Jessica Hart - Last-Minute Proposal

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© 2008

Tilly’s diary:

Okay, here I am, halfway up a Scottish mountain, with a man I’d never met before this morning. It’s funny to think that this time last night I’d never even heard of Campbell, and now it seems as if I’ve known him forever. And tonight we’re going to sleep together…well, not sleep together-except, of course, we will be sleeping. Oh, you know what I mean.

Where was I? Oh, yes, Campbell…You should have seen him making me abseil down that cliff-two cliffs! Talk about competitive! And he’s not exactly chatty. I’ve never met a man who talks so little about himself. Still, he’s got that steely eyed thing going that’s quite exciting when he’s not pushing you down a cliff. Anyway, he wasn’t so bad this afternoon. In fact, he was really quite nice-especially the last few miles. And now he’s making me supper. I ought to offer to help, but I really don’t think I’ve got the energy to get out of the tent. Perhaps if I just close my eyes for a moment, and then I’ll go and give him a hand…

Dear Reader,

It’s hard to believe this is my fiftieth book! It seems hardly any time since the excitement of seeing my first book in print. The thrill is still there with every book, but Last-Minute Proposal will always be a special one for me, especially coinciding as it does with my fiftieth birthday-and, yes, there will be a party! Looking back at fifty heroes and fifty heroines, I realize they were all favorites when I was writing them, but some have stayed with me more than others, so that even nearly twenty years since I was writing their story I’m thinking about where they are now and what they’re doing.

I’ve got a feeling Tilly and Campbell will long be favorites, too, perhaps because I could identify so much with Tilly-with her love of food, her insecurity about her figure and her fear of abseiling. The opening scene was written entirely from my own experience. I, too, have hung off a cliff whimpering, “Don’t let me go!”-although I’m ashamed to admit that Tilly is a lot braver than I was! Campbell has his own challenge to face, and that’s just as difficult for him. But we all learn by stepping outside our comfort zones, and Tilly and Campbell both discover that having to do something they really don’t want to do ends up being the best thing that ever happened to them.

I hope you’ll enjoy this book as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Jessica

‘DON’T let me go!’

Tilly’s voice rose to a shrill whisper as she grabbed Campbell Sanderson’s neck and hung on for dear life. He was rock-solid and smelt reassuringly clean and masculine. And he was the only thing standing between her and the bottom of a cliff.

Typical. The closest she had been to a bloke for ages and she was too terrified to enjoy it.

Campbell reached up to prise her hands away. ‘I’ve no intention of letting you go,’ he said irritably. ‘I’m going to hold the rope while you lower yourself down. It’s perfectly simple. All you have to do is lean back and trust me.’

‘And how many women over the centuries have heard that line?’ snapped Tilly, clamping her arms determinedly back in place the moment he released them. ‘It’s all very well for you to talk about trust, but you’re not the one being asked to dangle over an abyss with only a thin rope between you and certain death!’

One thing was sure-certain death was awaiting her twin brothers, who were responsible for getting her into this mess. She was going to kill them the moment she got off this sodding hillside.

If she ever got off this hillside.

Tilly risked a glance at Campbell. It was odd to be so close to a perfect stranger at all, let alone clasping him quite so fervently, and she examined him with a strange, detached part of her mind that was prepared to do anything other than think about abseiling down the sheer cliff face.

He had glacier-green eyes that were the coldest and most implacable she had ever seen, close-cropped hair and an expression of profound impatience. Of course, that might just be inspired by her, Tilly had to acknowledge, but she had a feeling it was habitual. He seemed the impatient type. Tilly was the last person to deny that appearances could be deceptive, but there was something about the austere angles of his face and the ruthless set of his mouth that made her think that here was a prime example of ‘what you see is what you get’.

And what you got in the case of Campbell Sanderson was a very tough customer indeed.

‘How can I trust you?’ she demanded, without releasing her limpet-like grip. ‘I don’t know anything about you.’

Campbell sucked in an exasperated breath. ‘I don’t know you either,’ he pointed out crisply. ‘So why would I want to drop you down a cliff, especially with a television camera trained on me? Or hadn’t you noticed they’re filming you right now?’

