One Wedding Required!

She had never known Finn be so prickly and confrontational. Oh, they had sparred often enough in the time they had been living together—and before that. Plenty of times. But humour and affection had lain behind those exchanges, while there was certainly no humour or affection lurking in the depths of Finn’s emerald gaze right now.

She bit her lip and wondered how to answer him, because now did not seem the right time to tell him that she had sold the story of their meeting to Wow! magazine.

And he looked tired, too. Dog-tired. For the first time since he had arrived home Amber took a really close look at him—noting the blue-black shadows beneath his eyes and the tension around his jaw. His nerves were clearly jangled and stretched, and she frowned. He had been working too hard; that much was apparent. For where was the cool, calm Finn who coped equably with most things which were thrown at him?

‘Ursula came round for a drink,’ she told him, and offered a silent prayer of contrition for the lie. It was necessary, she told herself firmly. She would pick a better moment than this one to tell him the truth. A time when she was sure he would give her that easy, familiar laugh of his and tell her that, no, she shouldn’t have done it—but that no real harm had been done.

‘Ursula?’ He frowned. ‘Your sister?’

‘I know only one Ursula.’

‘What was Ursula doing round here in the middle of the day? Drinking champagne?’

Amber rounded on him. Enough was enough. ‘There’s no need to make it sound as though we were up to no good!’ she told him furiously. ‘Some of the women that work in Ursula’s company go out to wine bars every single lunchtime!’

‘And do absolutely zilch in the way of work afterwards, I’ll bet!’

‘But it was my afternoon off!’ Amber pointed out, and to her horror she burst into tears.

Finn stared at her in amazement. ‘Amber—’

‘Shut up! Just shut up!’ she sobbed, and ran from the kitchen towards the bedroom.

She flung herself down on the bed, her shoulders shaking with the effort of trying to keep the tears back, but it was no good. Great rivulets came streaking their way in a salty path down her nose and into her mouth and she swallowed them down like medicine. She was just scrubbing at her eyes and sniffing back the last of her tears when she heard the door open quietly, and Finn began to walk towards the bed.

She held her breath, froze into total stillness, her body language screaming out a wordless message of rejection. But it was a message which he was clearly choosing to ignore, for he put his hand on her shoulder.

She tried to shake it off. ‘G-go away!’

‘You know you don’t want me to.’

‘How do you know what I want?’ she demanded.

‘Why don’t you tell me?’ he suggested tenderly.

‘Okay, I’ll tell you!’ She sat up on the bed, aware that she must look an absolute fright. Strands of golden hair were sticking to her cheeks like glue. ‘I want a little respect, Finn Fitzgerald—that’s what I want!’ Then tell him the truth about this afternoon, a little voice inside her head urged her. She ignored it.

He sighed. ‘Shall we start this evening all over again?’

‘And how do you propose we do that?’ she asked him quietly, but the instant the words were out of her mouth she realised that they could be interpreted as provocation.

His eyes briefly flickered, and Amber immediately recognised the dark, gleaming shutters of desire.

He smiled as he gave a shrug of his broad shoulders, clad in their habitual black. ‘I don’t know, Amber,’ he murmured. ‘Any ideas?’

She knew what he wanted. What she wanted, too, if she was being honest with herself. A sizzling session of making up, which would banish the memory of their angry words and make everything seem all right again. But she was damned if she was going to lie back on the bed and start giving him the come-on, pouting and desperate, with no pride.

She quickly got up off the bed, and Finn frowned.

‘Where are you going?’

‘To the kitchen. I’ve left the rice and chicken cooking. Remember?’

‘So this is what an engagement means, is it?’ he taunted softly. ‘That you put supper before making love?’

Amber paused by the door, his words unsettling her. She found herself wanting to placate him, to run back over to the bed and start to massage the knotted tension from his shoulders in the way he so liked. And that would inevitably lead on to something else, in the way that massage always did. But that type of behaviour would consign her to a lifetime of being considered a doormat. She already had his supper ready and waiting for him every night—she sure as hell wasn’t going to start agreeing to sex when she most emphatically did not feel like it!

‘My behaviour isn’t unique,’ she countered quietly. ‘Before we got engaged you wouldn’t have dreamed of coming home and hurling accusations at me like that. You sounded like a bear with a sore head! No, worse!’

And she flounced out of the room before either of them had a chance to say anything else which they might later regret.

Her hands were shaking as she switched the gas off and took two plates out of the oven, where they were heating. She carried them through to the dining room, where she found Finn standing staring at the Christmas tree, its white candle lights reflected in the big glass windows which overlooked the park. There was a look of soft wonder in his eyes, some brief, faint glimpse of the innocent boy in the hard, handsome face of the man, and her heart turned over with love.

She put the plates down on the table. ‘Do you like it?’

‘You don’t usually put it up quite so early,’ he observed, his attention still caught by the bright glitter.

‘I couldn’t wait,’ she prevaricated, vowing to tell him about the interview. Tomorrow. ‘And you still haven’t answered my question. Do you like it?’

He turned to face her, his eyes as darkly and as beautifully green as the fragrant pine. ‘Sweetheart, I love it—it’s the most beautiful tree I’ve ever seen!’

‘You said that last year.’

‘Did I?’ he smiled.

‘Yes! And the year before!’

‘In fact, every Christmas we’ve spent together, even before we were officially a “couple”,’ he murmured, his eyes slowly travelling over her, looking at her properly for the first time since he had arrived home. ‘And how many Christmases is that, Amber?’

‘F-four,’ she stumbled, because the way his eyes were searing over her was sending her pulses racing. ‘Can’t you remember?’

‘I’m having a little difficulty with my thoughts just now,’ he admitted deliberately.

Now she was ready to play the game. There was no danger of the flat burning down and, quite frankly, the sight of the chicken congealing in its coconut and coriander sauce was making her feel slightly queasy. She just wanted to lose herself in his arms and forget about the hurtful things they had said. And the lie she had told him...

‘Are you?’ she asked, her voice husky.

‘Mmm.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Because you’re distracting me, sweetheart, that’s why. I can’t seem to think of anything right now, except...’ His voice tailed off as his pupils dilated in a look of desire that made Amber feel positively brazen.

‘Except?’

‘Come here,’ he whispered.

Amber supposed that a more liberated woman than herself might have requested that he come to her. Because he was the one who had arrived home in such a foul temper,