An Affair to Forget (17 page)

Seventeen

Ignoring Morrin’s protests, Gareth carried her through the house, past her own bedroom door and out on to the patio. In the guest house he dropped her on to the bed, shut the door, and switched on a bedside lamp, then went into the bathroom to reappear almost immediately with his red bathrobe and a large towel. Before she realised what was happening Morrin had been whisked to her feet and Gareth was unfastening her dress with practised dexterity.

“
What are you doing?” she squeaked as the dress was peeled off and tossed into a corner of the room.

“
Saving you from pneumonia.” He unfastened her bra and began to towel her back. “Then we have some talking to do.”

“
What about?” His touch, his closeness, was setting her skin on fire.

“
About us, of cour– ” He suppressed a sneeze, then stood up and draped the towel about her shoulders. “But first I’d better get dried myself. Back in a minute.”

Once
he was in the bathroom she dried herself swiftly and pulled the dressing-gown on then tiptoed across to the door. She had just put the tips of her fingers on the door knob when he said from just behind her, “I must say that that robe has never looked as good on me as it does on you.”

She
whirled round, startled, to see him eyeing her admiringly from head to toe. He himself was wearing a blue and white striped towelling robe that reached halfway down his muscular brown thighs. “Going out?”

“
I’m going to my room.”

“
You really should have a hot drink right now. Why don’t you just sit down and let me make you one?”

“
I can do that in the house.”

He
shrugged. “OK, if you must rush back to your own bedroom go ahead. I’ll bring the drinks along in a minute.”

“
Don’t bother, I’ll stay for a little while.” Realising that she was not going to get away from him that easily, Morrin sat in the chair by the table she had used as a desk and watched as he switched on the electric kettle, then spooned cocoa powder into two cups and added sugar.

“
I don’t take sugar.”

“
You do tonight. It’s for the shock.” He put two large spoonfuls into each cup.

“
I’m not suffering from shock.”

“
You probably will be, later on,” he said blandly. “Now then, what are we going to do about you now that you’re out of a job?” Then, as she raised her eyebrows, “You don’t think that Vicki will let Sam keep you on, do you?”

“
Did you mean what you said about them, Gareth? Are they really in love?”

“
Believe me, they are. They always were. I tried to warn you, but you’re not very good at picking up clues, are you?”

“
I’m not as experienced in these things as you are.”

“
No, thank goodness,” he agreed. “That’s why I had to keep hanging around here, to pick up the pieces when it all went wrong for you.”

“
I’m quite capable of picking myself up, thank you.”

“
You weren’t capable of it tonight when the Atlantic tried to claim you as its own,” he pointed out, then as the kettle boiled he turned his attention to making the drinks with practised ease. The way he did everything, she thought, watching his deft hands.

“
Here.” He brought a cup over to her, putting it into her hands and wrapping her fingers about it as though she was a child. The small, unexpected act of kindness brought a sudden surge of weak tears to her eyes, and as she bent over the cup to hide them the steam warmed her face.

A
clean handkerchief swam into view through the blur of steam and tears. “Here,” Gareth said from above her bent head. “If you’re going to cry over Kennedy best to get it done with here and now.”

“
I’m not crying over him!” She swatted the handkerchief aside and scrubbed at her eyes with the knuckles of one hand. “I’m not crying at all!”

“
Not even over your own future? You do realise that you’re probably out of a job… again.”

“
I can find another.”

“
You could come back to work for me.”

“
No I couldn’t, you’ve already got a secretary.”

“
I could probably fit you in somewhere. A personal assistant, perhaps?”

Anger
drove the tears away. She glared up at him. “Keeping your diary, dealing with phone calls from your lady friends? I don’t think so.”

He
was leaning back against the small table, sipping at his drink. “There aren’t any lady friends now,” he said.

“
There’s Cass.” Morrin recalled the girl’s unexpected venom when they met briefly in the hall. “I don’t think she would want you to employ me again.”

“
Cass has nothing to do with my work.”

“
She will have when you marry her.”

His
eyebrows shot up. “Marry her? Is this another bee you’ve found in your bonnet?”

“
Your sister told me, just before I left Yorkshire.”

“
Kate said… ?” Gareth slammed his half-empty mug down on the table. “Why,” he asked, exasperation in his voice, “can’t women stop matchmaking? Of course I’m not going to marry Cass, that’s just some romantic nonsense that the silly girl dreamed up… with, I might add, my grandmother’s connivance. You know the sort of silly stuff some women come away with.”

“
But you must have known that Cass was coming to Tenerife.”

“
Why should I? I only see her when I visit the family in Wales. Cass is like a sister to me; I’ve never considered her as anything else. Drink your cocoa.”

Morrin
took a sip from the cup; the cocoa was comfortingly hot, but far too sweet. “I thought that that was why you decided to come to the island, because you knew that Cass was going to arrive.”

“
If I had known, I would never have come. Oh Morrin, sometimes I despair of you! I came here because of you… because for one thing I wanted to know why you had kept me a secret, like something nasty you had found in your attic or in the shed at the bottom of your garden, and for another I knew as soon as I saw you and Kennedy together that he was too streetwise for the likes of you. I came to Tenerife because I could see that you needed someone to look out for you. And I stayed because as soon as I saw Sam and Vicki together I realised what was going on between them and I didn’t want you to get hurt. I really did think then,” he said quietly, “that you were lovers. And I knew that if Vicki had her way it wouldn’t last.”

