‘I’m late? I think not! If anything, you are early. We said three o’clock and it’s…it’s…’
Words failed Ellie as she stared at her watch in stunned confusion. Of all the times for the battery to die, it had to go and do it now!
‘It’s very nearly half past,’ Morgan supplied for her as she glared at the offending watch, shaking her wrist roughly in a vain attempt to get it started again. ‘I see your time-keeping hasn’t got any better over the past eighteen months.’
He had come closer as he’d spoken, moving between her and the sun so that his long body cast a shadow over her as she concentrated fiercely on the unmoving second hand on her watch.
Don’t look at him! Don’t look! she told herself fiercely. Don’t even risk it until you’re more under control!
Every inch of skin on her body felt as if it were afflicted by prickling pins and needles, and with the once dearly familiar scent of his body tantalising her nostrils she had to struggle to hide her instinctive response. Electricity sizzled along her nerves, making her heart beat a crazy, uneven tattoo. If she looked into his face she would be lost for ever.
And so in spite of her hunger, the aching need to see just once more the features of the man who had taken total possession of her heart and never let it go, she kept her gaze stubbornly averted, watching him only out of the corners of her eyes.
‘But if you will insist on wearing that decrepit old thing, then I suppose you can’t expect it to be accurate.’
‘I happen to like this watch!’ Ellie retorted defensively. It was also the only one she could afford, but she wasn’t going to admit that to him. ‘And living and working on a farm, I wouldn’t have much use for anything more expensive.’
‘True,’ Morgan conceded. ‘Though I have to admit that a farm in rural Cornwall was really the last place I ever expected to find you.’
‘I…’
Her resolution failed her as surprise forced her gaze upwards, to focus on the hard-boned face, all her fears realised as she felt the thudding shock to her system.
Dear heaven, but he looked good! So stunningly, devastatingly good.
After all those months of abstinence, the hunger that swamped her was like a raging tide, sweeping everything before it and threatening to throw her thought processes into total chaos.
‘Expected to find…? Y-you knew!’ she forced herself to stammer. ‘You were expecting me all the time. So the story that you were here to do research was pure make-believe.’
It made her blood run cold in horror at the idea.
‘Not completely,’ Morgan returned imperturbably. ‘I do have research to do for my next book. And I’ve tried hotels but I just can’t work in them. So renting a place to live in seemed the next best idea.’
‘But you could rent anywhere you like—there are many more houses, all much bigger and better than this cottage! You could easily afford any one of them—you could even buy one of them if you wanted to! Why did you have to come here?’
‘This place suits me. I don’t need space—somewhere to eat, sleep and work is all I want. But to work I need quiet and…’
His narrow-eyed glance took in the wooded surroundings, the rutted path that led to the cottage, the distant view of the sea.
‘They really don’t come much quieter than this.’
His half smile challenged her to make more of it than that. But there was more to make of it, Ellie could have no doubt. Too late, she recognised the clues that her tension had made her miss the first time.
There had been his total lack of surprise at her appearance. His total lack of anything, just that cold, hard, assessing stare that had been fixed on her as she’d walked the last few yards. He had not been expecting just anyone. He had known very well who would come to hand over the key, show him round the cottage. He had been expecting her, and her alone.
And that begged the question—why?
‘Just what are you doing here, Morgan?’
She had forgotten just how blue his eyes were until now when, up close, she found herself seared by their sapphire blaze, her own angry glare caught and held transfixed, unable to look away.
‘Perhaps I came to look up an old friend.’
‘Friend!’ she scorned the word cynically. ‘We were never friends. Things moved so fast at the start that we never had time for friendship. And you were certainly not in the least bit friendly when you told me to go—to get out of your life and stay out of it for good.’
‘I didn’t feel friendly,’ Morgan growled savagely, a black scowl darkening his face. ‘I couldn’t wait to see the back of you.’
‘A fact which you made perfectly plain.’ Remembered pain roughened the edge of her voice.
‘Well, what did you expect? After all, you’d just told me that you’d been seeing someone else.’
She hadn’t actually told him that. It had been a conclusion he had jumped to, and in order to protect herself she had let him think it. By that point she had been too worn down, too miserable to fight him any more.
‘Which brings us back to my question. Precisely why are you here?’
This time his smile was icy, fiendish, tinged with a danger that set her teeth on edge.
‘Perhaps I’m planning an old lovers’ reunion.’
That smile did terrible things to what little was left of Ellie’s composure.
‘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.’