by Penny Jordan
She tensed as she heard the rasp of a match, her eyes widening as she saw Finn’s face briefly outlined in the quick flare before he protected the flame with his hand and lit the candles.
What was it about candlelight that immediately gave even the most mundane of surroundings an aura of sensuality and romance? As they both stood up, Maggie could see the way Finn looked round her kitchen.
‘You’re cooking chilli?’ he questioned her frowningly.
‘Is there any reason why I shouldn’t?’ Maggie responded in immediate self-defence. ‘I happen to like it. Not that it’s any business of yours.’
‘I should hope you do,’ Finn agreed, ignoring the final challenging sentence of her response. ‘There’s enough stuff here to feed a small army. I trust you’ve taught yourself how to cook mince in the last few months?’
His frown deepened, and he stared at her for so long that Maggie felt slightly nervous. ‘You aren’t wearing any shoes,’ Finn told her, and his frown gave way to a look of wondering male amusement as he grinned. ‘You’re tiny.’
‘I am no such thing,’ Maggie denied indignantly.
‘Oh, yes you are.’ Finn contradicted her softly. ‘Tiny and stubborn and…’ Putting the newly lit candles down on the worktop, he moved purposefully towards her.
Immediately Maggie panicked, moving back from him, knocking over the candles as she did so. The small flames were instantly extinguished.
The effect of the darkness on her already sensitive nervous system caused her to cry out, a small choked sound of distress which Finn reacted to, demanding, ‘Maggie, what is it? Are you all right?’
‘No, I’m not all right,’ Maggie burst out. ‘I hate the dark. It makes me feel so afraid.’
In the silence that followed her small outburst, Maggie cursed her reckless tongue. What on earth had she told him that for? He would think she was a complete fool. And yet despite that she still heard herself continuing, in a distinctly wobbly little voice.
‘It frightens me and…’
Before she could finish Finn was saying gruffly, ‘I hate spiders. They terrify me. I have nightmares about them…’
In the darkness Maggie listened to his breathing. The thought of Finn being afraid of anything—and admitting that fear to her—brought a warm rushing flood of protective love washing through her.
‘At least you can do something about the darkness. Spiders are there all the time,’ Finn told her.
Without thinking about what she was doing, Maggie took a step towards him.
‘How about you protecting me from spiders whilst I protect you from the dark?’ Finn suggested.
Finn must have moved too, because now his voice was right against her ear, and his arm was right round her waist, and his lips…
‘Do you think that’s really a good idea?’ Maggie whispered. With Finn’s lips deliberately teasing hers it was almost impossible for her to think, never mind speak.
‘Mmm. And I think that this is an even better idea,’ Finn muttered as his arms wrapped round her and he began to kiss her in earnest.
Maggie could feel her head starting to swim whilst her body melted with the sweet wanton pleasure of being so close to him.
‘Oh, God, Maggie, if you only knew how much I’ve missed you. How much I’ve wanted you,’ she could hear Finn groaning hoarsely to her.
The only response she could make was to wrap her own arms around him and open her mouth to the hot seeking pressure of his tongue. Behind the closed velvet of her eyes the darkness beyond them didn’t matter, because she could see in her mind’s eye all that she wanted to see. And that was Finn. Her fingertips touched his face, tracing its bone structure, and she felt her body thrill with the unexpected sensuality of the tension in his jaw as she stroked his skin.
With an urgency that both shocked and thrilled her Finn was unfastening her clothes, his whole body shuddering sharply when he touched her bare skin.
‘God, you feel so good,’ he moaned against her throat. ‘The scent of you in my bed has been driving me crazy, do you know that? Every time I’ve closed my eyes all I’ve seen is you, all I’ve wanted to touch is you. You are the air I breathe, Maggie, every thought I think…my heart…my soul.’
Maggie gasped and trembled as his hand cupped her naked breast.
‘Undress me, Maggie. Take me to bed, show me that you want me. Be the wild wanton woman I know you can be, the woman who isn’t afraid to put love first in her life.’
His hoarse words filled her heart with a hot vocal torrent of fiercely moaned desire, challenging her to meet and match his need.
‘Right now nothing is more important to me than you…and this,’ Finn was telling her roughly. ‘Kiss me, Maggie. Show me that you want me,’ he begged her, but before she could move he was kissing her, taking her mouth with shockingly intense hunger.
The darkness, for so many years her dreaded, hidden and feared enemy, had suddenly become a welcome sensual cloak within which she could hide from any danger of exposure, be free to respond with every bit of the rich sensuality of her true nature to what he was demanding of her.
They made love quickly and passionately, tearing at buttons and fastenings, the raw broken sound of their frantic breathing interrupted by the sharp moan of pleasure Maggie gave when Finn lifted her onto the worktop and sank into her. Until she had felt him there even she hadn’t realised how much she had longed for the fulfilment of his possession, how much her body had ached for the feel of him within it.
His own release followed hers, flooding through her as the final shimmering pulsations of her orgasm died away.
As he lifted her off the worktop Finn crooned her name between gentle kisses whilst Maggie tried to stop her body from trembling with the shocked aftermath of what had happened.
