Free The Prospective Wife by Kim Lawrence

already over my permitted number of platitudes for one day,’ she retorted drily.
    ‘You’ve got a limit?’ His eyes widened with mock shock. ‘That makes you a very unusual angel of mercy.’
    ‘I bet you gave the nursing staff hell!’ she accused huskily. And I bet they came running back for more!
    The devilish glint in his eyes intensified. ‘A man’s got to do something to amuse himself when he’s stuck in bed all day,’ he confessed, displaying no signs of remorse for his alleged behaviour.
    It made Kat’s blood run cold—which, on sober reflection, was probably better than a constant simmer—to imagine him amusing himself at her expense. A woman, who swore she hated him, being turned into a mass of seething hormones by his bad blue eyes? With his twisted sense of humour, he’d never be able to resist a joke like that!
    ‘You look a lot better than you did last night.’ In retrospect, she wondered whether it had been such a good idea—in the interest of peace and harmony—to have brought up the subject of the previous night. She wasn’t sure he was the sort of man who’d like anyone to see him with his defences down.
    ‘Ah, last night; I wondered how long you could resist saying, “I told you so”?’
    ‘I was just making an observation. I’m sure you already realise how stupid you were being yesterday without me rubbing it in.’
    Kat already regretted letting her sharp tongue run away with her, but much to her surprise Matt didn’t seem to mind; there was an amused, almost appreciative gleam in his eyes.
    ‘I’m only just realising what a soul of restraint you are, Kathleen.’
    Their eyes clashed and suddenly the humour fizzled away, leaving an almost electrical charge in its place. Kat was the first to look away.
    ‘Hold on a minute,’ she requested curtly, pulling one arm elbow-first out of the oversized tee-shirt. ‘Grab on there,’ she suggested, indicating her free shoulder with her chin, ‘while I get this off.’ A quick wriggle and it was over her head.
    Matt expelled his breath in long luxurious sigh. It hardly mattered that this was no skin fest; he hadn’t been this close to a skimpily clad female for some time. The racing-backed swimsuit she wore was black, the unadorned high-necked type that competitive female swimmers wore to flatten their natural buoyancy aids in the hope it would shave a few micros of a second off their times.
    Even accounting for the design factor and reinforced Lycra, there was no disguising the fact Kat had a knock-out figure; from whichever angle you looked at her there was no mistaking she was all female! There would be absolutely no chance of a man grazing himself on her hipbones—a bloke got tired sometimes of females trying to starve their curves into submission.
    The sound of her clearing her throat noisily brought his eyes reluctantly from softly rounded thigh level to her pink-cheeked, predictably indignant face. The clear grey eyes were spitting sparks and her cute nose was twitching with temper.
    ‘Shall I give you a twirl, or have you seen enough?’
    He saw no harm in playing out the moral degenerate card—her opinion of him couldn’t get much lower—not if the expression in her eyes was any indicator.
    ‘Have you ever considered a bikini? The skimpy sort?’ he mused, elaborating with some pleasure on the theme, ‘Triangles tied together…’
    She snorted and did that flouncy cross thing with her head and her ponytail smacked her in the eye… One eye watering, she blinked rapidly and took an angry step away from him. Being an observant man, he noticed the bounciness extended to other areas.
    This awakening sexual interest was probably a sign that he was getting back to normal. As Kathleen had a habit of saying…it was nothing personal. Nice try, mate, but just who are you kidding? Not himself, that was for sure—not with a piece of self-deception that flagrant!
    ‘I was just being a dutiful friend. Joe will expect a full