Cinderella’s Wedding Wish

by Jessica Hart

  There was utter silence in the room as Rafe closed the door behind them, and they listened to Elvira shuffling off down the corridor.

  ‘I’m sorry about this,’ said Rafe at last. ‘I never thought for a minute she’d put us in the same room. She’s always been so strait-laced before.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Miranda, wandering over to the big bay window and trying not to look at the vast bed. ‘There was no point in making a fuss.’

  ‘I can find somewhere else to sleep tonight,’ he offered. ‘She’ll never know.’

  ‘No.’ Miranda drew a deep breath and turned from the window to face him across the room. She had had time to think this afternoon while she was walking the dogs. ‘There’s no need for that,’ she said, surprised to find that her voice was quite steady. ‘I was wondering if we should renegotiate the terms of our deal for tonight.’

  Rafe was still standing with his back to the door, but his eyes were dark and alert. ‘Which particular clause were you thinking of?’

  Miranda moistened her lips. ‘The one where we don’t sleep together.’

  ‘What are you proposing instead?’

  ‘That we do.’

  This time the silence stretched until it strummed. Rafe didn’t move until, abruptly, he levered himself away from the door and crossed the room. He stopped a few feet from where Miranda stood, straight backed and chin up, in the window.

  ‘You want to sleep with me?’

  ‘Just for tonight,’ she said quickly.

  Still he didn’t move. ‘You don’t have to do this, Miranda,’ he said. ‘Do you know how many bedrooms there are in this place? I can easily find somewhere to kip.’

  ‘I want to do it.’ Miranda ran the tip of her tongue over her lips again. ‘I’ve been thinking about it all day. I was remembering how I told Octavia she would need to take a risk for what she wanted, and I realised I never do that. I never have.’

  Swallowing, she made herself look straight into his eyes. ‘You once told me that I was scared, and I think that might be true. I am scared. I’m afraid of losing control. When I was growing up, the rest of my family seemed to thrive on chaos, but I hated it. I learnt to be sensible and steady, because that way I felt safe, but I never got what I wanted either.’

  ‘And what do you want now, Miranda?’ Rafe’s voice was very deep and it seemed to reverberate across the floor and up Miranda’s spine.

  ‘I want one night where I don’t have to be sensible,’ she said without taking her eyes from his. ‘I want to not think about the future or the pretence or…or about anything. I want to be able to touch you and feel you and…’

  She trailed off, unnerved by his silence. What was she doing, asking Rafe Knighton to make love to her, Rafe who must have made love to countless women far more beautiful and desirable than she? It was nice of him not to laugh in her face.

  ‘But only if you want to, of course,’ she finished lamely.

  Rafe smiled then. Closing the gap between them, he cupped her face very lightly between his hands, feathering his thumbs over her cheekbones, along her jaw, tracing the line of her mouth.

  ‘I think I might force myself,’ he teased, but his blue eyes were serious and intent.

  She bit her lip. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure.’

  And she was. She had gone too far to turn back now and, anyway, he was there, touching her, smiling. Miranda knew that she might-almost certainly would-regret it later, but for now this was all she wanted, and it felt completely right.

  ‘In that case,’ said Rafe, ‘I can tell you that this is all I’ve been able to think about ever since you moved in with me. Night after night, you’ve been lying there across the corridor and I thought about doing this,’ he said, kissing the wildly beating pulse below her ear, ‘and this…and this,’ he murmured as his lips traced a delicious path down her throat while Miranda shuddered with pleasure.

  His fingers found the zip at the side of dress. ‘This is a dream come true.’

  ‘What else happens in your dream?’ she asked with a low, shaky laugh, and Rafe eased the straps from her shoulders until the dress slithered over her skin and fell in a puddle at her feet.

  ‘I’ll show you,’ he said.

  ‘Remind me why it took us so long to do this,’ said Rafe lazily.

