‘Oh.’ She couldn’t think what to say—or do—next.
‘So now we seem to be equipped,’ he said. ‘Just in case.’
‘I’m not agreeing to marriage. That’d be nuts.’
‘It surely would. But getting to know each other better...’ His hands came out and cupped her face. ‘Meg, that’d be sensible.’
She didn’t seem sensible. She seemed as if she were floating.
The feel of his hands... The warmth of his voice...
Oh, Cinders, she thought. You might have been an idiot but I’m starting to figure you had no choice.
‘I won’t pressure you,’ Matt said, his voice serious again, and she found herself smiling.
‘Suit yourself, Matt McLellan,’ she told him. ‘Because I believe I’m about to pressure you. You can’t make a woman a proposition like that and then go calmly to bed.’
‘I think I can,’ he told her, and then, suddenly, his hands dropped from her face, his arms scooped under her, and she was lifted, held against him, and his laughter was all around them. Not out loud. Just there. Laughter and...love? ‘I think I can,’ he said again. ‘It’s just a matter of whose bed we go calmly to.’
‘Forget the calm,’ she managed. ‘And your bed because it’s bigger.’
* * *
It was a week before the results of Henry’s DNA testing came through and it was a magic week.
Matt should be back in Manhattan. There was need for him to return but somehow the need to stay was greater.
It wasn’t spoken pressure, though. For Matt it was the way Henry’s eyes lit when he entered a room, the way Henry tentatively asked him if he could fish, the way he offered to show him what Meg had taught him.
It was the way Peggy deferred to him, depended on him, questioned him endlessly about what would happen. The way her voice wobbled as she bravely accepted her world had changed.
It was the way the two dogs bonded, tearing around the house like crazy things, annoying the chickens, bouncing as if the world was their constant delight.
But mostly it was the way Meg smiled at him. It was the way she folded into his body at night. The rightness of it.
The way her shabby, down-at-heel house felt like home.
Home seemed an insidious word, but more and more it centred around Meg. They didn’t speak of marriage again—she backed away if he raised it and maybe she was right. No decision needed to be made yet. But suddenly Manhattan didn’t seem as pressing. Staying with this makeshift family, being part of it, feeling as if he was making a difference in keeping Henry happy, in reassuring Peggy, in helping slash grass, collecting eggs, repairing a fence...
Lying with Meg. Feeling her curve against him. Being part of her.
Yes, it felt like home and when the results of the DNA came through—positive, as they’d all expected—he was even sorry.
But his plan meant this didn’t end. It simply moved.
First things first—take Meg to McLellan Place. Show her how life could be.
Show her how a plan could become reality.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IT WAS MEG’S first time in a plane and it left her stunned. Her bed, her seat, the service were all great. Her first-class pyjamas were pretty much the nicest pyjamas she’d ever worn and apparently she could keep them. She should be enjoying the whole experience.
She was lonely.
What had she expected? Maybe that they’d talk? Watch movies together? Just...share this fantastic experience.
Whatever, it wasn’t happening. It was as if a switch had been flicked the moment Matt had stepped into the plane. ‘Work’s overwhelming,’ he told her apologetically. ‘I need to get a handle on what’s happening before I land.’
A plane was obviously a place where he was accustomed to working. He surfaced for meals, he slept briefly, but for most of the time he used the plane’s internet and ‘got his handle’.
She peeked out of the windows—blinds were pulled because they messed with the screens of Matt and the other seasoned travellers around her—and marvelled at the world beneath her.
And wondered more and more what she was getting herself into.
Marriage? The idea was seeming more and more like a pipe dream. Every time she looked, Matt seemed a world away, deep in his life of high finance.
He’d been dramatically pulled from work, she told herself as the long plane trip finally reached its end. Maybe she needed to cut him some slack.
‘We’ll go straight down to McLellan Place,’ Matt told her as they landed. ‘I’m needed in the city but Peggy will be eager to hear from you. McLellan Place is where I hope you can all live.’
‘Where Peggy and Henry can live,’ she retorted. ‘There’s no me in this equation yet.’
‘I hope I can persuade you otherwise.’
‘Matt—’
‘Wait and see,’ he said simply, so she shut up as they were streamlined through the airport, then as a chauffeured car drove them through the city, toward the increasingly beautiful country to his beachside home.
But once again Matt wasn’t with her. For most of the journey he was on the phone. ‘Now I’m back I need to reschedule urgent meetings.’
‘You’re going to dump me and run?’
‘I’ll spend tonight and maybe tomorrow with you and then maybe you can come back to Manhattan with me. I have an apartment there. You’ll get to see the whole package.’
She fell silent, doubts crowding in from all sides.
Peggy and Henry were back in Rowan Bay, fishing, exploring, making themselves at home, giving themselves time to get to know each other and come to terms with their shared grief. Maureen had promised to keep an eye on them, which would involve at least half a dozen visits a day. Boof remained with them, as did Stretchie. ‘We’re going to check out a for-ever home for you,’ Matt had told Henry, and Meg knew Henry was beginning to feel safe enough to be left.
