Caroline Anderson, Sara Morgan, Josie Metcalfe, Jennifer Taylor

by Brides of Penhally Bay Vol. 01 (lit)

  Maggie burst out laughing. ‘That’s exactly what I’d intended doing,’ she admitted. ‘I had it all planned in my head.’

  ‘And after your mum was gone?’

  ‘I couldn’t afford to do it,’ she said simply. ‘Medical training was just going to take to long and be too expensive without any finances behind me. I even thought about selling the cottage, but…’

  ‘But it was all you had left of your family,’ he finished for her, knowing how she felt without her having to say it. ‘I think that was one of the things that stopped me coming back to visit Penhally—the fact that I would have to see our old home and know it wasn’t ours any more, that someone else was living there in the place that held all my childhood memories.’

  ‘And now you’ll be going past it on almost a daily basis when you’re out doing house calls. Is it still a problem for you?’

  ‘Not going past it, no. It looks so completely different because someone’s painted the old stone walls white and stuck fake shutters either side of the windows.’

  ‘Don’t forget the fact that the windows are now plastic and the new front door is studded with fake iron nails,’ Maggie said, and was rewarded with a chuckle.

  ‘What on earth makes people think that sort of thing is an “improvement”? There was nothing wrong with it the way it was—an honest-to-goodness fisherman’s cottage built of local stone, roofed in Delabole slate and with the original sash windows.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, deliberately broadening her accent, ‘you know what us locals say about they incomers… all thur taste is in thur mouth,’ she teased, and he laughed aloud.

  ‘You’re not wrong there. It seems to be happening wherever there’s a pretty sleepy place with tiny cottages. Before you can turn around, there’s a crop of multimillion pound mansions squeezed between them—second, third and even fourth homes, meaning the locals haven’t a hope of buying a home within twenty miles of their families or their jobs.’

  ‘Well, at least the outsiders are only there for the summer,’ she consoled him. ‘Most of those new houses are probably only used for a fortnight every year, and long before the autumn gales come, the population’s back to just locals, and life returns to normal.’

  ‘I take it you’ve seen it at its worst, as a paramedic?’

  ‘And then some,’ she groaned. ‘There’s been an annual influx of Society types when the big public schools break up for summer. For a couple of weeks there can be several thousand teenagers congregating on the sand at one venue or another, fighting with their enemies from a rival school, or with pupils from some of the local schools. And when you factor in underage binge-drinking and the fact that some bring drugs down with them, it can be an explosive mix.

  ‘I presume the authorities have been taking steps to minimise the damage, in human terms, at least?’

  ‘You mean, apart from drafting in almost every available policeman in the area to police the alcohol and drugs and imposing a curfew on the beaches?’ Maggie laughed wryly. ‘They risk life and limb trying to separate the warring tribes while we paramedics are playing piggy-in-the-middle taking care of the injuries and overdoes. Thank goodness for places like Padstow. There’s more for people to do there; more entertainment and come very good cafés and restaurants, as well as a lot of more affordable accomodation.’

  ‘So, when we get you out of here, would you like to go to Padstow for our celebratory meal?’ he asked, and her heart gave a sudden leap.

  ‘At least in February you’d be certain of finding something open in Padstow,’ she said wryly, while she tried to find the words to clarify the situation. In the end, all she could do was ask point blank. ‘Adam, did you just ask me out for a meal?’

  ‘I must be more out of practice than I thought if you couldn’t tell that was an invitation,’ he complained. ‘Perhaps I need to give it another go. So, have you got a favourite place, Maggie? Will you come out with me?’

  It was such a tempting thought and would be the fulfilment of a dream she’d had since she’d been fifteen, but there was one enormous obstacle.

  ‘Won’t your wife mind you asking me out, or will she be joining us?’ she asked pointedly, knowing she wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she went against her personal convictions, and that included an absolute ban on having a relationship with a married man.

  ‘Dammit, Maggie, I should have told you about Caroline—’ he began, only to break off when there was the sound of a shout from somewhere behind him. ‘Just a minute,’ he said distractedly, his voice fading, and she could picture him turning away from the radio to speak to the man who’d hailed him.

  She tried to listen in on their conversation but the reception wasn’t clear enough. She couldn’t even tell from the tone of their voices whether the news was good, bad or indifferent, and had to wait impatiently until he came back to her.

  In the meantime, she was left wondering just what he would have said about his wife if he hadn’t been interrupted. Were he and Caroline divorced? She felt a pang of guilt that she should feel the remotest bit happy that he should have gone through that sort of misery. But it would mean that he was no longer married, a small voice inside her head pointed out.

  Or perhaps they were merely separated, each resigned to the other’s peccadilloes, uncaring that they were breaking their sacred vows. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t change the situation as far as she was concerned. She believed that married was married, and only death—or divorce for those who believed in it—would change that.

  ‘Maggie?’ Adam’s voice brought her out of the realms of speculation and the new energy that flowed out of the radio was almost visible. ‘Someone’s unearthed a map.’