  Miranda lay within the curve of his arm. Her head was on his shoulder and she was playing idly with the hairs on his chest. Making love to her was supposed to have been a way to get her out of his system, but that didn’t seem to have worked at all. Rafe remembered that breathtaking, heart-swelling, bone-melting mixture of passion and tenderness and excitement and a wild, unexpected sweetness, and his arm tightened around her.

  ‘Because it was a very bad idea,’ said Miranda, rather muffled against his chest. ‘And you don’t need to remind me it was mine.’

  ‘It didn’t feel bad to me,’ said Rafe, stroking the hair back from her face and craning his head to try and see her expression. ‘Wasn’t it good for you?’

  ‘You know it was. Too good,’ she said honestly. ‘How am I going to pretend what we just shared never happened?’

  ‘Do you have to? Why can’t it happen again?’

  She shook her head slowly. ‘There’s no future for us, Rafe. We both understand that. We want completely different things.’

  ‘We wanted the same thing a few minutes ago,’ he reminded her, a smile in his voice. ‘We don’t have to think about the future. Can’t we just enjoy the present?’

  Miranda was very still, and he began to hope that she was changing her mind, until she said in a small voice, ‘I’m scared. Tonight was wonderful, but it doesn’t change what I really want. I’m going to Whitestones and you’ll stay in London, and if I get used to nights like this one I’m afraid it’ll hurt too much when I go. It’ll be too hard to say goodbye, and we’re going to have to say that some time soon.’

  Rafe was silent. How could he argue with her? The last thing he wanted was to hurt her, and, besides, she was right. They didn’t have anything in common. They wanted different lives. Miranda wanted the fairy tale, and he couldn’t give her that. The sensible thing would be to admit that this had been a mistake and agree not to repeat it.

  But it didn’t feel like a mistake when her skin was silky and her hair smelt of flowers and when losing himself in her had left him with an extraordinary sense of peace and a rightness he had never felt before.

  CHAPTER TEN

  A S THE days passed, though, it began to seem more and more like the mistake Miranda had called it.

  Rafe tried to carry on as before, but it was impossible. He couldn’t get the feel of her, the taste of her, out of his mind. Her scent and her softness and her sweetness seemed to be imprinted on every fibre of his being. Now he avoided touching her at all, afraid that if he did he wouldn’t be able to stop at taking her hand or resting his hand on her back to guide her through a crowd, but would end up yanking her into his arms and doing something stupid like begging her not to go.

  Because she would go. Miranda was stubborn. Whitestones had been her goal all along, and now that it was in her sights she wouldn’t change her mind.

  Rafe told himself that he didn’t want her to. He wanted a clever, sophisticated wife who would be a companion and a partner, who would run his houses for him and entertain and support him as he transformed Knighton’s and proved that he was worthy of the legacy his father had left him, however unwillingly. Miranda had no interest in doing any of that. She wasn’t what he needed.

  No, he had to stay focused. He would find someone else, someone perfect, and forget Miranda and the soaring sweetness they had found together.

  ‘What did you think of Caroline?’ Rafe leant aside to let the waiter deposit a plate in front of him.

  It was an evening towards the end of that long week, and they were in an Italian restaurant. Rafe suspected Miranda was no hungrier than he was, but they had both ordered a bo
wl of pasta. The reception they’d attended had finished by eight o’clock, and neither wanted to go home and endure terrible tension there, where nothing stood between them and the memories of the night they had shared. At least when they were out and surrounded by other people they could preserve the illusion that things were normal. Whatever normal was nowadays. Rafe wasn’t sure he could remember.

  Miranda picked up her fork. ‘Caroline? Which one was she?’

  ‘She’s a solicitor. Blonde, attractive.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Miranda shrugged and took a mouthful of spaghetti. ‘A bit bland.’

  ‘What about Helen, then?’

  ‘She’d be very high maintenance.’

  ‘How on earth did you work that out?’

  ‘You can tell. You don’t get to be that driven without becoming completely neurotic on the way.’

  Rafe blew out an irritated breath. ‘You don’t like any of the women I think might be suitable!’

