The City-Girl Bride

‘There.’ She sat back, exhaling in relief. ‘All finished. How were the alpaca?’ she asked Finn, smiling up at him as she turned round. ‘Finn, what is it?’ she asked anxiously, her smile fading as she saw his grim expression.

‘This can’t go on, Maggie,’ Finn told her tersely.

He had to turn away from her as he spoke, knowing that if he looked directly at her he would betray what he was really feeling. And the last thing he wanted to do was to end up begging her to stay with him, to give up her life in London and share his. After all, he already knew what her answer to that would be.

The shock of his harsh words froze Maggie into numb silence. She knew if she tried to speak she would start to cry.

What she had expected, what she had longed to hear Finn say to her, was how much their night together had meant to him, how it had proved to him, as it had to her, that what they had was far too important to take second place in their lives. Like any woman in love she had wanted to hear the words that confirmed her feelings were shared, valued, reciprocated. She had wanted to hear Finn telling her that he loved her, that he never intended to let her go. Instead of which she could hear, and feel, the dull aching echo of his words pounding against her heart like blows.

Desperately she tried to reach out to him, unable to accept his rejection.

‘Last night…’ Her throat was so dry her protest sounded blurred and raw.

‘Sexually the chemistry between us is explosive,’ Finn interrupted her curtly. ‘Neither of us can deny that. I’ve never—’ He stopped, his face shadowed and grim.

‘You’ve never what?’ Maggie challenged him thickly, driven to impale herself even further on the sharp spears of anguish tearing into her heart, helpless to prevent herself from causing herself more pain. ‘You’ve never met a woman more eager to go to bed with you?’ She gave him a tight proud smile that defied him to look beyond it and see her pain. ‘Enjoying sex for its own sake isn’t a crime, is it? Men do it all the time.’

Inwardly she felt as though she was haemorrhaging the lifeblood of her heart, as though her emotions were being ripped apart. But there was no way she was going to let Finn guess how she felt. How could she have been so wrong about what they had shared? How could she have been so stupid as to imagine it was something special, something life-changing for him as it had been for her? Just because…Just because he had looked at her, touched her, made her think and feel that he cared…

Her hands were shaking so much she could hardly pack away her laptop. ‘The snow’s practically gone,’ she told him. ‘There’s no reason for me to stay here any longer now.’

‘Haven’t you forgotten something?’ Finn challenged her as she hurried towards the door.

Just for a moment she thought he had been teasing her, testing her, not realising just how devastating she found his inadvertent cruelty, but as she turned towards him, her body going weak with longing, she saw from his expression that whatever it was he intended to say it was most definitely not a declaration of love. Gritting her teeth together, she willed herself not to break down in front of him.

‘Have I?’ she responded quietly.

‘We still haven’t resolved the situation with the lease on the Dower House,’ Finn reminded her.

He could think of that at a time like this?

What kind of fool was he? Finn demanded angrily of himself. He knew for his own sanity he couldn’t afford the emotional risk of any future contact with her and yet here he was, clinging to the flimsiest excuse he could find to do so, knowing that with her grandmother living so close Maggie would have to visit.

Not knowing how on earth she was managing to keep her voice level, Maggie told him, ‘You wanted to make it a condition of the lease that I never stayed in the Dower House with my non-existent lover. I’ll agree to more than that for you, Finn. I’ll agree never to stay there myself.’

‘But you’ll want to see your grandmother.’ Finn frowned.

Did he think she might use the excuse of visiting her grandmother to cloak a desire to see him? Only her pride was holding her together.

‘Yes, I shall,’ she agreed. ‘But I don’t have to inflict my unwanted presence on you in order to do that, Finn. I can, after all, see her in London.’

She was opening the door as she spoke, hurrying through the hall, ignoring the cold wet bite of the remaining snow as she pulled open the front door and walked through it to her car. There was still time for him to change his mind, to stop her from leaving, to reach for her and tell her that he just couldn’t let her go. As she opened her car door Maggie held her breath.

He was standing by the open front door, so close that a few steps was all it would take for her to run back to him. Tears blurred her vision. What was it he had said to her? ‘This can’t go on…’

He couldn’t have inflicted a more savage form of rejection on her, and he certainly couldn’t have made it plainer how little he wanted to see her again. Faced with that knowledge she had no other option but to walk away from him in an attempt to keep her pride intact. Her pride was, after all, all she had left. Her heart was now ripped into ribbons of screaming unendurable pain.

CHAPTER NINE

SOON it would be Christmas. Maggie had her grandmother’s present all planned, providing her own and Finn’s solicitors could get the lease for the Dower House drawn up and signed in time.

Finn.

Maggie had left Shropshire vowing that she would have no further contact with him, but then she had gone to visit her grandmother and had been shocked to see how frail, how fragile and unhappy she looked.

‘I miss your grandfather so much,’ she had told Maggie, adding quietly, ‘This house seems so empty of everything that he was: his vibrancy, his sense of fun, his love of life. He was my strength, Maggie, and without him—’