The City-Girl Bride

Initially Maggie had intended to ignore his arrogant command—in the City a woman never responded to overtures from unknown men—but then she felt her car move again.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Finn demanded irascibly once Maggie had lowered her window. ‘You’re driving a car, not a submarine.’

His obvious irritation and contempt infuriated Maggie, who was not used to being verbally mauled by the male sex. Normally her looks alone were enough to guarantee that they treated her gently.

‘What I am doing,’ she responded acidly, ‘is trying to ford the river.’

‘In this—a flood?’ Finn couldn’t keep the ire out of his voice.

‘There was no flood when I started to cross,’ Maggie retaliated hotly, and then gasped as her car started to move again.

‘You’re going to have to get out of the car,’ Finn told her. Any moment now, he suspected, the car would be completely swept away with her in it, if she didn’t move quickly, but he was worried that she would start to panic and make the situation even worse than it already was.

‘And how do you suggest I do that?’ Maggie asked him with a sharp frostiness icing her voice and her eyes. ‘Open the door and swim for it?’

‘Too dangerous—the current’s too strong,’ Finn informed her brusquely, ignoring her attempt at sarcasm. Giving her slender body a brisk inspection, he told her crisply, ‘You’ll have to climb out through the window; there should be enough room. I’m parked close enough for you to be able to crawl into the back of the Land Rover through the rear passenger window.’

‘What? You expect me—?’ Maggie was almost lost for words. ‘I am wearing a designer suit and a pair of very expensive shoes, and there is no way I am going to ruin them by crawling anywhere—least of all into an extremely muddy Land Rover.’

Finn could feel his blood pressure rising, and along with it his temper. He had never met anyone who had irritated him as much as this impossible woman was doing. ‘Well, if you stay where you are it won’t just be your shoes you’ll be in danger of losing. It could be your life as well—and not just your own. Have you any idea of the—?’ Finn broke off as her car rocked with the force of the water buffeting it. He had had enough.

‘Move. Now,’ he ordered her, and to her own shock Maggie found that even before he had finished speaking she was scrambling through her car window.

The feel of two strong male hands supporting her, almost heaving her towards the Land Rover’s open window as though she were a…a sack of potatoes, only increased her sense of outrage. As she wriggled and slipped head-first into the rear of the Land Rover the breath whooshed out of her lungs at precisely the same time as her shoes slid off her feet.

Without even having the courtesy to check that she was all right her rescuer was continuing to cross the river, his vehicle somehow pushing its way through the flood which had threatened her own car. As she struggled to sit up Maggie saw her car start to move downstream as the flooding river finally overwhelmed it. She was shivering with shock and reaction, but the driver of the Land Rover seemed totally unconcerned about her as they finally emerged onto dry land and he started to drive up the hill.

Another few seconds and that idiotic woman would have been swept away with her car, Finn fumed once he had safely negotiated their passage back onto dry land. Now, until the river went down, the farm was effectively marooned. There was no other road off the property, which was enclosed on both sides by steep hills.

‘You can drop me in the centre of the town,’ Maggie informed him in a dismissive clipped voice. ‘Preferably opposite a shoe shop, since I now have no shoes.’ And not anything else, she recognised. No luggage, no handbag, no credit cards…

‘The centre of what?’ Finn demanded incredulously. ‘Where the hell do you think you are?’

‘On the A road, five or so miles from Lampton,’ Maggie told him promptly.

‘On an A road…Does this look like an A road?’ Finn’s voice was loaded with male disbelief.

Now that she looked at it—properly—Maggie could see that it didn’t. For one thing it was barely more than single track, which meant…which meant that somehow or other she must have taken a wrong turning. But she never took wrong turnings—in any area of her life.

‘Things are different in the country,’ she informed Finn contentiously. ‘Any old road can be an A road.’

Her arrogance infuriated him.

‘For your information this is a private road, leading only to a farm…my farm.’

Maggie’s soft brown eyes widened. She studied the back of Finn’s head whilst she tried to assimilate what he had told her. He had a strong bone structure, and thick, very dark brown hair. His hair needed cutting. It covered the collar of his shirt. She wrinkled her nose fastidiously as she took in the shabbiness of his worn coat. She could almost see the forcefield of male anger and hostility that surrounded him, and she felt equally antagonistic towards him.

‘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.