Runaway Sister

by Ann Jennings

  “Why not?” he persisted. “You always liked it there.”

  “I don’t know, it’s difficult to…” Her voice was interrupted by the sound of a very noisy scooter coming down the rocky track leading to the villa. Whoever was riding it obviously imagined he was participating in a motorcycle scrambling circuit.

  Dennis tutted in annoyance at the loud noise and went quickly through the villa to investigate. Moments later he came running back waving a telegram in his hand.

  “Everything is happening today,” he announced, still waving the telegram excitedly. “It’s from Sophie—she and Tex are to be married in London, the day after tomorrow!” He sat down and poured himself another iced coffee and mopped his brow. “My God, I think I’ve had enough excitement for one day!”

  Samantha looked at Adam with consternation. Suddenly she felt fervently sorry for him. Whatever her feelings about him, he didn’t deserve to be ditched in such a manner. However, Adam didn’t look in the least bit like a man who had been dealt a mortal blow, instead he was grinning from ear to ear.

  “Didn’t I say Tex and Sophie made a good pair?” he said, no trace of malice in his voice. “I have a feeling, too, that Tex will be quite a match for her, he’ll give her all she wants, but I don’t think he’ll give in to her.”

  Dennis laughed. “I agree,” he said. “This really calls for opening another bottle—what do you say, Samantha?”

  Samantha had been regarding Adam with something akin to amazement, hardly able to believe her ears. Had she been wrong all along? Were her wildest dreams possible? Quickly she collected her straying errant thoughts as Dennis called her name again.

  “If I drink any more champagne, Dennis,” she said truthfully, “without having anything to eat, I can promise you I shall be most unsociable and fall asleep right where I am.”

  Adam laughed. “Poor Samantha, but don’t worry, we shan’t mind having a Sleeping Beauty in our midst.” His eyes held hers, a cryptic expression lurking in their depths.

  Samantha looked away quickly, unable to trust herself. She felt that everything she was thinking must be written plainly across her face.

  Dennis got up. “I’m going to organize something special for dinner tonight,” he said. “We’ve got a double celebration.” He laughed. “I wonder what the third thing will be—they say everything happens in threes.”

  Samantha felt Adam watching her, and restlessly pushed back some strands of hair from her face. The atmosphere between them was crackling again with that familiar current. Was she going to run away again? Or would she have the courage this time to find out what he really felt about her? She was uncertain, half of her wanting to know, the other half afraid of what the answer might be.

  “Shall we take a stroll down to the sea?” Adam’s voice was low, almost inaudible, but it throbbed with an urgency that she couldn’t deny.

  “Yes,” she whispered, and rose meekly from the sunlounger where she had been lying. Silently they made their way down the rocky path that led to the cove. The sun was setting now, long fingers of shadow darkening their figures as they walked.

  The cooler air of the evening fanned against Samantha’s burning cheeks. Suddenly she was struck dumb, she couldn’t think of a thing to say—at least not anything that would sound in the least bit sensible.

  It was Adam who broke the silence. “Well…” he drawled when they reached the jetty. As he spoke he put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him.

  “Well what?” stammered Samantha.

  “If I remember correctly, we’d reached a very interesting point in the conversation at the casino, when we were interrupted.”

  “Oh, had we?” said Samantha, trying to keep her voice as noncommittal as possible, afraid of giving all her feelings away, only to be rebuffed.

  “Yes, you were going to tell me what you liked.” He pulled her closer almost roughly and she noticed a smoldering passion in his eyes illuminated by the reflection of the setting sun.

  “Was I?” she whispered back, mesmerized by the look in his eyes. “I don’t remember.”

  “Perhaps this will jog your memory,” said Adam as with ruthless determination he took her lips. His arms folded around her masterfully, pinioning her arms against her sides. “I’m not taking any chances of being pushed into the water this time!” he murmured into a warm corner of her mouth before he started kissing her again, this time with a passion that could not be denied.

  Not that Samantha wanted to, he ignited an exquisite incandescent glow inside her, tingling every nerve end of her being. She began to kiss him back with an ardor that surprised her.

  Slowly he slackened his tight hold on her arms, and she slid them slowly, languorously up around his neck, running her fingers luxuriously through his thick hair, pulling his face closer to hers.

  Adam broke away from the kiss and held her from him. “What shall we do now?” he asked hoarsely. “This is usually the point where you have second thoughts and we end up quarreling. If you’re going to do that, let me know, and we’ll stop right now.”

  Samantha snuggled her head into the hollow of his shoulder and slid her fingers sensuously up and down his neck. “I don’t want to stop,” she whispered. “I’ve never really wanted to stop.”

  “Then why the hell have you?” demanded Adam roughly, standing back and holding her at arm’s length from him.

  “Because of Sophie,” she said simply.

  “What the hell has Sophie got to do with it?” Adam’s voice was tinged with irritability. Then grasping her arm in a viselike grip he led the way off the jetty and plonked her down on some rocks near the sea, then seated himself beside her.

  “We’re not going up for dinner until you and I understand each other,” he said firmly. “Even if it means sitting here talking all night.”

