His Emergency Fiancée by Kate Hardy

out two large bowls of porage.
    ‘Yep, the same as Ben’s,’ Kirsty pronounced when she tasted it. ‘Not that he cooks very often.’
    ‘Oh, come on. I made you dinner the other night when you were late home.’
    With an ulterior motive. He’d asked her to be his pretend fiancée. ‘Makes a change from leaving crumbs behind you,’ she shot back.
    ‘Do you not normally eat together?’ Morag asked, sounding surprised.
    They stared at each other, aghast at how nearly they’d slipped up. Already.
    ‘When we’re on the same shift, we do,’ Ben said lightly.
    ‘If I’m not stuck in Theatre, dealing with one of his cases,’ Kirsty added.
    The potentially nasty moment averted, Kirsty turned the conversation back to something light. ‘So where are we having this picnic, then?’
    ‘On the shores of Loch Ness, of course,’ Ben said immediately. ‘Surely you want to see Nessie?’
    ‘I’ve never seen her in my seventy-three years,’ Morag said, ‘and don’t you tell any of your tall stories, Ben Robertson. You know what happens to liars.’
    He flushed deeply. ‘Um.’
    ‘Your nose grows?’ Kirsty guessed.
    ‘You get spots on the tongue. Lots of them. The same colour as the lie,’ Morag informed her.
    At this rate, Ben thought, he and Kirsty both had extremely white and extremely spotty tongues.
    They exchanged a guilty glance and ate the rest of their breakfast in silence.
    Ben insisted on clearing up, to Kirsty’s amusement—considering he always left his breakfast bowl in the sink so it needed a good hour’s soaking that evening to get the hardened cereal off—and then on packing the picnic. It was weird to see him so domesticated. He looked… married.
    Not that she should be thinking about marriage and Ben in the same sentence. If he ever settled down, it’d be with one of his tall, gorgeous women.
    ‘So what time will the two of you be back?’ Morag asked.
    ‘Three of us,’ Ben corrected. ‘You’re coming, too.’
    ‘We came up to see you,’ Kirsty added, ‘not the scenery, beautiful as it is.’
    Ben chuckled. ‘You should have seen her last night, Gran. You’d never have pegged her as a brilliant surgeon. She was a big feartie.’
    ‘A what?’ Kirsty asked.
    ‘A feartie. You know, a scaredy-cat.’ He winked and let his accent get even richer to emphasise the point that he was teasing her. ‘Ye’re a richt cooardy custard—even for a softie Sassenach.’
    ‘Don’t tease the lass, you bad boy,’ Morag admonished him.
    ‘I’ll go and get my coat,’ Kirsty muttered.
    ‘Me, too,’ Ben said, following her out of the room.
    As soon as their bedroom door was closed, he looked her straight in the eye. ‘Explain.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘The loving fiancée act. Gran’s told you, hasn’t she?’
    Kirsty shook her head. ‘She was about to, I think.’
    He closed his eyes, shutting out the pain. ‘I knew it. I knew she was hiding something.’
    ‘Ben, I’m with you on this all the way. As far as she’s concerned, you’re happy and you’re settled with me. That’s the way we’re going to play it, OK?’
    ‘OK.’ He swallowed, and opened his eyes again. ‘It’s just…she’s all I’ve got, Kirst.’
    ‘You’ve got me, too,’ she reminded him. ‘Best-friend Kirst, remember?’
    ‘Yeah.’ He struggled to smile. ‘D’you think the ring’s enough to convince Gran?’
    Was he asking her to take it one step further and actually marry him? ‘I don’t know,’ she mumbled.
    ‘Maybe…’ His voice was so soft that she looked up at him. He wasn’t smiling. Those blue, blue eyes were intense. And they were focused on her mouth.
    ‘Ben?’
    Her heart skipped a beat as she remembered the previous night. Ben’s body curled round her own. Ben’s fingers touching her more intimately than any man since—no, not since Luke. Even Luke. Luke hadn’t bothered much with preliminaries.
    And then Ben lowered his head. Hesitantly, as if he wasn’t sure he was doing the right