In Want of a Wife? (16 page)

Lizzy opened her mouth to tell him that she didn’t feel comfortable unwinding with him, that he was at the very top of her hit list. Had it not been for him, Leigh would never have met Freddy, would not now be causing her parents sleepless nights and Rose would still be enjoying life on cloud nine instead of spending her days working through boxes of tissues.

But the thought of sitting on one of those leather bar-stools in his kitchen, watching while he cooked for her, was so alluring that her mouth actually felt dry. And she wanted to do things with this man; she wanted to absorb every minute of him like a sponge.

‘Grab your coat.’

‘You can’t just take charge,’ she said weakly. ‘And I haven’t got all evening to spend here. I only came because you told me that you had something to say to me.’

‘Yes. And now I’m telling you that I’m going to rise to the challenge and cook you a meal. When it comes to taking charge, you should know that I’m an expert in the field.’

‘You don’t have to prove anything to me.’

‘No?’ Louis held out her coat so that she could slip into it. ‘Then why does it always feel that way? And why do I like it?’

His breath was warm against the nape of her neck and his voice was low and pensive, as though he was really talking to himself. Lizzy shivered involuntarily and stepped away because being so close to him affected her ability to breathe.

This all felt so dangerous, yet so inevitable, and as she brushed past him out of the front door she was struck yet again at how easily control of her own life had slipped through her careless fingers. She wondered where the mouthy girl on the motorbike had gone.

The delicatessen was as close as he had said and was stocked with the most exotic array of food Lizzy had ever seen, at prices that made her eyes water. She watched with interest as he randomly chucked things into his basket and after a while she couldn’t resist asking, ‘Do you know what you intend to cook exactly?’ She looked up at him and experienced a drowning sensation as his brilliant black eyes locked on her with amusement.

‘I like to wing it when it comes to this sort of thing.’

‘I’m beginning to see that.’

Half an hour later, she was relaxing on one of the bar stools in his kitchen, in front of a glass of crisp, chilled wine, with a wooden bowl of cheese-savoury biscuits in front of her. She had kicked off her shoes and, yes, against all odds she felt totally relaxed. Was he deliberately going on a major charm-offensive? Probably not. But he was being charming, talking as he chopped things, reminiscing about places he had been and people he had met. He was funny, sharp and utterly enthralling.

The kitchen was no longer what it had been. The floor was littered with bits of vegetables that had escaped his watchful eye and a cavalier array of condiments cluttered the counter space. Several attempts to toss whatever he was stir-frying had ended in chaos but he seemed unaware of the mess created.

Maintaining the necessary distance was difficult, and several times Lizzy found herself staring intently down at her feet, trying hard not to laugh.

‘So …’ She looked at him as he eventually finished his impromptu meal and approached her with a tea towel slung casually over his shoulder and a triumphant smile on his face.

‘I gather you’re not really that familiar with the basics of cooking.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Most of the ingredients seem to have ended up on the floor.’

Louis, in buoyant spirits, looked down at the floor and frowned. ‘How did that stuff get there?’ He shrugged and tossed her a careless smile.

‘Rule one,’ Lizzy informed him primly, ‘is to make sure that you clean as you go. Or else it’s just a matter of time before everything descends into chaos.’

‘I’m very ordered in my chaos.’ Louis topped up her glass and indicated the living room. ‘And if you adjourn to the living room you can pretend the kitchen doesn’t exist. Food’s going to be at least another fifteen minutes.’

Lizzy wondered how many glasses of wine she had had. Her head felt a bit woozy and she was relieved when she made it to the long leather sofa. ‘I’ve had too much to drink,’ she complained.

‘You’ve had three glasses.’

‘And one at the pub before I was collected. I’m not accustomed to drinking.’

‘Close your eyes and relax.’

‘I can’t fall asleep in your apartment.’

‘I know. That would be truly shocking.’ Louis had never had a woman nod off in his company, but he was amused when five minutes later her eyelids fluttered shut and her breathing softened. He felt guilty and intrusive to watch her as she dozed but watch her he did. He noted the way her head gently fell to one side, the way her hand, balled into a loose fist, found its way to under her chin; the way her features softened. In between he set about cleaning the kitchen, a tedious task which he condensed into under ten minutes. And his lovingly prepared meal.