  “Yes, Adam,” said Samantha demurely, a sudden mischievous smile crinkling the corners of her mouth.

  “Now let’s start at the beginning,” began Adam, but she reached up and drawing his head down to hers searched for his mouth. He needed no second bidding, he responded with a passion that shook her, his hand gently cupping her breast, stroking the nipple through the thin material of her dress with his thumb. Samantha felt her nipples rise and harden as an intense longing started like a fire in the pit of her stomach. Adam’s mouth left hers, and blazed a burning hot trail down her throat, finally resting in the secret hollow of her throat. “You do want me, don’t you?” It was a statement rather than a question.

  “Oh yes, I do,” she breathed, “I always have. I lied to you about Steve, I’ve never even thought about him since the first time you kissed me.”

  He raised his head and looked down at her, his eyes dark pools of desire. “Why the hell did you keep pushing me away every time, and tell me that cock-and-bull story about loving Steve? Not that I believed that,” he added with conviction, kissing her again.

  Much later when she had surfaced again Samantha gently traced the outline of Adam’s jaw. Dusk had fallen now, everything was peaceful and tranquil. The water gently lapped the rocks around their feet and the cicadas kept up their constant whirring in the still night air.

  “I love you,” said Adam. “You know that, don’t you?”

  Samantha raised her head to look at him. Compassion, tenderness and, yes, love were shining from his eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me before?” she whispered.

  “I thought it was too soon after your breakup with Steve, I didn’t want you on the rebound,” he answered, covering her face with a thousand tiny kisses, the kisses of a lover.

  “I do love you,” whispered Samantha, “but I couldn’t tell you because of Sophie.”

  Adam sighed. “We’d better start from the beginning,” he said, “so that I, being only a poor male, ignorant of the complexities of the female mind, can understand.”

  She kissed his
chin. “It all started after the Ball, when…”

  “Ah yes,” interrupted Adam a trifle grimly, “after the Ball. You really led me on then.”

  “I didn’t lead you on,” she retorted indignantly. “It was you, and when I glanced round and saw Sophie’s negligee where she’d flung it across the chair in your bedroom, I just sort of froze up inside.”

  “So that’s what it was!” Adam laughed. “Surely you didn’t think that Sophie and I were involved in that way? She’s not my type at all. She only stayed in my flat because it was a convenient base for her, and I was more or less forced to put up with her as she was Dennis’s sister. In fact, if you really want the truth I wasn’t at all pleased when she turned up at Princess Mary’s. Being Sophie, she expected me to drop everything and dance attendance on her.”

  “Which you did,” interrupted Samantha.

  “Which I did,” agreed Adam. “But I didn’t want to upset Valerie at that point in her pregnancy, she especially asked me to look after Sophie for Dennis’s sake. So as you can see, I was stuck with her. I let her sleep in my bedroom, but I didn’t sleep with her. Surely you didn’t think that I…”

  “Yes, I did,” admitted Samantha, “and I couldn’t bear the thought of being second best to some other woman. I couldn’t bear the thought of you making love to somebody else.”

  He took her face between his hands and cupped it so that she was forced to look at him as he said very seriously, “Samantha, I promise you that since I met you there’s been no other woman in my life. Give me credit for some constancy!” He smiled. “I can’t pretend, of course, that there haven’t been other women, I haven’t got to my ripe old age and remained a virgin!” He kissed the tip of her nose. “But since that day I first met you when I returned to Princess Mary’s from America, and I found that you hadn’t married, I determined I would marry you.”

  “You did?” Samantha’s eyes were round with astonishment. “But you weren’t nice to me all the time—you even shouted at me!”

  “And if I remember correctly,” grinned Adam, “you shouted right back!”

  “Well, you deserved it,” said Samantha with a contented sigh, settling herself comfortably into the crook of his arm.

  “Are you going to?” he asked.

  “What? Am I going to do what?” asked Samantha sleepily. All the events of the last two days were beginning to catch up with her.

  “Marry me?” demanded Adam.

  “Yes, please,” she said. Then she grinned wickedly. “It will give you a chance to show me that all-conquering passion you went on about so irritatingly when I first met you, remember?”

  “I certainly do,” murmured Adam. “I think we’ll begin with the first lesson right now.”

  About the Author

  Ann Jennings was born and still lives in Hampshire, and has been a published romance author since 1984. She’s had a varied career, a verbatim shorthand writer, a cabaret singer, a teacher, a hospital administrator and finally a full-time writer.

  She has also written for and directed musicals and plays for the local theatre. She has always enjoyed travelling, and loved visiting New England, USA but now mostly travels to the family house in southern Tuscany in Italy, a country dear to her heart.

  Look for these titles by Ann Jennings

  Now Available:

  Headlong Into Love

  Intensive Affair

  Nurse on Neuro

  Doctor Knows Best

  Writing as Angela Arney

  Cast the First Stone

  Coming Soon:

  Doctor’s Orders

  Sold to the Surgeon

  Nurse on Loan

  Surgeon Ashore

  New Beginnings

  Really, Doctor!

  Santa Lucia

  The course of love can be as bumpy as a ride in a careening ambulance.

