by Penny Jordan
‘What? Not even caution to the winds, in the arms of your lover?’ Finn derided her. ‘How very disappointing that must be for him.’
Maggie couldn’t believe her ears. How on earth had they managed to get on such personal ground?
‘I do not have a lover,’ she heard herself telling Finn sharply.
Finn digested her too-quick denial with silent cynicism. He already knew that she was lying. She embodied everything he most disliked about the life he had left behind him. So why did he feel this virtual compulsion just to stand and look at her? He had seen more beautiful women, and he had certainly known far more sexually encouraging women. She had an almost visible ten-foot-high fence around her, warning him to keep his distance—which was exactly what he wanted and intended to do. So why was a reckless part of him hungrily wondering what it would feel like to hold her, to kiss her, to…?
Compressing his mouth against the folly of such thoughts, he said curtly, “I’m going out to lock up the fowl for the night. If you want something to eat help yourself from the fridge.’
Help herself? Eat on her own? Well, he certainly believed in being hospitable, Maggie reflected waspishly as she watched him walk out into the yard. If she’d been in the City now she would still have been working. She rarely finished work before eight, often leaving her office even later, and most evenings she either had dinner with clients or friends; if with friends at one of the City’s high-profile restaurants, if with clients somewhere equally expensive but far more discreet.
Her apartment possessed a state-of-the-art stainless steel kitchen, but Maggie had never cooked in it. She could cook, of course. Well, sort of. Her grandmother was a wonderful cook and had always encouraged Maggie to concentrate on her studies whilst she was growing up, and somehow there had never been time for Maggie to learn domestic skills from her.
Well, at least if she had something to eat now she could retreat to her room and stay there. Who knew? By tomorrow the river might be fordable again. Certainly if it was possible for a person to will that to happen then that person would be Maggie.
Skirting the large table in the middle of the room, she looked disparagingly at the untidy mess of books and papers cluttering it. An old-fashioned chair complete with a snoozing cat was pulled up in front of the Aga, not a bright shiny new Aga, Maggie noticed, but an ancient chipped cream one. The whole house had a rundown air about it, a sad shabbiness that evoked feelings in her she didn’t want to examine.
Maggie had spent the early years of her childhood being dragged from one set of rented lodgings to another by her mother after the break-up of her parents’ marriage. Every time her mother had met a new man they had moved, and inevitably, when the romance ended, they had moved again. In some people such a life might have created a deep-seated need for stability and the comfort and reassurance of a close loving relationship with a partner, in Maggie it had created instead a ferocious determination to make herself completely and totally independent.
This house reminded her of those days and that life and she didn’t like it. Nothing in Maggie’s life now—the life she had created for herself—was shabby or needy, nothing was impermanent or entered into impulsively without cautious and careful thought. Everything she surrounded herself with was like her: shiny, clean, groomed, planned, ordered and controlled.
Or rather like she normally was, she corrected herself, as she looked down at her unshod feet in their expensive designer tights. Maggie never went barefoot—not even in the privacy of her own home—and most certainly never in anyone else’s home. To her being barefoot was surely synonymous with being poor, and vulnerable, and either of those things made her feel weak and afraid and angry with herself for feeling that way.
Quickly she went to open the fridge door. She was becoming far too dangerously introspective. As she looked into the fridge her eyes widened.
Finn pushed open the back door and removed his boots. The paddock was a quagmire of mud, partially due to the activities of the ducks and partially to the recent downpour. He had had the devil of a time catching one of the bantams, and had even got to the point of consigning the little wretch to the devil and the nightly marauding fox, but in the end his inherent concern for its safety had won out and he had persevered, finally managing to lock it up safely.
He was cold and hungry and his afternoon’s unscheduled meeting with the alpaca breeder had meant that he hadn’t made the chilli he had intended to prepare for his supper. He had an evening’s worth of paperwork in front of him, which he wasn’t looking forward to. Perhaps he was making life harder for himself than it needed to be by refusing to install a computer. It would certainly make his paperwork easier.
