Carole Mortimer - The Deserving Mistress

‘Tell me,’ Jude murmured softly. ‘Do your sisters look anything like you?’

‘Exac— Why do you want to know?’ she amended her initial confirmation to a guarded wariness.

He shrugged. ‘Just curious.’

‘No, you weren’t,’ May Calendar said confidently. ‘Those bodies you mentioned a few minutes ago, you wouldn’t happen to be referring to Max Golding, your lawyer, and Will Davenport, your architect, would you?’

Bright as well as beautiful, Jude mentally conceded. The Calendar sisters—the one he had met so far, at least—were absolutely nothing like the three little old ladies he had assumed them to be several weeks ago when he’d first initiated the buying of their—this!—farm.

‘What do you think?’ he prompted unhelpfully.

‘You’re fond of answering a question with a question, aren’t you?’ May murmured consideringly as she moved to refill her coffee mug.

It was a defence mechanism he had perfected over the years, meant that he usually obtained more information than he gave—and it wasn’t something that most people easily recognised!

He frowned darkly. ‘Obviously you share the same trait,’ he bit out tersely.

She shrugged narrow shoulders. ‘We could carry on like this all morning—except I don’t have all morning to waste exchanging verbal arrows with you,’ she added hardly.

‘Because you and the vet spent a sleepless night together,’ he came back with deliberate provocation.

Angry colour darkened her normally magnolia cheeks. ‘I have already explained about that once, I don’t intend doing so again!’ she snapped dismissively. ‘What is it you want, Mr Marshall?’ she prompted challengingly.

Having now met the elder of the three Calendar sisters, found her to be absolutely nothing like he had presumed her to be, he wasn’t absolutely sure. And that wasn’t a feeling he was particularly comfortable with.

‘Well, you might start off by telling me where Will and Max are?’ he prompted cautiously.

‘Assuming their bodies aren’t hidden under the kitchen flagstones, after all?’ she came back scathingly.

‘Assuming that, yes,’ he conceded with a humourless smile.

May Calendar gave a derisive shake of her head. ‘They aren’t.’

‘Well?’ he pushed impatiently a few seconds later when she added nothing to that remark.

She gave him a considering look, green eyes narrowed, her thoughts unreadable even to his experienced eye. ‘Will is in London. Max is in the Caribbean,’ she finally told him economically.

Jude drew in an impatient breath. ‘And your two sisters are where?’

‘March is in London. January is in the Caribbean,’ she informed him with a challenging lift of her chin.

‘How coincidental,’ he drawled dryly.

In fact, he had already known exactly where Max and Will were, and who they were with; he had just wanted to see if May Calendar was willing to tell him as much. She obviously was!

‘Not really—March and January naturally wanted to be with their fiancés,’ she told him with satisfaction.

So Jude had gathered when he had received first a telephone call from Max over a week ago telling him of his engagement to January Calendar, and then a second telephone call from Will a couple of days ago telling him of his engagement to March Calendar!

To say he was surprised by the fact that his two friends were engaged to marry anyone, let alone two of the Calendar sisters, was an understatement.

The three men had been to school together, had worked together for years; despite relationships with numerous women over those years, Jude had always assumed that none of them would ever make the commitment to falling in love, let alone getting married. Obviously he had been wrong.

And that was something else he didn’t admit to too freely!

He stood up abruptly. ‘You asked me what I wanted a few minutes ago,’ he rasped. ‘I want exactly what Max was sent here to do before he fell in love with your sister, and that was to buy this farm!’

Her head tilted defensively. ‘And I’m sure he’s told you that it isn’t for sale!’

Jude’s eyes narrowed icily. ‘Yes, he’s told me.’

‘And?’

The challenge was evident in her voice, as was the underlying tone of resentment. Both of which were going to get him precisely nowhere, Jude realised.

He forced himself to relax slightly, his smile lightly cajoling. ‘May, surely you’ve realised, after the last few days of managing on your own here, that you just can’t do it?’

She stiffened angrily, green eyes flashing with the emotion. ‘What I can or cannot do is none of your business, Mr Marshall. And I don’t remember giving you permission to call me by my first name, either,’ she added churlishly.

He bit back the angry retort that sprang so readily to his lips, at the same time marvelling at the fact that this woman had managed to incite him to such an emotion. Usually he kept his emotions tightly under control, having found that this gave him an advantage over— Over what? His opponent, he had been going to say…

Was May Calendar really that?

Looking at her, tired from hard work and a sleepless night, her face ethereally lovely, much too slender than was healthy for her, it was difficult to think of her in that light. In fact, he was starting to feel guilty for having added to her obvious problems of the day.

Which was a highly dangerous direction for him to have taken!

‘Look, maybe this isn’t the best time for the two of us to talk,’ he dismissed lightly. ‘You’re obviously busy, and tired, and—’

‘And coming back tomorrow, when I might be neither of those things, isn’t going to change my answer one little bit,’ she assured him scathingly. ‘I’ll tell you what I first told Max, your lawyer, and then Will, your architect—this farm is not for sale!’

Jude frowned at her frustratedly. She really was the most stubborn, intransigent—

‘Certainly not to someone like you,’ she continued insultingly. ‘We don’t need a health and country club where the Hanworth Estate used to be, Mr Marshall,’ she scorned. ‘Or the eighteen-hole golf course you intend to make of this farmland!’

She had done her homework, at least, Jude acknowledged admiringly—because that was exactly what he intended doing with this land once it was his. Unless, of course, Max or Will—

No! He didn’t believe either man, no matter what his romantic connection with this family, would have betrayed the confidence he had in them. In fact, he knew that they hadn’t, had already turned down Max’s offer of resignation because of a ‘conflict of interest’, and viewed the two sets of plans Will had drawn up for this latest business venture, one including the Calendar farm, the other one not doing so.

He shrugged. ‘That’s only your personal opinion—Miss Calendar,’ he added pointedly.

She shook her head. ‘I believe, if you cared to ask around in the area, that you would find it’s the general consensus of opinion, and not just mine.’

He didn’t have time for this, Jude decided as he zipped up his jacket impatiently, better able to appreciate exactly what sort of brick wall Max and Will had come up against in their efforts to secure this farm for development. But May Calendar was going to find that he was made of much sterner stuff than either of his two friends and work colleagues, that he wasn’t so easily distracted by a helpless female—or, indeed, three of them!

‘We’ll talk about this some other time, Miss Calendar,’ he dismissed uninterestedly, pausing at the door to add, ‘It’s enough for now that we have introduced ourselves to each other.’ And that she now knew what sort of opposition she was up against.