by Helen Brooks
It was the first time she had been able to study his face without fear of those piercing eyes arresting her. He looked exhausted. Her gaze stroked over the tough masculine features. But younger, more susceptible than when he was awake. How couldn’t she have seen his vulnerability before?
Because she had been too hung up on the past to look beyond herself and her own feelings.
The truth was uncomfortable but then it often was. When he had spoken of his childhood and youth she hadn’t pressed him for details, telling herself it was probably too painful for him to share. But that had been an excuse. She had been frightened of learning anything that would endear him further to her. The experiences he had gone through as a boy had shaped him into the complicated and enigmatic man he was today, that was for sure, but he had a capacity for love and tenderness she couldn’t ignore any longer. She couldn’t let him slip through her fingers.
She had to tell him how she felt and trust she hadn’t ruined everything. She nodded to the thought, ignoring the panic that accompanied it. She owed him that at least.
Willow knelt down beside the chair, drinking in the sight and scent of him. He’d discarded the thick leather jacket he’d worn in the car and his sweater did little to disguise the width of his chest and muscled strength of his shoulders. His hair had got damp as they’d walked and now it curled slightly over his forehead, accentuating the suggestion of boyishness. He was a man of contradictions, impossible to fathom.
‘Morgan?’ She touched his arm gently, her voice little more than a whisper. ‘Morgan, wake up. It’s me, Willow.’
His eyelids flickered and opened slowly but he didn’t move. His voice so low she could barely make out the words, he murmured, ‘I was dreaming of you.’
‘A good dream?’ she whispered, loving him so much it hurt.
His eyes seemed bluer than she’d ever seen them before and the faint lines radiating from their corners crinkled as he smiled. ‘X-rated.’
It was probably unfair to take advantage of him when he was still half asleep, but it was now or never. ‘I lied to you this afternoon,’ she said softly. ‘I do love you. I love you like I never thought it was possible to love anyone and I’ve known it for a while. Can—can you forgive me?’
He didn’t move, not a muscle. For what seemed an endless moment he stared at her, his face unreadable.
Willow stared back, equally immobile, holding her breath as her heart thudded so hard she was sure he must be able to hear it. Let it be all right, she prayed. Please let it be all right.
And then, as though lit from within, the hard rugged features melted in a smile that was beautiful. He opened his arms as he sat up in the chair and she scrambled into them, tilting her head back for his kiss, her mouth as hungry as his.
‘I love you, I do, I do,’ she murmured feverishly between kisses. ‘And I’m so sorry I hurt you. I hated myself this afternoon but I was so scared, Morgan. I still am scared. I can’t help it.’
‘And you think I’m not?’ he murmured against her lips. ‘Sweetheart, this frightens me to the core. My life was all mapped out and I was doing very nicely until you came along and blew me out of the water.’
‘Did I?’
‘Did you what?’
‘Blow you out of the water.’
‘Oh, baby, did you ever.’
They kissed again, straining together in an agony of need and murmuring incoherent words of love until a sound in the corridor outside brought them back to earth. Raising his head reluctantly, Morgan said softly, ‘Beth? How is she?’
‘She’s fine, the baby too. They’ve got a little boy and you’re allowed to see him, just for a minute. You’re not supposed to but Beth got special permission.’
‘Special permission, eh?’ He kissed her nose, his voice teasing to disguise the gratification he felt at being included. ‘This is pure you, you know,’ he said tenderly, ‘finally telling me you love me in a hospital waiting room with a blizzard outside and your sister just having given birth. It should have been over an intimate meal for two with wine and candles and guitars throbbing in the background.’
Willow giggled. ‘You told me you loved me in the middle of a freezing cold ploughed field when we were having a row,’ she reminded him.
‘Oh, boy, do we have a lot to make up for…’ He took her face in his big hands, smiling shakily as he murmured, ‘But in for a penny, in for a pound. This should be done with music and a ring to hand and me on one knee but I have to know. Will you marry me? Will you be my wife, to have and to hold for ever?’