‘Of course I’ve noticed! Why do you think I’m whispering?’

Tilly’s arms were aching with the effort of holding on to him. Her feet were braced just over the lip of the cliff, but she could feel gravity pulling her weight backwards.

And, let’s face it, it was a substantial weight to be pulled. Why, oh, why hadn’t she stuck to any of her diets? Tilly wondered wildly. This was a punishment to her for not subsisting on lettuce leaves for the past thirty years.

Campbell glanced at the distant cameras in disbelief. ‘They’re miles away! Of course they can’t hear you, but they can see you. They’ve got a socking great zoom on that camera and it’s pointed straight at you so, for God’s sake, pull yourself together!’ he told her sharply. ‘You’re making yourself look ridiculous.’

And him by association.

‘Better to be ridiculous than splattered all over the bottom of this cliff!’

A muscle was jumping in his cheek and his jaw looked suspiciously set. ‘For a start, this is not a cliff,’ he said with the kind of restraint that suggested that he was only hanging on to his temper with extreme difficulty. ‘It’s barely twenty feet to the bottom there and, as I keep telling you, you’re not going to fall. You’re on a secure rope, and you can let yourself down slowly. Even if you did lose control, I’ve got hold of the rope and I’d stop you dropping.’

‘You might not be able to,’ said Tilly, not at all convinced. ‘That rope’s awfully fine. I can’t believe it’ll hold my weight.’

‘Of course it will,’ he said impatiently. ‘This rope could hold a hippopotamus.’

‘Now, I wonder what made you think of a hippo,’ Tilly said bitterly.

She wished Campbell hadn’t mentioned the zoom on that camera. It was probably trained on her bottom right now. Unsure of quite what ‘a day in the hills’ involved, but fairly sure it would mean getting cold, she had squeezed herself into her old skiing salopettes, bought in a burst of enthusiasm soon after she had met Olivier and was at least two sizes smaller. Now her big red bottom would be filling the screen down there, and the television crew would all be having a good laugh.

Tilly had a dark suspicion that had been the idea all along.

‘Who thought up this show in the first place?’ she demanded, fear and humiliation giving her voice a treacherous wobble, but at least talking took her mind off the void beneath her.

‘God knows,’ said Campbell, thinking that a deep longing to be elsewhere was probably all that he and Tilly had in common.

‘I bet they were sitting around in some bar or wherever television types congregate, and someone said, “Hey, I know, let’s make a programme where we make fat people look absolutely ridiculous!”’

‘If that were the case, all the contestants would be fat and, in fact, none of us are,’ he pointed out impatiently.

‘I am.’

‘Not noticeably,’ said Campbell, although now she came to mention it, the figure clutching him was definitely on the voluptuous side.

He had been too focused on the task in hand to notice at first, which was perhaps just as well. Under other circumstances, he would have enjoyed the situation. He was only human, after all, and he certainly wasn’t going to object if a lush-bodied woman chose to press herself against him. Sadly, however many points Matilda Jenkins might score on the physical front, she was losing a lot more with all this carry-on about a simple abseil.

‘Your theory is nonsense, in fact,’ he told her. ‘None of the other novices are the slightest bit overweight.’

Tilly thought back to the meeting that morning, where they had met their three rival pairs who had also made it through from the first round. Much as it might go against the grain, she had to admit that Campbell was right.

Leanne had a perfect figure, for instance. Tilly had noticed her straight away as a possible kindred spirit. She was the only other contestant wearing make-up and looked about as happy to be there as Tilly was. It turned out that Leanne was a beautician, blonde and very pretty, and, almost as much as her figure, Tilly had envied her partner, a gregarious outdoor sports instructor called Roger who had all the latest equipment and was friendly and reassuring. The opposite of Campbell, in fact.

Leanne definitely wasn’t fat, and nor were the other two girls. Defying the usual stereotypes, one of them was a capable-looking outdoorsy type who had been teamed with a medieval art historian raising money for the restoration of some cathedral’s stained glass, and even he was downright skinny.