As he kicked off his muddy boots he could see Maggie staring into the open fridge.
‘What’s wrong?’ he demanded as he walked across to her.
‘Everything in here’s raw,’ Maggie responded in consternation. Like him, she was hungry, and had somehow been expecting…well, if not the kind of meal that would be served at one of London’s stylish restaurants, then at least a pizza.
An answering frown of disapproval furrowed Finn’s own forehead, as he listened to her.
‘What else did you expect? This is a farm, not a supermarket,’ he told her dryly. ‘We live at the beginning of the food chain, not at its end.’
‘But it all needs cooking,’ Maggie protested. She was looking at him with a mixture of hauteur and disdain that made Finn long to shake her.
‘Look, this isn’t some fancy city restaurant; of course it needs cooking.’
To his astonishment Maggie slammed the fridge door shut and stepped back from it. ‘I’ve decided that I’m not hungry,’ she told him coolly.
‘Well, no, I don’t suppose you are. You look as though you don’t live on much more than a few overrated radicchio leaves,’ Finn told her unkindly.
Maggie wasn’t sure what infuriated her most, his contempt for her figure or his contempt for her lifestyle. And anyway, how did a man like him know to name the City’s current of-the-moment salad ingredient? Maggie wondered sourly.
‘Well, you may not be hungry, but I most certainly am,’ he told her, reaching past her to re-open the fridge door.
At such close quarters Maggie could actually feel the male heat coming off his body as well as see its unwantedly disturbing male strength. What on earth was the matter with her? She had never been the kind of woman who had been interested in or affected by the sight of a well-defined muscular torso. And he had the kind of facial bone structure that any male model would pay a plastic surgeon thousands for, she decided unkindly, driven by a raw need to somehow punish him for making her aware of him at all, even if it was only in the privacy of her own thoughts. He was all taut male planes and angles, and as for his eyes—surely it was impossible for a man with such dark brown hair to have such shockingly dangerous steel-blue eyes?
‘Changed your mind?’ she heard Finn asking her.
‘What…? I…?’ As she started to stammer with unfamiliar self-consciousness she wondered how on earth he could have guessed that she was unexpectedly being forced to revise her first impression of him as a man she found physically unappealing, despite his good looks.
‘You look hungry,’ Finn explained patiently.
She looked hungry! Maggie felt her face start to burn, and then realised that Finn couldn’t possibly mean what she had thought he meant, that he couldn’t possibly know what she was thinking and feeling…yes, feeling…For a man she hardly knew—a man she didn’t want to know. What on earth was happening to her? The thoughts she was having—they were…they were impossible, inadmissible, unthinkable. But as they stood facing one another, with the fridge door open between them, the most peculiar feeling was sweeping over Maggie, an odd sort of light-headedness combined with an awareness of Finn as a man in the most shockingly intimate sort of way, so shocking, in fact, that—Maggie shook her head, trying to dispel her riotously erotic thoughts, her face growing pink at their tem
erity and inventiveness. This was totally alien to her. She had never before imagined, dreamed, nor wanted to imagine or dream such things, such needs, such desires. Even the air she was breathing seemed to be filled with a sense of urgency and excitement—of expectation, almost—that she was totally at a loss to understand. It was almost as though someone or something outside herself was forcing her to see Finn in a different light…
Finn’s eyes narrowed assessingly as he saw Maggie’s pupils dilate. She had started to breathe more quickly, her lips parting, her breasts rising and falling in a way that made it impossible for him not to be aware of her femininity. He had the most extraordinarily intense desire to close the fridge door and to take her in his arms and…
Grimly he turned away from her.
‘I intended to cook a chilli for my own supper; there’ll be more than enough for two.’
He sounded curtly dismissive, as though he was secretly hoping she would refuse. Well, tough—why should she? She wasn’t going to go to bed supperless just to please some arrogant, impossible man. No way.
