Sweet Surrender with the Millionaire (3 page)

‘How
embarrassing.
Poor you.’ In spite of her words Beth’s tone was more eager than sympathetic and her face was alight with interest. ‘And this guy who owns the place, he must be worth a bit if the manor house is just his weekend home?’

‘I’ve got no idea how wealthy he is or isn’t.’

‘Is he young or old? I mean, grey-haired or what?’

‘What’s his age got to do with anything?’ Willow found she was regretting mentioning the episode at the weekend to her sister now. She had called in for a coffee and quick chat after work mainly, she had to admit, because she was still smarting from Morgan Wright’s condemnation and wanted someone to commiserate with her. She might have known Beth wouldn’t play ball.

Beth shrugged. ‘I just wondered if he was tasty, that’s all.’

Willow had to smile. ‘He’s a man, Beth. Not a toasted sandwich.’

‘Is he, though?’ Beth had got the bit between her teeth.

‘Is he what?’ said Willow, deliberately prevaricating.

‘Fanciable.’ Beth grinned at her. ‘Hunky, you know.’

She was
so
not going to do this. ‘I didn’t notice, added to
which he’s more likely than not married. Attractive, wealthy men of a certain age tend to be snapped up pretty fast.’

‘So he
is
tasty?’ Beth sat forward interestedly.

Willow changed the subject in the one way that couldn’t fail. ‘So you’ve finished the nursery now, then? Can I take a look?’

She oohed and ahhed at the pretty lemon and white room, which already had more fluffy toys than any one child could ever want, along with a wardrobe full of tiny little vests and socks and Babygros, and then made her escape before Beth returned to their previous conversation. Her sister rarely let anything drop before she was completely satisfied.

The weather had broken at the beginning of the week and it had got progressively colder day by day. Today, Friday, was the first of October and the month had announced its intentions with a biting wind and rain showers. It started to rain again when she was halfway home, but this was no shower, just a steady downpour that had her scurrying out of the car and into the house in record speed once she was home.

After several days of battling with the Aga cooker she’d finally got the knack of persuading it into action just before she’d resumed work, but she hadn’t lit it all week, making do with microwave meals. She could imagine the kitchen was a warm, cosy place with the range in action, but each evening she’d lit a fire in the sitting-room grate and sat hunched over it for the first hour until the chill had been taken off the room.

Putting a match to the fire she had laid that morning before she’d left for work, she walked through into the
kitchen to switch the electric kettle on, shivering as she went. The last few days had pointed out her main priority was to get oil-fired central heating installed in the cottage as quickly as she could; the sitting-room fire would be a nice feature to keep but was woefully inadequate as the sole means of warmth.

Once she was nursing a hot mug of coffee she returned to the sitting room and threw a couple more logs and a few extra pieces of coal on the fledgling flames, fixing the guard round the fire before she went upstairs to change into jeans and a warm jumper. That done, and in spite of the fact the room was freezing, she sat for some time on the bed sipping the coffee as she stared at her reflection in the long thin mirror on the opposite wall, her mind a million miles away.

It had been a tiring week at work with several minor panics and she was still getting used to the long drive home, but it wasn’t that that occupied her thoughts, but how her life had changed in the last twelve months and especially in the two weeks since she had moved into the cottage. OK, it might be pretty basic right now but it was
hers.
She had done this on her own. Why hadn’t she had the courage to leave Piers long before she had done and make a new life without him? Why had she tried and tried and tried to make the marriage work long after she had known she’d married a monster? A handsome, charming, honey-tongued monster who had fooled her as completely as he did everyone else. At first. Until she’d tied the knot.

Why? a separate part of her mind answered. You know why.

Yes, she did. She nodded her acquiescence. Piers had been the master of mind games and he had moulded and
manipulated her to his will so subtly she hadn’t been aware of his power over her until it was too late. He had convinced her she was worthless, useless, that she couldn’t manage without him, and she had believed him utterly. Because she’d trusted him, fool that she was.

