The City-Girl Bride
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‘So I must have made a wrong turning somewhere.’ She gave a small shrug. Only she knew just how much it cost her to admit that she might have got something wrong.
‘If you hadn’t virtually hijacked me I would have been able to turn round and—’
‘Turn round?’ Finn interrupted her with a derisive snort. ‘If I hadn’t turned up you’d have been damned lucky to be alive right now.’
The brutality of his harsh words sent a shiver running through her, but Maggie refused to let him see it. Instead she did what she had trained herself to do, which was to focus on her ultimate goal and ignore everything else.
‘How long will it be before the river goes down?’ she asked him. ‘If we wait here?’
‘Wait…?’ Finn couldn’t keep the disbelief out of his voice. ‘Lady, a river like this could take days to subside,’ he told her, impatient of her naivety. People like her shouldn’t be let loose in the country. They had as much idea of how dangerous nature could be as a child had of crossing a motorway.
‘Days…?’
In his driving mirror Finn saw the panic flaring briefly in Maggie’s eyes, and against his will he wondered what had caused it. What the hell was he doing, getting curious about her?
‘How…how many days?’ Maggie asked, fighting not to betray her concern.
Finn shrugged. ‘That depends. The last time we had a flood like this it was well over a week.’
‘A week…’ Now there was no hiding the despair in Maggie’s voice. And, if the road really did lead only to the man’s farm, it looked as if she had no choice but to spend that week with him.
They were almost at the top of the hill now, and automatically she turned round in her seat to look back the way they had come. The Tarmac glistened wetly, a narrow black ribbon against the autumn landscape, and as for her car—she could just about see its roof above the floodwater as it lay at an angle, wedged against a tree.
With the initial shock of what had happened over, Maggie was filled with unfamiliar panic and anxiety. Her clothes, her mobile phone, her bag—with her money and credit cards and all those taken-for-granted things that reaffirmed who and what she was—had gone, swept away from her by the flood with her car. She was, she recognized with stomach-dropping resentment, totally dependent on her rescuer.
In his rearview mirror Finn carefully monitored the emotions shadowing Maggie’s eyes. He knew how to read people, and how to second-guess their thoughts; city life had taught him that. City life, like this city woman. What was a woman like this one doing in such an out-of-the-way country area? Everything about her screamed that she was not a country-lover. And every instinct he had was telling him that she was trouble.
Finn knew danger when he saw it, right enough, but for some reason he couldn’t understand he had an overwhelming urge to go ahead and walk right into it, he recognised, with a grim disbelief at his own totally uncharacteristic behaviour as he heard himself saying, ‘If you’ve got friends in the area you can ring them from the farm to tell them what’s happened.’
What the hell was he doing, practically inviting her to involve him in her life? Finn asked himself angrily. There was no way he wanted to be there. She irritated and antagonised him to the point where…To the point where he just knew he had to take her in his arms and see if that deliciously full soft mouth felt as good as it looked.
Finn clenched his jaw. What the hell was happening to him? To think…to imagine…to want…He shook his head, appalled by the sheer inappropriateness of his unwelcome thoughts.
‘I’m not visiting friends,’ Maggie denied tersely.
Finn waited, expecting her to elaborate, and then when she didn’t wondered why he should find her refusal to confide in him so intensely aggravating. By rights he should have been pleased that she was so determined to keep her distance from him.
Maggie could feel herself starting to bristle with irritation as she recognised that her rescuer was expecting her to tell him what she was doing in Shropshire. As though she was a child being called to account by an adult. Well, her business was none of his, and besides, the very nature of Maggie’s career meant that secrecy and discretion were of prime importance—so much so that they were now second nature to her. Anyway, why should she divulge her very private reasons for being in the area to this…this farmer?
They had crested the hill now, and the lane narrowed even more ahead of them, meandering through pastureland towards a pretty Tudor farmhouse. A small herd of animals grazing in one of the fields was disturbed by the Land Rover and raced away from the fence, capturing Maggie’s bemused attention.
‘What are those? Llamas?’ she asked, unable to check her curiosity.
