A New Year Marriage Proposal (Harlequin Romance) (3 page)

‘OK. Deal. See you in thirty minutes or so,’ she said.

* * *

Quinn hit pure gold in the wine shop: they had a deli section, with a display of French
macarons
in pretty colours.

Pistachio, vanilla, coffee. And then some more unusual flavours: violet and blueberry, white chocolate and pomegranate, crème brûlée, salted caramel. The perfect gift for a foodie like Carissa, he thought.

He bought a boxful, plus a bottle of flinty Chablis.

Back at the mews, he rang Carissa’s doorbell.

She answered the door wearing a cotton apron covered in hearts over her skirt and shirt; it made her look younger and much more approachable than she’d seemed the first time he’d met her.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Dinner’s almost ready.’

He handed her the bottle and the box. ‘The box needs to go in the fridge,’ he said. ‘The wine’s already chilled.’

‘Thank you—though you really didn’t need to bring anything. Come up.’

He closed the door behind them and followed her up the stairs to her kitchen. She’d laid her kitchen table, he noticed, with a white damask tablecloth, solid silver cutlery, very elegant fine glassware and a white porcelain vase containing deep purple spray carnations.

‘Is there anything I can do to help?’ he asked.

‘Given that you waved a pizza menu at me, can you actually cook?’ she teased.

‘I make great toasted sandwiches, I’ll have you know,’ he protested.

She 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 a lawyer, but she met Dad at a gig when she was a student, fell in love with him, and then I came along.’ She smiled. ‘Though I think Gramps was quite pleased when he realised I was more likely to follow in his footsteps than in Dad’s.’

Quinn had had nobody’s footsteps to follow in. He’d made his own way. ‘I guess that made it easier for you.’

‘More like it meant I had something to live up to,’ she corrected.

He’d never thought of it that way before—that privilege could also be a burden. Tabitha’s friends and family had all been privileged, and they’d taken their easy life for granted; they’d also looked down on those who’d had to work for what they had, like him. Clearly Clarissa saw things very differently.

‘I had to be the best, because I couldn’t let Gramps down,’ she continued. ‘If I fell flat on my face, it wouldn’t just be me that looked an idiot. No way would I do that to him. I wanted him to be proud of me, not embarrassed by my incompetence.’

Quinn hadn’t known Carissa for very long, but incompetence was a word he’d never associate with her. And he’d just bet that her grandparents adored her as much as her parents obviously had, because her voice was full of affection rather than fear or faint dislike. ‘Do your grandparents know what you’re doing about the ward?’

‘The ward itself, yes, of course—Gramps was really good at helping me cut through the red tape and pushing the building work through endless committees. Plus, obviously he’s one of the trustees. But I haven’t told them anything about the virtual Santa. I wanted to make sure it could work first.’

‘If you hadn’t met me, what would you have done about it?’ he asked, suddenly curious.

‘Found a programmer. Talked to his clients. Offered him a large bonus to get the job done in my timescale.’ She shrugged. ‘Standard stuff. But it’s irrelevant now, because I’ve met you.’

‘How do you know I could...?’ he began, and then stopped. ‘You talked to some of my clients, didn’t you?’

‘I couldn’t possibly answer that,’ she said, making her face impassive and clearing away their empty plates.

He sighed.

‘OK. I won’t say who I spoke to, but they said that if you run a project then it’ll work the way it’s supposed to work. No compromises and no mistakes.’

He prided himself on that. ‘Yes.’

‘And that you call a spade a spade rather than a digging implement,’ she added with a grin.

‘What would you call a spade?’ he asked.

‘That rather depends on the context.’

He smiled. ‘A very lawyerly response.’

‘It’s who I am,’ she said.

‘No. You’re more than your job,’ he said. ‘You could’ve just got the rest of your dad’s band to come and play some of his most famous songs at the opening. That would’ve been enough to wow everyone. But you went the extra mile. You’re arranging a very special Santa for the kids. It’s personal—and I don’t mean just for them, I mean for you.’

‘That hospital saved my life when I was a baby. I owe them,’ she said. ‘The virus meant that I was more prone to chest infections when I was really small, and I can remember spending my fourth birthday in hospital with pneumonia, being too ill for a birthday party and balloons and cake. The staff were really kind, but I knew what I was missing. And being in hospital at Christmas is especially hard on kids. They miss out on Santa and all the parties. It’s hard on their families, too. I just want to put a bit of sparkle into their day and make a difficult Christmas that little bit better for them.’

‘Christmas isn’t always good outside hospital,’ he said, and then he could have kicked himself for letting the words slip out.

Carissa, just as he’d half expected, homed straight in to the crux of the matter. Even though she’d just brought the box of
macarons
over to the table and looked thrilled when she opened it, she didn’t let the pudding distract her. ‘Is that why you don’t like Christmas?’

No way was he going to discuss that subject with her. ‘I don’t like the greed and commercialism surrounding Christmas,’ he said. Which was true. Just not the whole truth.

‘So you don’t believe that the spirit of Christmas exists any more?’ she asked, putting the
macarons
on a plate.

‘Do you?’ he asked, throwing the question back at her because he didn’t want to admit that the spirit of Christmas had never really existed for him.

‘Yes, I do. My parents always made a big deal about Christmas, and I love this time of year. OK, the year they died was different—it’s pretty hard to enjoy Christmas when you’re fifteen years old and planning a funeral for the two people you love most in the world.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘But, other than that year, I’ve always tried to keep it the way they kept it, full of love and happiness. Just how it should be.’

The complete opposite of the Christmases he remembered. Full of misery and wishing the day was over. Knowing that he wasn’t really wanted and was in the way—he’d always had presents, yes, but they’d been on a much smaller scale than those of his cousins because he didn’t really belong. He’d been a charity case. Sometimes, as a child, he’d thought he would’ve been better off in a children’s home.

* * *

A man who hated Christmas.

It was so far removed from Carissa’s own view that it intrigued her. Why didn’t Quinn like Christmas? Had he had a tough childhood, maybe? Grown up in a family where Christmas had been a source of tension and worry?

It would explain why he didn’t like the commercialism. When money was tight, tempers tended to fray as well. She’d seen the results of that first-hand when she’d helped at the refuge. And yet the women there still tried to make Christmas good for their kids and put their own feelings aside.