It was worthy of the bin. Clearly he had a long way to go
when it came to honing his culinary skills, but the attempt to actually use some of the utensils in his kitchen had been interesting. It only struck him later, when he was carrying a slumbering Lizzy into his bedroom, that she was the first woman he had ever cooked for. Even when he had been at university, he had had the financial resources to eat out.

She turned a little as he laid her down on his king-sized bed, and when he began removing some of her clothes he wondered whether she would wake up and how she would react. But was there anything worse than falling asleep fully clothed?

And it was hardly as though he hadn’t seen her body before. In fact, he had perfect recall of all of it—although as everything but her bra and pants amassed in a heap on the sofa by the window he still felt his breathing thicken at the glorious sight of her. With a groan of frustration, he gently covered her with the duvet and watched as she burrowed under it until she found the most comfortable position.

Then he pulled over a chair, fetched the novel he had begun months previously, and which he had enjoyed reading until work commitments had relegated it to the bottom of the drawer, and took up position next to where she lay sleeping.

Three hours later, he dropped the book onto the bedside table as she began to stir.

‘Before you ask, you fell asleep.’ Louis sat forward, arms loosely resting on his thighs. ‘And, no, you didn’t get a chance to sample my fantastic dinner.’

Lizzy groaned and tried to focus. ‘How long have I been out of it?’

‘A little over three hours.’

Another groan, this time more dismayed. ‘I’m so sorry.’ She rubbed her eyes. ‘This has never happened before. Those glasses of wine must have acted on an empty stomach. I didn’t get time today to grab any lunch, and I haven’t been sleeping
well since all this business happened. I’m sorry you went to the trouble of cooking a meal and I fell asleep on you.’

‘There’s no need to keep apologising. I sampled the food and I can assure you that you didn’t miss anything.’

Lizzy shot him a nervous glance from under her lashes. She began to work out how she had managed to go from the leather sofa to lying comatose on a bed in. She looked around her and registered that this was no guest room. This was
his
room: huge; airy; a vast expanse of window with privacy secured by banks of wooden shutters, and a massive bed with chocolate-coloured linen that felt silky soft against her skin. Against her.

Lizzy tentatively lifted the duvet and peered down at her semi-clothed body, then she raised her eyes to his as her mouth fell open.

‘Where are my clothes?’ She cleared her throat and then followed his hand as he casually indicated the chair.

‘I thought you would be more comfortable.’

For the first time she noticed the chair by the bed, the book on the ground, the jug of water and the glass by the side of the bed.

‘Were you in here with me the whole time that I was asleep?’

‘Is that a problem?’ Louis heard an edge of defensiveness in his voice and realised that his immediate response to her question had been to justify his uncharacteristic behaviour.

‘Okay …’ She strung that one word out. She had fallen asleep on him and in return he had
taken care
of her. What did that mean? Wary of embarking on an analysis of the situation—because she knew that it would be too easy to twist conclusions in a way that favoured him—she instead clutched the duvet and forced herself to be as brisk as she could.

‘If you don’t mind, I’ll get dressed now, and perhaps we can actually talk about what I came here to talk about in the first place.’

‘You want me to leave the room?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘Because I won’t be seeing anything I haven’t already seen …’ And wanted to see again. Like a complete loser, he was prepared to take her rejection of him on the chin and stage another battle for her interest. ‘There’s an
en suite
bathroom and fresh towels in the cupboard. Feel free to take a bath or a shower; you can rest assured that I won’t intrude.’

By the time she finally emerged from his bedroom, he had made them both a sobering cup of coffee and was waiting for her on the leather sofa, idly staring into space and not moving a muscle as she tentatively took the chair facing him.