Rising abruptly, she walked closer to the mirror and stared into the slanted green eyes looking back at her. What had attracted Piers to her that night nearly six years ago? There’d been other, prettier girls in the nightclub. But he’d chosen her and she’d been thrilled, falling head over heels in love with him from the first date. Seven months later her parents had been killed and when he’d asked her to marry him just after the funeral she’d accepted at once, needing his love and comfort to combat the pain and grief. A month later they were Mr and Mrs Piers Gregory. And she had been caught in a trap.

Marry in haste, repent at leisure.
An older, wiser friend had murmured that to her when she had announced her wedding date but at the time she’d been too much in love and too heartbroken about her parents to take heed to the warning.

Shaking her head at the naive girl she had been then, Willow made her way downstairs. On entering the sitting room she was slightly alarmed by the roaring fire, although it had warmed the room up nicely. Hastily banking down the flames with some damp slack, she walked through to the kitchen and made herself another coffee. Give it a few minutes and she’d toast the crumpets she’d bought for her tea in front of the fire once it was glowing red; there was nothing nicer than toasted crumpets with lashings of butter. And this was definitely a comfort night.

She had just picked up the mug of coffee when a sharp pounding on her front door almost made her drop it. Her
nerves jangling, she hurried into the tiny hall and opened the door, her eyes widening as she took in the tall dark man in front of her. And he looked just as angry as when she’d first seen him.

‘Are you aware your chimney’s on fire?’ Morgan said grimly.

‘What?’ She stared at him. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Look.’ To her amazement she found herself hauled forward by a hard hand on her arm as he pointed to the roof of the cottage. Massive flames were lighting the night sky.

Wrenching herself free, Willow stared aghast at the chimney. Never having lived in a house that accommodated coal fires, she’d had no idea a chimney could catch fire.

‘I’ve called the fire brigade and they should be here shortly.’ Even as he spoke the sound of a siren in the distance could be heard coming rapidly nearer.

‘You called the fire brigade?’ Willow echoed in horror. ‘Can’t it just go out? I won’t put any more coal on.’

‘Are you serious?’ Morgan stared at her through the rain, which had settled down to a fine drizzle. ‘You could lose the whole cottage. The chimney is on
fire,
for pity’s sake.’

‘But a chimney is supposed to have smoke and flames go up it,’ she answered sharply. ‘That’s what they do.’

‘Up it, yes. If it catches fire that’s a whole different ball game. Did you have it swept before you lit the first fire?’

‘Swept?’ He could have been talking double Dutch.

‘Give me strength.’

He shut his eyes for a moment in a manner that made Willow want to kick him, but then the fire engine had screeched to a halt and in the ensuing pandemonium she forgot about Morgan.

Half an hour later the fire engine and the very nice firemen left and Willow stood staring at the devastation in her sitting room. She was barely aware of Morgan at the side of her until he murmured, ‘What is it with you and fire anyway?’

She wanted to come back at him with a cutting retort, but she knew if she tried to speak she would cry. Swallowing hard, she picked her way across the wet, sooty floor and reached for the photograph of her parents on the mantelpiece. Wiping the black spots off the glass, she held the photograph to her when she turned to face him. ‘Thank—thank you for calling the fire brigade.’ The fireman had said she’d been minutes away from having a major catastrophe on her hands. ‘I want to start cleaning up now, so if you don’t mind…’

He didn’t take the hint. ‘I’ll help you mop up the worst and then I suggest you leave the main clearing up till tomorrow. Nothing will seem so bad after a good night’s sleep and a hearty breakfast.’

Willow stared round the room and her expression must have spoken volumes because Morgan smiled the lopsided grin that she’d registered the first time she had met him before saying wryly, ‘OK, it might, but this’ll take hours and it’ll be better in daylight.’ He shivered, adding, ‘Haven’t you any heating in this place? It’s as cold in here as it is outside.’

Willow’s eyes went involuntarily to the blackened fireplace.

‘No central heating? No storage heaters or fan heaters?’

She shook her head. ‘Not yet, but I will do something soon.’

‘OK, this is what we do,’ he said after a moment’s
silence. ‘We mop up like I said and then you’re coming home with me for a hot meal and a bath before you spend the night at my place. I’ll bring you back in the morning and we’ll tackle the cleaning then. At least you’ll be in a better frame of mind to cope.’

