Last-Minute Proposal Read online

  ‘These are good,’ he said, unable to keep the surprise from his voice.

  Tilly switched on the kettle and turned to lean back against the sink, determinedly keeping her distance.

  ‘It’s not exactly turning round a global corporation, is it?’

  Campbell turned another few pages. ‘I’m beginning to wonder if that might not be easier than coming up with ideas like these.’

  ‘Well, that’s why you’re a hotshot international executive and I’m the provincial cake-maker,’ said Tilly. ‘If you think about it, we don’t have a single thing in common, do we?’

  Campbell looked at her standing by the kettle. Her nut-brown curls gleamed with gold under the spotlights, and he remembered how soft her hair had felt under his cheek as they had lain together in the tent up on the Scottish hillside. Funny to think they had only spent a matter of hours together. She seemed uncannily familiar already. Campbell wasn’t a fanciful man, but it felt as if he had known the glint of fun in her eyes, the tartness of her voice, the gurgle of laughter, for ever.

  ‘No, I don’t suppose we do,’ he agreed, his voice rather more curt than he had intended.

  And they didn’t. Tilly was right. They had absolutely nothing in common.

  It hadn’t taken Campbell nearly as long as he had expected to adjust to civilian life. He had always been too much of a maverick to fit that comfortably into naval life, even within an elite unit. An unorthodox approach and a relentless drive to succeed at whatever cost came into their own on special operations, but were less of an advantage in the day-to-day routine.

  He hadn’t regretted leaving all that behind. Lisa hadn’t intended to change his life for the better when she’d walked out, but he was grateful to her in an odd way for making him so determined to prove that he could make twice as much money as her new husband that he had gone into business. It had turned out that he was made for the ruthless cut and thrust of corporate life. Campbell didn’t do emotions, or talking or any of the things women thought were so important, but he knew how to make money, and that was what counted.

  When it came down to it, Campbell believed that everybody was motivated by money at some level. Tilly wouldn’t agree, he was sure. That was another thing they didn’t have in common.

  ‘We just have to get along for a fortnight with nothing in common,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll be gone.’

  Thanks for the reminder, Tilly thought, piqued in spite of herself. It was all very well deciding not to get involved with him, but quite another thing to be hit over the head with the fact that he was planning to leave the country soon. She had a nasty feeling he had done it to make sure that she got the message that he wasn’t available. Why didn’t he just hang up a sign saying ‘don’t bother’?

  Not that she had any intention of letting him know that she had even considered the possibility of getting involved. That really would make him laugh.

  ‘Of course, you’re moving to the States, aren’t you?’ Tilly was Ms Cucumber Cool as she carried the teapot over and found two mugs. She could do couldn’t-care-less as well as anyone, even Campbell Sanderson. ‘Where exactly are you going?’

  ‘New York.’

  ‘Is that where your ex-wife lives now?’

  Campbell looked at her, startled. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Well, you said she lived in the States, and you don’t seem the kind of man who lets go easily. I wondered if you were going there because you wanted to see her.’

  ‘Not at all,’ he said sharply. ‘It just happens that’s where the head office is.’

  Infuriatingly, though, Tilly’s words had made him pause and examine his own motives for the first time. ‘Of course I’ve considered the chance that I might bump into her,’ he went on after a while. ‘New York is a big city, but Lisa’s new husband is in a similar line of business, so it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that we’ll meet.’

  ‘Gosh, I hope he’s not more successful than you,’ said Tilly, only half joking, and Campbell smiled grimly.

  ‘Not any more,’ he said.

  CHAPTER SIX

  T ILLY poured the tea. She could just imagine how Campbell would have been driven to out-perform the man who had taken his wife away from him. It would have hurt anyone, but to a man like Campbell the implication that she had left him for someone more successful must have been an extra dose of salt in the wound.

  ‘What will it be like, seeing her again?’ she asked.

  He shrugged, and she rolled her eyes as she pushed a mug across the table towards him.

