Lost in Love

‘Which reminds me,’ she cut in on him. ‘I must give Jamie a ring and let him know he can stop worrying. I’d forgotten all about him, poor thing.’

‘There is no need for you to speak to Jamie,’ Guy interrupted her drifting thoughts, ‘because I have already done so.’

‘Oh.’ She glanced ruefully at him. ‘I hope you didn’t rip him into shreds—he’s frightened enough of you as it is.’

‘It seems a pity that his sister does not possess the same healthy instinct,’ he muttered.

‘If you’d wanted a simpering idiot for a wife, Guy,’ she mocked, ‘then you would not have looked twice at me.’

‘True.’ He smiled, relaxing enough at last to begin enjoying his melon. ‘It has always been a big regret of mine that I did not take my own advice on that first day we met, and just turn tail and run in the other direction before I did take that—fatal second look.’

His eyes gleamed at her and Marnie grimaced, knowing exactly what he meant. Until he had met her, Guy had been used to women simpering all over him. He had been used to them sending out promises to him with their eyes, using every sexual lure in the book to attract his attention. He could handle all that by either responding or ignoring it depending on his mood. Marnie, by contrast, had never gone out of her way to attract him—and if anything had done everything she could to freeze him out. Guy had done all the running, all the careful luring—until the days and weeks of patient but fruitless persuasion eventually turned him into a quick-tempered and very frustrated man while Marnie, though half out of her mind in love with him, had continued to hold herself aloof, pretending to even be a little amused by his attention.

The bream was all it promised to be, and they managed to finish their meal in a companionable manner, both deliberately keeping the conversation light after that. The new mood suited Marnie. Having planted the seed of doubt about their sleeping arrangements tonight, she was quite happy to let that seed take root before she tackled the problem again. She wasn’t worried; she knew she could win this one. Guy was an honourable man in his own way, and it was to that honour she was going to plead.

So it was gone ten o’clock before they both sat back in their seats and away from their empty coffee-cups, and Marnie stretched into a tired yawn which announced that she was more than ready for bed. ‘Can I borrow one of your shirts to sleep in?’ she asked, getting to her feet.

Guy rose more slowly, the relaxed mood they’d managed to maintain throughout the meal shot to death. ‘You will need no shirt to keep you warm tonight, Marnie,’ he informed her smoothly, ‘for I will be right beside you to ensure you do not catch a chill.’

Marnie paused in her movement away from the dining-table and took her time turning back to face him with a look of grave contemplation. ‘You know, Guy,’ she said quietly, ‘for all that has gone between us—and some of it I accept has not been particularly nice—I have never once doubted that you respected me deeply as a person.’

The remark took him completely by surprise, sending him erect in a way that said she’d activated his enormous banks of pride. ‘Which I do,’ he immediately confirmed.

‘And before we were married the last time—and no matter how—passionately you desired me, you always managed to demonstrate that respect by drawing back before you became too—carried away.’

He nodded curtly. ‘You are referring, no doubt, to the fact that I wished my bride to come to me innocent on our wedding night.’

‘Quite,’ she agreed, unexpectedly touched by the degree of reverence he’d placed in that statement. ‘You do know, don’t you, Guy,’ she went on, holding his gaze steady with her own, ‘that there has been no other man but you in my life?’

His eyes blazed with a pride and a triumph he could not contain. ‘I accept that—totally.’ His trust in her was unequivocal—another fact which unexpectedly warmed her. ‘It—it has always humbled me, Marnie,’ he murmured huskily, ‘that you can be so pure of heart and body when I know the depth of the passion which runs in your veins. Are you afraid that I may hurt you?’ he asked suddenly, completely misunderstanding the point she was trying to make. He came around the table to take her shoulders in a gentle reassuring grip. ‘I am very aware of the length of time it has been since we made love with each other, Marnie. And I am hungry for you—quite desperate in fact to feel your body warm and responsive beneath my own again, but my loving will be as gentle as it was the first time I took you as my own. You have nothing to fear from me.’

‘No—you’ve…’

Misunderstood, she had been about to say. But his mouth was drowning out the telling word before it reached her lips, and nothing, nothing in all her careful planning prepared her for the kind of kiss he offered her, though perhaps his words should have done as he began to kiss her with such exquisite sweetness that she felt herself being hurled back across five long years to that moment on their wedding night when Guy had taken her in his arms as his wife.

And Marnie, with that memory filling her mind, responded, her mouth clinging to his while she tried desperately to untangle the past from the present, tried to remember why she was here and who she was with and what he would do to her if she so much as lowered her defences an inch. But the kiss was special, tender, loving, offering promises she’d once yearned for with all her heart. And as he gently urged her closer to the hard-packed, powerful wall of his chest she let herself relax, let her arms creep hungrily around his neck, let her lips part and their tongues meet and the heady, hot tide of desire wash languidly over her.

‘Marnie,’ he whispered against her clinging mouth. ‘Sweet—sweet heaven.’

Then he brought her tumbling back down to a horrified sense of what was actually happening as he bent to lift her into his arms.

‘No—!’ she cried, twisting away from him before he’d managed to do more than flex his muscles in readiness to lift her.

He staggered slightly at her sudden escape, and Marnie found herself standing, swaying dizzily barely a foot away from him, breathing hectically, her eyes dark and glowing with a crazy mixture of self-aimed fury and deep disturbing sensuality.

‘What do you mean, no?’ he demanded in husky-voiced bewilderment.

Marnie swallowed, having to fight for breath before she could answer. ‘I w-won’t be seduced into your bed, Guy,’ she whispered.

‘And why not?’ he demanded arrogantly. ‘It was a mutual seduction, Marnie. I was being beautifully seduced also.’

Her cheeks coloured then went pale because she knew he was telling the truth. She had lost all control of herself for a moment there, had been more than matching him kiss for hungry, seductive kiss.

‘You’re used to it. I’m not.’

He stiffened. ‘What is that supposed to mean?’ he demanded.

‘It means,’ she said, outwardly beginning to pull herself back together, although inside she was a quivering, shivering wreck, ‘that I expect you to treat me with the respect you’ve just claimed you always had for me by allowing me to keep my body for my husband alone.’