  What did he expect? Miranda wondered crossly. He was always doing this, speculating about the women he might ask out the moment she was gone, wondering which of them would make him the best wife, as if she was supposed to care. He seemed determined to rub her nose in the fact that there would be another woman sleeping with him, loving him, waking up to the warmth and security of his body and to the smile in his eyes.

  She should never have asked him to make love to her. What a stupid, stupid thing to do! If she’d thought about it, she could have guessed what a wonderful lover Rafe would be. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t known that he had a lot of experience. She understood now why all the beautiful women he had dated and had been photographed with had worn such wide smiles. She must have seemed woefully inexperienced in comparison, she thought miserably. No wonder he was so keen to find someone else now! He clearly couldn’t wait for her to leave.

  Still, there was no need for him to go on and on and on about it. Rafe had been like this all week, she thought, exasperated. Everywhere they went, he wanted to know what she thought about the women they had met. He probably thought she had fallen in love with him since they had slept together and was terrified now in case she forgot the terms of their agreement.

  He ought to know her better than that. Miranda’s lips thinned. The constant reminder that he was looking forward to a future without her was grating on her nerves, and she was brittle with the effort of not seeming jealous.

  ‘I don’t have to like any of them,’ she said, unable to keep the tightness from her voice. ‘I’m not proposing to marry any of them.’

  ‘You could be a bit more supportive, though,’ said Rafe grouchily.

  ‘Supportive?’ Miranda’s voice rose as temper frayed the edges of her control and she dropped her fork onto her plate with a clatter. ‘I’ve been supportive! I’ve dressed up like a doll every night. I’ve turned up at endless stupid parties and let you paw me in public. How much more supportive do you want?’

  ‘That’s what I’m paying you for,’ said Rafe, nettled. ‘Quite a considerable sum, in case you’ve forgotten.’

  ‘Believe me, I’ll have earned every penny!’

  ‘I’m surprised you didn’t ask for more if it’s been that awful,’ he snapped, still smarting from that pawing comment.

  ‘If I’d known what it was going to be like, I would have done!’ Miranda glared at him, her eyes a glacial green. ‘What do you think it’s been like, Rafe, having you parade women in front of me all week while you look them over like horses? I’m surprised you didn’t ask them to open their mouths so you could inspect their teeth! Did it ever occur to you to think that I might find that all a bit humiliating?’

  Rafe’s expression hardened. ‘That was the deal.’

  ‘The deal was that you pretend to be in love with me, not that you ignore me completely. You’ve been in a foul mood all week. You haven’t laid a finger on me, barely addressed a word to me and made sure everyone knew you were bored stiff by me. You did everything but dump me publicly! And you dare accuse me of not being supportive!’

  A muscle was jumping in Rafe’s jaw, and his eyes were colder than Miranda had ever seen them. ‘You’re never happy, are you, Miranda? You don’t want to sleep with me again, but you complain when I don’t touch you. You want to run away to Whitestones, but you don’t want me to meet anyone I can be happy with.

  ‘Or maybe that’s the problem?’ he went on savagely as she sat there, cold with shock and fury. ‘You don’t want anyone to be happy because you don’t know how to be happy. You’re too repressed to let yourself go and have a good time, or, if you do, you immediately run away the moment happiness rears its ugly head.’

  ‘That’s not true!’

  ‘Isn’t it? Why are you so desperate to go to Whitestones? OK, it’s somewhere you were happy in the past, but I’m betting its real appeal is the fact that there’s no one there who might ask you to be happy now.’ Rafe looked at her contemptuously. ‘You haven’t got the guts to go for what you really want, Miranda.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ said Miranda, pushing back her chair, picking up her plate, and tipping spaghetti right over his head. ‘That was exactly what I wanted to do,’ she told him.

  Rafe leapt to his feet, swearing, and the low hum of conversation in the restaurant stopped abruptly as every head swivelled to stare at him as he stood there, spaghetti dripping from his hair and off his shoulders.

  ‘What the-? What are you doing?’ he snarled, his face white with fury.