‘No, llamas are much larger. These are alpaca. I keep them for their wool.’
‘Their wool?’ Maggie repeated, watching as the small herd stopped and one of its braver members craned its long neck to stare at them.
‘Yes, their wool,’ Finn repeated, adding sardonically, ‘It’s highly prized and very expensive—and I wouldn’t be surprised if your ‘designer’ hasn’t used it in his clothes.’
The way he’d said the word ‘designer’ was so challenging that Maggie itched to retaliate, but before she could do so he had put the Land Rover in a higher gear and switched on the radio, so that any attempt she might have made to talk would have been drowned out by the sound of the announcer.
‘Sounds like we’re not the only ones to be caught out by this freak storm,’ Finn commented.
‘Thank you,’ Maggie told him tartly. ‘But I don’t need a translation. I do speak English.’
The auction was in six days time—the river had to have gone back to normal by then. She wished now that she had not given herself this extra time, but she had hoped to be able to convince the agent, when she talked with him face to face, to accept her offer for the Dower House prior to the auction taking place. She was fully prepared to pay, and to pay generously to secure the house. Anything to see her grandmother smile again.
They were driving into the farmyard now—in the paddock beyond it Maggie could see hens scratching in the grass and ducks on the pond. An idyllic scene, no doubt, to some people. But not to her, no way, and especially not when it came inhabited by a man like the one who was now turning round in his seat towards her.
‘Let’s just get one thing straight,’ he was telling her grimly, ‘I don’t like this situation any more than you do, and, moreover, I was not the one who stupidly drove my car into a river which was plainly in full flood. Neither was I the one who made a wrong turning and ended up—’
‘There was no flood when I tried to cross the ford,’ Maggie interrupted him sharply. ‘It just seemed to come out of nowhere—as though…’ As though some malign fate had been waiting for her, she wanted to say, but of course she was far too sensible to make such a silly comment. ‘And, since you apparently own this wretched place, I should have thought you would have a legal obligation to warn motorists of just how dangerous it is to use the supposed ford.’
Ignoring her mistaken belief that he owned the farm—this was no time to become involved in minor details—Finn barred his teeth savagely in an unfriendly smile whilst he reminded Maggie unkindly, ‘Since this road is private, and on privately owned land, there isn’t any need.’
‘That’s all very well,’ Maggie countered immediately, ‘but perhaps you could explain to me just how a person is supposed to know that, if there isn’t a sign to tell them so?’
‘There doesn’t need to be a sign,’ Finn told her through gritted teeth. ‘It’s perfectly plain from any map that this is virtually a single-track road which leads to a dead end. Women,’ he exploded sardonically. ‘Why is it they seem pathologically incapable of reading maps?’
Maggie had had enough—all the more so because of the small inner logical voice that was trying to tell her unwantedly that her adversary had a point.
‘I can read a map perfectly well, thank you, and I can read human beings even better. You are the rudest, most arrogant, most…irritating man I have ever met,’ she told him forcefully.
‘And you are the most impossible woman I have ever met,’ Finn retaliated.
Silently they looked at one another in mutual hostility.
CHAPTER TWO
MAGGIE finished the call she had just made to her assistant explaining to her what had happened and asking her to organise the cancellation and reissue of her credit cards.
‘Do you want them sent direct to you where you are?’ Gayle had asked her.
‘Er, no…Get them to send them to the hotel for me instead, please Gayle. Oh, and when you report what’s happened to my insurance company and the garage make sure they know I’m going to need a courtesy car, will you?’
She had kept the details of what had happened brief, cutting through Gayle’s shocked exclamations after she had retreated to the room Finn Gordon had shown her to, clutching the mobile telephone he had loaned her. It galled her to have to ask him for anything, and she frowned now as she quickly dialled her grandmother’s number. She hadn’t told her what she was planning to do, had simply fibbed instead that she was going away on business for a few days.
The fraility in Arabella Russell’s voice when she answered Maggie’s call choked Maggie’s own voice with emotion.
