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‘Well, you can forget that idea straight away!’ she flung at him. ‘I’m not interested in a reunion or any such thing. The only thing I am to you is an ex-lover, with the emphasis very definitely on the ex, and that’s the way I intend it to stay. If I could have done, I would have sent someone else here in my place today, but just because I’m here doesn’t mean you can interpret it to your advantage!’
The look he turned on her was dark with contempt, searing over her skin like lightning.
‘Might I suggest that you wait until you’re invited, my dear Ms Thornton?’ he tossed at her in a voice so laden with acid that it seemed to strip a protective layer from her skin, leaving her even more vulnerable than before.
Her certainty that Morgan had some private, hidden agenda was growing by the second. And that being so, she knew that this could never work. She could never cope with him living in the cottage, with waking up every morning knowing that he was here, living in fear of a meeting every single day.
Studiously ignoring his interjection she snatched at a half-formed idea as it presented itself.
‘Well, I’m sorry, but I’m afraid there’s a slight problem…’
‘A problem? What sort of a problem?’
‘The—the cottage… It’s double booked. Someone else has the tenancy for the next…’
Her voice deserted her as she saw the way his beautiful mouth thinned in anger, his adamant shake of his dark head rejecting her desperate bluff even before she’d managed to express it.
‘Then “someone else” will have to find somewhere else to stay.’
‘But they can’t! They…’
‘Don’t fight me on this, Ellie,’ Morgan warned. ‘You won’t like the consequences if you do. The tenancy is mine—signed and paid for—and with a cheque that was cleared even before I set off from London. So if you have any ideas of backing out, I warn you that you will find things very uncomfortable. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Crystal.’
What else could she say? He didn’t have to put his threat into words. She could read it in the cold brilliance of his eyes, the ruthless determination that set his strong jaw hard against any hope of appeal.
And she couldn’t risk that threat being made real. Money was desperately tight on the farm, and the idea of setting up the holiday cottages to bring in some much-needed income was a new one. It had taken a huge investment to bring the old buildings up to scratch. That was why Henry had been so delighted when he’d taken Morgan’s near end of season booking.
‘No—I’m sure it can be sorted out. We’ll find a way round…’
‘We?’ Morgan demanded sharply. ‘I spoke to a Mr Knightley on the phone.’
‘Henry.’ Ellie nodded, her expression warming slightly. ‘He owns the farm.’
And Henry knew nothing about her own former relationship with Morgan. So of course he had seen no reason at all to hesitate when Morgan had rung up asking about the tenancy of Meadow Cottage.
‘He’s married to Nan—to my grandmother.’
Just for a moment the stiff mask slipped from his face, revealing a look of genuine astonishment.
‘Marion?’
It would be a shock, Ellie reflected, a touch of amusement breaking through the tension that held her slim body taut and stiff. The last time he had seen her grandmother had been almost two years ago when she had been the widowed Mrs Thornton. Even her own family had been stunned by the whirlwind romance that had ensued from Marion’s meeting with Henry Knightley.
‘She married again in November last year. Just after…’
Frantically she caught the words up, terrified at what she had been about to reveal.
‘Just two months after she met Henry,’ she amended awkwardly, painfully conscious of everything she was holding back.
By mentioning Henry Knightley, she had moved the conversation onto very dangerous ground. Morgan might know nothing about Henry, other than the phone conversation he’d had with the older man, but Henry’s grandson was a totally different matter. Pete Bedford was the man Morgan believed that she had left him for. The man she had allowed Morgan to think was her new lover in order to cover up the truth.
‘So is that how you came to be here? You came with Marion?’
‘No, I was here first. I was helping Henry out and Nan came to visit. She met Henry and the rest is history.’
The same could have been said about herself and Morgan, she reflected miserably. Their relationship had followed much of the same heady pattern.
They had met, fallen head over heels for each other, become lovers, and moved in together in exactly the same time span as her grandmother and Henry. But the major difference was that at no point at all had Morgan shown any inclination to want to make any other commitment to her. Marriage, and all that went along with it, had very definitely not been in his plans for the future.
She had been prepared to put up with that. Loving him so desperately, she hadn’t asked for more than he’d been willing to give. She had lived with him, shared his life, his bed, and at first that had been enough.
But then things had changed, forcing her into a decision that had torn her heart in two.