Somewhere outside their room a bell was being rung impatiently; someone was clattering along with what sounded like a trolley in the corridor and the odd baby or two were crying in the background. The smell of antiseptic was strong along with that faint odour peculiar to all hospitals, which was impossible to pin down. Willow thought she had never been in such a perfect place. ‘Yes,’ she said, taking his lips in a kiss that was fierce. ‘Yes, yes, yes.’
Beth’s squeal of delight brought the nurse running when Willow gave her sister the news after she and Morgan had held David Peter for a moment or two. For such a big man, Morgan had held the tiny infant with a tender delicacy that had wrenched her heart. She’d had a vision of the future, of Morgan cradling their own baby with the same sweet gentleness, and it had reduced her to tears. Not that it mattered. Tears and smiles and laughter were flowing with abandon and had infected everyone with the same weakness.
By the time she and Morgan returned to the waiting room Willow felt dizzy with happiness. That and tiredness. It was now gone three in the morning. She felt ridiculously hungry too but the hospital restaurant and café didn’t open for breakfast for another five hours. Morgan found a snack machine and returned with crisps, chocolate bars and two paper cups holding a murky brown liquid that purported to be hot chocolate.
She sat on Morgan’s lap and they fed each other the food between kisses, cocooned in a couple of blankets the nurse had kindly brought them. They didn’t talk about the past or the future; that could come later. They had time now, for everything. But tonight only the present mattered; being in each other’s arms, able to kiss and touch and breathe the other’s warmth.
If this wasn’t heaven, it was close enough, Willow thought as she snuggled against his chest and shut her eyes. Thank goodness for Beth wanting her tonight, thank goodness for the snow and her car not starting and the fact it was the weekend and Morgan had been home; thank goodness that against all the odds she had found the one man who could release her from the past and make her life complete.
She settled herself more comfortably within the circle of Morgan’s arms and within moments she was asleep, a half-smile on her lips and her body curled trustingly into his.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THEY got married on Christmas Eve at the little parish church in the village. How Morgan managed to pull everything together so quickly, Willow didn’t know. It wasn’t just the paperwork and legal stuff, but persuading the vicar to fit in the marriage service between the three carol concerts the church was holding that day that amazed her. She suspected a hefty donation towards the church-roof fund might have had something to do with it. Certainly the vicar seemed happy enough.
Willow wore a mermaid-style dress in pale gold guipure lace with a fake-fur-lined matching cloak and hood, and carried a Christmas bouquet. Peter was giving her away and as they reached the church and heard the organ music as they stood outside she gripped his arm tightly. ‘Oh, Peter.’
‘Everything’s going to be fine,’ he reassured her softly, ‘and you look beautiful. You’ll take his breath away.’
She smiled at him tremulously. She had no doubts about what she was doing but she suddenly felt so emotional as she looked at the arch of Christmas garlands hung round the church door. The December day was bitterly cold but sparkling with sunshine and the winter sky was as blue as Morgan’s eyes. She hoped her parents knew how happy she was, how happy both she and Beth were. She hoped they knew they had
their first grandchild, and that she was thinking of them on this special day. She hoped…oh, lots of things.
‘Ready?’ Peter smiled down at her and she nodded. As they stepped into the church’s tiny inner porch the music changed, announcing her arrival, and just for a second she remembered that other wedding. She’d worn a full meringue-style dress in white satin with a long veil that day and they’d had nearly three hundred guests to the reception. Piers had insisted on a very formal and grand affair and her five bridesmaids and two flower girls had been schooled by him—as had she—not to put a foot wrong. She’d felt nervous and tense all day and the dress had been too tight, the speeches too long and she’d developed a blinding headache before the day was half through. Piers, on the other hand, had been in his element.
This was so different. Their seventy guests were all close friends and family and Kitty had put on a magnificent spread at home. This was an impromptu wedding filled with love.