  Doctor Knows Best

  © 2014 Ann Jennings

  Just Megan Jones’s luck, the one time she enters the Casualty department as a patient and not a nurse, no one she knows is on duty to speed her through the examination and treatment of her sore wrist.

  Worse, the only pair of eyes available to treat her belong to the arrogant, high-handed new physician consultant, Giles Elliott. It’s bad enough his brusque manner rubs her the wrong way. Now he says he wants to reorganize her already efficient system in the department.

  Just who does Giles think he is? Besides towering, dark and handsome, that is. Oh, and a man who one moment is vexing her to no end, the next making her shiver in her uniform with his devastating smile.

  The more she learns about the reason he left his university position to return to patient care, the more she softens toward him. Now if only he’d stop treating her like a first-year long enough to notice she’s a mature woman with a mind—and heart—of her own.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Doctor Knows Best:

  The store cupboard was quite large and unfortunately for Megan and the two pupil nurses it had a radiator in it. It had once been intended for use as an office, but due to some oversight on the part of the hospital architect, there was no ventilation or window. The young nurses struggled to turn off the radiator at Megan’s request, but couldn’t manage it. Megan had a try too, but was equally unsuccessful, so they carried on working in the rather hot and stuffy room. The net result of which was that by the time they had finished the task all three of them looked hot and flushed and extremely dusty.

  Megan glanced at her watch as they placed the last box of plaster of Paris bandages on the shelf. It was five o’clock, time for the pupil nurses to go off duty. “OK, you two can go now,” she said briskly. “Thanks for all your hard work.”

  “Are you sure everything is done, Sister?” asked one of the girls.

  “Yes, thank you,” replied Megan, standing with her hands on her hips looking about at the reorganised cupboard with satisfaction. “I’ll just write a note and pin it on the door asking the cleaners to give the floor a good wash, and that will be that. So off you go, and thank you.”

  The two girls needed no second bidding, flying off down the corridor, chattering non-stop, towards the female changing rooms.

  Megan felt tired now, but at least she had worked the thoughts of Giles Elliott out of her system. Absentmindedly she ran a hand across her forehead, pushing back the rebellious dark hair that had escaped from beneath her cap during her exertions. In a few moments Juliet Moore would be coming on duty, just time for her to write the note for the cleaners.

  As she closed the door of the store cupboard behind her and stepped into the corridor, Megan suddenly became aware of two piercing blue eyes, with more than a hint of amusement in them, regarding her. She was also palpably aware of her very dishevelled appearance. Half-heartedly she tried to straighten her cap and push her hair back in place, acutely conscious of his blue eyes taking in every detail of her appearance. She felt her cheeks burning with embarrassment and knew she was turning crimson.

  “Have you been having an orgy in the cupboard, Sister? If so, I’m very sorry to have missed it. I should have stayed here instead of going up to London!”

  “I, we…um…” If Megan was flustered before, he had completely unnerved her now, and to make matters worse he took a step nearer. Involuntarily she took a step backwards and ended up leaning against the store cupboard door. Her luminous brown eyes, fringed by their impossibly long lashes, looked panic-stricken as she unexpectedly felt herself falling backwards. The door to the store cupboard had not been fastened properly and the light pressure of her slim young body had been enough to send it flying open and her tumbling backwards. Hitting the floor with a thud that knocked all the air out of her lungs, Megan lay still for a split second.

  “Megan, are you all right?” Giles’ large frame was bending over her, lifting her gently to her feet.

  S
till dazed and bewildered, Megan clung to him, vaguely conscious of the comfortingly rough texture of his tweed jacket and the pervading masculine smell of his skin, with its faint, lingering perfume of aftershave. His face was so close to hers it would have been easy to reach up and kiss that strong, determined jawline, and Megan found herself terribly tempted to do just that.

  Common sense prevented her. Instead she said, rather lamely, “I’ve been clearing out the store cupboard.”

  He smiled down at her. “You seem to make a habit of falling over. What part of your anatomy have you damaged this time?”

  Self-consciously Megan tried to push him away.

  “Nothing,” she said firmly. “I’m sorry, it was a stupid thing to do.”

  “Yes, it was rather,” he replied, his blue eyes smiling. He made no effort to release her—if anything, it seemed to Megan that his arms tightened around her a little.

  Her long lashes fluttered down over the becoming curve of her high cheekbones as she lowered her gaze, unable to meet the searching blue of his eyes any longer.

  “I’m all right now,” she muttered quickly. “Thank you very much for picking me up.” It seemed a rather inadequate thing to say but she couldn’t think of anything else. In fact she found it difficult to think at all with his arms around her.

  “Don’t mention it,” came his low reply. “I really quite enjoyed it.”

  “You did?” Megan’s head came up in surprise and simultaneously his dark head came down to meet hers. She was briefly aware that he had kicked the cupboard door shut behind him before his lips came down on hers, blotting out everything. His mouth was hard and demanding, and Megan’s natural instinct was to respond to the urgency of his kiss. A confusing mass of emotions spun like stars in her head.

  Abruptly he let her go, saying, “That is what happens to young women who fall at my feet! You have been warned!”

  Megan looked at him suspiciously. He was laughing at her.