Standing outside the partially open door, with the cup of tea he had made for his unexpected and unwanted guest, Finn heard the soft liquid note of love in her voice as she asked, ‘Are you all right, darling?’
Stepping back sharply from the door, he wondered why the knowledge that there was a man, a lover in Maggie’s life should be so unwelcome.
They had exchanged names earlier, with a reluctance and formality which in other circumstances he would have found ruefully amusing. Despite her bedraggled state, Maggie still managed to look far too desirable for his comfort. He had tried to reassure himself that his preference was and always had been for brunettes, and that he preferred blue eyes to brown, but he had still found himself staring at her for just that little bit too long.
Her call to her grandmother over, Maggie examined her surroundings. The room Finn had shown her to was large, and mercifully possessed its own bathroom. Its dormer windows looked out onto fields, beyond which lay some awesomely steep hills clothed in trees. The autumn light was already fading. What on earth was she going to do, stuck here until the river subsided? Maggie wondered bitterly.
Her request to her ‘host’ for access to his computer so that she could e-mail Gayle had met with a grim and uncompromising, ‘I don’t have one. I prefer to choose whom I allow to intrude into my life.’
Which had been a dig at her as well as a reinforcement of his dislike of technology, Maggie suspected. The man was positively Neanderthal. Everyone had a computer. Everyone, that was, but this farmer she had managed to get herself trapped with. Crossly Maggie acknowledged that if fate had done it deliberately to annoy her it couldn’t have produced a man who would antagonise and irritate her more, or whose lifestyle was so much the opposite of hers. So far as she was concerned the river could not go down fast enough—and not just because of the impending auction.
In his kitchen, Finn was listening to the local weather forecast on the radio. As yet no one had been able to come up with any an explanation for the freak storm that had been so oddly localised and which, it seemed, had caused chaos which was only limited to within a few miles of the farm.
Finn hoped the river would be crossable in time for the auction. He preferred to bid in person rather than by phone; he liked to see the faces of his competitors so that he could gauge their strengths and weaknesses. Not that he was expecting to have much competition for the estate so far as the main house and the agricultural land went. However, when it came to the estate cottages it was a different matter. There was no way he wanted second home owners or holidaymakers living on his land. No, what he wanted was his privacy. What he wanted—
He turned round as the kitchen door opened and Maggie walked in. She had removed the jacket of her suit and the thin silk blouse she was wearing revealed the soft swell of her breasts, surprisingly well rounded in such an otherwise fragile fine-boned woman. The sight of her in silk shirt, plain gold earrings and straight tailored black skirt, but minus her shoes, caused Finn to smile slightly.
Immediately her chin came up, her eyes flashing warningly. ‘One word,’ she cautioned him. ‘Just one word and I’ll…’
Finn couldn’t resist. ‘You’ll what?’ he goaded her. ‘Throw something at me? A shoe, perhaps?’
‘I’m a mature woman,’ Maggie told him through gritted teeth. ‘I do not throw things…ever.’
‘What? Not even caution to the winds, in the arms of your lover?’ Finn derided her. ‘How very disappointing that must be for him.’
Maggie couldn’t believe her ears. How on earth had they managed to get on such personal ground?
‘I do not have a lover,’ she heard herself telling Finn sharply.
Finn digested her too-quick denial with silent cynicism. He already knew that she was lying. She embodied everything he most disliked about the life he had left behind him. So why did he feel this virtual compulsion just to stand and look at her? He had seen more beautiful women, and he had certainly known far more sexually encouraging women. She had an almost visible ten-foot-high fence around her, warning him to keep his distance—which was exactly what he wanted and intended to do. So why was a reckless part of him hungrily wondering what it would feel like to hold her, to kiss her, to…?
Compressing his mouth against the folly of such thoughts, he said curtly, “I’m going out to lock up the fowl for the night. If you want something to eat help yourself from the fridge.’
Help herself? Eat on her own? Well, he certainly believed in being hospitable, Maggie reflected waspishly as she watched him walk out into the yard. If she’d been in the City now she would still have been working. She rarely finished work before eight, often leaving her office even later, and most evenings she either had dinner with clients or friends; if with friends at one of the City’s high-profile restaurants, if with clients somewhere equally expensive but far more discreet.
