by Jessica Hart
Determinedly, Miranda grasped the ladder, and set her foot on the first rung. She would survive. She would be happy. She would unblock that gutter. She could do this.
She got as far as the sixth rung before the ladder lurched to one side and she froze with a whimper of fear. Her heart was hammering in her throat, and all she could do was grip the ladder and stare fixedly at the brickwork, too terrified to move in case she dislodged the ladder further.
Now what? She was either going to have to stay up this wretched ladder for ever, or fall off, in which case there would be no one to find her. It had been stupid to try and do this alone.
‘Are you on your way up, or your way down?’
The achingly familiar voice made Miranda start so violently that the ladder jerked away from the wall momentarily and she gasped with fear even as her heart leapt with incredulous joy.
Rafe. Rafe. He was here and suddenly the world was glorious again-or it would be if she dared look down to see him.
‘I’m stuck,’ she said.
‘No, you’re not,’ said Rafe. She felt him take hold of the ladder and steady it. ‘I’ve got you,’ he said. ‘Come on down.’
Biting her lip, Miranda inched her hands lower and forced her right foot to reach down for the rung below. Very gradually, she made it down to the next rung and then the next, and the next, and the last two were easy, although her knees were shaking when she finally had both feet back on the ground and she could turn and look at Rafe.
It might have been him that was making her knees weak. He was dressed like a million other guys in jeans, with a jacket over his shoulder and a long-sleeved cotton shirt pushed casually above his wrists, but he looked so gorgeous and vital and immediate that it was all she could do not to throw herself at him and shower him with kisses while she patted him all over to make sure that he was real.
He was real. ‘What on earth were you doing?’ asked Rafe conversationally, as if the last time they had spoken they hadn’t flayed each other with bitter, angry words.
‘Trying to unblock a gutter,’ said Miranda, trying desperately to steady her reeling senses. She was so happy to see him that she couldn’t think straight. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Trying to unblock my life,’ said Rafe. ‘And bringing you a present.’
‘A present?’ she echoed blankly. Perhaps this wasn’t real? Why, when she had dumped a plate of spaghetti on him, would he bring her a present? Why would he come at all? Her heart was hammering again, but this time with frantic hope. ‘What sort of present?’
‘Wait here and close your eyes.’
It felt so surreal that Miranda simply did as he ordered. She sat down on the verandah steps and closed her eyes, tipping her face back to the sun and enjoying its dazzle behind her eyelids.
Please don’t let this be a dream. Please don’t let him be gone.
But, no, there were footsteps on the wooden verandah behind her. She felt him crouching down beside her, and the next moment a soft, squirming body was placed gently in her lap.
Miranda’s eyes flew open to see a puppy sprawled across her knees. It had huge paws, floppy ears and a velvet soft coat, and it was licking her hands and wriggling with pleasure.
All the breath leaked out of her. ‘Oh…’ Her throat was so tight, it was all she could say for a while. She looked up at Rafe. ‘He looks just like Rafferty,’ she managed, but her voice was cracked and constricted and she was very close to tears. All of her childhood, she had dreamed of a puppy just like this one.
‘He’s an Irish Setter,’ said Rafe, obviously pleased at her reaction. He sat down beside her on the step and reached over to scratch the puppy’s head. ‘I couldn’t get a mutt in case it didn’t look right.’
‘Is he really for me?’
‘He is, but you might not want him when you see what he eats! I warn you, he chews everything. I only had him in the house for about an hour this morning, and he’s already ruined two pairs of shoes, my best tie and the remote control for the television!’
Miranda laughed shakily and lifted the puppy so that they were nose to nose. ‘Are you very naughty, darling?’ she asked him, and the puppy’s long pink tongue lapped eagerly, trying to reach her face.
‘I thought he’d be company for you,’ said Rafe, watching her face alight with laughter. ‘It must be lonely down here on your own.’
Her smile didn’t fade, but some of the light seemed to go out of her. She glanced at him, confused by his thoughtful gesture, even more confused by her own reaction. He had given her a beautiful puppy, and gone to all the trouble of finding one that would look like her beloved Rafferty. How could she not be grateful to him? She ought to be ecstatic. But if he thought she needed company, that meant he wasn’t planning on staying.
