Lowering her gaze, she watched from beneath her lashes as Finn bit into a piece of toast. He had pulled on a robe before going downstairs, but he hadn’t fastened it, and…Unable to help herself, Maggie peeped discreetly at his bare torso. Somehow, of its own accord, her glance slid lower, whilst her breathing stilled and then quickened, matching the fluttering thrill disturbing her heartbeat.
She thought that Finn wasn’t aware of what she was doing but then she heard him advising her softly, ‘Don’t do that. Not unless you want me to…’
‘I thought you said you had to go and see how the alpaca are,’ Maggie reminded him quickly.
Not because she didn’t want him, she acknowledged, hot-faced, but because—shockingly—she did.
‘Hmm…had enough of me?’ he teased her.
‘No…never…’ Maggie responded fervently, unable to check her vehement response.
However, before she could feel embarrassed by her self-betrayal, Finn was putting down his coffee to cup her face in his hands whilst he told her gruffly, ‘That isn’t the way to encourage me to go out and check on the livestock.’
Maggie held her breath until she felt the warm brush of his lips against hers, and then she exhaled in a soft shaky rush as his kiss deepened.
Her un-drunk coffee had gone cold by the time Finn finally left the bedroom, fully dressed to go and check on his animals.
Maggie got up at a more leisurely pace, blessing the properties of modern underwear that meant that it could be rinsed through to dry overnight. If there was one thing she should have learned from her recent experiences it was that whenever she came to Shropshire she ought to bring a change of clothes with her.
She was halfway downstairs when her mobile rang. Her caller was a client urgently needing to replace a key member of staff who had unexpectedly announced her intention to relocate to Boston to be with her lover.
Maggie had her laptop with her, and within minutes of ending the call she had drawn up a shortlist of potential replacements for her client and e-mailed them to him. Less than an hour later, seated in Finn’s kitchen, drinking the cup of coffee she had just made herself, she was congratulating herself on the efficiency with which she had already set up the necessary interviews.
But it wasn’t the speed with which she had been able to respond to her client’s request that was exciting her so much that she was pacing the kitchen floor in eager anticipation, she acknowledged giddily. No, what was filling her with so much euphoria that she just could not keep still was the sudden realisation of just how easy it was for her to work without being in London. Of course, she argued to herself, if she were, to say, for instance, relocate to Shrewsbury, she would still need to keep up to date with her contacts in London. But if she organised things properly that could be done with regular biweekly meetings. Meetings that would still enable her to get home in the evening, of course…
Home…
She stopped mid-turn to stare out of the kitchen window. The snow was melting rapidly now, but it wasn’t the snow that was commanding her attention.
Home…The tiny hairs on the back of her neck lifted in atavistic reaction to what she was thinking.
Home and Finn. Since when had the two become synonymous? Since when had Finn become so important to her, so vital to her, that he was her home? And when had she started to allow herself to acknowledge that fact? Since last night? Because they had made love? Or was it truer to say that those feelings had been there right from the very first time they had touched?
Then she had fought against them, determined to extinguish them, to deny and destroy them. Then she had been afraid of what admitting to them would mean, of how vulnerable it might make her. But now things were different. Something had changed. She had changed. Just how or why wasn’t something she could in any way analyse, Maggie acknowledged in rueful mental defeat as she tried to apply her analytical faculties to the intensity of her emotions. Brainpower alone could not unravel the complexities of her feelings, her instincts, nor explain how or why her anger and her fear had somehow been transmuted into acceptance of her love, into a feeling which had begun as a tiny trickle but had been slowly gathering force within her right from the first moment they had met.
It was only now that she was able to recognise it for what it was—and it was totally revolutionising the way she looked at things. She was experiencing a need to admit into her life a cleansing surge of desire to sweep away her old repressions, the old barriers against love which she had clung to so fearfully. She was experiencing a sense of release and relief that was lifting from her the weight of a burden she hadn’t previously known that she carried, and that burden had been a responsibility, an awareness of life as a serious affair, in which the self-indulgence of falling in love was a luxury she could not permit herself.
Unlike her parents, who had lived selfishly, hedonistically intent only on indulging themselves in the experience of the moment, without giving any thought to the feelings of others or the future, Maggie had felt that it was incumbent on her to behave more responsibly, suppressing her own emotions, crushing them, if necessary, in order to do so.
Now, illuminatingly, she could see that such extremes, such self-sacrifice was not necessary, that immaturity and selfishness on the part of her parents was to blame for what they had done, not love itself. She could see, too, that love and responsibility could work together, that commitment and independence could co-exist.
The first time she had told Finn she loved him she had hated herself and resented him in the backlash of fear that had immediately swamped her. Because of that she had told herself that she had been wrong, that she did not love him. But now she knew better. She ought to
have listened to her heart all along. From now on…A happy smile curved her lips and Maggie started to hum beneath her breath. Then started to blush as she recognised that she was humming the ‘Wedding March’.
A small gurgle of laughter bubbled in her throat. Knowing Finn as she was now coming to know him, she suspected that, had he heard her, been privy to her thoughts, he might well have suggested, with that special irresistibly tender teasing smile of his, that Handel’s Water Music, the ‘Triumphal March’ he had written so beloved by the organisers of firework displays might have been a more appropriate tune for her to hum from his point of view!
Fifteen minutes later, when Finn walked into the kitchen, she was working busily on her laptop.
‘Five minutes,’ she told him. ‘And then I’ll be finished.’
As she spoke her mobile rang and she reached for it, her voice crisp and professional. ‘Don’t worry,’ Maggie soothed as she listened to a girl she had only recently placed with one of the newer finance houses. ‘If we’re talking about sexual harassment then I’m prepared to speak personally to the chairman. I should be back in London by this evening. We can set up a breakfast meeting, if you like…’
As he stood behind her, listening to her, Finn’s mouth compressed. What the hell was he doing, even allowing himself to think that they could share something? For him a long-distance affair, with Maggie in the City and him here in the country, could never work. It would be the emotional equivalent of snatching at fast food when he ached for something far more satisfying—for a meal he could linger over and savour in the same way he wanted to savour Maggie herself, and all that he felt for her. Those feelings could never be fulfilled by a brief series of meetings, nor compromised by being forced into that kind of mould. The way he felt about Maggie meant that he could never be content to be part of her life on a part-time basis.
Finn looked bleakly at her downbent head as she concentrated on her laptop. She was muttering to herself beneath her breath, so wholly engrossed in what she was doing that he might just as well not have been there.
Another few seconds and she would have finished, and then…Grimly, Maggie forced herself to recite under her breath what she was trying to do. If she didn’t that aching longing she had to throw herself into Finn’s arms and tell him just how she felt about him would overwhelm her and her work would be totally forgotten. She had her obligations, after all…