Merlyn felt as if the breath had been knocked from her body as she stared at the photograph on the table beside the bed. It was of a beautiful, dark-haired woman with laughing blue eyes, love glowing in those eyes for the person on the other side of the camera.
Merlyn was drawn like a magnet to the inscription in the bottom right-hand corner of the photograph. ‘Darling, I love you'. It didn't say who darling was, but because it was Rand's bedroom it had to be him, there was no signature to the declaration, but there didn't need to be one; no one who had lived in England the last ten years could help but know the woman who had dominated both British screen and theatre for that time. Suzie Forrester …
He had said his name was Rand, but—Brandon? Was that man downstairs Brandon Carmichael, Suzie's husband?
It wasn't surprising Merlyn hadn't recognised him, the only photographs she had seen of him had him dressed like the millionaire businessman that he was; the man downstairs wore faded and old clothes, and he didn't look as if he had shaved or had his hair cut for years. Years? Two years? Since the death of his wife …
Suzie Forrester's illness and then tragic death had been a blow to everyone who had ever seen her act, but to her husband of eight years it had been a loss from which he was reported never to have recovered.
He was never going to believe that Merlyn's arrival here had been accidental. He was going to think the whole thing had been staged so that she could meet him!
SHE looked at her host with new eyes when she joined him in the lounge, able to see some remnants of styling left in the overlong dark hair, also able to see the grey among the black on closer inspection. She knew Brandon Carmichael, or Rand Carmichael as he seemed to prefer to be known by those he chose to admit into the intimacy of his friendship—and after the way she had blundered in here she doubted she would ever be admitted into that small circle—was thirty-nine years old and, despite the youthfully overlong hair and the lean muscularity of his body, he looked it!
He was watching her in return, those silver eyes narrowed speculatively as she eyed him nervously. ‘You'll want to telephone the hotel,’ he spoke with sudden impatience.
‘Will I?’ She blinked cat-like eyes, wondering where all her confidence had gone when she needed it so desperately. ‘I mean, I will. Of course I will,’ she dismissed, irritated with herself for acting like a bumbling idiot. ‘Anne will be worried about me.'
Those silver eyes glinted warily now. ‘You're a friend of hers?'
She wouldn't recognise the other woman if there were only the two of them in the same room together! But she didn't stand a chance of persuading this man into letting her play the part of his wife now, had ruined any chance of that the moment she struggled to open those iron gates and drove inside. She should have known a hotel wouldn't shut its gates in that way, and she probably would have done if she hadn't felt so wet and cold by that time that she just wanted to take shelter somewhere, anywhere. Christopher was going to be far from amused when she told him what she had done, she didn't find it all that amusing herself!
‘Sort of,’ she answered Rand evasively, avoiding going into the details of that acquaintance as she frowned up at him. ‘Is the hotel far from here?'
He shrugged. ‘A couple of miles. It's at the other end of the estate.'
Merlyn knew from her research on Suzie Forrester that the Forrester sisters had been the only children of wealthy land-owner John Forrester, and that his estate had been left jointly to his daughters on his death. As she had initially guessed, this was the main house, so Anne must have built her hotel on her half.
‘Don't worry,’ Rand mocked, positioned to the left of the fireplace, a cheery fire burning there in the chill of this mid-summer day. ‘You're far from the first person to make this mistake, this house is called The Forresters, the hotel, The Forest.’ He shrugged. ‘They're too similar. Although usually the wall and gates keep people out of here,’ he added dryly, seeming to imply as he did so that there was nothing ‘usual’ about her!
She was blushing more today than she had the last eight years, and she felt incredibly stupid. ‘I'm sorry,’ she grimaced. ‘I've driven up from Manchester, taken so many wrong turns that I must have added twenty miles on to my journey; I was just desperate to reach the hotel by the time I spotted your gates.'
He nodded. ‘I'll pour the coffee while you call Anne. You aren't going to be able to make it there tonight, I'm afraid.'
‘What?’ she gasped, her horror reflected in her eyes. ‘But you said it's only a couple of miles away.’ She shook her head. ‘I can leave straight after I've had my coffee.'
‘Unfortunately not,’ he drawled, pouring the coffee.
‘Why not?’ she attacked. She had driven up here, she could drive back out again!
‘You remember the ford you crossed about half a mile from here?’ He arched dark brows, down on his haunches beside the low table.
She had been so blinded by the rain by that time that she had been lucky to stay on the road, let alone remember crossing a ford; the whole road had looked like a river to her. But if he said there was a ford then she believed him; she doubted many people disbelieved what this man said. If they did they were fools.
‘It's flooded.’ Rand straightened, the silver eyes cold at her dismayed expression.
‘You mean it's completely impassable?’ she groaned, needing to have her worst fear confirmed rather than just imagined.
‘Unless your car floats, yes.’ He gave a mocking inclination of his head.
Is there another hotel near here?’ Merlyn could feel her panic rising at the thought of being stranded here and left dependent on this man. When she had to tell him who she was she would be lucky if he didn't throw her out into the rain again to take her chances!
‘The ford is on the private road to this house,’ Rand told her. ‘There is no other way out. You're stuck here until the river goes down again.'
She winced at his obvious displeasure as the realisation of her enforced stay struck him too. ‘And how long will that take?'
He pursed his lips thoughtfully. ‘If the rain stops soon, probably tomorrow.'
Merlyn turned to look out of one of the long windows at the steadily pouring rain; it didn't look like it was ever going to stop!
‘Oh, it will,’ Rand assured her in an amused voice as she unwittingly spoke her dismay aloud. ‘Some time,’ he added mockingly, the expression in his eyes one of challenge.
She inwardly groaned her despair. Her feelings for this man had been bewildering enough before she knew who he was. Now that she knew he was the still-grieving widower of Suzie Forrester, they were absolutely ridiculous. And she only had to look at him to feel her temperature rise and her senses quiver into life in a way she had never known before.
‘You can use the bedroom you used earlier, opposite mine,’ he added softly, as if guessing her response to him was the reason for her dismay.
And why shouldn't he have realised how he affected her, her behaviour earlier had been rather obvious! ‘That's very kind of you—–'
‘Kindness doesn't have a damned thing to do with it,’ he rasped. ‘I don't have a choice.'
Neither did she, by the sound of it. And she couldn't blame him for resenting her intrusion either, he didn't come over as the sort of man who enjoyed having to be polite to a woman who had been stupid enough to get herself lost the way that she had.
‘I'll telephone Anne,’ she said quickly.
‘Do that,’ he nodded tersely, standing up to restlessly pace the room.
Merlyn