‘Maggie, Maggie…’ Finn was cupping her face, stroking his thumbs over her cheekbones, still damp with the release of her orgasmic tears. ‘I want…’
They both blinked as the power suddenly came back on. Maggie could see scratches on Finn’s bare shoulder, which she must have inflicted in the heat of their passion. The kitchen floor was strewn with discarded clothes and the air smelled of passion—and Finn. She was appalled by the ferocity of her longing to beg him to stay. To tell him that she would do anything, be anything, in order to share her life with him. The intensity of her emotions made her feel physically weak. She wanted to crawl into bed and pull the covers up over her head. No, what she really wanted was to go to bed with Finn and to curl up there against his body whilst he held her and told her how much he loved her.
But he didn’t love her.
Unable to endure looking at him, she quickly pulled on her scattered clothes and told him disjointedly, ‘You can’t stay here. I want you to leave…’
Like her, Finn had finished dressing.
‘Maggie—’ he began, but Maggie couldn’t bear to listen; she was so close to breaking down completely and begging him to let her into his life. Skirting past him, she walked into her sitting room.
Finn followed her, mentally cursing himself beneath his breath. No wonder she wanted him to leave after the way he had behaved. Why the hell hadn’t he taken things more slowly? Did he really need to ask himself that? The sight of her, the scent of her, the reality of her had turned the final screw in the already over tightly coiled ferocity of his need and he had totally lost control. Even now, just thinking about the way she had felt when he had sunk into her, the receptive warm wetness of her, the…
She was walking across the sitting room, heading for the hallway, obviously determined to make him leave.
‘Maggie…wait…I’ve got the draft lease here for you to look at. Tina gave it to me earlier. And those photographs I was telling you about…’ As he spoke Finn was reaching for his briefcase and opening it.
Reluctantly Maggie turned round and watched him. In his desperation Finn accidentally dropped the case, spilling its contents. Maggie watched in silence as he gathered up the spilled papers
and then tensed as she saw the estate agents’ brochures. ‘You’re thinking of buying a London flat?’ she demanded, unable to conceal her shock.
For a moment Finn was tempted to lie and tell her he had got them for a friend, but what was the point?
‘I was,’ he acknowledged, giving her a grimly wry look. ‘Like I’ve told you before, Maggie, a part-time relationship with you isn’t what I want. I thought it was better to let you go completely rather than be forced to life on the fringes of your life, fitted in between business deals, always knowing that I came a poor second best, that my love for you came second best. But the way I’ve been feeling these last few weeks has changed my mind, and one of the reasons I came to London was to see you and to tell you…to ask you…if it would make any difference to…to things if I were prepared to spend a couple of nights a week in London. That way—’
Maggie didn’t let him finish. ‘You’d do that for me?’ she asked him quietly. ‘You’d buy a flat in London just so that you could see me…?’
The tremor in her voice and the look in her eyes made Finn’s heart ricochet against his chest wall. ‘To have your love, Maggie, I’d—’ He stopped and drew a deep breath before admitting huskily, ‘I’d do whatever it takes. Living in the City might be one kind of hell as far as I’m concerned, but living without you is every kind of hell there is and then some, all rolled into one unbearable pain.’
‘Oh, Finn.’
He gave a small grunt as he exhaled when she threw herself into his arms, but he still had the presence of mind to lock them around her and to kiss her with fiercely sweet passion before asking her hoarsely, ‘Will you do it, Maggie? Will you let me into your life, share your time and yourself with me?’
‘For two nights a week whilst you’re in London?’ Maggie questioned him, gravely looking up into his eyes.
The hope and the pain she could see there tore at her own heart. He might not have said the words ‘I love you’, but he didn’t need to; she could see his love in that expression.
‘Yes. Will you?’ he repeated thickly.
Very slowly Maggie shook her head.
‘No,’ she told him quietly.
‘No…’ He had gone white with shock, anguish written—no, carved into his face, Maggie recognised on a wave of sweetly tender love. ‘Maggie…’ he began, but she stopped him, placing her finger against his lips.
‘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…’
‘Good. Now you’ll never be able to escape from me,’ Finn told her promptly as he lifted her back into the car. Maggie whispered something in his ear.
‘Barefoot and what?’ he demanded.
‘You heard me.’ Maggie laughed. ‘And anyway,’ she told him truthfully, ‘I’ll never want to escape, Finn. I love you too much.’
‘No more than I love you,’ he told her softly.
‘Gran’s so happy in the Dower House,’ she said, smiling, when he had turned the round and they were heading for the airport.
‘Mmm…and she’s going to be even happier when we get back from honeymoon and tell her our good news,’ Finn agreed.
Lovingly they exchanged tender private glances. The discovery that Maggie was pregnant was still too new and precious to share with anyone else. It was, as Finn had told her emotionally only that morning, the most wonderful gift of love she could possibly have given him—apart from herself.
‘Like I said,’ Maggie reminded him. ‘You’re an old-fashioned country type who wants to keep his woman barefoot and pregnant!’
‘No,’ Finn corrected her lovingly. ‘What I want—all I want—is to keep you happy, Maggie.’