‘I take it you won’t be cooking dinner wearing that?’ she said tartly, determined to wrest control of the situation into her own domain as she flicked a deliberately disparaging glance at his ancient coat.
The look Finn gave her sent a prickle of alluring excitement that was totally alien to her racing down her spine.
‘No, I won’t be,’ he agreed, his voice mock affable as he added carelessly, ‘In fact you could get the chilli started whilst I go up and have a shower. Here’s the mince,’ he informed her as he removed a covered container from the bottom of the fridge. ‘I shan’t be long.’
Helplessly Maggie stared at the container he had given her before going over to the worktop and reluctantly opening it. What she should have done was tell him in no uncertain terms before he had left the kitchen that there was no way she was going to be turned into some kind of unpaid domestic help and that he could make his own supper. But, having missed that opportunity to put him in his place and save her own face, she had no option other than to try to cook the wretched stuff. There was no way, not ever in a hundred years, a thousand years, that she was going to admit to him that she had no idea how to cook it.
Anyway, it couldn’t be that difficult, could it? She had seen her grandmother cooking whilst she worked on her homework at the kitchen table. It was surely just a matter of putting it in a pan and…Her forehead furrowed into a frown of concentration as she tried to remember just what her grandmother had done, mentally picturing her in the comfortable kitchen of the home that she had made Maggie’s. She could visualise her grandmother plainly enough, smiling, bustling between the cooker and the sink whilst delicious mouthwatering smells filled the room. But as to what she had actually been doing…
Maggie mentally squared her shoulders. She could do it. She had to do it. There was no way she would ever concede victory to that…that farmer.
She needed a pan first, and the logical place for that had to be in a cupboard close to the Aga. Pleased with her own intelligence, she went towards it.
Five minutes later, when she had checked every cupboard in the kitchen, red-faced and fuming, she finally found what she was looking for on the opposite side of the room. And men had the audacity to claim that women were illogical. Ha!
Decanting the contents of the container into the pan, she grimaced in distaste. It looked unappealingly raw. She carried the pan over to the Aga and stood nonplussed in front of it before tentatively lifting one of the covers. The heat coming off the hotplate made her wince before hastily putting the pan down on it and stepping back. Now all she had to do was to wait for the stuff to cook. Good.
Upstairs in his bedroom, Finn rubbed his damp hair dry and then dropped the towel to reach for a clean shirt to pull over his naked torso. He didn’t want to analyse why he had found it necessary not just to shower but to shave as well, and he wasn’t going to.
A pungent smell was beginning to fill the air. He sniffed it warily and then frowned. Something was burning. Without bothering to put on his shirt, he made for the door.
In the kitchen, Maggie couldn’t understand what was happening. A horrid pall of smoke was filling the room—and as for the smell! The mince couldn’t be cooked yet, surely? She had a memory, admittedly vague, of her grandmother spending far longer than a mere few minutes cooking hers!
Cautiously she approached the Aga, and was just about to lift the lid off the pan when Finn came bursting into the kitchen.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ he was demanding as he strode past her and grabbed the pan off the stove, carrying it over to the sink, where he dumped it unceremoniously then removed its lid to peer in disgust at its smoking contents before turning on the tap.
‘It’s not my fault if your cooker isn’t reliable,’ Maggie informed him with a bravado she was far from feeling.
‘My cooker!’ Finn exclaimed through gritted teeth. ‘It isn’t the cooker that’s unreliable, it’s the cook. Why on earth didn’t you add some more water to it?’
Some more water. Maggie gulped and looked away, feigning disdain, but obviously her acting wasn’t good enough, because to her chagrin she heard Finn saying in an oh, so dangerously soft voice, ‘You did add water, didn’t you?’
Maggie swallowed. Her grandmother had had very strong views about lying, but surely on this occasion…
‘You didn’t, did you?’ Finn breathed in disbelief.
