A New Year Marriage Proposal (Harlequin Romance) Read Online Free PDF

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