Carole Mortimer Romance Collection

‘I really do have to go,’ Cyn cut in, impatient with the way this family assumed she had nothing else to do this evening but stand here listening to them. ‘I have a date—with my bath,’ she added pointedly as she saw Wolf’s eyes narrow questioningly. ‘It was—interesting, meeting you again, Barbara,’ she told the other woman drily. Barbara was still looking slightly dazed from the encounter.

‘Interesting?’ the other woman echoed incredulously. ‘Wolf, I don’t—’

‘Bye!’ Cyn called lightly as she left the office without haste—only to find herself brought to a sudden halt as familiar fingers grasped tightly about her arm. ‘What do you want now, Wolf?’ she asked wearily as she turned to face him in the corridor, all the time aware of Barbara waiting inside his office for him.

He looked intently down at her pale face. ‘Will you have dinner with me tonight?’ he asked gruffly.

Cyn’s eyes widened. ‘But I thought Barbara just said the two of you were having dinner together?’ she frowned.

‘We only made the arrangement an hour ago,’ Wolf shrugged dismissively. ‘I don’t have to go.’

He had only learnt late this afternoon that his fiancée was going to be out of town for a couple of days! But immediately he and Barbara had made plans of their own. Nothing had changed, it seemed!

‘I wouldn’t have dinner with you if I were starving to death!’ Cyn told him scornfully, pulling roughly out of his grasp; God, she was going to be covered in bruises at this rate! ‘Go back to Barbara,’ she advised disgustedly. ‘The two of you obviously deserve each other!’

‘Cyn—’

‘Leave—me—alone, Wolf!’ The tone of her voice must have warned him she was close to doing some physical damage of her own if he didn’t, because he stepped back from her abruptly—although she was aware of him watching her as she strode forcefully down the corridor to the lift, viciously jabbing at the button, stepping inside the plush lift once the doors had glided open, her violet gaze clashing with his golden one before the doors silently closed again and she began her smooth descent to the ground floor.

Cyn only wished her thoughts were as smoothly untroubled!

She couldn’t believe Wolf and Barbara, just couldn’t believe the two of them!

Seven years ago Cyn had been left in no doubt of the fact that Wolf and Barbara were having an affair, that they had been doing so since the early days of Barbara’s marriage to Alex. Just as she didn’t doubt now, in spite of Wolf’s engagement to Rebecca—an engagement that seemed to be founded on business on Wolf’s side rather than love!—that they were still having an affair.

If she only knew where Rebecca had gone for the weekend, she would go and see her and tell her how right she was to feel unsure about marrying Wolf, that she should give him his damned ring back and tell him to go to hell!

As Cyn had...

CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_7042bd9f-2e0e-5f9d-a9ec-3b89650b3a34)

‘I WANT to know exactly what you know about Rebecca going away!’

Cyn drew in a slow controlling breath as Wolf verbally attacked her as soon as she opened her cottage door to his knock. She had been expecting something like this all day, ever since her peaceful Saturday had been shattered at ten o’clock this morning when she received a telephone call from Rebecca Harcourt... She wished, and not for the first time, that she hadn’t had her home telephone number as well as her business one printed on the card she had given Rebecca at their first meeting, then she wouldn’t have Wolf standing on her doorstep glowering down at her!

‘You’d better come in,’ she invited him wearily now, stepping back to allow him entrance.

‘I— My God!’ he muttered impatiently as he followed her inside the cottage—and almost hit his head on the low-beamed ceiling. ‘I didn’t realise you lived in the original Seven Dwarfs’ cottage!’ he rasped insultingly as he lowered his head to avoid another beam.

The height and small size of the rooms was one of the reasons Cyn had been able to rent the cottage in the first place; there weren’t too many people short enough to feel comfortable living here! It certainly wasn’t suitable for one of the commuter couples who would usually have snapped it up; not too many men must relish the idea of going around permanently bent over in order to be able to walk about their own home!

Wolf looked particularly ridiculous, his size and height making him look more like a giant who had stumbled into the Seven Dwarfs’ cottage than anything else. Not that many men had been to the cottage at all, and Wolf certainly hadn’t been invited here, so it was his own fault if he was now uncomfortable.

He sat down abruptly in one of the armchairs, the cane-based chair creaking under his weight; even the furniture had had to be chosen to fit in with the small proportions of the rooms.

He glared up at Cyn. ‘Well?’ he barked harshly.

Cyn looked down at him, having none of the problems with the size of the cottage that he obviously did. He was dressed as casually as she was today, both of them wearing denims, Cyn’s topped with a bright pink sweatshirt, Wolf wearing a pale cream sweater. But the casualness of their clothes was the only thing they had in common. Wolf’s expression was grim, Cyn’s deliberately enquiring. She knew what he was talking about, of course she did, but she didn’t know how to answer him, had no idea exactly how much he knew concerning Rebecca...

‘I was just about to make a cup of coffee,’ she said lightly. ‘Would you like one?’

