Free A New Year Marriage Proposal (Harlequin Romance) by Kate Hardy Page B

remembering how that had felt.
    ‘Are you sure I’m not interrupting your work?’ she asked.
    Actually, she was. It was the perfect excuse to get rid of her. So why on earth wasn’t he using it? ‘It’s fine,’ he said, and ushered her up to the kitchen.
    He made two mugs of coffee and cut two slices of the cake. Which tasted even better than it smelled. He could get addicted to this stuff.
    ‘So what are you doing this morning—if you can tell me?’ she asked.
    ‘What I can tell you is that it’s to do with surveillance systems.’
    ‘Surveillance systems.’ She looked thoughtful. ‘Could you make one for a house?’
    She wanted a surveillance system? Given what she’d told him last night, the question made him frown. ‘What’s worrying you, Carissa? Is your ex stalking you? Because, if he is, I know people who can have a quiet word with him and scare the hell out of him to make sure he leaves you alone in future. And, yes, of course I can do a surveillance system for you.’
    ‘He’s not stalking me.’ She lifted her chin. ‘And I’m fine.’
    Quinn knew a lie when he heard one. The second bit was definitely a lie. She wasn’t fine at all.
    ‘I wasn’t asking you about a system for my house,’ she said.
    ‘Whose house, then?’
    She bit her lip. ‘I need to think about this. Anyway, that’s not why I came to see you. I wanted to apologise for yesterday.’
    ‘There’s nothing to apologise for,’ he said.
    ‘Thank you.’
    But there was something else. He could tell from the way she was sitting that there was something on her mind—something making her a little tense. ‘Why do I get the feeling that the cake was softening me up for another of your alleged proofs of the magic of Christmas?’ he asked
    ‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘Actually, I’m after your biceps.’
    All his blood drained south and he had an immediate vision of lifting her up and carrying her to his bed. Not that it was going to happen. Given what her ex had done, Quinn knew he was lucky that she trusted him to be nearer to her than a ten-foot bargepole would allow.
    ‘Why exactly do you need my biceps?’ he asked. Then a really nasty thought hit him. ‘You’re not doing a calendar or something, are you, to raise funds for Project Sparkle?’
    She laughed. ‘No, but you’d hold your own in a group of bare-chested firefighters on a calendar photo. My PA thinks that smart-is-the-new-sexy headline was spot on.’
    ‘I wasn’t fishing,’ Quinn said loftily, but secretly he was flattered. Very flattered. ‘So why do you need my biceps?’
    ‘To haul a tree about.’
    Oh, no. ‘Would this be a Christmas tree?’ he asked, knowing that the answer was perfectly obvious, so the question didn’t actually need asking in the first place.
    ‘It’s the first of December today. I always put my tree up on the first of December.’
    ‘Right. So this means a trip to a forest or something?’
    ‘No—a market in the East End,’ she said. ‘Though I plan to drive. We’re not lugging a tree up and down the escalators and on the Tube.’
    Market? He struggled to compute that one. ‘But you’re not the type to shop at a market.’
    ‘Don’t be such a snob,’ she said crisply.
    ‘Carissa, you live in a mews house in Belgravia, you’re a lawyer, and you wear designer clothes,’ he pointed out. ‘The only market you’d shop in would be a posh farmers’ market.’
    She folded her arms. ‘I’ll have you know that I come from East End barrow-boy stock—generations of them. My family’s had a fruit stall in an East End market for years and years and years.’
    He blinked at her. ‘But I thought your grandfather was a barrister? Are you trying to tell me your family’s not posh?’
    ‘Mum’s is,’ she said, ‘but Dad’s isn’t.’
    And her accent was completely cut glass. No way would she fit in with people who spoke broad Cockney. ‘Don’t you feel out of place?’
    ‘What, when I visit Nan and Poppy?’