Worlds Apart. Kay Thorpe

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СКАЧАТЬ her seat on the ledge of sand as he moved towards her. ‘I only came because you made it impossible to refuse,’ she said stonily. ‘Not because I want to be here. Just say what you have to say.’

      He contemplated her in silence for a lengthy moment, eyes veiled. When he did speak it was with an odd note in his voice. ‘I need to know how you really feel about me now, Caryn.’

      The question dried her throat. She gazed at him with darkened eyes, fighting the almost overwhelming urge to jump up and rake her nails down that lean brown cheek. ‘How would you expect me to feel?’ she got out with an effort

      His smile was wry. ‘What I’d expect and what I can hope for are two different things.’

      Her voice seemed to be coming from a long way away. ‘So what do you hope for?’

      ‘That you’ll be prepared to marry me,’ he said.

      This couldn’t be for real, she thought dazedly. He was making fun of her. He had to be!

      ‘Don’t look so stricken,’ he said on a dry note. ‘All I’m asking for is a simple yes or no.’

      ‘All?’ She drew in a shaky breath. ‘I don’t know what kind of game you think you’re playing, but you’re not doing it with me!’

      He caught her arm as she began to turn away, pulling her back round to face him and holding her there, a look of determination on his face. ‘It’s no game, believe me. I need you, Caryn.’

      Need, not love, a part of her mind registered, but the shock was still too great to take any real account of the distinction.

      ‘I don’t understand,’ she managed to get out. ‘Why now?’

      His lips twisted. ‘Because you’re eighteen, not sixteen. Old enough to know your own mind.’

      Eyes wide and dark, she gazed at him in silence as she grappled with the implications of that statement. When she did find her voice it came out low and husky. ‘Are you trying to tell me you felt the same way two years ago?’

      ‘Why else do you think I went away?’ he asked. ‘You were sixteen, I was thirty-one. I doubt if your parents would have sanctioned marriage between us—whatever the circumstances.’

      He was right about that, Caryn knew. They would have been utterly devastated had they been forced to learn of her premature initiation into womanhood, but there would have been no marriage. Not at sixteen. She searched the firm features with a sense almost of desperation, heart and mind in turmoil. Right at this moment she didn’t know how she felt about him—about anything. It was all too much to take in.

      As if in recognition of her dilemma, he drew her to him, sliding a hand behind her head to tilt her face up to his. The kiss moved her immeasurably in its gentle yet inexorable seeking. She found her arms moving of their own accord up about his neck, her whole body surging into closer proximity. There had never been anyone else who could make her feel this way—as if fireworks had been lit inside her. She wanted him to go on kissing her, to make love to her, to lift her to that seventh heaven she had experienced so briefly yet never once forgotten.

      It was Logan himself who brought matters to a halt by putting her firmly, if with reluctance, away from him. He was smiling, eyes fired with a desire he made no effort to conceal.

      ‘Still the same lovely, warm, responsive Caryn,’ he murmured. ‘I’ve dreamed about making love to you again, but it isn’t going to happen like this. We have a lot to talk about first.’

      Still held fast in the grip of her turbulent emotions, Caryn allowed herself to be drawn to a seat on the wedge of sand she had so recently vacated. Logan kept an arm lightly about her shoulders.

      ‘Before we go any further,’ he said, ‘I have to tell you that my mother knows the whole story, and has done from the start. She kept an eye on you for me. If there had been any hint at all of a pregnancy, I would have come back and faced up to it, but going away seemed the best thing for us both at the time.’

      Caryn said slowly, ‘Does she know about… now?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘And approves?’

      ‘Yes,’ he said again, and hesitated a moment before continuing, ‘She’s the main reason I’m not prepared to spend too much time rebuilding a relationship between us. It’s her dearest wish to see me happily married.’ There was a pause, a change of tone. ‘You are going to marry me, aren’t you, Caryn?’

      ‘It’s all so sudden,’ she protested. ‘I can’t take it in.’ She could feel herself trembling as reaction began to set in. ‘You didn’t attempt to see me last year when your father died.’

      ‘I dared not let myself. I was only here a few days, anyway.’ He brought up his other hand to trace the line of her mouth with the tip of a finger, making her tremble with another, quite different emotion. ‘You told me once that you loved me,’ he said softly. ‘Does that still follow?’

      Caryn was hard put to it to think of anything other than what he was doing to her with that slow caress. She caught at his hand, staying the movement yet not pulling away. ‘We hardly know one another,’ she whispered. ‘Not in any real sense.’

      ‘We know how we feel,’ he returned. ‘That’s the most important.’

      Caryn wasn’t sure. She felt totally confused. For this to happen after two years of hatred was beyond all reason. How could she even begin to sort out her emotions?

      ‘Does your mother really consider me the kind of wife you should have?’ she asked. ‘There must be others far more suitable.’

      ‘Suitable to whom, and for what?’ Logan queried. ‘If I’m going to take a wife at all, then it has to be my choice.’

      He studied her for a brief moment, then tilted her chin and kissed her again, this time with less restraint, parting her lips in surging response. Caryn didn’t try to think, only to feel—the way she had always felt about this man deep down in her heart. He had been her first love; she wanted him to be her only love. Nothing else seemed important right now but that.

      ‘I take it the answer is yes,’ he said with a touch of arrogance when he lifted his head at last. ‘It must be soon. There isn’t a lot of time left.’

      ‘It can’t be that soon.’ She was breathless, heart racing, mind in a whirl. ‘What do I tell my parents?’

      ‘The truth, up to a point,’ he suggested. ‘Just leave out the more intimate detail. They’ll surely understand the need for haste when they know about Mother.’

      ‘She won’t mind their knowing?’

      ‘Providing they keep it to themselves. The last thing she’d want is for the whole town to know.’ Logan took her hand, pressing the back of it to his lips in a gesture that warmed her all the way through. ‘You’re of age. It’s your decision, not theirs. Your life.’ His smile was an inducement in itself. ‘You won’t regret it, Caryn. I’ll make sure you don’t.’

      Caution went to the winds. Whatever the cost, she thought recklessly, she couldn’t turn her back on this dream come true. Logan had to love her, СКАЧАТЬ