  ‘Just taking your advice,’ Miranda said. ‘And you know what? You were right. Now I’ve stopped being repressed and started doing what I want, I feel really happy! Thanks so much for the tip!’

  Tugging the exquisite diamond ring from her finger, she dropped it deliberately into his fettuccine. ‘While I’m doing what I want, I’ll give you that back, too. You can send a cheque to me at Rosie’s.’

  ‘The hell I will!’

  Belatedly becoming aware of the fascinated stares, Rafe grabbed Miranda’s arm and jerked her towards him so that no one else could hear. ‘We had an agreement,’ he reminded her in a savage voice.

  ‘And I’m keeping it,’ she said, so angry she could barely bite out the words. ‘You wanted me to be the one to end our engagement, and I’m ending it.’

  ‘Not like this! You’ve made me look a fool!’

  ‘I have, haven’t I? Oops,’ said Miranda coldly. ‘Never mind, they’ll all feel sorry for you now. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? They’ll be queuing up to console you for losing your boring, miserable, repressed fiancée!’

  Wrenching her arm free, she snatched her bag off the back of her chair. There was a deathly hush at the surrounding tables, and she put up her chin and looked around at the faces, agog at the excitement of the scene.

  ‘I never liked that suit,’ she said, and walked out, leaving Rafe ridiculously and furiously alone in the middle of the restaurant, his hair clogged with sauce and spaghetti straggling from his shoulders.

  Miranda set the ladder against the wall and tested it gingerly. It was very wobbly, and she bit her lip. She hated heights at the best of times, and climbing a rickety ladder set on uneven ground hardly counted as one of those. But she would have to get up there somehow. The gutter was blocked, and would have to be cleared, or the problem would just get worse. And there was no one else to do it.

  There was no one else to do anything. She had been at Whitestones nearly a month. She had unpacked the hire car alone and carried everything across the field alone. She had made the house habitable alone. She had cleaned and cooked and tidied alone. She had pulled water and started the generator alone.

  She walked on the beach alone.

  She went to bed alone.

  Still, it was beautiful, every bit as beautiful as she had dreamed all those years in London. Miranda woke up to the sound of the sea every morning. She walked along the cliff and breathed the clean air, and told herself that she was happy.

  But she wasn’t. She was lone
ly.

  There was silence and space and light, but there was no one to talk to, no one to laugh with, no one to exasperate her.

  No one to make her heart jump just by walking into the room.

  No Rafe.

  You don’t know how to be happy. His words echoed endlessly in Miranda’s head, and her heart twisted with pain. She had been happy when she was with him, but it was too late to realise that now. Even if he hadn’t wanted such a different life from hers, there was no way Rafe would ever forgive her for that plate of spaghetti.

  She shouldn’t have done it, Miranda knew, but she had been so angry and so hurt. And so bitter with herself for wilfully ignoring all those sensible warnings in her head that had kept telling her it could never have worked. Why hadn’t she listened to them? Rafe was too handsome, too charming, too desirable for a girl like her. She had known that he could never love her.

  She had thought he liked her, though. Miranda couldn’t bear to remember the contempt in his voice that night. The truth had come out then. He thought she was boring, repressed, cowardly…Oh, God, here came the memories again, like a cruel fist grasping and tearing at her entrails.

  Miranda took her hands from the ladder and covered her face with them instead. She tried to breathe through the pain, but still the hot tears came, squeezing out from beneath her lashes, no matter how desperately she willed herself to hold them in. She mustn’t cry. She mustn’t.

  If she started, she would never stop.

  Drawing a shuddering breath, she brushed the treacherous tears from her cheeks furiously. In the end, Rafe had sent her a cheque by express courier the very next day, and she had gone straight out to hire a car, ignoring Rosie’s pleas to wait and talk to Rafe when they had both calmed down. She had never been back to his house to collect her clothes. None of them really belonged to her, and she wouldn’t wear any of them again anyway. Instead, she packed up her few possessions and drove down to Whitestones, and she had been here ever since.

  And now she was here, she would make the best of it. She would be happy.