“
We were never…” she began, suddenly so tired that she could scarcely bear it.

“
I know, I know. But I didn’t know then.”

“
And now you’re leaving, going back to England.” In a few short hours, she thought. Leaving her to face Sam and Vicki alone when they came back. If they came back.

Gareth
set down his cup and went to the window, staring out into the dark night for a few minutes before closing the curtains. “I decided to leave because I wasn’t getting anywhere with you. You wouldn’t listen to me.” He swung round, hands tucked into the belt of his robe. “But now you know everything.”

“
Not quite. Gareth, is Charlotte based on Cass?”

He
gave her one of his exasperated looks. “Of course not! Charlotte’s a mature woman, Cass is still a bit of a child, like you.”

“
But Charlotte’s real.”

“
Yes.”

“
And you care about her.”

“
Oh yes, I care. More than she deserves at times,” Gareth said, then, “So what’s the next move?”

“
I suppose I’d better go home as soon as I can get a flight back.”

“
That’s tomorrow morning, then. I booked two seats, just in case,” he went on as she stared up at him.

She
stood up and put her cup on the table, glaring at him. “You’re always one step ahead, aren’t you?” She pushed her damp hair back from her forehead. “What is it like, Gareth, being such a perfect human being?”

“
It’s lonely. Don’t go,” he said as she moved towards the door.

“
I’m very tired.”

He
shrugged and went ahead of her to open the door. Then he paused, his hand on the handle.

“
We never did spend that night together, although we got close to it in Yorkshire.”

“
As close as we ever will.”

“
Oh, I intend to get much closer than that,” said Gareth softly. He turned to face her, leaning back against the panels with arms folded, smiling down at her with a wicked emerald light in his eyes.

“
Gareth, I’m going to my – ”

He
laughed aloud. “It’s no use, Morrin, even you can’t be taken seriously when you haven’t got any proper clothes on,” he said, and gathered her into his arms.

“
Gareth,” she said weakly. “Let me go.”

“
Typical,” he said into her ear, his lips tickling the lobe. “You let me risk my life to save you, then you walk out on me. Will this change your mind?”

He
tipped her face up to his and brushed her lips gently with his own. A tremor ran through her body at the contact.

“
I have to go back to my room!”

He
took a tendril of her damp hair and twisted it round one finger. “All right then, would you change your mind about leaving if I said please, Morrin, please marry me?”

“
Gareth,” she began, then, in hushed tones, “Did you just say…?”

“
I think I just did. You see what you’ve done? I came to this island a carefree bachelor, and now I’m throwing it all away on a hothead who disagrees with every word I utter. I must be mad.”

“
You are mad. You can’t possibly mean…!”

“
Oh, shut up,” Gareth said, and stopped her mouth with a kiss so long and so passionate that when it finally ended they were both breathless.

“
You haven’t given me your answer yet,” he said huskily.

“
But – what about Charlotte?”

“
She’ll be thrilled once she meets you,” he said soothingly, easing her away from the door. “She’s been on at me since I was a callow youth to marry someone with brains, someone who could work for a living instead of just using her looks to earn a fortune. Someone like Cass, you see.” Then he began to laugh. “My poor darling, you don’t understand a word I’m saying, do you?”

“
I do. It’s all beginning to fall into place. Charlotte’s your grandmother, isn’t she?”

“
At last!” Gareth kissed the end of her nose. “Remember the night of the storm?”

“
How could I ever forget it?”

“
That makes two of us. When I got to Wales the next day Grandmother started on at me again about marrying Cass so that we could provide her with great-grandchildren while she was still alive to enjoy them, and I suddenly found myself telling her that I’d found my own woman, someone every bit as capable as Cass… and every bit as determined as Charlotte, too.” He laughed against Morrin’s neck. “It gave her a shock, I can tell you. It gave me quite a turn too, because it was the first I’d known of it myself. That’s when I realised why I hadn’t been able to get you out of my mind the whole damned day.”

They
sank down on to the bed together, his arm about her, her head on his shoulder. “‘Bring her here,’ said the bossy old bat. ‘Let me see this paragon for myself.’ So I hurried home… and you’d gone.”

When
she looked up at him his face was still, his eyes dark green as he remembered. “I missed you, Morrin… you’ll never know how much. You were never out of my mind.”

“
You didn’t come looking for me.”

“
Did you want me to?”

“
No,” she admitted.

“
That’s what I figured. I had found you, and frightened you away, all in one stormy night. I thought I had lost my chance, but I never stopped thinking about you, and about Grandmother Charlotte and how incredibly alike the two of you are. And that’s when I began to plan
Charlotte
Dreaming
. Her book… and yours too, in a way. Then…”

He
kissed her again, then continued, “Then one day there you were in London, all sophisticated and grown up and pretending for some reason that you’d never set eyes on me in your life. And you were Sam’s, or so I thought. Lost to me for ever. So… I decided to go to Tenerife to teach you a lesson and make your life uncomfortable for a few days and get you out of my system all at the same time. Then when we met up with Vicki I decided that I should stay, just to look out for you.”