Well, what had she expected?
‘It’s really kind of you, Rafe,’ she said. ‘Thank you. I love him.’ She fondled the puppy’s ears. ‘I don’t deserve him after I threw spaghetti all over you.’ She glanced at him. ‘Is it too late to say that I’m sorry?’
‘Not if I can say sorry too,’ said Rafe. ‘I think we both said and did things we regret that night, but in one way it couldn’t have worked better. After that spectacular end to our engagement, I got plenty of sympathy!’
Miranda made herself smile. ‘So our plan worked?’
‘You could say that.’
‘Well…good.’ She kept her smile in place. It was enough that he was here, she told herself. He had brought her a gorgeous puppy, and was prepared to be friends again, even after she had behaved so appallingly. What more did she want? ‘So, have you found a fiancée yet?’
‘I have,’ said Rafe, and her heart sank lower than she would have believed possible when she was holding a wriggling puppy. ‘At least,’ he qualified, ‘I’ve decided who I want to marry, and now I’ve just got to persuade her to agree. That’s why I’m here, in fact. I need your advice.’
‘You want my advice?’ Miranda gaped at him. Didn’t he remember that terrible row?
He nodded. ‘I thought you’d be the best person.’
‘I’m surprised you’d want advice from someone boring and repressed!’ she couldn’t help saying, unable to keep the hurt from her voice.
‘You were never boring, Miranda,’ said Rafe gently. ‘I never called you that.’
‘You implied it. You said I didn’t know how to be happy.’
‘Are you happy?’
Instantly her chin came up. ‘Of course I am. I’ve never been happier. I’ve got everything I’ve always wanted, especially now I’ve got you,’ she added to the puppy, who was struggling to get off her lap. Carefully, she lifted him up and set him down at her feet, where he gambolled a little way before tripping over his paws and flopping down onto the grass.
She smiled brilliantly at Rafe and gestured out at the sea, which was glittering silver in the afternoon sun. ‘How could I not be happy here?’
‘Ah,’ he said, and looked away. ‘I’m glad.’
Miranda glared at his profile. Honestly, how obtuse could he be?
‘Of course I’m not happy,’ she said crossly. ‘I’m miserable. Is that what you wanted to hear?’
He turned at that. ‘It is, actually.’
His eyes held a smile, but Miranda couldn’t look at him. Biting her lip, she jerked her gaze away. ‘Probably serves me right for dumping spaghetti on you,’ she said.
To her horror, tears clogged her throat without warning, and she had to swallow painfully before she could produce a bright, bright smile. ‘Anyway, I’m glad you’ve met the right woman for you,’ she managed after a moment. ‘What’s she like? Is she nice?’
‘Well, I like her,’ said Rafe. ‘She’s different. She prefers dogs to people, can you imagine that? She doesn’t like being in the city and she hates dressing up and going to parties.’
As his words sank in Miranda’s heart began to thud. It was slamming steadily, painfully against her ribs, and, hardly daring to believe that it wasn�
��t a cruel joke, she turned her head very, very slowly to meet his eyes once more.
They were dark and blue and very warm. ‘She wears dull little suits and ties her hair up,’ he went on, ‘and if you watched her dealing with a photocopier, say, you would think she was really repressed.’
Miranda moistened her lips. ‘I can’t think why you would want to marry someone like that,’ she said unsteadily.
‘The thing is,’ Rafe confided, ‘only I know that when she lets down her hair and takes off that suit, she’s the wildest, most exciting, most beautiful woman I could ever hope to meet. Making love to her was a big mistake, in fact, because once I’d done that, I knew that only she would do.
‘The thing is,’ he said again, his voice very deep and low, ‘nothing is quite right without her. I’m not right without her. I tried to be. I tried as hard as I could. I told myself that I could easily love someone else, that marriage was better approached practically rather than emotionally. That’s what I wanted to feel. It’s what I felt I should feel. The trouble was that once she’d gone, I realised that it wasn’t what I did feel.’