Meg, on the other hand, wasn’t feeling the least bit safe. In fact she was feeling so unsafe that, when they finally pulled up before the magnificent gates of McLellan Place, it was as much as she could do not to bolt.
There was a house just inside the gates, but the car didn’t even slow. ‘That’s the gatehouse,’ Matt said, dismissively.
‘Right,’ she said faintly, looking at the house that was far bigger and grander than hers. ‘For what, someone to live in while they open and shut the gates?’
‘The gates work automatically now. Our head gardener lives there.’
Head gardener. Right.
She had no more questions.
The driveway seemed to stretch for ever, meandering through private woods, then opening to gardens that welcomed them in. And finally she saw the house, long, low, gracious...mellowed with age. She counted five gables, two together and then three, with a vast stretch of what looked like a pavilion in between. An enormous vine—wisteria?—ran the entire length of the gables, its drooping autumnal leaves accentuating the gold hue of magnificent stone steps.
It looked like something Meg had seen in magazines in doctors’ waiting rooms. Not in real life.
‘You don’t really live here,’ she breathed.
‘Mostly I live in Manhattan.’
‘Then who...?’
‘It stays pretty much empty,’ he told her. ‘My great-grandparents used it for entertaining, as did my grandparents. My parents never liked the seclusion so they planned to sell but the seclusion suits me. I bought it from them ten years ago.’
‘You bought it from your parents...’ She was struggling to get her head around the dynamics of his family. Of this place. Of wealth beyond her comprehension.
‘I was sent here most holidays,’ he said. ‘I’ve grown fond of it.’
‘I could grow fond of the gatehouse,’ she said frankly. ‘To grow fond of this house...�
��
‘You don’t like it?’
‘It’s like a palace.’ She turned to him, feeling totally confused. Bewildered wasn’t a big enough word. ‘Matt, why on earth would you want to marry me?’
There was silence at that. The car had pulled to a halt in the vast circular driveway. The driver opened the doors for them to alight and occupied himself taking their luggage into the house. Meg could see a woman—a housekeeper?—ushering him in.
What nonsense was this? With this amount of wealth, with these supports, Peggy and Henry would be safe for ever. They certainly didn’t need her.
‘Meg, it’s just a house,’ Matt said. ‘If you came, you’d make it a home.’
Home.
She thought of home as she’d known it, before the accident, before loss and grief had robbed it of its heart. Her parents and grandparents had made her house a home.
She glanced back toward the vast gates that had seamlessly closed behind them. They were so far away she could no longer see them.
She shivered.
‘Give it a chance,’ Matt told her. ‘Didn’t your parents tell you not to judge on appearances?’
‘Their vision of appearances didn’t stretch to this,’ she breathed. ‘This is movie stuff.’
‘This is home.’
‘Here? By yourself?’
‘I hope not,’ he said seriously and took her face in his hands and kissed her. ‘We could be happy here, Meg.’
‘Could we?’
* * *
She was shown to her bedroom—sumptuous enough to make her gasp. The housekeeper who’d greeted them formally, but who’d disappeared almost the moment they’d arrived, had said lunch would be at twelve. Meg showered and changed into her best trousers and shirt and she still felt...not dirty, just small. Then she made her way cautiously back to the dining room. Taking in the house as she went.
The living rooms and bedrooms, the gleaming bathrooms, the windows leading out to the sea without a trace of salt on them, the acres of lawn and garden...there must be an army of ‘housekeepers’ keeping this place functioning.
To say she was unnerved was an understatement.
Matt was on the phone when she reached the dining room. He raised his brows in apology and waved to the table.
She sat and she felt smaller. This table was ridiculously big.
Matt finally finished his call.
‘Is everything okay? Is your bedroom comfortable?’ he asked.
Of all the questions to ask. She had eight—eight!—pillows to choose from. How could she not be comfortable?
She ate the most beautiful salmon salad she’d ever tasted in her life. There were tiny lemon meringues for desert. And grapes. And wine.
She very carefully didn’t touch the wine.
‘Jet lag,’ she said when Matt offered to fill her glass and he raised his brows.
‘You slept on the plane. Under a down duvet. With three pillows.’
‘That was because I couldn’t choose from the pillow menu. I can’t choose here.’ She stared at him in bewilderment. ‘Matt, with all this, you could have any wife you wanted.’
‘I want you.’
‘How can you want me? I’m a nothing.’
‘How can you say you’re a nothing? You’re everything I’ve ever wanted in a partner. Brave, beautiful, smart, funny, independent...’
‘Is it the independent thing that makes me suitable?’ she ventured. The loneliness thing was starting to get to her.
‘I don’t want a wife who clings, if that’s what you mean.’
‘I don’t cling. But if I needed to cling...’
‘I’d be there for you.’ And his voice—and his expression—said he was serious.
‘Don’t do that.’ She was starting to recover. The feistiness she seemed to have been born with—or the feistiness she’d developed almost as a shield as she’d struggled to survive by fishing in a mostly guys’ world—was coming to her aid. ‘Matt, there is this...thing between us but it’s called lust. We’ve been thrown into each other’s company in a weird way and it’s messed with your judgement.’