‘Mum said that you telephoned her,’ Lizzy began without preamble. ‘I phoned you to thank you for that. I don’t suppose she gave you such a good reception when she heard your voice …’

She had washed her hair and, unlike all the women he had ever known, appeared to have no qualms about the fact that it was still damp. Nor did she mind sitting in front of him with a freshly scrubbed face. He had to drag his eyes away from the enticing wholesomeness of her.

‘She seemed to share the belief that it was exclusively my fault that Rose and Nicholas had broken up,’ Louis said abruptly. ‘I made you a cup of coffee. Next to you on the table.’ He could almost smell the clean, pine scent of his shampoo in her hair.

‘Yes, well, I’m afraid I did tell her that you might have had a hand in that.’

‘I telephoned Nicholas and had a talk with him.’

‘You did?’

‘He had to return to London to sort out an accident at a building which he had personally surveyed six months ago. There was some notion that he might have had culpability, but as it turned out the person who had been injured had been an illegal squatter. There was no question but that the correct
signs were in evidence, and the owner of the building had no idea that it had been broken into. At any rate, he left Scotland the second he received the news, and it all took much longer than he had anticipated because he wanted to make sure that the guy who had been injured was all right.’

Lizzy’s heart softened. ‘But Jessica …’

‘Played fast and loose with the truth for her own reasons,’ Louis said in a hard voice. ‘But, as you know, that wasn’t why I called your parents. I called them to reassure them about Freddy.’

‘Yes. Mum sounded a lot less frantic when I last spoke to her.’

‘Which was the intention. As an aside, however, you might want to know that Nicholas has managed to get through to your sister at last. It’s transpired that Jessica had told him that she had had a heart-to-heart with Rose, who wanted to end the relationship but didn’t know how. Nicholas being Nicholas, he thought that he would retreat and give her some space, so when he returned to England he threw himself into sorting out the problem with the squatter and lay low for a few days. I think he may have hoped that Rose might get in touch, but that didn’t happen, because she was busy thinking that she had been dumped.’

‘Why on earth would Jessica say stuff like that?’

‘She had her own agenda.’

‘And you were at the centre of it.’

Louis shrugged. Lizzy stiffened and looked at him with flushed cheeks. ‘Why don’t you just put the poor girl out of her misery and marry her? She fits the bill, after all …’

Louis watched her carefully, his antennae tuned to her subtle changes in mood. ‘I’m beginning to think that fitting the bill isn’t quite as important as I’ve made it out to be in the past.’

Lizzy was determined not to be distracted. She had fallen in love with him; she knew that if Rose and Nicholas married
then Louis would be around in some form or other for a long time, whether she liked it or not. He was Nicholas’s closest friend. Rose was her sister. Ergo, she would be destined to bump into Louis at every family gathering, at every significant party, and neither would she be spared gossip about what he was up to, what he was doing, who he was seeing.

A vision of herself turning into a shrivelled spinster jumped out at her with nightmarish clarity: unable to move on, and condemned to witness first-hand Louis finding a suitable bride with the right background and having lots of suitable children. He would be the constant spectre in the background, reminding her of her unwise decisions and foolish behaviour.

So when he murmured like that, about fitting the bill not being as important as he once thought, she couldn’t afford to melt, not even a little bit.

‘Really? Well, I guess that’s your business, but she must care very much about you if she’s willing to make mischief with everyone’s life to get her own way. Did she think that you would like her more if Rose was out of the way?’

‘She thought that with Rose out of the way the ground would be cleared for Nicholas to marry my sister,’ Louis said shortly. ‘And then her chances with me would be vastly increased. She was deluded—and believe me when I tell you that I’ve dragged her kicking and screaming out of that particular delusion.’

Lizzy had a pleasing vision of Jessica being dragged by her glossy blond locks out of a house called Delusion and summarily chucked into a street called Reality—which was such an uncharitable thought that she flushed guiltily.

‘Well, I’m glad that Nicholas and Rose have patched things up,’ she said with genuine, heartfelt emotion. ‘And have you been able to find out anything about Freddy and Leigh?’

Louis stood up and paced the room restlessly before sitting back down, but this time on the low, square uber-modern wooden table in front of her.

‘What?’ Lizzy asked anxiously.