‘No, Finn, you’ve had your say,’ she told him gently, ‘now it’s my turn. I was so jealous tonight when I saw you in the restaurant, and so…so very unhappy when you told me that things couldn’t go on between us. Do you remember…when we were snowed in?’ she reminded him, watching his face.
‘I can remember saying something, feeling…knowing that I’d go mad if I couldn’t find some way of us reaching a compromise that would allow us to be together as lovers rather than adversaries,’ Finn agreed.
‘I thought you were telling me that you didn’t want me,’ Maggie whispered. ‘I’d been waiting for you to come back from the animals so that I could tell you…’
She paused and played with his fingers, before running her own a little nervously up and down his arm whilst he clenched his muscles beneath the innocent seduction of her touch and begged her though gritted teeth, ‘Maggie…?’
‘Sorry,’ she apologised, her face suddenly pink. ‘I didn’t mean…It’s just that I love to touch you so much,’ she told him.
‘Maggie.’ This time the warning in his voice was almost a groan.
‘Oh, yes,’ Maggie resumed hastily. ‘Well, whilst you were out I’d been thinking that I could work quite easily from Shropshire…’ She looked up into his face again, and then looked away quickly, telling him shakily, ‘Don’t do that, Finn, or I’ll never be able to finish.’
‘Why didn’t you say something to me? Tell me?’ Finn growled in despair.
‘I…you seemed to be rejecting me,’ was all that Maggie could say.
‘Rejecting you…’ Finn closed his eyes and breathed very deeply. ‘After the way we’d just made love? Some rejection, Maggie. Are you really telling me that we’ve wasted the last four weeks living apart when we could have been together?’ he demanded. ‘That I’ve spent every single day and every single night aching for you…wanting you. God, those nights, Maggie. Have you any idea…?’
‘Yes,’ Maggie admitted frankly. ‘Every idea!’ She was still trying to come to terms with the sheer sweetness of the pleasure of knowing how much he loved her. It was making her feel giddy with its power and awesomeness.
‘You’d really be prepared to work from Shropshire to be with me?’ Finn was demanding gruffly in a voice that said he hardly dared believe what he was hearing.
‘It makes very good economic sense,’ Maggie told him demurely. ‘Everyone who’s anyone is downscaling these days, putting their private lives first. In my job it’s important for me to be completely in tune with the needs and aspirations of my clients…’
‘And so it’s a business decision, is it?’ Finn challenged her.
‘Not entirely.’ Maggie breathed in ecstatic pleasure as he started to nibble teasing kisses along her jaw. Her eyes, which had been closed, suddenly opened as she tensed and demanded anxiously, ‘I won’t have to wear boots, will I, Finn? Well, I won’t anyway. Not—’
‘Not unless they have a designer label?’ Finn supplied, tongue in cheek.
‘Mmm,’ Maggie sighed in soft pleasure as he started to kiss her.
‘Mmm…’ Finn agreed as his own voice thickened in urgent male need.
‘Finn, what on earth are you doing?’ Maggie demanded. They had been married just over six hours, both of them sharing a secret laughing look as they had walked down the aisle and out of the church to the victorious sound of Handel’s ‘Triumphal March’—Maggie having told Finn of her thoughts and feelings as she had waited for him to return to the house the morning before their fateful misunderstanding.
Now, having driven her grandmother back to the Dower House from their reception, they were supposed to be on their way to the airport to catch the flight for their tropical honeymoon destination. But instead of driving towards the airport, Finn was…Finn was…
Maggie stared in disbelief as she looked down from the window of Finn’s new four-wheel drive to see that Finn was driving down towards the ford where they had first met.
When he stopped the car in the middle of its now gentle flow Maggie stared accusingly at him. She was wearing her going-away outfit, which just happened to be a raw silk white trouser suit with, of course, a pair of her favourite delicate stilettos.
‘The first time we met here there was something I wanted to do that I’ve regretted not doing ever since,’ Finn drawled.
There was a wicked glint in his eye that made Maggie’s heart beat fast in female excitement.
‘Oh, and what might that have been?’ she teased him dulcetly, thinking that she could already guess. Perhaps if he had kissed her then it might have cut short a lot of later unhappiness, but from that they had both learned the value of loving compromise, and now they both respected one another and were equal partners in their relationship.
‘This,’ Finn told her promptly as he got out and went round to her door, splashing through the shallow ford as he did so. As he opened her door for her Maggie willingly allowed him to lift her out, laughing down into his eyes, but her laughter was replaced with a shocked gasp of indignation when, instead of kissing her, he smacked her firmly on her neat raw-silk-covered behind instead.
‘Finn—’ she began to protest indignantly, in proper female objection—although he hadn’t actually hurt her, and there had been far more sensuality in his light touch than any real anger. But now he was kissing her and kissing her, with a hungry, tender loving passion that totally melted away her ire.
‘And this…’ he told her. ‘How could you have been foolish enough to risk your pretty, wonderful, irreplaceable neck trying to cross that flood in that ridiculous city car? When I think what could have happene
d,’ he groaned, and then checked, lifting his mouth from hers as Maggie let out a wail. ‘What is it?’ he demanded anxiously.
‘My shoes,’ she told him. ‘They’ve fallen off…’