A Perfect Proposal. Liz Fielding

still had to fight the impulse.

      It was quiet. Blissfully quiet. Uninterrupted, he’d swiftly finished the calculations and now he needed Jane. She’d had more than enough time to bathe one small child and put her to bed. He walked out into the hall and listened. Nothing. About to call her, he realised he might wake Shuli and instead went upstairs.

      The door to the nursery was open and Jane was sitting on the bed, gently stroking Shuli’s fair curls. His heart turned over at the sweet intimacy of the scene. Jane was right. This was what his little girl needed more than anything.

      Relief at how easy it had been with her here warred with guilt that he found it so difficult to cope with his own child. Relief won hands down. The thought of Jane taking care of things at home far outweighed the inconvenience of losing her in the office, and he suddenly felt as if a huge burden had been lifted from his shoulders.

      Seeing him in the doorway, she put her finger to her lips, set the listening device and then joined him, pulling the door partly closed behind her.

      ‘You make it look so easy,’ he said.

      ‘I’ve had a lot of practise. I’ve got half a dozen nephews and nieces.’ She had a family? He hadn’t thought of that. ‘You must be hungry. Shall we have something to eat now?’ she asked. ‘Or do you want to get straight back to work?’

      ‘Let’s eat. I’ll get something sent in.’ He headed for the stairs. ‘What do you like?’

      ‘Why don’t I just make something quick? Some pasta or eggs?’

      He glanced at her. ‘You cook, too?’

      ‘You’re a very lucky man, Mark. I have an old-fashioned mother. She taught us all the basics.’

      It occurred to him that he knew nothing of her background, her interests. He hadn’t even asked her where she’d gone on holiday. For the past three years he’d used work to fill the emotional vacuum inside him. He’d cut himself off from everything human, vital. The only time he seemed to speak to his family these days was when he needed help with childcare. But he wasn’t totally beyond redemption. ‘How will she react to this wedding?’

      ‘My mother? With considerable surprise, I imagine. Having given birth to four swans, she despaired of her little ugly duckling ever finding a mate.’

      ‘You’re kidding?’

      Her eyes sparkled back at him. Of course she was.

      ‘Why are you doing this, Jane? I can see the advantages from my point of view, but you’re young. You have your life ahead of you. You should be looking for a man who can give you…’ All of himself. That was what he’d been going to say. Her brows quirked up as he faltered. ‘A little bit of romance,’ he finished lamely.

      ‘The girls in the office live for romance. As far as I can see it involves a great deal of weeping in the cloakroom followed by the consumption of chocolate in industrial quantities. It looks messy. Not to say a dietary nightmare.’

      ‘Don’t underrate it.’

      ‘I don’t underrate love,’ she conceded, and a momentary sadness darkened her eyes. Then she shrugged. ‘I just don’t believe it’s something you’re likely to find in a club on a Saturday night.’

      That was it, then. Her heart had been broken too. They’d make a perfect match. Even so…‘Will you promise me something?’ She regarded him curiously from a pair of the darkest brown eyes, solemn now as she waited for him to continue. ‘If you ever do fall in love—the real thing, one hundred per cent, no holds barred love—you must tell me. I wouldn’t expect you to stay.’

      Jane knew he was talking about the way it had been for him, with Caroline. She’d been treated to all the office gossip when she’d first joined the firm, heard how their marriage had been the perfect once-in-a-lifetime romance. How his wife’s tragic death had nearly destroyed Mark, too.

      And, despite her denial of a romantic nature, like the girls in the office she’d done her share of weeping. For him. And for herself. At home, in the privacy of her own bedroom. But this wasn’t the moment to tell him that he was all the romance she’d ever need. Neither was it the moment to tell him that, like her mother, she was an old-fashioned girl who believed in taking her marriage vows seriously. Till death us do part.

      ‘Jane?’ he prompted, reaching out as if to keep her at his side, his hand beneath her arm, his look deeply intense.

      ‘I promise,’ she said.

      ‘Thank you.’

      And then she saw that in giving this promise she’d in some way absolved him from guilt about marrying her for his own selfish motives. Since her intention was to make his life easier, she tried to disregard the small stab of pain this caused, simply to be grateful that he hadn’t thought to give her a similar promise from himself.

      ‘Maybe you’d like to look around while you’re up here,’ he suggested brightly, shattering the quiet intimacy of the moment. ‘You might like to have the suite overlooking the garden,’ he added, opening a door and then standing back so that she could pass him and look around. ‘Caroline designed it for guests and it’s got pretty much everything.’

      She was about to laugh and say that there was no need to take ‘platonic’ that far, when some inner sense of self-preservation warned her to hold her tongue. She already knew she’d have to wait for his heart. It seemed she’d have to wait for everything else, too.

CHAPTER THREE

      ‘YOU’VE done what?’

      Jane, curled up on her best friend’s sofa, with a mug of tea clutched comfortingly between her hands, repeated her news. ‘I’ve asked Mark Hilliard to marry me.’ She lifted her shoulders, bunching them against her neck. This was harder than the actual deed. ‘At least, I manoeuvred him into a position where he asked me, which is much the same thing.’