  ‘Come on, you must have thought about it! I’ve spent the last eighteen months practising what I would say to Olivier if I ever saw him again-not that I’ve had the chance to say any of it,’ she added ruefully. ‘It’s probably just as well.’

  ‘Olivier?’

  ‘The beat of my heart for two years,’ she said, blue eyes bleak with memory.

  And presumably the man who had taught her that the absence of children didn’t make a break-up any easier. Campbell was remembering now.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. Were commiserations in order? These kinds of emotional conversations always made him uncomfortable. He couldn’t understand why women insisted on talking about this kind of stuff the whole time.

  ‘What would you have said?’ he asked at last, opting for a practical approach.

  Tilly thought about it. ‘It depended on the mood I was in,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I was determined to make him realise just what he’d lost, so I was going to pretend to have a fabulous new lover and carry on as if I’d almost forgotten him. At other times I wanted him to acknowledge how he’d hurt me, but either way I would be very cool and calm.

  ‘In reality, of course, if I had bumped into Olivier, I would have burst into tears and begged him to come back, and then none of my friends would ever have spoken to me again!’

  Campbell studied her across the table. Her generous mouth was twisted in a self-deprecating smile, but the blue eyes were wistful, and he wondered what Olivier was like. Campbell didn’t like the idea of him at all. He didn’t like the idea of anyone hurting Tilly.

  She wasn’t beautiful, not like Lisa. Her features were too quirky for that, but there was something alluring about her all the same, he realised. She had warmth and wit and a charm that Lisa had never had, and in a strange way she was sexier, too.

  The thought was startling, but Campbell decided it was true. Lisa was slender and elegant and perfect, but she was a woman most men admired from a distance. Tilly was quite different-all soft curves and luminous skin-and there was something irresistibly touchable about her. Any man’s fingers would be twitching with the need to reach out and slide through her hair, to smooth and stroke and explore that warm, lush body, and then he would want to take that mouth and see if it tasted and felt as good as it looked…

  Alarmed by how quickly his thoughts had drifted out of control, Campbell slammed on the brakes and gave himself a mental slap.

  He drank his tea, feeling jarred and vaguely uneasy. Tilly was the one with the vivid imagination, not him. Campbell Sanderson was famous for his coolness under pressure, for his single-minded pursuit of a goal. He wasn’t a man who let himself get distracted, especially not by a woman. The last time that had happened, he had ended up married to Lisa, and look what a mistake that had been! No way was he doing that again.

  ‘If you cried, there really would have been no chance of getting him back,’ he said caustically to make up for the fact that while his mind was firmly back under control, his hands were taking rather longer to catch up and were still tingling at the idea of touching Tilly.

  Scowling at the sign of weakness, Campbell gripped them firmly around the mug.

  ‘I know.’ Tilly sighed. ‘What is it with men? Look at you. You’re happy to jump off a cliff but show you a woman in tears and I bet you’d run a mile!’

  This was unfortunately so true that Campbell could only glower. ‘I like dealing with facts,’ he said. ‘Emoti
ons are messy.’

  Tilly stared at him and shook her head. ‘How on earth did you ever manage to get married in the first place? You must have had to succumb to a teensy little emotion then, surely!’

  ‘The attraction between us was a physical thing. It was never about hearts and flowers and all that stuff. Lisa’s not like that. She’s like me in lots of ways. She knows what she wants, and she goes after it, and she gets it. And for a time,’ he said, ‘she wanted me.’

  Campbell paused, remembering. ‘It’s hard to resist a woman who looks the way she does. You’d have to see her to understand,’ he said, catching Tilly’s sceptical expression.

  ‘I can’t see you being pushed into doing anything you didn’t want to do, let alone marriage,’ she said. ‘You’re not the passive type.’

  ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘I did want to marry her.’

  ‘Because you loved her, or because you could show her off, prove that you had a more beautiful wife than anyone else?’

  A very faint flush stained Campbell’s cheekbones. ‘I suppose there’s some truth in that,’ he acknowledged. ‘But marriage was Lisa’s idea. I’d never imagined myself as a marrying type, but she wanted a wedding, and I was mad for her. I didn’t care what happened as long as I could have her. I should have known it wouldn’t last.’