  ‘A map?’ She couldn’t see quite what the excitement was about. Most people might have completely forgotten that this mine had ever existed, but it was bound to have been marked on old maps.

  ‘Young George used a few of his contacts,’ Adam continued, and Maggie smiled the way she always did when she heard the old man’s title, knowing it had been bestowed on him when his father and grandfather had both been alive.

  ‘So how does that help anything?’ she asked, frustrated that their conversation had been interrupted for something so unimportant. ‘We already know where the mine is.’

  ‘Ah, but this isn’t the sort of map you’re thinking about, with roads and railways marked on it,’ he explained. ‘This is a map that shows all the tunnels and whether they were adits, drifts, winzes and so on, and what level they all are in relation to each other.’

  Suddenly she felt a spark of excitement, too. Did this mean that there was a chance they could find another way in to her living tomb?

  ‘So, what have they found out?’ she demanded eagerly.

  ‘Not a lot, yet,’ he admitted. ‘But I didn’t want to keep you in the…um…I just wanted to let you know that even though it might not seem like it at the moment, things are happening.’

  ‘You nearly said you didn’t want to keep me in the dark,’ she pointed out with a quiver in her voice, not certain whether she wanted to laugh or cry.

  For just a moment she’d thought it was all going to be easy, that with this old map they’d found there was another way to get her safely out of there, another adit coming into the mine from the other side of the hill perhaps.

  Adam’s narrowly averted slip of the tongue would have been funny under any other circumstances. It was only now, when she was so close to the edge, that it had nearly been enough to break her control, and that was the last thing she wanted.

  If…when…the inevitable happened, he was bound to feel guilty for having persuaded her to go into the mine in the first place. He would probably ignore the fact that she’d willingly gone back down after she’d brought the three boys out, and take all the blame on his own conscience. He certainly didn’t need to hear her fall apart, too. The least she could do was show the world some composure in the face of adversity.

  ‘So…’ She had to pause to cle
ar her throat and pray for some inspiration. The one thing she did need was to have Adam close to her, because hearing his voice was enough to make her feel a little less alone. All she had to do was think of a topic.

  ‘Did you ever hear what happened to the girl under the train? Joanna?’ she asked, her brain instantly connecting the present situation with the first time she’d been in a cramped and dangerous situation with him. Then it had been his deep voice washing over her, instructing, calming, encouraging, that had helped her to cope with the whole thing on a minute-by-minute basis.

  ‘I went to visit her a few days later on Orthopaedics, after she’d had some reconstruction work done,’ he said, and as soon as she heard the smile in his voice she knew that there had been a successful outcome even before he told her. ‘They’d managed to pin and plate her arm and done some microsurgery on blood, tendons and nerves, but she knew she was going to be looking at several more procedures to maximise function before plastics would make it look prettier. But she still had her arm and they were very optimistic about the outcome.’

  ‘Did she tell you what had happened?’ she demanded. ‘All I heard was the rumour on the platform—that she’d screamed and jumped, and he was a good-Samaritan bystander that she dragged off with her—but while we were under the train, she didn’t sound in the least bit suicidal. She was begging us to save her life.’

  ‘Apparently, the man was an ex-boyfriend who wasn’t taking the “ex” part very well,’ Adam said. ‘She said she’d realised just in time that he was a complete control freak who was systematically taking over her life, cutting her off from all her friends and family. She’d told him it was all over, but he didn’t want to let her go.’

  ‘So he decided that if he couldn’t have her then no one could, and he pushed her under the train?’ Maggie couldn’t believe it. ‘And to think I felt sorry for him!’

  ‘She was just amazingly lucky that she landed between the rails without touching the live one. He had wrapped his arms around her before he jumped so even though she was struggling, he actually kept her fairly safe.’

  ‘Except for her arm,’ she said with a shudder, remembering the extent of that injury. When she’d first seen it, she’d been convinced that the wheels had gone completely over the arm and severed it. It had only been when she’d been trying to staunch the arterial bleeding that she’d realised that it had only been a particularly bad open fracture.

  ‘As near as they could make out, the back of his head was hit by something under the train. The blow destroyed the dens on C2—you probably know that’s called the hangman’s fracture—and he was dead almost instantaneously. Her arm was caught by part of the machinery underneath, too, but it wasn’t a total traumatic amputation so the surgeons were able to salvage the hand.’

  ‘So it was all worthwhile, being shoved under the train when I just wanted to run screaming into the distance,’ she said wryly. ‘The London underground system was hard enough to cope with, especially at that time of day with so many commuters packed onto the platform, but climbing down onto the track and seeing the tiny space I was going to have to squeeze into…’ She shuddered at the memory.

  ‘But you did it, because there was no one else small enough with the right knowledge to be able to save her life in the few minutes there was left to make a difference,’ he said quietly. ‘And I don’t know whether I ever told you but I was so proud of you for being able to make yourself do it.’

  ‘The way I remember it, you didn’t really give me much option,’ she grumbled, to cover up the delight flooding through her at his words. She’d been delighted that Joanna had still been alive by the time the air ambulance staff had arrived with replacement fluids and the pain relief that she’d needed. At least she could console herself that her efforts had kept the young woman going until her care had been placed in other hands.

