it was Wolf that Rebecca intended marrying.
Gerald frowned. ‘She’s over twenty. Admittedly Wolf is a lot older than her, thirty-five, but I’m sure they’ll be good for each other.’ He shook his head at her implied suggestion that perhaps they wouldn’t.
‘The bridegroom did seem a little—remote,’ she said awkwardly. The Wolf she had met today bore little or no resemblance to that teasing man she had met seven years ago; he didn’t look as if he knew how to tease!
‘Oh, Wolf’s all right,’ Gerald dismissed comfortably. ‘He and Rebecca are good friends.’
‘Friends?’ Cyn frowned at his choice of words. ‘Isn’t that a strange thing to say about a couple who intend marrying in four months’ time?’
‘Not in the least strange,’ Gerald disagreed. ‘I only wish Rebecca’s mother and I had been friends before we married, maybe then we wouldn’t have ended up hating each other’s guts once the initial passion wore a little thin. The same goes for you, I’d hazard a guess.’ He looked at her shrewdly.
Her eyes widened. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked warily. What did he mean? She was sure, not by word or deed, that she and Wolf hadn’t given away the fact earlier today that they had known each other years ago.
Gerald shrugged. ‘Whoever the man was in your past, who gave you the same distrust of marriage that I have, I’ll bet the two of you weren’t friends.’
It was a bet he would lose. She and Wolf had been great friends, had found a rapport existed between the two of them from the first—much to Cyn’s surprise; she had been sure the two of them could have nothing in common. But there was no way she could tell Gerald that Wolf had been that man!
She smiled dismissively. ‘I’m sure we all have disastrous love-affairs in our past that have coloured our judgement in later life,’ she shrugged. ‘We get over them.’ She held her chin defensively high, knowing she had never got over loving Wolf.
‘Some of us do,’ Gerald nodded thoughtfully, watching her closely. ‘I’ll take a rain-check on the dinner invitation, then,’ he finally accepted lightly, moving to grasp her gently by the upper arms. ‘But I really meant it when I said I’m not giving up on you.’ He kissed her lightly on the lips.
Cyn stood in the doorway of the brightly lit cottage waving goodbye to Gerald as he drove away, wondering exactly what he would make of the fact that seven years ago she had been the one about to marry Wolf!
* * *
Given time—once she finally got away from the hotel that evening, without seeing Wolf Thornton again, unfortunately—Cyn had decided that he couldn’t really have been serious about the dinner invitation. But if she had thought he hadn’t been serious, what on earth had possessed her to be waiting outside the Thornton’s Hotel at seven-thirty the following evening?
She had felt very conspicuous standing outside on the pavement, several people entering the hotel eyeing her curiously as she did her best to look casually unconcerned by the obvious fact that she was waiting for someone. Someone who, by seven-forty, still hadn’t arrived!
He hadn’t been serious, she realised with a sinking heart, wondering how she could slip away without drawing any more attention to herself. The doorman, a man she had come to know over the last few weeks, had been watching surreptitiously to see just who her date was for the evening. How awful that the ‘date’ hadn’t turned up!
‘Thank God I caught you!’ gasped a breathless voice behind her. ‘I thought I was going to be too late.’
Cyn had been in the act of quietly slipping away from the front entrance of the hotel, but she turned sharply at the first sound of Wolf Thornton’s voice.
If she hadn’t been sure what to wear for their date, formal or casual, then Wolf seemed to have been even less sure. He was wearing no jacket at all, despite the brisk breeze on this April evening, and his shirt had come adrift from the faded denims he wore—and he seemed to have the remains of a meal down the front of the pale blue shirt! At least—she frowned at the vivid red and green streaks—she presumed it was a meal?
His appearance was certainly much less formal than it had been on Saturday evening, and his hair was hopelessly windswept, not with that deliberate casualness that was so much in fashion nowadays, but actually blown in complete disarray by the breeze.
A fact he seemed to become conscious of as she continued to look at him silently, putting up an impatient hand to smooth the errant dark blond locks from his brow. ‘I really am sorry I’m late for our date, Cyn,’ he told her with a rueful grimace. ‘But I— Well, I got caught up in work, and—’
‘You work on a Sunday?’ She couldn’t help her surprise.
He grinned at her reaction. ‘I work every day, Cyn.’ He took a firm grasp of one of her arms. ‘Let’s go and eat—we can talk over our meal,’ he suggested cajolingly.
He thought she was going to refuse to have dinner with him at all because he was over ten minutes late! Cyn realised dazedly. She hadn’t been very happy about having to stand in such a conspicuous place as she waited for him, she admitted—and, now that he had arrived, Ron, the doorman, was completely agog at just who had turned up to meet her, obviously recognising Wolf from last night!—but she was far too curious about this enigmatic man to change her mind about having dinner with him just because of that. And from Ron’s almost stunned expression, the sooner they moved away from the hotel the better!
‘I thought you might have already eaten...?’ She frowned up at Wolf as she moved with him to the taxi he had signalled to come over to them.
Wolf gave the driver an address before joining Cyn in the back of the taxi, looking puzzled as he turned to look at her. ‘What on earth gave you that—? This isn’t food,’ he dismissed with a laugh as he saw the direction her gaze had taken, putting up a self-conscious hand to the marks on his shirt. ‘I should have changed before coming to meet you,’ he acknowledged with a grimace. ‘But I was so caught up in what I was doing, it was almost seven-thirty before I even remembered our date—I didn’t put that very well, did I?’ He winced as he saw her mockingly raised brows.
She laughed softly, starting to relax now that they were away from the hotel; it was the worst possible place they could have agreed to meet, although she acknowledged that, at the time, they hadn’t had much time to think of another location. ‘It wasn’t the most flattering thing you could have said,’ she shook her head with a rueful smile.
Wolf’s hands moved to clasp one of hers. ‘Once you’ve known me for a while, you’ll realise that flattery is one thing I never give,’ he told her with intensity. ‘In fact, I’ve been accused of the opposite on more than one occasion.’ He seemed to deliberately lighten the conversation. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve asked the driver to take us to my flat; I really should change before taking you out to dinner!’
Cyn didn’t care where they went; her body was doing strange things just at the touch of his hand on hers, and she could see that awareness reflecting in the warm amber of Wolf’s eyes as they made the journey to his flat.
The flat, as she should have guessed, was in Mayfair, and Wolf took her up in the almost silent lift to the penthouse apartment at the top of the building. But the furniture, she saw as they stepped straight into the luxurious lounge, ebony and chrome, the suite of dark brown leather, somehow didn’t
