Barbara Hannay - Borrowed Bachelor

Rick sampled the beans and nodded his approval as he chewed. ‘Tasty,’ he commented. ‘Beans go quite well with the wine, don’t they?’

Maddy’s hand waggled vaguely in the air. The beans were average as chilli beans went, but the wine was very good quality. ‘This wine would improve just about anything—even a peanut butter sandwich.’ She took another sip to prove it. ‘I’m glad to hear your partner is getting better.’

‘Yeah. It’s going to be a long process, but mobility should be retained.’

‘So she’s had an accident?’

For a long moment, Rick stared back at her, and she was shocked by the sudden change in his expression. His grey eyes became as empty and bleak as the ashen shell of a burnt-out building.

‘A bullet lodged in the hip.’

‘My God!’

Rick frowned and blinked and stared at his food, and Maddy lowered her eyes to her own plate. Her thoughts whirled.

Rick Lawson’s girlfriend had been shot?

Who was she sharing her meal with?

A criminal involved in some kind of backstreet warfare?

She thought of Rick’s few belongings. Was he on the run? The hairs lifted on the back of her neck as she remembered how familiar his face and name had seemed. Surely she hadn’t seen mugshots of him on television? On some ‘Wanted’ file?

‘I blame myself,’ Rick said with a heavy sigh. And the expression on his face was so full of remorse that Maddy put on hold her intention to ring Crime Stoppers. Surely a criminal wouldn’t look so repentant?

‘Perhaps you’re being too hard on yourself,’ she said, shocked at the definite note of sympathy she heard in her voice.

Rick’s eyes softened and he smiled a slow, lingering smile that acknowledged her attempt at empathy, but held just a hint of something else as well.

As his gaze rested on her, Maddy’s arms turned to goosebumps and her cheeks grew warm. What was wrong with her? She knew better than to feel warm and melting over a man’s smile. Especially a man who already had a girlfriend. So what if the smile was a darn sight beyond charming? So what if his eyes suddenly sparked with a hint of something that looked remarkably like desire? And perhaps his mouth was sensuous and sexy? Minutes—maybe only seconds ago, she’d been suspecting this man of being wanted by the police in at least five states.

But, whatever message had flashed across his face, it disappeared as he shook his head. ‘Sam’s accident was my fault. It was my idea for us to chase a story in a really dangerous part of the world.’

Rick placed his wineglass carefully on the glass-topped table. ‘Sam didn’t want to do the story. Said the whole situation was too hazardous. But such a damned good photographer can’t resist a chance at good footage—and I knew that once we got there and saw the action Sam would be right in the thick of things—getting the most incredible scenes.’ He paused and, with his fork, traced a pattern in the bright sauce on his plate. ‘I placed my partner’s life in jeopardy for the sake of my story.’

While her sympathy for him swelled, something else clicked into place in Maddy’s brain. ‘I just realised who you are,’ she blurted out.

‘YOU’RE Rick Lawson!’ Maddy exclaimed.

He grinned briefly and rolled his eyes. ‘Well done,’ he chuckled. ‘I thought I introduced myself last Monday.’

‘No. I mean you’re the Rick Lawson. The foreign correspondent!’

How could she not have recognised him? On her father’s recommendation, Maddy had watched Rick’s programs from around the world with increasing fascination. She’d been impressed by his ability to make complicated and often disastrous situations in foreign parts of the world seem clear and vitally important to viewers watching from the comfort of their lounge rooms.

But, meeting him in a totally different context—in her own little flower shop—she hadn’t made the connection. As soon as he’d mentioned terms like stories and photographers, his identity had been so glaringly obvious, she felt foolish. ‘Wow! You did all that wonderful work for famine relief last year!’ she exclaimed.

‘And landed my partner in hospital this year,’ he replied softly.

‘But you said she’s going to get better.’

‘Sam will walk again. But there’ll probably be a limp. We won’t be able to do the dangerous kind of work we’re used to doing together.’

Rick reached over and topped up her glass and promptly changed the subject. ‘The people like you whose business involves weddings—the caterers, florists, photographers…Do you all form some kind of a cooperative? Recommend each other? That sort of thing?’

‘Oh—um—are you planning a wedding?’ Maddy stammered, still grappling with the startling realisation that, rather than harbouring a criminal, she was entertaining a celebrity.

‘No, not at all. But I thought maybe Sam should think about that line of work—some kind of functions photographer. Videos perhaps.’

‘Oh. I see,’ Maddy said quietly.

And she saw a lot more. It suddenly made complete sense why the taciturn Rick Lawson, who’d shunned her all week, had suddenly turned up on her doorstep. He was no more interested in ‘good neighbourly relations’ now than he had been on Monday.

That winning smile he’d beamed on her mere minutes ago had been a weapon—a weapon he frequently used in front of the camera. He could switch it on whenever he needed to win the hearts of viewers worldwide. And tonight he’d turned it on for her, because he wanted to appease his guilty conscience by finding a suitable career alternative for his partner. He was simply sussing her out as a possible link for Sam’s future employment.

And why she should be so utterly disappointed by that thought puzzled Maddy totally.

Rick stood up. ‘Why don’t you have the last of this wine while I wash the dishes?’

Startled, Maddy jumped to her feet. She hadn’t expected Rick Lawson to belong to the dish-washing variety of male. She’d hardly met a man who had. At home, her father had always had more important things to do than household chores and her brothers had helped him on the farm, leaving the kitchen to her mother and herself. More recently, while her fiancè had enjoyed her cooking on many occasions, she knew Byron would have had a blue fit if she’d so much as waved a tea towel at him.

‘You don’t need to wash up,’ she told Rick. ‘There are only a couple of plates and a pot.’

But he ignored her protests, gathered up the plates and headed for the kitchen. ‘I insist.’

Maddy followed him, clutching her wineglass. She leant against a cupboard and watched with interest as Rick flicked on the hot-water tap and squeezed some detergent into the sink. She had to admit that her interest was fuelled by more than simple curiosity about a man tackling a household chore. The muscles flexing in Rick’s shoulders and arms as he moved, the way detergent bubbles clung to the light hair on his strong forearms and the neat way his jeans outlined his behind were all points worthy of inspection.

She set down her drink, reached for a tea towel and furiously scrubbed at a plate. There was no point in wasting time contemplating Rick Lawson’s physique when the only interest he’d shown in her was as an employment agency for his girlfriend.

‘Do you have a pot-scrubber?’ he asked as he frowned at the baked-on dregs of beans sticking to the bottom of the saucepan.

‘Sure,’ Maddy mumbled, feeling ridiculously flustered and frantic. It was so weird to be sharing a domestic chore with a virtual stranger. ‘Under the sink. I’ll get it for you.’

He stepped slightly to one side so that she could rummage around in the cupboard. How could the scouring gear have vanished? It was always in a little plastic bucket at the front of the cupboard. On her haunches, she stuck her head deeper into the rather untidy jumble of cleaning gear.