  What would it be like to be so beautiful you always got your own way? Tilly wondered. What would it be like to be desired so much by Campbell that he would do whatever you wanted?

  ‘How long were you married?’ she asked instead.

  ‘Just three years,’ said Campbell. ‘There was great sexual chemistry but not much else going for the marriage. I was away on operations most of the time, and Lisa wasn’t prepared to sit at home waiting for me. She liked to have fun, and she liked money, and it didn’t take her long to get bored and start to want something more glamorous. Arthur offered her the lifestyle she wanted, so she took it.’

  He shrugged, but Tilly couldn’t believe that he was as nonchalant about the failure of his marriage as he pretended. It must have been a huge blow to his pride.

  ‘Are you hoping that if she sees how successful you are now, she might come back to you?’

  Campbell stared at her for a moment, then pushed the mug abruptly aside. ‘No,’ he said instinctively, and then, honestly, ‘I don’t know.’

  So what were you thinking, Tilly? Tilly asked herself. That he might say, Of course not, how could I possibly want my beautiful ex-wife with whom I shared such incredible sexual chemistry when I could have you for a brief fling?

  ‘I was angry when she left,’ he said unexpectedly, almost as if the words had been forced out of him. For a long time all I thought about was seeing Lisa again, and making her regret the choice she had made. I probably did hope that she might change her mind then.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Now…now I think I want her to see what she could have had if she had stuck with me. Beyond that, I really don’t know. I probably won’t know until I do see her again.’

  Well, she had asked and he had answered. Tilly couldn’t complain that he hadn’t been honest. She was very glad that she hadn’t done anything silly, like taking Cleo’s advice. Campbell was like a dog with a bone that it had tired of until the moment someone tried to take it away. Losing Lisa to another man would smack too much of failure for a man like him. Consciously or not, Tilly was prepared to bet that his life since then had been focused on getting his wife back.

  Perhaps that was how it should be, she thought, but it was hard not to feel a little disconsolate. No one would ever feel that way about her. Olivier certainly hadn’t, she remembered with a trace of bitterness. Even if she had been the one to dump him, he would probably just have been relieved that she had saved him the trouble. He wouldn’t still be hankering after her four years down the line.

  She should just face up to the fact that she wasn’t the kind of girl men got possessive or obsessed about, Tilly decided glumly. She had better just stick to baking.

  And, talking of which…She sniffed delicately and looked across at Campbell, who was staring into his tea with a brooding expression.

  He glanced up as he felt her eyes on him. ‘What?’

  ‘How long has your cake been in?’

  ‘The cake!’

  Campbell leapt to his feet and yanked open the oven, only to cough and splutter as smoke billowed into his face. Grabbing a tea towel, he pulled the tin out, swearing as he burned his fingers and let the tin fall with a clatter on to the work surface.

  When the smoke cleared, he could see that the cake was not the perfect chocolate cake he had intended to make. Instead, it was burnt, hard and flat. It didn’t take a Michelin starred chef to see that it was going to be inedible.

  Only the tiniest of smiles dented the corner of Tilly’s mouth as she went into the larder and found a banana cake she had made a couple of days earlier. She put it on the table and sat down again, very carefully saying absolutely nothing.

  ‘All right!’ snarled Campbell as if she had been shouting accusingly at him. ‘All right! It’s not just a question of reading the instructions, OK? I admit it! Happy now?’

  He looked so chagrined at his failure that Tilly had to bite her cheeks to stop herself from laughing out loud.

  ‘Actually, it is just a question of following a recipe,’ she tried to placate him, ‘but you have to know how to read it first. I can teach you that.’ She cut him a slice of cake. ‘Here, try a bit of this.’

  Campbell took a bite. It was a revelation-moist and light and delicious, its flavours and textures perfectly balanced. He felt as if he had never eaten cake before. He finished the slice without speaking and then looked straight at Tilly. ‘That was the best cake I have ever tasted,’ he said simply.