Maggie affected a nonchalant shrug. ‘So we favour different schools of cooking…’
‘Different schools?’ His eyes narrowed. ‘You haven’t a clue, have you?’ He scoffed sardonically. ‘Thank you, fate. Not only have I got to house her; I’ve got to feed her as well. Tell me,’ he invited unkindly, ‘just how many other non-skills do you possess that are likely to bring havoc to my life? You can’t read a map, you can’t cook, you—’
‘Stop it.’
Maggie wasn’t sure which of them was the more shocked by the sound of her tear-filled voice.
The silence it caused seemed to stretch for ever, hostility giving way to shock, shock to a soft little prickle of sensual tension which in turn led…
‘I’m sorry.’ It was the gruff note of real apology in Finn’s voice that did it, Maggie assured herself later. That and the fact that she had really been intending to walk past him and out of the room—would have walked past him if her eyes hadn’t been blurred by tears of shame and anger causing her instead to walk into him, into him and into…into his arms.
CHAPTER THREE
‘I’M SORRY. I didn’t mean to hurt you,’ Finn apologised gruffly, as he pushed the silky hair back off Maggie’s face, his fingertips enjoying the soft delicacy of her skin. Her throat seemed to fit the curve of his hand perfectly. She was trembling slightly, and in his own body…
‘You haven’t. You didn’t,’ Maggie responded huskily. She couldn’t stop looking at him; their glances were meeting, meshing, mating; she didn’t want to stop looking at him.
‘I’ll make us something else to eat,’ Finn offered. He knew he should release her, but he didn’t want to, couldn’t bear to.
Maggie shook her head. ‘It’s you I’m hungry for,’ she whispered softly. ‘Not food. Just you. Only you, Finn.’
As she lifted her face towards his Maggie knew that she had never done anything in the whole of her life that felt more right than this, more right than Finn.
Finn tried to apply the brakes of caution and common sense to the escalating urgency of his response to her, but one look into the dark haze of her passion-filled eyes had much the same effect on those brakes as the wall of water sweeping down the river had had on Maggie’s car.
His kiss was tentative at first, his lips exploring the soft curves of hers, but then she moved closer to him, nestling into his arms, her breathing quickening, the look in her eyes making Finn groan out loud.
‘Kiss me, Finn,’ Maggie whispered insistently, adding with a shaky urgency that made F
inn catch his own breath in fierce longing, ‘Properly this time.’
‘Like this, do you mean?’
Finn’s hand slid beneath her hair, supporting her head as they gazed helplessly at one another. They kissed quickly, as though equally wary of what they were doing, equally wary of their mutual hunger for one another. Brief, fierce kisses were snatched, as though they were starving, in fear of being deprived of the means of satisfying their hunger. But slowly their kisses became longer, deeper.
Behind her closed eyelids, Maggie savoured the richness of the texture of Finn’s mouth. His kisses were the most extraordinarily sensual she had ever experienced. Without doing anything more than holding her and kissing her he had made her whole body come alive with longing for him. Everything about him was having the most erotic aphrodisiacal effect on her, making her think things, want things, want him, with a female ardour and urgency that left her breathless. Breathless and aching, eager, hungry, and wanting him. Just as he wanted her. Finn was a man, and even if his kisses hadn’t shown her that he wanted her as passionately as she did him his body would have given him away.
Experimentally she slid her tongue-tip into his mouth. The arm he had wrapped around her body tightened and she felt him shudder, felt too the corresponding quiver of reaction that set her own limbs shaking.
‘Don’t do that unless you mean it,’ Finn warned her rawly. Heat flamed in his eyes, and beneath her explorative fingertips the hard high planes of his cheekbones burned.
‘I do mean it,’ Maggie responded. Automatically she looked round the kitchen, and, correctly sensing what she was seeking, what she was thinking, Finn released her from his arms and took hold of her hand, silently leading her out of the kitchen and towards the stairs.
His bedroom was on the opposite side of the landing to the room he had given her. Silently he drew her into it, and equally silently Maggie went with him. It was simply and traditionally furnished, and at any other time she would have turned her nose up its shabbiness and lack of style. But the bed was large, with heavy iron head and footboards.