The City-Girl Bride

The auctioneer was waiting for her response to Finn’s last bid. Reluctantly she shook her head, appalled by the unexpected and unwanted rush of hot tears choking her. Unable to face any more, she turned on her heel, heading for the exit.

She had just reached her car when Finn caught up with her. He had wanted to go to her before, but he had needed to speak with the young couple who he knew had been planning to bid for one of the cottages. He had learned that they were local youngsters, and that the young man had only recently left agricultural collage with excellent qualifications. It had immediately occurred to Finn that, since he would be in need of agricultural workers for the estate, he could both offer the young man a job and throw in the rental of the cottage at a suitably low rate, and he had wanted to make this offer to them before they left the house.

So far as Maggie and her desire to buy the Dower House went, he knew he had done the right thing, the only thing he could have done, but something about the way Maggie had looked at him as she conceded defeat had made him feel as though…As though what? As though he had behaved badly, unfairly?

‘Maggie…’

The moment she heard his voice Maggie felt her emotions swamping her. Swinging round, her back against the door of her car, she glared at him. ‘If you’ve come to crow over your victory, Finn, don’t bother.’ She gave a bitter laugh. ‘I suppose I should have known that you would never allow me to win. How nice to be able to throw so much money away without counting the cost. I hope you consider it was worth it.’

‘It was,’ Finn assured her, suddenly equally angry, forgetting now, as he heard and felt her antagonism, the look of aching disappointment and pain he had seen in her eyes as she had acknowledged her inability to bid any higher. ‘I would have paid twice as much to keep the likes of you from owning the Dower House, Maggie…’

‘The likes of me?’ Maggie was too incensed to conceal her feelings.

‘City people. Weekenders,’ Finn elucidated in a curt voice. ‘The countryside should be for living in full time, not treated as some kind of manicured playground.’

‘Oh, I see,’ Maggie retaliated furiously. ‘I’m good enough to take to bed, but apparently not good enough to have as a neighbour. Is that what you’re trying to say? Well, for your information—’ She stopped in disbelief as for the second time in less than half an hour the intensity of her emotions brought her dangerously close to tears.

‘The fact that we went to bed together has nothing to do with the Dower House,’ Finn denied—untruthfully. He could feel the tinge of colour creeping up under his skin as his conscience forced him to admit to himself that, contrary to his verbal claim, the fact that they had been lovers had everything to do with the fact that he didn’t want her living in the Dower House. Not when he knew she would be sharing it—and her bed—with the man she had called ‘darling’, not when last night—all night, virtually—he had ached and longed for her, not when against everything he knew about himself a part of him still stubbornly refused to accept that there was no way there could ever be a proper relationship between them.

‘You bid for the Dower House to spite me,’ Maggie accused him once she had herself back under control.

‘No,’ Finn denied sharply. ‘I had always intended to bid for the whole estate…’

‘That’s not what the agent told me,’ Maggie argued, shaking her head. ‘He told me that no one else was going to bid for the Dower House.’

‘He may have believed that,’ Finn acknowledged ‘But—’

‘But the moment you realised I wanted it you were determined that you were going to stop me,’ Maggie cut in bitterly, too angry to conceal her feelings.

‘There are other houses,’ Finn pointed out.

‘Not for me,’ Maggie rejected grimly.

She looked white-faced and anguished, and ridiculously Finn found himself aching to comfort her. She had plainly replenished her wardrobe since she had left the farm. She was wearing the soft creamy cashmere coat he had seen her in in Shrewsbury, and a toning pair of trousers, with a fine knit top that clung to her breasts. She looked both elegant and expensive, and somehow softly vulnerable as well, the delicacy of her small heart-shaped face and huge brown eyes driving him to anger against himself for what he was feeling.

As she started to turn away from him a sudden fierce gust of wind caught at Maggie’s unfastened coat, sending it swirling around her and virtually blinding her. As she reached to push it away so automatically did Finn. Their hands touched, Maggie’s retracting as though it had been burned, leaving Finn’s to somehow drop to her body, cupping her hipbone beneath the heavy folds of her coat.

Its fragility and the memories the feel of it evoked sent desire rocketing through Finn in a way that caught him completely off guard.

‘Maggie.’

The urgency in his voice hit her senses with the same devastating impact as alcohol on an empty stomach. She could feel herself swaying in response to the desire she could hear running through that roughly urgent utterance of her name. She could almost see the images compressed in it. The two of them lying naked on his bed whilst he…

‘Let go of me,’ she demanded as she was deluged with panic—panic caused not by a fear of him but of herself and what she might do, what she might reveal if he continued to stay where he was.

But as she pulled back from him she realised there was nowhere for her to go, that she was already backed up against the car. Inside her she could feel her anger and excitement battling for supremacy. Finn was leaning towards her.

Her lips framed the word ‘no’ but it was too late. The kiss they exchanged was mutually hostile and denying, a fierce pressure of lips on lips, mouth on mouth, tongue battling with tongue as they fought to overcome one another and their own unwanted feelings.

If the time she had spent in Finn’s arms had opened her eyes to the danger of her own susceptibility to his sensuality, then the kiss they were exchanging now was confirming just how right she had been to reject her feelings for him.

To feel such an intensity of emotion frightened her. To know that she was capable of wanting so passionately a man who made her feel so angry, of wanting him so intensely that a part of her was actually relishing the furious savagery of their intimacy, shocked and appalled her. And to know that she of all people was capable of being totally overwhelmed by emotions in a way that ran contrary to everything that was important to her filled her with a blind panic that somehow gave her the strength to wrench her mouth away from Finn’s, to push him out of the way long enough for her to be able to pull open her car door and get inside.

As she drove off in a furious spray of gravel Finn stared after her, fighting to regulate his breathing and his feelings. Where the hell had that come from? Absently he lifted his hand to his jaw, and then winced as his thumb pad brushed his bottom lip and found the place where Maggie had briefly savaged it with her teeth. He had never known such a passionate, contrary, downright dangerous woman—and he wished he didn’t know her now.

Not when that woman was Maggie—and most definitely not when she was involved with another man.

CHAPTER FIVE