Assignment: Single Man. Caroline Anderson

eyes, but set the bottle down carefully, found the corkscrew and opened it.

      ‘Well, you managed that all right for somebody who doesn’t know anything about wine,’ he said, watching her with the corkscrew.

      Fran laughed. ‘Just because I don’t know anything about wine doesn’t mean I can’t open the bottle. What now?’

      ‘Now you leave it to breathe, until we’re ready to eat. Let me smell the cork.’

      She put the bottle down and turned and studied him. ‘Are you really that desperate?’ she said with a grin.

      ‘Cheeky. I’m just making sure it’s not corked.’

      ‘I believe you, thousands wouldn’t. You look a bit better for your rest,’ she said, remembering her role. ‘Maybe you should go back on the sofa with your legs up and take it easy until supper’s ready. Have you got a telly you can watch to help you chill?’

      Josh nodded. ‘There’s one in that cupboard,’ he said, pointing at the corner by the table. ‘I’d rather listen to music, though.’

      ‘Whatever,’ she said with a shrug. ‘Just so long as you rest.’

      Needless to say, his choice in music was interesting. She handed him a remote control, and he aimed it at a little keypad on the wall. Moments later music flooded the room. He chose something modern and instrumental by nobody she’d ever heard of, but the beat was compelling and she found her foot tapping to the music as she prodded the casserole and prepared the vegetables.

      Every now and again she glanced his way, but he was lying back on the sofa with his eyes closed, his left leg bent up and his foot tapping in time with hers, and he didn’t notice her.

      It gave her a chance to study him while the vegetables were cooking, and she had to admit he was a fine specimen, easily as good as she’d remembered. Broad shoulders, lean hips, well-muscled legs—at least, the left one was. The right one was suffering a bit at the moment, but no doubt it would recover. She glanced back to his face, and found him looking at her. Soft colour flooded her cheeks and she turned back to her vegetables.

      ‘You’re still alive, then?’ she teased.

      ‘Ten out of ten,’ he replied, turning the music down. ‘How’s supper?’

      ‘Done. Where do you want to eat?’

      ‘Here?’

      So she boned the chicken and cut it into little chunks, poured him a glass of wine and propped him up a bit, then handed him the plate on a tray. ‘Heaven knows what it will be like, I make no guarantees.’

      ‘Very wise. I never guarantee anything—that way nobody is ever disappointed.’

      Fran didn’t believe him for a moment. For instance, there was the art student he’d sponsored and her strange, tortured sculpture in the other room. She thought about that as she ate her supper—astonishingly palatable, considering—and thought there was a great deal more to this man than met the eye.

      She sipped the wine and wondered if it was hideously expensive or if it was just Josh’s company and the fact that she had found herself somewhere to live and an income for the short term at least that made everything seem better.

      He swirled his glass, sniffed the wine and sipped it, and set it down with a nod of satisfaction. ‘Good choice, for a self-confessed philistine,’ he said with a grin. ‘The casserole’s good, too. If you didn’t nag so much, you’d be perfect.’

      High praise, indeed. She bent over her plate so that her hair fell forward and disguised the colour in her cheeks, horribly conscious of his eyes on her.

      ‘You need to learn to take a compliment,’ he said softly.

      ‘Lack of practice,’ she told him.

      ‘Now you’re fishing.’

      She didn’t bother to follow that one up. There was no point. It had been so long since anybody had paid her a compliment of any sort that she couldn’t remember it.

      ‘Fran?’

      ‘Leave it, Josh, it’s not important.’

      She kept her eyes fixed on her supper, and after a moment she heard the scrape of his fork against the plate again. It wasn’t over, though. Even on such short acquaintance, she knew him better than that, and he would return to the subject, she’d stake her life on it.

      Thank goodness it would soon be time to settle him down for the night, and she could go into that lovely room with a book from the groaning shelves in his library and just be herself. She needed the job, but more than that she needed time to recover, time to put herself back together and let herself heal.

      Maybe then she’d be able to take a compliment and dare to believe it.