him, she thought with an edge of desperation. His presence seemed to fill the room, sucking in all the air until it was hard for her to breathe. His eyes were too bright, his teeth too white, and he was too vibrant, too unsettling, too everything.

      Phoebe felt unbalanced, a bit dizzy, and, desperate for something to break the suddenly jarring atmosphere, she pushed her papers out of the way.

      ‘Sorry about all this mess. I was just trying to do some work before the others got home.’

      Gib twisted his head on one side to get a glimpse of the papers. ‘What is that you do?’

      ‘I’m a production assistant for a company that makes programmes for television,’ said Phoebe, unable to keep the pride from her voice.

      Of