  She laughed, pleased. ‘That’s one of the easiest cakes to make. You can try one for yourself tomorrow if you like.’

  ‘I suppose there’s some secret ingredient you keep to yourself to make sure no one else makes a cake as good as yours.’ Campbell looked at her accusingly, but Tilly held up her hands in a gesture of innocence.

  ‘I promise you there isn’t. Pleasure in food is for sharing, not keeping to yourself.’

  ‘There must be something special you do.’

  ‘Oh, there is,’ she agreed. ‘I make all my cakes with love. Do you think you’ll be able to do that?’

  There was a tiny silence as their eyes met across the table.

  Campbell was the first to look away. ‘Will determination do instead?’

  ‘If that’s the best you can offer, we’ll have to hope it’s good enough for Cleo’s cake.’

  Cleo was dark and vivacious and she eyed Campbell with undisguised interest when she arrived to discuss her wedding cake the next day. Right at home in Tilly’s kitchen, she plonked herself down at the table and proceeded to cross-examine him with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer while Tilly made coffee.

  Campbell wasn’t doing a bad job of deflecting her questions, Tilly thought as she put a plate of biscuits she had made earlier on the table between them, but if he had hoped to deter Cleo he was in for a disappointment.

  ‘Biscuits…yummy…and Tony’s favourites, too! Can I take some home for him?’

  Without waiting for an answer, Cleo turned back to Campbell.

  ‘Tilly’s a fabulous cook! Well, you probably know that already, Campbell.’ She leant confidingly towards him. ‘Tony was wild with envy when he heard you were going to be spending a couple of weeks here. He’s always angling for an invitation to dinner and then he spends weeks afterwards asking me why I can’t be a domestic goddess like Tilly.’

  Ignoring Tilly’s warning kick under the table, she sat back and warmed to her theme.

  ‘Lucky she’s such a special person or I’d really hate her. As it is, everyone loves Tilly,’ she told Campbell. ‘She’s the best friend anyone could have. She’s the one we all go to when we need looking after. I don’t know what I’d do without her
, and I certainly don’t know what Harry and Seb would have done without her. She brought them up, you know. She’s a born mother, I think, and she’s going to make some lucky guy a perfect wife one day.’

  Tilly sighed and gave up on trying to be discreet. It was way too late for that now. The only thing she could do now was to brazen it out. ‘Why not come right out and offer Campbell fifty camels if he’ll take me off your hands?’ she asked acidly. ‘You’ll have to forgive Cleo,’ she said to Campbell as she handed out mugs of coffee. ‘Wedding bells have gone to her head. Just because she’s getting married, she thinks everyone else should be, too. She’s desperate to get me attached to some poor unsuspecting man and she doesn’t care who she embarrasses to do it! Just ignore her.

  ‘And you, Cleo,’ she added, pointing a stern finger at her friend, ‘stop it! Campbell is here to make your wedding cake, and that’s it. He isn’t attracted to me and I’m not attracted to him.’

  Cleo was quite unabashed. ‘We wouldn’t have to embarrass you if you ever made the slightest effort to find someone new. You just hide yourself away in this kitchen and nobody ever knows what a lovely person you are. Honestly, it’s a crime! Tell her, Campbell.’

  ‘I am not hiding away!’ said Tilly, exasperated, before Campbell had a chance to reply. She dropped into the chair next to him. Right then, he seemed to be her only ally. ‘Nobody seems to understand that I’m trying to run a business here! Tell her, Campbell!’

  Campbell looked from Tilly’s heated face to Cleo’s amused one, and his lips twitched. He had, it was true, been a little taken aback by Cleo’s blatant matchmaking, and wasn’t at all sure how he should react, but Tilly’s intervention had dispelled any awkwardness.

  She was right, of course. He wasn’t attracted to her. Interested, perhaps. Amused, even intrigued, but not attracted.

  Not really. Not the way he had been attracted to Lisa, anyway, and the two women were such polar opposites that it would be bizarre to find them both attractive. Still, Tilly’s bluntness had stung a little. She had made him feel a fool for being so aware of her the day before.