Kate Hardy - A New Year Marriage Proposal

‘It’s OK. I won’t hold it against you.’

Her voice was neutral and her face was impassive, and he didn’t have a clue what she was thinking. ‘So your father actually wrote the song for you?’

‘My first Christmas,’ she said. ‘I was only a few weeks old. I was in hospital for a week with a virus that meant I couldn’t breathe very easily, and I had to be fed by a tube until I was better. The only way Dad coped with it was to bring his guitar to the hospital, sit by my bed and play me songs. That’s why he wrote “Santa, Bring My Baby Home for Christmas”.’

And now Quinn understood for the first time what the song was actually saying. Pete Wylde had wanted his tiny baby daughter home for her first Christmas, safe and well and in his arms. It wasn’t a cheesy love song at all. It had come straight from the heart.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. And not just because he’d insulted her. Because he was envious. What would it be liked to be loved and wanted so much by your family? It was something he’d never had. His mother had been quick enough to dump him on his aunt and uncle, and he’d always felt a bit like a spare part in their home. Which was probably why he was antsy about getting attached to anyone now: it was something he’d never really done.

‘You don’t need to like the song,’ she said with a smile. ‘Though plenty of people do. It makes shedloads of royalties every Christmas.’

But Quinn was pretty sure that money wasn’t what motivated Carissa Wylde. ‘And?’

‘Dad arranged to put half the royalties from the song in a trust,’ she said. ‘Which has been enough to fund the building and equipping of a new children’s ward, including an intensive care unit. All state-of-the-art equipment—and we’ll be able to keep it that way in the future.’

‘The ward that needs a virtual Santa.’ It dawned on him now. ‘ You’re the client.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘So do you do PR for anyone else?’

She frowned. ‘PR?’

‘That’s what you do, isn’t it? PR?’

‘No. I’m a lawyer,’ she said.

So he’d been right first time round. ‘Oh.’

‘Sit down,’ she said, ‘or if you want you can grab the corkscrew from the drawer and open that lovely wine you brought. Third drawer on the right.’

She was letting him off the hook. And he was grateful. ‘Thank you.’ He opened the wine while she served up the tuna and the vegetables. Porcelain flatware, he noticed, and she served the vegetables in dishes rather than just sharing them out onto their plates. Carissa Wylde did things formally. Completely the opposite of how he did things, outside work. He was quite happy to eat pizza straight out of the box or Chinese food straight from the carton.

‘Well.’ She stripped off the apron, folded it and placed it on the worktop, no doubt ready to be transferred to the washing machine. Then she sat down opposite him and lifted her glass in a toast. ‘Here’s to the opening of the Wylde Ward and our virtual Santa.’

‘The opening of the Wylde Ward and the virtual Santa,’ he echoed, and smiled at her. ‘It’s nice that it’s named after your dad.’

‘And my mum,’ she pointed out.

‘That’s nice,’ he said again, feeling horrendously awkward and not quite sure how to deal with this. Things had suddenly become a lot more complicated.

‘Help yourself before it gets cold.’ She indicated the food.

What he’d thought would be plain vegetables had clearly been cooked with a spice mix. A gorgeous one. And the polenta fries were to die for. ‘If you ever get bored with being a lawyer,’ he said, ‘I think you’d make a good chef.’

‘Cook,’ she corrected. ‘Maybe.’

‘Didn’t you ever think about being a musician? I mean, given what your dad did?’

She shook her head. ‘I can play the piano a bit, but I don’t have that extra spark that Dad had. And life as a musician isn’t an easy one. In the early days, he and Mum lived pretty much hand to mouth. He was so lucky that the right break came at the right time.’ She paused. ‘What about you? Do you come from a long line of inventors?’

Quinn didn’t have a clue who his father was. And the family he’d been dumped on...well. He’d just been a burden to them. The unwanted nephew. One who definitely hadn’t planned to spend his career working in their corner shop, which in turn had made him even more unwanted. ‘No.’

He’d sounded shorter than he’d meant to, because it killed the conversation dead. She just ate her tuna steak and looked faintly awkward.

In the end, he sighed. ‘Why is it I constantly feel the need to apologise around you?’

‘Because you’re being a grumpy idiot?’ she suggested.

‘You don’t pull your punches, do you?’ he asked wryly. ‘I hope I never end up in court in front of you.’

‘I’m a solicitor, not a barrister,’ she said. ‘Gramps’s chambers would’ve taken me on as a pupil but...’ she pulled a face ‘...I didn’t really want to do all the performance stuff. Wearing the robes and the wig, doing all the flashy rhetoric and showing off in front of a jury. I prefer the backroom stuff—working with the law, with words and people.’

‘So it’s in the family? Being a lawyer?’

‘On my mum’s side, yes. I think Gramps was a bit disappointed that she never became a lawyer, but she met Dad at a gig when she was a student, fell in love with him, and then I came along.’ She smiled. ‘Though I think Gramps was quite pleased when he realised I was more likely to follow in his footsteps than in Dad’s.’

Quinn had had nobody’s footsteps to follow in. He’d made his own way. ‘I guess that made it easier for you.’

‘More like it meant I had something to live up to,’ she corrected.

He’d never thought of it that way before—that privilege could also be a burden. Tabitha’s friends and family had all been privileged, and they’d taken their easy life for granted; they’d also looked down on those who’d had to work for what they had, like him. Clearly Clarissa saw things very differently.

‘I had to be the best, because I couldn’t let Gramps down,’ she continued. ‘If I fell flat on my face, it wouldn’t just be me that looked an idiot. No way would I do that to him. I wanted him to be proud of me, not embarrassed by my incompetence.’

Quinn hadn’t known Carissa for very long, but incompetence was a word he’d never associate with her. And he’d just bet that her grandparents adored her as much as her parents obviously had, because her voice was full of affection rather than fear or faint dislike. ‘Do your grandparents know what you’re doing about the ward?’

‘The ward itself, yes, of course—Gramps was really good at helping me cut through the red tape and pushing the building work through endless committees. Plus, obviously he’s one of the trustees. But I haven’t told them anything about the virtual Santa. I wanted to make sure it could work first.’

‘If you hadn’t met me, what would you have done about it?’ he asked, suddenly curious.

‘Found a programmer. Talked to his clients. Offered him a large bonus to get the job done in my timescale.’ She shrugged. ‘Standard stuff. But it’s irrelevant now, because I’ve met you.’

‘How do you know I could...?’ he began, and then stopped. ‘You talked to some of my clients, didn’t you?’

‘I couldn’t possibly answer that,’ she said, making her face impassive and clearing away their empty plates.

He sighed.

‘OK. I won’t say who I spoke to, but they said that if you run a project then it’ll work the way it’s supposed to work. No compromises and no mistakes.’

He prided himself on that. ‘Yes.’