Was he mad?
Adrenalin surged in a welcome flood, enabling her to straighten and say steadily, ‘Thank you, Mr Wright, but that’s really not necessary. I can manage perfectly well.’

‘I’ve seen the results of you managing…twice.’

Willow’s chin raised a notch. ‘Thank you,’ she said for the third time, her voice thin, ‘but I’d like to be on my own now. I’m not a child so please don’t treat me like one.’

She saw the amazingly blue eyes narrow in irritation. ‘Are you always this stubborn?’

The smell of soot was thick in her nostrils and she was so cold her fingers were numb. All she wanted was for him to leave so she could sit down and howl. ‘Please go,’ she said weakly.

It was like talking to a brick wall. Somehow in the next few minutes she found herself covering the floorboards with a thick layer of newspapers—Morgan had fetched these from the potting shed and to his credit he didn’t make any comment whatsoever—before fetching her handbag and coat and locking the front door of the cottage. She felt shivery and shaky and it was just easier to comply rather than argue, besides which she was cold and hungry and the thought of tackling the cleaning-up process tonight was unbearable.

It wasn’t until Willow reached the rickety garden gate that she noticed the Harley-Davidson parked down the
lane on the grass verge. As Morgan walked over to the powerful machine she stopped dead. ‘That’s yours? You came on that?’

‘Yep.’ She could see his blue eyes glittering in the deep shadows as he turned and smiled. ‘When I saw the flames I figured I’d better get round here as fast as I could.’

She waved her hand helplessly. ‘But you live next door.’

‘A minute or two can make all the difference with fire. I didn’t know whether I was going to have to pull you out of a burning house at that stage.’ He shrugged. ‘It can happen.’

He started the engine and the quiet of the night was rudely shattered as he drove to her gate. ‘Get on.’

She had already noticed that he was even taller than she had thought him to be when he was perched on the wall. Morgan Wright was big, very big, and it was muscled strength that padded his shoulders and chest. In fact he gave off an aura of strength from his face—which was rugged with sharply defined planes and angles and no softness—to his feet, which were encased in black leather boots. The thought of clambering up on the bike and holding onto the hard male body was blushingly intimate, but she could hardly walk beside him. She had no choice but to agree.

Blessing the fact she had changed from her pencil-thin office skirt to jeans, Willow slid onto the bike, her handbag over one shoulder. Morgan wasn’t wearing a coat, just jeans and a shirt, and as she put her arms round his waist the warmth of his body flowed through her fingers. She felt him jerk.

‘Hell, you’re like a block of ice,’ he muttered.

Funnily enough, she was aware of that herself. ‘Sorry.’

There was no chance to say anything more before they roared off. After some two hundred yards Morgan turned
into his own grounds through open six-foot wrought-iron gates. The drive wound through mature trees and bushes, which hid the house from the road, but then a bowling-green-smooth lawn came into view and the manor house was in front of them. It was quite stunning.

The motorbike drew to a halt at the bottom of wide semicircular stone steps, which led to a massive studded front door that could have graced a castle. Willow could hear dogs barking from within the house and they sounded ferocious.

‘Are you OK with dogs?’ Morgan asked as he helped her off the Harley. ‘There’s a few of them so be prepared.’

‘If they’re OK with me,’ she said more weakly than she would have liked. ‘And I prefer they don’t look on me as food.’

He grinned. ‘They’ve already been fed for the night.’

‘That’s comforting.’

He took her arm, leading her up the steps. ‘My housekeeper and her husband will be back shortly—they’re visiting a friend in hospital—and dinner’ll be about eight, but that’ll give you time for a long hot soak. You’re shaking with cold.’

Willow was glad he was already opening the door and she didn’t have to reply. For the life of her she couldn’t have said if it was the icy night air making her tremble or the enforced intimacy with the very male man at her side. And he smelt delicious, the sort of delicious that would cost a small fortune for a few mls and definitely came courtesy of a designer label.

Contrary to what she had expected the dogs didn’t come at them pell-mell but in an orderly group that sat at their feet without any jostling. ‘I’ll introduce you and you can
give the obligatory pat—that way they’ll know you’re a friend and off the menu. They never eat my friends.’