  Once their help was no longer needed, Adam had suggested that she might like to avail herself of his bathroom to clean herself up a bit and that had been the moment when she’d realised that she had been covered in so much of Joanna’s blood that she’d looked like a victim herself.

  Of course, that wasn’t the only reason why she accepted his offer so readily. If she was being honest, a large part of her eagerness was due to the incredible attraction that had been drawing the two of them together all day.

  From the first moment that she saw him walk into the lecture room Maggie knew that Adam was still the only man for her. It may have been years since he’d left Penhally but she’d never forgotten him, measuring every man she met against his impossible standard.

  It was hard to concentrate on the lectures while she watched him pace backwards and forwards at the front of the room, his body more heavily muscled than when he’d left as a teenager so that his shoulders looked broader than ever, his stride long and smooth. And those stunning eyes! She’d never seen another pair such a deep sapphire colour, or any eyes that held the sparkle that his did when he smiled at her.

  Looking back on it, there had probably been several disgruntled women on the course, upset that he’d made it obvious that he’d wanted to spend his break times only with her. At the time all she’d been aware of had been the fact that she had actually been there, sitting next to Adam Donnelly, and that he’d seemed every bit as pleased to see her.

  So when he suggested that she come home with him, there was no thought in her head that she would turn the offer down. In fact, it was quite possible that her brain ceased working altogether, handing over control of the evening to her heart.

  The maisonette was bigger than she’d expected, bearing in mind the cost of housing in London, but other than that, inside it seemed like a typical bachelor’s abode, with that morning’s dishes washed but left on the drainer and a pile of opened mail on the table. The bathroom was no better, with the towel he’d used slung over the shower door rather than hung on the rail and the toothpaste and brush left on the back of the basin.

  ‘At least I put my dirty laundry away,’ he muttered defensively as he did a lightning tour, picking things up and putting them away before he found a clean towel for her and left the bathroom.

  Her clothes had disappeared by the time she finally turned the shower off and she shivered at the knowledge that he might have seen her through the screen while she had been under the shower, hoping that he’d liked what he’d seen. Her only regret was that she hadn’t known he was looking so that she could have invited him to join her.

  Just the thought of being so wanton made her blush and she groaned at the fact that she’d had so little experience, afraid that it might turn Adam off. The trouble was, she’d never been so attracted to another man that she’d wanted to share her body with him. It had always been Adam for her, first, last and always.

  The pale grey sweats he’d left just inside the door were far too long for her, but that was the perennial problem for her when she bought clothes, too. Anyway, she thought as she picked her shoes up while her heart tried to pound its way out of her chest, she was hoping that she wouldn’t be wearing them for very long. If the expression in his eyes was anything to go by, Adam was every bit as excited as she was to be there together at last.

  Perhaps it had something to do with the life-or-death events on the underground, making the two of them feel that they had to celebrate the fact that they were alive and well in the most basic way possible, but she’d barely stepped out into the hallway when he appeared from the tiny kitchen.

  ‘Can I get you anything while your clothes are in the washing machine? Tea? Coffee? Something stronger? Or would you rather have something to eat?’ he offered, but she barely heard him, her eyes feasting on the naked chest displayed to perfection above jeans worn white in prominent places.

  She was struck dumb by his sheer masculine beauty and all she could think was that she only wanted to feast on him.

  ‘Maggie…!’ he groaned, and she knew that he was every bit as desperate for her as she was for him.

  Su
ddenly it was so easy and so blissfully simple as she walked into his arms and offered her mouth for his kiss.

  Within seconds he’d swept her off her feet and into his arms but she had no idea where he was taking her, only that his kisses were even better than she’d remembered, sweeter, deeper, more exciting, stirring her to her depths and reverberating with all the emotions she’d been storing up for just this moment.

  She’d thought that she would be shy the first time a man explored her body with love-making in mind, knowing that her slenderness was far from most men’s ideal, but this was Adam touching her, stroking all the way up her shower-warmed belly as he pushed the borrowed sweat top up until her naked breasts were revealed.

  ‘At last,’ he breathed as he lavished attention on them, stroking and kissing and suckling them the way she’d longed for him to do that far-off summer. ‘I’ve been wanting to do this for so long. You’ve no idea how hard it was for me to resist you back then.’

  ‘So why did you bother resisting?’ she demanded, while her brain was still in command of her mouth. ‘You must have known that it was what I wanted, too, and once I was sixteen…’

  ‘That’s far too young to start a sexual relationship,’ he growled, momentarily distracted from feasting on her. ‘I was already eighteen and my hormones were driving me crazy, but even then I knew that it was too soon. You were too young to know…much too young for me to tie you down.’

  She knew that he was right. Logically, sixteen was far too young, but in her heart she knew that if you met the right person at that age, there was no point in looking any further. All those years ago she’d been absolutely certain that he was the right person as soon as she’d got to know him, and now, finally, they were going to be together the way they always should have been.