‘Well, if you’re stopping, you’ll need these…’
Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a bunch of keys and waved them, letting the ring that held them dangle from one finger. The faint jingling noise they made added a welcome note of carelessness, one she tried to match as she went on, ‘I think you’ll find Meadow Cottage very comfortable. I hope you enjoy your stay.’
There, now she’d done her duty—more than her duty! She’d met Morgan as arranged, faced him, spoken to him, and by doing so she’d also confronted her own private demons.
And she’d survived.
If she could just get out now, then she might be able to hold herself together. If she went home…
Home…
A sudden wave of devastating longing swept over her. The need to see Rosie, to hold her daughter’s small, warm body close, to inhale the sweet baby scent of her, to hear her soft breathing, was so powerful that it almost overwhelmed her.
It was because of Rosie that she had had to leave Morgan in the first place, something that had come close to destroying her but which had seemed the only way out. Faced with a choice that had been no choice at all, she had been torn between the two people that she loved most in all the world. And she had had to choose Rosie.
Rosie was her world now, all that she had left after losing her relationship with Morgan and the future she had dreamed of. But if Morgan ever found out the truth, then that world was likely to come crashing down round her ears, and she couldn’t even begin to imagine what her future would be after that.
CHAPTER TWO
‘MR STAFFORD will you please take the keys?’
He’d waited just too long for Ellie’s peace of mind. His silence and the way he was watching her, blue eyes slightly narrowed against the sun, made her feel desperately uneasy, the tangled mass of knots in her stomach tightening with every uneven heartbeat.
‘The keys…’ she repeated with as much emphasis as she dared. ‘I have to be going.’
‘No.’
It came so softly, almost thrown away, that for a moment or two she wasn’t at all sure she had heard him right and frowned her confusion.
‘What…?’ Bewildered she looked up at him, golden eyes wide in shock and confusion. ‘Mr Stafford—I…’
Did she know what it did to him when she looked at him like that? Morgan wondered. Did she know how it twisted deep inside him to see those amazing eyes burn with rejection where once he had seen them burn with love for him—or with what he had believed was love? Did she know how it felt to see her so anxious to leave when in the past it had seemed that she couldn’t have enough of him? Couldn’t protest her love for him often enough.
Or had all that been a pretence too?
‘The name is Morgan,’ he declared with cold precision. ‘And you go when I say you can—not before.’
That brought a flare of defiance into her flashing gaze.
‘But I have to go!’
‘No.’
Dammit, it had taken months to get to his moment. Had he spent so long looking for her only to have her turn and run at the very first meeting? She was as edgy as a cat on hot bricks, and it wasn’t just as a result of seeing him again. She was hiding something and he was determined to find out what.
‘I only want what I’m entitled to.’
‘Entitled?’
The need to see Rosie was uppermost in her mind, making it impossible to think straight. She knew that her daughter was safe and well cared for with Marion who doted on her first great-grandchild, but it wasn’t for Rosie’s sake that she wanted to be with her. It was for her own.
One look at her baby daughter would remind her why she was in the hateful position of lying to the man she had loved.
Morgan’s slow smile mocked her tense question, the spark of uncertainty in her eyes.
‘The contract said that I would be met, given the keys—and shown round the property.’
‘Shown round! Oh, come on! I mean, look at it…’
The gesture of her hand to indicate the cottage beside them was wilder than she would have liked, betraying too much of how easily he had rattled her. Get a grip! she warned herself inwardly. Morgan in this mood was like some watchful predator. Show a moment of weakness and he would pounce.
‘You don’t need to be shown anything—you could walk round the entire place in two minutes flat.’
‘Nevertheless I expect you to fulfil the agreement. Come on, Ellie,’ he cajoled, his voice deepening, softening, his smile an enticement in itself. ‘Indulge me in this.’
For a brief second Ellie actually had to close her eyes against the appeal of his voice that curled around her senses like a plume of warm smoke, soft as a caress. She had never been able to resist him when he’d switched on the charm like this, and to her horror she found that she still couldn’t.
‘Very well, then…’
Reaching back into her past, she dragged out from some hidden corner the image of the woman she had once been. The Eleanor Thornton who had been second in command of a large, profitable secretarial agency. The Eleanor Thornton that Morgan had first met.
Adopting a tone of voice that was all control, all businesslike and nothing more, she even managed to flash a swift and obviously insincere smile into his watchful face.