‘My judgement’s never let me down in the past.’
‘Well, it might have let you down now. Especially if you’ve judged that Peggy and Henry could be happy here. They’d... I don’t know...wallow.’
‘Wallow?’
‘Lose each other. Echo. This place is vast.’
‘It doesn’t need to be vast. There’s a guest wing at the end I thought they could use, two bedrooms with a sitting room between. It’s cosy.’
‘I don’t know if I agree with your definition of cosy.’
‘And there’s the sea. If you’ve finished your meringues...’
‘I might never finish these meringues,’ she admitted. The one she was currently attending was a perfect crisp shell, cracking to reveal a marshmallow centre and at its heart a scoop of the most delicious lemon curd she’d ever tasted. There were still ten...twelve...on the plate. ‘If I don’t eat them will they be fed to the compost?’
‘I have no idea,’ he said faintly.
‘Really?’ She took another, almost defensively.
‘I’ll give orders that they’re to be served at supper, as well.’
‘You’re kidding. You’ll give orders...’
‘I’ll ask nicely. My staff are accommodating.’
‘I bet they are.’ She shook her head. ‘Matt, this place is out of this world.’
‘It’s special,’ he agreed. ‘I need to show you the beach. Would you like a swim?’
‘A swim.’ She considered. She glanced out of the dining room window at the outside pool, then across to what looked like a vast pond, and, in the distance, the beach.
‘The house pool is heated but the beach is better. I know it’s autumn but the water shouldn’t be too cold. Not after the water you’re used to.’
She finished her meringue and tried very hard not to be seduced by the zing of lemon, by the soft marshmallow, by the crisp outer shell... By the smile of the man watching her from the other side of the table. Who’d spent almost all of the last twenty-four hours on his laptop or on his phone.
‘Will you come with me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Will you bring your phone?’
He glanced at his phone, lying on the table beside him, and then he looked at her. Decision time?
‘I won’t,’ he said. Supreme sacrifice? ‘We can walk to the beach or we can take the boat.’
‘I’d like to walk,’ she told him.
* * *
They walked around the cultivated shore path that bordered the pond and led to the sea. The path was a thing of beauty on its own, Meg thought, with coastal grasses, trees seemingly sculpted by the winds, vast rocks scattered as if the sea had thrown them there. It was only her knowledge of true wild seascapes that told her this was landscaping brilliance.
She’d donned her bathing gear under her jeans and T-shirt. She was a guest of Matt and she was heading for a swim. There was no reason why her knees were shaking.
It’s jet lag, she told herself, but she knew it was no such thing.
‘It’s gorgeous,’ she managed. She’d been walking for ten minutes with Matt striding silently beside her and she needed to say something. Anything.
‘It is.’ And she could hear the pride in his voice.
‘That one man could own this... And hardly share...’
‘I am offering to share,’ he told her. ‘That’s why you’re here.’
She shut up again.
And then they reached the beach and her world seemed to settle.
It was always like this. As a child she remembered getting home from school and racing down to the beach. Sometimes she’d swim or walk one of the legion of O’Hara dogs. But often she’d ju
st sit, doodling in the sand, savouring the feel of the sun on her face...or simply being. The wash of the waves, the immensity of the ocean, the timelessness, soothed something inside her so deep, so intrinsic that she knew she could never leave the ocean.
That was why she couldn’t sell her grandparents’ house and walk away from her debts. Where else could she be by the ocean every day of her life? In the city, maybe, or a decent-sized tourist town? Sure, she could rent herself a bedsit, make herself a life. She could walk on the beach with other tourists.
It was totally selfish, this feeling that the ocean was hers.
‘You love it, don’t you?’ Matt asked gently, and she could only nod.
She expected him to continue. She expected more pressure. Instead he said simply, ‘Swim?’
And he kicked off his shoes, tugged off his shirt and trousers and headed for the sea.
She stayed for a moment, watching. He walked straight in and then dived. The waves here were small, the cove protected by two headlands. There was no sign of anyone, of anything. A private beach? She’d heard of such places.
Did he own all this?
He’d disappeared, sleek, smooth, sliding underwater, only the faintest break in the surface occurring when he needed to breathe.
She could see seagrasses from here. A sheltered rocky cove... It’d be home for so much.
What was she doing, standing gawping at a guy like Matt when she could be checking out seagrasses?
She gave herself a mental shake—which kind of didn’t work because she was still thinking of Matt, of his gorgeous body, of the way he’d slid into that wave as if he’d been born to the sea...
But she had to ignore it. There was a whole new ocean world to explore.
And Matt McLellan was surely only an incidental part.
* * *
He had his life sorted. She just had to see it.
From the moment the idea had come into his head, there’d been not a single doubt that this was the right decision. Matt McLellan was known for decisiveness. It had never let him down in the past and it wasn’t letting him down now. The path he saw in front of him was perfect.
Cinderella and the Billionaire Page 12