Her apartment possessed a state-of-the-art stainless steel kitchen, but Maggie had never cooked in it. She could cook, of course. Well, sort of. Her grandmother was a wonderful cook and had always encouraged Maggie to concentrate on her studies whilst she was growing up, and somehow there had never been time for Maggie to learn domestic skills from her.
Well, at least if she had something to eat now she could retreat to her room and stay there. Who knew? By tomorrow the river might be fordable again. Certainly if it was possible for a person to will that to happen then that person would be Maggie.
Skirting the large table in the middle of the room, she looked disparagingly at the untidy mess of books and papers cluttering it. An old-fashioned chair complete with a snoozing cat was pulled up in front of the Aga, not a bright shiny new Aga, Maggie noticed, but an ancient chipped cream one. The whole house had a rundown air about it, a sad shabbiness that evoked feelings in her she didn’t want to examine.
Maggie had spent the early years of her childhood being dragged from one set of rented lodgings to another by her mother after the break-up of her parents’ marriage. Every time her mother had met a new man they had moved, and inevitably, when the romance ended, they had moved again. In some people such a life might have created a deep-seated need for stability and the comfort and reassurance of a close loving relationship with a partner, in Maggie it had created instead a ferocious determination to make herself completely and totally independent.
This house reminded her of those days and that life and she didn’t like it. Nothing in Maggie’s life now—the life she had created for herself—was shabby or needy, nothing was impermanent or entered into impulsively without cautious and careful thought. Everything she surrounded herself with was like her: shiny, clean, groomed, planned, ordered and controlled.
Or rather like she normally was, she corrected herself, as she looked down at her unshod feet in their expensive designer tights. Maggie never went barefoot—not even in the privacy of her own home—and most certainly never in anyone else’s home. To her being barefoot was surely synonymous with being poor, and vulnerable, and either of those things made her feel weak and afraid and angry with herself for feeling that way.
Quickly she went to open the fridge door. She was becoming far too dangerously introspective. As she looked into the fridge her eyes widened.
Finn pushed open the back door and removed his boots. The paddock was a quagmire of mud, partially due to the activities of the ducks and partially to the recent downpour. He had had the devil of a time catching one of the bantams, and had even got to the point of consigning the little wretch to the devil and the nightly marauding fox, but in the end his inherent concern for its safety had won out and he had persevered, finally managing to lock it up safely.
He was cold and hungry and his afternoon’s unscheduled meeting with the alpaca breeder had meant that he hadn’t made the chilli he had intended to prepare for his supper. He had an evening’s worth of paperwork in front of him, which he wasn’t looking forward to. Perhaps he was making life harder for himself than it needed to be by refusing to install a computer. It would certainly make his paperwork easier.
As he kicked off his muddy boots he could see Maggie staring into the open fridge.
‘What’s wrong?’ he demanded as he walked across to her.
‘Everything in here’s raw,’ Maggie responded in consternation. Like him, she was hungry, and had somehow been expecting…well, if not the kind of meal that would be served at one of London’s stylish restaurants, then at least a pizza.
An answering frown of disapproval furrowed Finn’s own forehead, as he listened to her.
‘What else did you expect? This is a farm, not a supermarket,’ he told her dryly. ‘We live at the beginning of the food chain, not at its end.’
‘But it all needs cooking,’ Maggie protested. She was looking at him with a mixture of hauteur and disdain that made Finn long to shake her.
‘Look, this isn’t some fancy city restaurant; of course it needs cooking.’
To his astonishment Maggie slammed the fridge door shut and stepped back from it. ‘I’ve decided that I’m not hungry,’ she told him coolly.
‘Well, no, I don’t suppose you are. You look as though you don’t live on much more than a few overrated radicchio leaves,’ Finn told her unkindly.
Maggie wasn’t sure what infuriated her most, his contempt for her figure or his contempt for her lifestyle. And anyway, how did a man like him know to name the City’s current of-the-moment salad ingredient? Maggie wondered sourly.