‘If you’ll just come this way, I’ll show you where everything is. And perhaps you’d like to know a little bit about the area too.’
This was better; she was in the swing of things now. After all, she had done this many times before. Meadow Cottage had been occupied almost every week since Easter, and Ellie had usually been the one to greet the new tenants.
‘Watch the floor here,’ she said when, after unlocking the door, she made her way into the narrow hall. ‘It’s a little uneven. As you will have seen in the brochure, Meadow Cottage was formerly one of the farm’s cowsheds, and these stone flags formed part of the original flooring.’
Her voice was perfectly steady as she went into the well-worn patter she had used so often before, but her control over the rest of her body wasn’t quite so complete. When a struggle with the slightly stiff door brought him to her side to help her, the brush of his tall, strong body against her own in the constricted, confined space sent her senses into overdrive.
He still wore the same aftershave that had been a favourite when they had been together; one that she had bought for him for the only Christmas and birthday they had shared. Just the scent of it was like an instant shot of memory, jolting her back in time to those gentler, happier days.
But underneath the evocative cologne was the subtler, more intensely personal scent of his body that stabbed straight to her heart as it stirred up the waters of the past, bringing to the surface the bitter-sweet recollection of how it had felt to lie in bed with him, her head pillowed on the strength of his shoulder, breathing in the clean, musky scent of his skin.
At once all her familiar spiel deserted her. Her head was buzzing, her senses stirring in a disturbingly primitive way. For a moment the memories that gripped her were so powerful, so real that her eyes burned with bitter tears and she had to blink furiously to drive them back.
‘The kitchen…’ was all she could manage, gritting her teeth against the sting of irony in his murmured, ‘Obviously.’
From then onwards all she wanted to do was to get the job done as quickly as possible. Not giving him time to look around, she marched him to the next door, opening it briefly.
‘The sitting room… The second bedroom is up there…’
A wave of her hand indicated the small gallery above the sitting room where a neat bedroom nestled under the eaves.
‘The bathroom is down here… And the main bedroom directly opposite. You can get milk and eggs from the farm—everything else from the store in the village, and they’ll cash a cheque for you in an emergency. I’m afraid there isn’t a bank anywhere nearer than St Austell. We provide fresh linen and towels on Mondays.’
There, she was done! Surely now he had to let her go.
‘Is there anything else?’
‘Just a couple of things. But why don’t we discuss them over coffee?’
‘No, thanks,’ Ellie managed through teeth gritted against the urge to scream in frustration. ‘I have other things to do.’
‘And I have things I want to discuss.’
Blatantly ignoring her protest, he turned and headed back down the white-walled corridor to the kitchen, leaving her with no option but to follow him.
‘Morgan, I don’t have time for coffee. I have to work…’
The need for her daughter was like an ache in her heart, a hunger that no food could possibly assuage.
‘Work?’
The look he directed at her burned with frank scepticism.
‘You working on a farm—that’s not at all what I’d have expected from the elegant Ms Thornton.’
‘I told you, I’m not the same person any more. I’ve changed a lot in the past eighteen months.’
‘So I see.’
His tone was a slow drawl and those brilliant eyes swept over her in a deliberately insolent assessment. She couldn’t miss the way that sapphire gaze lingered around the fullness of her breasts, the curves of her hips in the close-fitting skirt.
As a result of her pregnancy she had filled out noticeably, so that her shape was definitely more womanly when contrasted with her slenderness when they had been together. And Morgan, who had known her body with the intimacy of a lover, couldn’t be unaware of those changes either.
‘So I see,’ he repeated, and there was no mistaking the disturbingly sensual note on the words.
She knew that purring tone of voice. Knew only too well what it implied. She had heard it often enough when they had lived together. Then it had made her heart leap in anticipation, had set her body tingling in uncontrolled response. Just to hear her name spoken in that huskily appreciative way had been like a subtle form of foreplay, telling her instantly what was in his mind, and triggering off the same heated longings in her own.
But hearing it now shocked her rigid. Foolishly, naively perhaps, she had expected that the feelings Morgan had once had for her, every type of feeling, would have died, starved into non-existence by eighteen months of lack of nourishment. But there was no mistaking the heated desire that now flared in the brilliance of his eyes, the instant response that made his pupils so huge and dark.