Slowly and gracefully she began to walk down the aisle towards the tall dark man standing beside Jim at the front of the church. Morgan turned to watch her and the blue eyes were glittering with tears as she reached him. With no respect of etiquette he bent and kissed her as he took her cold little hand in his, and immediately his warmth and love surrounded her. She smiled up at him, all her adoration in her eyes.
He kept tight hold of her hand as the minister began the service, and when the time came to say their vows his voice was strong and clear for all to hear. By then the brief poignant sadness outside the church had gone and she was glowing with happiness. She was with Morgan. Where she belonged. And she knew that, for better or worse, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, until death did them part, they would be there for each other, strong in their love.
When the vicar beamingly declared them man and wife Morgan lifted her off her feet and swung her round to cheers from the congregation, kissing her soundly as she clung to him, her cheeks rosy pink and her eyes shining. Beth and Kitty cried along with the rest of the women in the church, and there was even the odd male guest who had a surreptitious dab at his eyes, but Willow and Morgan were smiling as they walked down the aisle together looking radiant. Which made Beth cry still more.
A friend of Morgan’s who was also a professional photographer took relaxed, natural pictures throughout the afternoon and even little David Peter beamed toothlessly into the camera. The food was delicious, the champagne flowed and everyone got a little tiddly by evening when the dancing started in the huge, heated marquee in the garden, which was decorated with Christmas garlands.
Willow felt she was floating in a dream when she and Morgan had the first dance, their guests gathered in a smiling circle around them. It had been the perfect day. She glanced at the rose-gold wedding band nestling next to the diamond engagement ring Morgan had bought her the day after he’d proposed. Her hand was resting on his shoulder and he caught her glance, his voice deep and husky when he said, ‘It’s there for life, sweetheart.’
‘I know.’ She smiled up at her brand-new husband, thinking he was the most handsome, sexy, delicious man in the world as he whirled her round the dance floor.
‘Don’t look at me like that,’ he whispered in her ear, his warm breath tickling her cheek, ‘or we won’t finish this dance, let alone the rest of the evening, before I take you upstairs and rip that dress off.’
‘It cost a fortune,’ she protested laughingly. ‘You have to undo all the little buttons down the back.’
He groaned. ‘What’s wrong with a good old-fashioned zip?’
‘Morgan, this is a designer wedding dress,’ she said with mock severity.
‘Exactly.’ He grinned down at her. ‘And the designer should have known better.’
She touched his face with her fingertips. He had insisted they would wait until their wedding night—hence the swift arrangements and bribe to the vicar—because he wanted it to be special with her, different from all those other women he had bedded so casually. She respected him for that and understood his reasoning, but she had seen what his restraint had cost him over the last weeks. But now the time for restraint was over and she wanted him every little bit as much as he wanted her. Beneath the guipure lace she was wearing a low-cut sexy bra, positively indecent see-through briefs and stockings, her pièce de résistance a naughty little garter.
Beth’s eyes had nearly popped out of her head when she’d helped her dress in her wedding finery that morning. ‘Willow!’ her sister had shrieked. ‘You dark horse, you.’
Her cheeks scarlet, Willow had muttered, ‘What is it with you and horses, Beth? And I don’t usually go for this sort of underwear,’ she’d added as Beth had laboured over the host of tiny buttons at the back of the gown. ‘But I wanted to surprise him. To let him know how much I want him.’
‘You will. Oh, you will.’
The memory of that conversation brought her mouth turning upwards now, and as the dance finished and they were joined by other couples Morgan murmured, ‘What is it?’
Feeling deliciously like a wanton hussy, she murmured back, ‘I’ve got a surprise for you later.’ She might not be able to match those other women he’d known in expertise or a knowledge of all the little tricks a woman could use to please a man of the world like Morgan, but she had something none of them had had. His love.
The first guests began to leave about eleven, and by midnight they waved the last straggler off. Kitty and Jim had retired to their flat above the garages long ago and Kitty had promised she wouldn’t disturb them until she called them for Christmas Day lunch at one o’clock the next afternoon. The day after that they were flying to Hawaii for a month’s honeymoon. Morgan had booked a little villa right on the beach.