‘Well, you may not be hungry, but I most certainly am,’ he told her, reaching past her to re-open the fridge door.
At such close quarters Maggie could actually feel the male heat coming off his body as well as see its unwantedly disturbing male strength. What on earth was the matter with her? She had never been the kind of woman who had been interested in or affected by the sight of a well-defined muscular torso. And he had the kind of facial bone structure that any male model would pay a plastic surgeon thousands for, she decided unkindly, driven by a raw need to somehow punish him for making her aware of him at all, even if it was only in the privacy of her own thoughts. He was all taut male planes and angles, and as for his eyes—surely it was impossible for a man with such dark brown hair to have such shockingly dangerous steel-blue eyes?
‘Changed your mind?’ she heard Finn asking her.
‘What…? I…?’ As she started to stammer with unfamiliar self-consciousness she wondered how on earth he could have guessed that she was unexpectedly being forced to revise her first impression of him as a man she found physically unappealing, despite his good looks.
‘You look hungry,’ Finn explained patiently.
She looked hungry! Maggie felt her face start to burn, and then realised that Finn couldn’t possibly mean what she had thought he meant, that he couldn’t possibly know what she was thinking and feeling…yes, feeling…For a man she hardly knew—a man she didn’t want to know. What on earth was happening to her? The thoughts she was having—they were…they were impossible, inadmissible, unthinkable. But as they stood facing one another, with the fridge door open between them, the most peculiar feeling was sweeping over Maggie, an odd sort of light-headedness combined with an awareness of Finn as a man in the most shockingly intimate sort of way, so shocking, in fact, that—Maggie shook her head, trying to dispel her riotously erotic thoughts, her face growing pink at their temerity and inventiveness. This was totally alien to her. She had never before imagined, dreamed, nor wanted to imagine or dream such things, such needs, such desires. Even the air she was breathing seemed to be filled with a sense of urgency and excitement—of expectation, almost—that she was totally at a loss to understand. It was almost as though someone or something outside herself was forcing her to see Finn in a different light…
Finn’s eyes narrowed assessingly as he saw Maggie’s pupils dilate. She had started to breathe more quickly, her lips parting, her breasts rising and falling in a way that made it impossible for him not to be aware of her femininity. He had the most extraordinarily intense desire to close the fridge door and to take her in his arms and…
Grimly he turned away from her.
‘I intended to cook a chilli for my own supper; there’ll be more than enough for two.’
He sounded curtly dismissive, as though he was secretly hoping she would refuse. Well, tough—why should she? She wasn’t going to go to bed supperless just to please some arrogant, impossible man. No way.
‘I take it you won’t be cooking dinner wearing that?’ she said tartly, determined to wrest control of the situation into her own domain as she flicked a deliberately disparaging glance at his ancient coat.
The look Finn gave her sent a prickle of alluring excitement that was totally alien to her racing down her spine.
‘No, I won’t be,’ he agreed, his voice mock affable as he added carelessly, ‘In fact you could get the chilli started whilst I go up and have a shower. Here’s the mince,’ he informed her as he removed a covered container from the bottom of the fridge. ‘I shan’t be long.’
Helplessly Maggie stared at the container he had given her before going over to the worktop and reluctantly opening it. What she should have done was tell him in no uncertain terms before he had left the kitchen that there was no way she was going to be turned into some kind of unpaid domestic help and that he could make his own supper. But, having missed that opportunity to put him in his place and save her own face, she had no option other than to try to cook the wretched stuff. There was no way, not ever in a hundred years, a thousand years, that she was going to admit to him that she had no idea how to cook it.
Anyway, it couldn’t be that difficult, could it? She had seen her grandmother cooking whilst she worked on her homework at the kitchen table. It was surely just a matter of putting it in a pan and…Her forehead furrowed into a frown of concentration as she tried to remember just what her grandmother had done, mentally picturing her in the comfortable kitchen of the home that she had made Maggie’s. She could visualise her grandmother plainly enough, smiling, bustling between the cooker and the sink whilst delicious mouthwatering smells filled the room. But as to what she had actually been doing…