Hope was gripping Miranda’s heart so tightly it was almost painful, and it was all she could do to breathe past the constriction in her chest. ‘What did you feel?’ she asked huskily.
‘I felt that I had found the one person I didn’t know that I had been looking for all these years,’ said Rafe quietly. ‘The one person who could make me feel complete.’
Reaching out, he took Miranda’s hand at last. ‘I didn’t think it could be you, Miranda. There seemed to be too many reasons why it shouldn’t be you, but it is you,’ he said.
His fingers curled around hers, his clasp warm and strong and infinitely reassuring. ‘Dad always complained that I never stuck at anything. I thought I had to stick at Knighton’s to prove him wrong, but I don’t. All I need is to prove to you that I love you.’
Rafe lifted their clasped hands to his lips and kissed her knuckles. ‘I’m asking you for the chance to prove that I can stick with you for ever.’
‘Rafe…’ Miranda’s heart was so full she couldn’t speak. She could just stare at him, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears as happiness seeped like sunshine along her veins.
‘I’m not asking you to leave Whitestones, Miranda. I know what it means to you. If you-and the dog-’ he added, nodding at the puppy which was snuffling inquisitively through the long grass, ‘will have me, I’ll move down here too. It’s not as if I’m short of a bob or two. I don’t need to work. I could unblock those gutters for you.’
He was babbling, Rafe realised, and he made himself stop. His fingers tightened around hers. ‘What do you think?’
‘I think,’ she said slowly, ‘that you need Knighton’s more than you think you do, Rafe. Your father entrusted the company to you, and you need to fulfil that trust.’
‘But then I’d have to be in London, and you would hate that. You need to be here, at Whitestones.’
‘I need you more,’ said Miranda, and reached for him as the tears spilled over at last. ‘If London is where you are, that’s where I need to be too.’
‘Miranda…’ Rafe held her away from him just long enough to look down into her face and see the love in her eyes before he pulled her into his arms for a long, sweet, almost desperate kiss.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked raggedly when they broke for breath. He rested his cheek against her shining hair and held her tightly. ‘It’s not just about you. You’ve got the dog to think of now, remember.’
Miranda laughed shakily. ‘There are parks in London,’ she reminded him, ‘and we can come down here at weekends, can’t we?’
‘We can.’ Rafe pulled back to take her face between his hands and fix her with serious eyes. ‘But maybe we need to think about this. I can’t ask you to come back when you hate it so much.’
‘Well, maybe I don’t hate London quite as much as I thought I did,’ Miranda confessed. ‘I’ve been down here for nearly a month, and, to be honest, I’m dying for a cappuccino!’
Rafe laughed and wrapped his arms around her once more. ‘I’ve missed you so much, Miranda,’ he told her with a sigh.
‘I’ve missed you too,’ she said, nestling closer, still hardly able to believe that he was there. ‘I’ve been so lonely without you.’
‘I’m so sorry for all those terrible things I said to you,’ said Rafe. ‘I didn’t mean any of them. I was just feeling desperate. I wanted you so much, but I knew I couldn’t give you the fairy tale you wanted. I still can’t,’ he said seriously, tipping back her head to look down into her face. ‘It won’t be perfect all the time, but I love you and I need you and I think that as long as we’re together, we can get through anything.’
Miranda smiled through her tears. ‘That is the fairy tale, Rafe,’ she said, and she kissed him again.
Much later, they lay on the rough grass together as the puppy clambered over them, licking their chins and chewing their fingers with sharp little teeth.
‘Ouch,’ said Miranda, laughing, and tugged gently at his ears. ‘I had thought I might go back to work, but I can see you might turn into a full-time occupation!’ she told the dog.
Rafe lay with his hands behind his head, watching the clouds drifting across the sky. He had discarded his jacket and his shirt was unbuttoned at the neck. ‘It’s hard to think about work when you’re down here,’ he said. ‘Have you missed it?’
‘Sometimes,’ she admitted. ‘I quite like being in an office with lots going on. And, of course, you never know who you’re going to meet when you’re at the photocopier!’
He laughed and pulled her down beside him. ‘I’m very glad that agency sent you to Knighton’s. I might never have met you otherwise.’