‘No, I damn—’ Wolf broke off abruptly, drawing in a slow controlling breath as he sat forward in the chair. ‘I didn’t come here for coffee, Cyn,’ he bit out harshly. ‘I came for some answers. Gerald tells me that this morning you received a telephone call from Rebecca asking you to inform him that he isn’t to worry about her because she’s fine, but that she may stay away longer than the couple of days she initially planned—and that the wedding is off!’

Cyn had still been half asleep when she answered the ringing of her telephone early this morning, having spent a restless night, still churned up over that meeting with Wolf and Barbara in his office. But she had come awake instantly when Rebecca identified herself on the telephone. However, Rebecca hadn’t wanted Cyn to talk, had only wanted her to listen, and then pass the message on to her father. When Cyn had protested at the message she wanted her to pass on Rebecca had put the receiver down at the other end.

Cyn had been stunned. What was she supposed to do now? One thing she had known—Rebecca had no intention of telephoning her father and talking to him herself, so if she didn’t call him herself he would be left wondering what had happened at the end of the weekend when Rebecca didn’t return home from the schoolfriend’s she had told him she was visiting. And when Gerald telephoned that friend he would discover that Rebecca hadn’t been there at all!

Cyn hadn’t liked the position she had been put in at all, and wished once again that she had never heard of the Harcourt family. But as she had heard of them, and Rebecca had entrusted her with the task of talking to her father, Cyn had had no choice in the end but to telephone Gerald. He had been stunned by what she had to tell him, and wanted to know where Rebecca really was, but as Cyn had no idea...

It hadn’t taken Wolf long after Gerald must have spoken to him to decide that Cyn must know more than she was telling them.

She shrugged. ‘That was exactly what Rebecca told me to tell her father.’ She grimaced at the inadequacy of it. But Rebecca had been adamant that she had nothing else to say on the matter, so what else could Cyn possibly say about it?

‘Why you, Cyn?’ Wolf’s eyes were narrowed up at her speculatively. ‘Why did Rebecca choose you to talk to rather than one of us? After all, Gerald is her father, and I’m—I was—her fiancé,’ he amended grimly.

Cyn swallowed hard. ‘Possibly that’s the reason she chose me,’ she suggested lightly. ‘The two of you were too close, whereas I—’

‘Yes?’ Wolf prompted as she hesitated.

‘I don’t know why she chose me either, Wolf,’ Cyn snapped, her eyes flashing deeply violet. ‘You’ll have to ask Rebecca that, won’t you!’

‘But I can’t, because she isn’t here,’ he reminded her softly. ‘You are.’

And she wished she weren’t! She had known there was going to be trouble over Rebecca’s behaviour, had tried to think of some answers she could give Wolf—because she had known he would come here demanding some!—but the truth of the matter was that she just didn’t have any to give him. Not without betraying Rebecca’s trust in her. And she couldn’t—wouldn’t do that.

She shrugged. ‘And I’ve told you everything Rebecca told me to.’

Wolf still watched her with narrowed eyes. ‘Everything?’ he echoed silkily.

She couldn’t quite meet his gaze now. Yes, she had told them everything Rebecca had told her to tell her father and Wolf—but not everything she knew! And Wolf was astute enough to realise that, if Gerald wasn’t.

Rebecca hadn’t answered her when Cyn had asked if she was doing this thinking she needed to be alone, had just repeated the message she wanted Cyn to give her father. But Cyn would be very interested to know if the young golden god of a gardener arrived for work on Monday morning...

‘Everything,’ Cyn repeated firmly. ‘There’s really nothing more I can tell you, Wolf, so if you wouldn’t mind, I—’

‘But I do mind, Cyn,’ he told her evenly as he once again stood up—and instantly cursed the low ceiling once again as he ducked to avoid hitting his head. ‘I wanted to talk to you about last night.’

She was discovering that the tiny rooms in the cottage had another disadvantage besides the obvious ones; the small proportions made Wolf seem very close, very dominating with his superior height—and more than a little dangerous! What was it they said, the best form of defence was attack? Well then, she had better attack, and quickly, because her defences were starting to crumble!

‘Your fiancée has just called off your wedding, and you want to talk to me?’ she scorned incredulously. ‘I think it’s Rebecca you should be trying to talk to!’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t happen to know where she is, do I? But I do know where you are,’ he added with satisfaction.

Cyn swallowed hard. ‘I have nothing more to say about last night. In fact, now that the wedding appears to have been cancelled,’ she continued more confidently—she would not talk about Barbara, would not put herself through that emotional torture a second time! ‘I can’t see any reason for us to have any further contact at all. Unless, of course, Rebecca changes her mind about the wedding, in which case I’ll be more than happy to talk to both of you concerning the—Wolf!’ she croaked as he reached out suddenly and pulled her up hard against his chest, the expression on his face grimly determined, to say the least.

‘Shut up, woman!’ he rasped. ‘Just shut up,’ he groaned before his head lowered and his mouth claimed hers.

Cyn wished he would stop doing this, because there was no way she could resist him. She had once loved this man— Once? God, she still loved him, she realised with a sickening jolt in her stomach. How could that be? How could she still love this man, a man who had not only betrayed her, but also the girl he had been about to marry in a few months’ time?