They stood wrapped in each other’s arms on the doorstep as the lights of the car faded down the drive. A million stars twinkled in a clear velvet sky and the frost glittered like diamond dust on the ground, thick and white. The dogs had gone out as they’d seen their guests off and now filed past them into the warmth of the house, sensing it was their bedtime at last. They’d accepted her presence in Morgan’s life completely.
Morgan grinned at her. ‘We’ve been keeping them up. I think they were ready for bed long before this.’
She turned in his arms, kissing him hungrily. ‘Them and me both,’ she murmured. ‘I didn’t think the last few would ever go.’
With a groan of longing he pulled her into him and then lifted her off her feet, carrying her over the threshold for the second time that day. Kicking the door shut behind him, he held her high against his chest as he kissed her, devouring her mouth as she yielded to his maleness, her body boneless and fluid against his. She was trembling but not with fright, and as his mouth crushed hers possessively she strained against him, wanting more, passionate and willing for all the love he had to give.
By the time they reached the bedroom they were both breathing raggedly, their faces flushed. From somewhere Morgan found the strength to slow down. This had to be so right for her after all she had been through and he didn’t want to rush it. They had a thousand tomorrows and he would make sure they were all filled with happiness and fulfilment but tonight—tonight was precious, a night apart. Tonight she became his wife.
An ice-bucket with a bottle of the best champagne and two flutes, along with a huge bowl of hothouse strawberries, was standing on a small table close to the bed. He made himself walk across and pour two glasses after he had set her down on her feet, returning immediately and placing one glass in her fingers before he said, ‘To us, Mrs Wright.’
She smiled up at him and touched his cheek with her palm. ‘To us, Mr Wright. And you are right for me, so right.’
They drank deeply before he set the glasses down and took her in his arms again, covering her face with kisses before he turned her round and began to undo the tiny buttons, kissing and nuzzling her shoulders and the nape of her neck as he did so. He edged the dress apart, caressing the silky skin of her back, before continuing
with the myriad buttons, swearing softly once or twice when a particular button resisted his efforts and making her giggle.
‘Of all the dresses in all the world…’
‘I wanted to look beautiful for you,’ she murmured softly.
‘Believe me, my darling, you don’t need clothes for that.’
When the final button gave up the fight he turned her round to face him and as he did so she let the dress fall to the floor. The look of wonder on his face was all she could have wished for. ‘My surprise,’ she whispered, suddenly overcome with shyness at the expression on his face. ‘Happy wedding day.’
‘You’re more beautiful than words can say,’ he breathed against her skin, his hands cupping her breasts as his mouth explored her curves. He peeled off her bra and then her stockings, taking his time, using his hands and mouth with exquisitely controlled sensuality as he knelt before her. When he removed the scrap of material that was her panties, followed lastly by the garter, she tugged at his hair.
‘My turn,’ she murmured plaintively.
He smiled, rising to his feet and standing before her as she undressed him. Now it was she who stroked and tasted the contours of his body, the hard muscles that shivered under her fingers and the roughness of his body hair exciting her as she teased him. By the time he was naked he was hugely aroused.
He lifted her up and carried her over to the bed, placing her on the black satin sheets and lying down beside her. She had half expected that their first time would be a quick and lusty coupling born of the desire he had kept a rein on for so long, but Morgan spent a long time showing her differently. He kissed and tasted and caressed every inch of her until she was mindless beneath him and begging for the release only he could give. And still he continued to please her.
She had never dreamt her body was capable of what it was feeling, that it was possible for pleasure to reach such a pitch that it was unbearable in its intensity. He introduced her to things she’d had no idea of, things that would have made her blush in the cold light of day but which were so right in the warm womb of their room. And all the time he whispered words of love and passion, taking care not to hurt her, her pleasure his only focus.