‘I suppose it wasn’t too bad as assignments go.’
‘Do you fancy another one?’
Miranda tucked herself into his side and rested her cheek on his chest with a contented sigh. ‘That depends what kind of assignment you’re talking about.’
‘I’m in need of a wife,’ said Rafe in a mock businesslike tone. ‘It’s a permanent position, and you’d have to be prepared to be adored for ever. There are one or two conditions attached, of course.’
‘What sort of conditions?’
‘You’d have to adore me back,’ he told her. ‘Oh, and you’d need to wear this every day.’ Digging into his shirt pocket, he produced the diamond ring that Miranda had last seen as it plopped into his pasta.
Taking it from him, Miranda turned the ring between her fingers so the diamonds flashed in the sunlight. ‘Hmm…sounds quite an interesting job,’ she pretended to muse. ‘What’s the deal?’
‘Well, there would be a few details to sort out, but before we go into that I’d need to know if you were available and willing in principle to take the position.’
Miranda smiled as she remembered the last time Rafe had used those words. Then he had been asking her to pretend to love him. Now it was wonderfully, gloriously for real.
‘I’m available,’ she assured him, slipping the ring back on her finger where it belonged and raising herself on one arm so that she could bend to kiss him softly. ‘And very, very willing!’
It was a perfect day for a wedding. The bride looked like a fairy tale princess, in a stunning ivory silk creation, swathed in antique lace. A gossamer-fine veil streamed from the tiara she wore in her beautiful hair, and she carried a bouquet of exquisite, creamy yellow roses. Glowing with happiness, she laughed up at her groom, who wore a faintly stunned look, as he if couldn’t quite believe she was really his, and his expression when she kissed him made more than one of the guests wipe a surreptitious tear away.
‘You look beautiful,’ Rafe told Miranda.
‘It must be because I’m so happy.’ She leant against him with a smile. ‘I feel as if my heart is going to burst with it. It was a beautiful wedding, wasn’t it?’
‘Perfect,’ said Rafe, ‘for Octavia and Simon. Not for us.’
&n
bsp; ‘No,’ she agreed, her smile widening. ‘Not for us. Today is everything Octavia has ever dreamed of, and I’m so happy for her, but our wedding isn’t going to be like this, is it?’
‘Ours will be perfect for us,’ Rafe promised. ‘It’ll be everything you dreamed about that day at Whitestones when we walked on the beach together for the first time.’
‘Miranda!’
Octavia’s voice interrupted them and Miranda turned to see Octavia on the steps, the voluminous skirt of her dress caught up in one hand. Smiling at her sister, she tossed the bouquet straight towards her.
The roses came sailing through the air straight towards her, but Miranda wasn’t ready. Caught unawares, she dithered and stretched out her hands too late. ‘Oh, no!’ she cried, hating the thought of the beautiful roses crashing to the floor.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ Grinning with affectionate exasperation, Rafe shot out an arm and caught the bouquet just in time. Bowing in acknowledgement of the rousing cheers, he presented them to Miranda with a flourish. ‘I believe these were meant for you,’ he said. ‘You must be getting married next!’
A-brim with happiness, Miranda laughed and took the roses with a kiss.
The dress, an exquisite confection of silk and chiffon, was hanging behind a door, floating ethereally whenever the air so much as stirred. A bouquet of meadow flowers would be delivered in the morning. The champagne was already on ice. That was the extent of the preparations for their perfect wedding. Elvira was determined to throw a spectacular party at Knighton Park to celebrate afterwards, but for Miranda and Rafe their wedding day was for them alone.
‘Only two weeks,’ Rafe murmured in her ear. ‘Then it’ll be just you and me-and the dog, I suppose. We’ll be sitting on the beach with that champagne, just like you dreamed, and we’ll be married at last. We’ll listen to the sea and, when the champagne is finished, we’ll go back to Whitestones to make love all night-and then we’ll wake up in the morning, knowing that we’ve got the rest of our lives to spend together.’
Miranda sighed happily and kissed him again. ‘I can’t wait,’ she said.
