The City-Girl Bride

Saying them had shocked her as well—so much so, in fact, that she immediately longed to call them back, wondering frantically why she had ever uttered them, furiously angry with herself for the vulnerability they were now causing her to feel. As though desperate to escape them she tried to turn away from Finn, but he refused to allow her to do so, taking hold of her instead, his hands gentle on the tense resistance of her body.

‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ he asked her quietly.

‘Nothing,’ Maggie lied sharply as she tried to evade the quiet depth of his searching gaze.

‘Yes, there is.’ Finn contradicted her. ‘You’re angry because you said you love me.’

‘No,’ Maggie denied fiercely, but she could tell from the expression in Finn’s eyes that he didn’t believe her.

‘I don’t know why I said it.’ She tried to cover herself. ‘It must have been some kind of knee-jerk adolescent reaction to the fact that we…’

When she stopped Finn supplied softly for her, ‘That we made love? Is that what you’re trying to say?’

Maggie shook her head. She had been intending to use the words ‘had sex’, if for no other reason than to remind herself of just what the reality of their situation was. But something in Finn’s eyes had warned her against doing so.

‘We’re both adults, Maggie,’ Finn was telling her gently. ‘Why should it be so difficult for us to use the word ‘love’ about what we’ve just shared, about one another? There was love between us. And to deny that…’

He paused and shook his head, whilst Maggie, thoroughly unnerved by what he was saying burst out sharply, ‘We hardly know one another. We can’t.’

‘We can’t what?’ Finn challenged her. ‘We can’t tell one another that we’ve fallen in love, even though it’s true? We can’t mention it? Show it to one another…like this?’ And then he was reaching for her, wrapping her in his arms and holding her so tightly that she could hardly breathe as he told her with fierce raw male intensity, ‘I don’t know how this has happened to us or why, Maggie, but I do know that now that it has…’

As his fingers stroked through her hair Maggie revelled in the mute tenderness of his touch, its confirmation of his admission of love. ‘Now that it has what?’ she asked him.

‘Now that it has…this…’ Finn responded.

As he started to kiss her his fingertips slid seductively down her spine. Voluptuously Maggie closed her eyes on a tiny moan of helpless resignation. There would be time later for her to analyse her feelings and get them back under her own control. For now…

For now there was nothing she wanted more than the feel of Finn’s flesh against her fingertips, the feel of Finn himself against her.

A triumphant smile curved Maggie’s mouth as she lifted the lid from the casserole she had just removed from the Aga and sniffed the delicious aroma emanating from it. For this evening’s supper they would be eating coq au vin, thanks to the slightly battered cookbook she had unearthed from deep inside one of the kitchen cupboards.

Or chicken casserole, as Finn would no doubt describe it.

Finn. Helplessly, knowing how much she would regret her foolishness and berate herself mentally for it, Maggie closed her eyes and succumbed to the temptation to slowly and lovingly mentally recreate every single inch of him.

Four days ago she hadn’t even known he existed, and wouldn’t have cared if she had; three days ago she had known

, but could have quite definitely contemplated a world without him. But now…Now…A loving dreamy smile softened her mouth, her emotions too powerful for her to ignore. She still felt bemused by the speed with which they had fallen in love—bemused by it when she wasn’t desperately trying to remind herself of all the reasons why it was impossible for her to behave in such an irrational and impulsive way, allowing her emotions to control her instead of the other way around—and completely, totally enchanted, enthralled and enraptured by Finn himself.

And somehow, without knowing quite how, and totally against her better judgement, she had allowed Finn to convince her that what they felt for one another was too wonderfully special to be ignored. They were in love. They whispered it to one another in the sleepy relaxed closeness of shared spent passion, moaned it to one another in its tumultuous throes, cried it out to one another as they climbed its heights together, vowed it to one another in barely spoken tender triumphant post orgasmic mutual bliss. They were in love.

Cautiously Maggie had allowed herself to wriggle out of the protective straitjacket of emotional denial she had cocooned herself in for her own safety, to begin to believe in what she was feeling, to make plans…

This morning she had woken up to find Finn leaning over her, his head propped up on one hand whilst he looked at her.

‘What is it? What are you doing?’ she had asked him sleepily as she reached up to touch the rough stubble on his jaw with one delicate fingertip.

‘Watching you,’ had been his husky reply. ‘Did you know that you twitch your nose when you’re asleep?’

‘No, I don’t,’ Maggie had denied.

‘Yes, you do,’ Finn had told her lovingly. ‘And you part your lips just a little, so that I’m irresistibly tempted to kiss them to see if they taste as soft and warm as they look.’

‘If you don’t know that by now,’ Maggie had begun to challenge him teasingly, ‘when you’ve had enough opportunity to find out…’

‘No. Never, never, ever could I have enough of you,’ Finn had told her, adding with a dangerous glint in his eyes, ‘Want me to prove it?’

Laughing, she had pretended to try to escape as he reached for her and wrapped her in his arms.