The City-Girl Bride

‘Perhaps it’s stopped snowing. Perhaps I can leave after all.’ Maggie knew that she was gabbling, giving away her panic, and her movements were flustered as she started to stand up and then sat down again very quickly as Finn moved towards her and reached out for her empty dinner plate. If she stood up now she would be standing right next to him. Just the thought of that happening was enough to make her whole body quiver as tiny rushes of nervous excitement darted through her. Agitatedly she picked up her wine glass and drank from it. She knew that Finn was watching her, and that was making her feel even more nervous.

‘It hasn’t,’ Finn responded grimly. ‘You can’t. And even if you could, after three glasses of wine I doubt you’d be legally able to drive.’

Three glasses? Maggie was horrified. Had she really drunk so much? A glance at the glass in front of her was enough to have her saying with solemn dignity, ‘I’ve only had two and a half.’

‘That’s still over the legal limit,’ Finn told her. ‘And besides,’ he added, ‘in those ridiculous shoes you’re wearing you couldn’t make it through one centimetre of snow, never mind closer to ten.’

‘Ten? No, that’s impossible,’ Maggie gasped, adding with a glower, ‘And will you please stop criticising my shoes? Just because you don’t like them.’

Finn, who had been loading the dishwasher, turned round, subjecting her to the full heart-rocking force of a look of such intense sensuality that it literally made her moan softly out loud.

‘I never said anything about not liking them,’ he told her succinctly. ‘Simply that they were impractical.’

‘Ridiculous” was the word you used. Not impractical,’ Maggie reminded him. She felt as though she were clinging helplessly to a very precarious rock in the middle of an extremely dangerous body of water. Pushing back her chair, she stood up. ‘I’m tired…I think I’ll go to bed. Hopefully the snow will be gone by morning, and I’ll be able to make an early start.’

Why on earth was the way Finn was looking at her making her stammer and walk away from him so self-consciously, all too aware of the way the height of her shoe-heels was making her body move?

As though he had read her mind, when she reached the door she heard Finn saying softly, ‘I was wrong. Neither ridiculous nor impractical is the right description for them. But provocative—now, that is.’

Provocative! If Finn was trying to imply that that was what she was, then…

But for some reason, instead of turning round to confront him and demand a retraction of his statement—a statement that could quite definitely be described itself as both ridiculous and provocative—Maggie discovered that she was actually hurrying away from him…running away from him? From him or from what he was making her feel?

In the silence of his now Maggie-free kitchen, Finn wondered irritably what subtle ingredient her perfume possessed that made its delicate fragrance linger so long. He could swear that his bedroom at the farm had continued to carry her scent right up until the day he had moved, and now here she was occupying his bedroom yet again…his bedroom…his bed…his life…his heart…

Grimly he closed the door of the dishwasher and switched it on, glancing out into the snow-covered yard beyond the window as he did so. Snow in November? It was unseasonable, unsettling and should have been unfeasible—like his feelings for Maggie?

Maggie woke up with a start, wondering at first, in the semi-darkness of the unfamiliar bedroom, illuminated by the bedside lamp she had deliberately left on, just where she was. And then she remembered. She was in Finn’s house, in Finn’s bed. Finn.

Her mouth felt dry from the wine she had drunk. She was desperate for a glass of cold water. Hesitantly she sat up. It was just gone midnight. Pushing the bedclothes aside, she got out of bed. When she opened the bedroom door she saw that the landing and stairs were in darkness. A sharp nervous frisson shivered through her. Loath though she was to admit it, she was afraid of the dark.

Her fingers trembled as she reached for the light switch she had remembered seeing on the wall next to the bedroom door, relief flooding through her as the lights came on. The house felt quiet and still. She had pulled on her coat before leaving the bedroom rather than wear the folded but Finn-sized robe he had given her. There was something about the intimacy of wearing something that belonged to him that was far too potentially dangerous for her to risk. The brilliance of the chandelier illuminating the stairs made her blink a little. Quickly she padded down the stairs and into the hall. She was less than halfway across it when the drawing room door was suddenly flung open and Finn strode into the hall.

Like her, he must have been asleep. But unlike her he obviously had no hang-ups about semi-nudity—and no modesty either, Maggie decided shakily as she frantically tried to focus on something other than his naked torso, wondering what on earth was wrong with her recalcitrant gaze as it recklessly returned to his shorts-only clad body.

‘Where the hell do you think you’re going?’

The harshness of his angry demand bemused her, forcing her to lift her gaze to meet his in response to his angry challenge.

‘I’m going for a drink of water,’ Maggie responded.

‘Dressed like that? Do you think I’m a complete fool?’ he demanded without giving her any opportunity to answer. ‘I appreciate how keen you are to leave, Maggie—’

‘Leave…?’ Maggie gave him a blank look. ‘I’m not leaving.’

‘Then why are you wearing your coat?’ Finn asked her grimly

Her coat! Maggie had forgotten that she was wearing it. Pink with embarrassment, she shrugged as nonchalantly as she could as she told him, ‘I…er…just put it on to come downstairs in…you know…as a sort of a robe. I’m not wearing my shoes,’ she pointed out. ‘Or…’ Self-consciously she stopped.

‘Or…?’ Finn prompted, recovering his sang-froid with a speed she envied.

When she remained silent, he pressed her softly. ‘If you don’t answer me, Maggie, then I’ll have to use my imagination, and right now it’s telling me…’ He stopped and groaned before challenging her hoarsely, as he came towards her, ‘Have you any idea just what it’s doing to me knowing that you’re as near as dammit naked underneath that coat?’

Maggie could feel her heart beating so frantically that it literally shook her whole body. The effect the raw sensuality of Finn’s voice was having on her was making it almost impossible for her to breathe. It shocked her that she should feel so wantonly excited by the knowledge that Finn found her desirable, that he wanted her. The voice of caution and common sense urged her to say nothing, to walk away from temptation whilst she still could. But when she responded it was to a far stronger and more deeply rooted instinct, a contrary reckless impulse impelling her to challenge him.

‘If you’re trying to tell me that you want me, then—’

‘Then what?’ Finn interrupted her rawly. ‘Then you’d rather I showed you?’