The City-Girl Bride

‘Oh, I know it,’ Finn had confirmed, giving her a sexily smouldering dark-eyed look that had made her stomach muscles quiver in delicious anticipation. ‘And I know too that if I touch you here…’ His fingertips had brushed against her already taut nipple and Maggie had raised her hand to his collarbone, tracing its length with fingers that trembled slightly.

It had been gone ten o’clock when they had finally got up. An appallingly late hour for a farmer, Finn had told her.

He was out checking on the animals now. Soon he would be back, and then…

Maggie replaced the casserole in the Aga, concentrating on the weather forecast being broadcast on the radio.

The freak flood was subsiding, the forecaster announced, and no further cloudbursts were expected.

Which meant—which meant that she would be able to make it to the auction, Maggie decided in relief.

All morning whilst she prepared her coq au vin she had been making plans. The farm was only rented, Finn had told her that, which meant that Finn was free to return to the City with her. She closed the Aga door and frowned slightly. It did concern her a little, if she was honest, that a man of Finn’s age should only be renting a property—and as for his lack of ambition…But that could be remedied, she felt sure.

He was an intelligent man and she was convinced that with her encouragement and support he could soon gain enough qualifications to get a proper job in the City. Heavens, if she, with her connections, couldn’t help him then no one could. And she was fully prepared to support him financially whilst he retrained. It was true that it was a little hard for her to visualise him living in her small apartment, with its minimalistic elegance, but somehow they would manage. She would take him to a suitable shop and get him a decent suit, and then she would organise a get-together at one of her favourite ‘in’ restaurants so that he could meet her friends, perhaps one or two people with the right connections, so that he could begin networking.

Her mind working busily, Maggie continued to plan. They would have a small elegant wedding—thanks, perhaps, to her grandmother she was old-fashioned enough to want to give their love the commitment of marriage—perhaps at one of the City’s newly licensed and breathtakingly beautiful National Trust properties. They would honeymoon somewhere far, far away and ridiculously romantic, and frighten each other by remembering how easily they might not have met.

Happily engrossed in her thoughts, Maggie didn’t hear Finn come into the kitchen. Removing his boots, he stood for a few seconds watching her. Was it really only four days ago that he had considered her the most infuriating woman he had ever met? Smiling ruefully, he walked up behind her, wrapping his arms around her as he lowered his head to gently nuzzle the side of her neck.

‘Mmm…something smells good,’ he told her appreciatively.

‘My perfume,’ Maggie responded huskily. What was it about that touch of a certain man’s lips and only his that had the power to reduce a woman to this state of sweetly intense longing, to make her want to…?

‘No, I meant the dinner,’ Finn informed her.

Maggie pretended indignation as she leaned back in his arms. ‘It said on the radio that the river is going down,’ she told him, closing her eyes, wanting to purr with sensuality as his fingertips stroked down her arm and found the deliciously sensitive little spot just inside her elbow where last night the touch of his mouth had made her moan softly with pleasure as her body arched languidly into his.

‘Yes, I know. I heard it too,’ he confirmed.

Still looking at him with eyes liquid with pleasure, Maggie reluctantly reminded herself of something she had to do. She hadn’t been able to speak with her grandmother—her grandmother was used to Maggie going away on business and being incommunicado for a couple of days or so, but Maggie wanted to telephone Gayle and ask her to let her know that she would soon be in touch.

Ringing herself was too fraught with potential hazards for Maggie to contemplate right now. Whilst Arabella Russell had never been the kind of person to sit in judgement on others, nor was someone who believed in imposing her own moral values on them, Maggie wanted to be in a position to explain to her grandmother just how she felt, as well as what had happened, in person. And, just as she did not feel comfortable with her grandmother worrying about what she was doing, neither did she feel comfortable with the prospect of Finn perhaps teasing her for worrying about an old lady’s sensibilities.

For an adult woman to be worrying about how her grandmother might react to the fact that she had made love with a man she had only known a matter of hours might seem justifiably risible in this day and age, but Maggie was not going to expose either herself or her grandmother to Finn’s potential amusement.

As he watched Maggie’s eyes darken and the expressions of concern and anxiety chase one another across her face, Finn was forced to acknowledge what he had determinedly pushed to the back of his mind ever since he’d overheard her phone call that first day. Namely, that he wasn’t the only man in Maggie’s life. Initially he had told himself that it didn’t matter, but of course it did, and it had mattered from the first moment he had kissed her; from the first moment he had wanted to kiss her, he corrected himself grimly.

There was nothing he wanted more than for them to be completely honest with one another. The love he felt for her demanded it. What would happen if he told her that he already knew? Perhaps…

‘Finn? May I use your telephone? There’s a phone call I need to make.’ Maggie could see Finn frowning as she blurted out her request.

‘Someone special?’ Finn asked her as lightly as he could, inwardly praying that she would open up to him, tell him about the someone else she shared her life with, and tell him too that what they now shared meant that her relationship with her existi

ng lover would have to end.

Someone special. Maggie tensed. Her grandmother was special, but she wasn’t ready yet to tell Finn about her, or to explain to him just why Arabella Russell mattered so much to her. The caution that had guarded her for so much of her life hadn’t entirely lifted its heavy barrier from her heart.

‘No…I just need to speak to my…my assistant.’

Finn knew immediately that there was something she was concealing from him. Silently he prayed that she would tell him what it was before…

Confused, Maggie waited for Finn to answer her. What on earth was it about a simple request to use his telephone that had brought such a darkly brooding look to his face?

There was nothing else for it, Finn acknowledged. If Maggie wasn’t going to tell him of her own accord then he was going to have to force the issue, to make his own position plain, put his cards on the table and tell her here and now what he was looking for from their relationship—that nothing less than total and complete commitment from her would satisfy him.

He knew that taking such a step was a gamble, a gamble which would have been dangerous even without the hidden presence of another man in her life, given the brevity of the time they had known one another. Still, it was a gamble he had to take; his love for her was forcing him to take it. He hoped that once Maggie knew just what he wanted from her she would drop her guard and tell him the truth.

Finn took a deep breath, and then, his hands cupping Maggie’s shoulders with firmly tender strength, he looked down into her eyes. ‘Before you do anything else, speak to anyone else,’ he emphasised, hoping she would guess that he knew who it was she really wanted to speak to, ‘there’s something I have to say to you—something I’ve never said or wanted to say to any other woman.’