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The City-Girl Bride
PENNY JORDAN
Penny Jordan needs no introduction as arguably the most recognisable name writing for Mills & Boon. We have celebrated her wonderful writing with a special collection, many of which for the first time in eBook format and all available right now.When elegant city girl Maggie Russell is caught in a flood, rugged Finn Gordon comes to her rescue. He takes her to his isolated farmhouse, laughs at her impractical designer clothes – and sets about removing them, item by item… !Sit back and enjoy Penny Jordan's emotional, sensual story of a woman who's more used to city streets than country lanes. When Maggie meets Finn, she's about to be awakened – her wild lover of the wilderness turns out to be a real gentleman, who's to the manor born…
Celebrate the legend that is bestselling author
PENNY JORDAN
Phenomenally successful author of more than two hundred books with sales of over a hundred million copies!
Penny Jordan's novels are loved by millions of readers all around the word in many different languages. Mills & Boon are proud to have published one hundred and eighty-seven novels and novellas written by Penny Jordan, who was a reader favourite right from her very first novel through to her last.
This beautiful digital collection offers a chance to recapture the pleasure of all of Penny Jordan's fabulous, glamorous and romantic novels for Mills & Boon.
Penny Jordan is one of Mills & Boon's most popular authors. Sadly, Penny died from cancer on 31st December 2011, aged sixty-five. She leaves an outstanding legacy, having sold over a hundred million books around the world. She wrote a total of one hundred and eighty-seven novels for Mills & Boon, including the phenomenally successful A Perfect Family, To Love, Honour & Betray, The Perfect Sinner and Power Play, which hit the Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller lists. Loved for her distinctive voice, her success was in part because she continually broke boundaries and evolved her writing to keep up with readers’ changing tastes. Publishers Weekly said about Jordan �Women everywhere will find pieces of themselves in Jordan's characters’ and this perhaps explains her enduring appeal.
Although Penny was born in Preston, Lancashire and spent her childhood there, she moved to Cheshire as a teenager and continued to live there for the rest of her life. Following the death of her husband, she moved to the small traditional Cheshire market town on which she based her much-loved Crighton books.
Penny was a member and supporter of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Romance Writers of America—two organisations dedicated to providing support for both published and yet-to-be-published authors. Her significant contribution to women's fiction was recognised in 2011, when the Romantic Novelists’ Association presented Penny with a Lifetime Achievement Award.
The City-Girl Bride
Penny Jordan
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
PROLOGUE
THE head of the Perfect Matches Department, English Speaking Division, scratched the top of his wing in irritation.
�Now look what’s happened,’ he complained to his newest and least experienced recruit. �They’ve called a summit meeting of all the top angels in Cupid Department to discuss the current state of romance. Far too many people are refusing to fall in love and make commitments. If this continues we shall be out of business and a fine thing that would be. Of course they would call this wretched conference when I’m already short-staffed and I’ve just finished drawing up this session’s list of ideally matched pairs. It’s too late to put things on hold now, and besides—’ he glowered darkly �—this session I’m determined that we’re going to meet our target, I am not having that pompous idiot from the Third Agers Section telling me yet again that he’s matched up more couples than us. But there’s just no one to do the work.’
�There’s me.’ His newest assistant reminded him eagerly.
The head of the department sighed as he studied the hopeful smile of his trainee recruit. Enthusiasm for one’s job was all very well, and to be applauded of course, but in this particular recruit’s case that enthusiasm needed to be tempered by the caution of experience and time. However, right now…Right now he had six couples to get together: couples who as yet had no idea that they were meant for one another, couples whose romances needed to be set in motion asap.
Reluctantly he acknowledged that on this occasion he would have to bow to expediency and ignore his forebodings. Handing over his carefully compiled list, he told his junior �Every one of these couples has been carefully vetted and checked for compatibility. In this department we do not put couples together unless we are sure they will stay together. Everything is set in place and nothing can go wrong. All you have to do is make sure that each and every one of them is in the right place at the right time. You must follow my instructions exactly. No experimentation or short cuts. Do you understand?’
All students had to learn, of course, but it was, to say the least, unfortunate that this particular student’s experimentation had led to a New York socialite’s pedigree chow falling desperately in love with her neighbour’s prize-winning Burmese cat. Luckily the outcome had not been totally without merit, and the marriage which had ensued between the socialite and her neighbour had been a very satisfactory conclusion to the whole affair. He had been working towards pairing her off with someone very different, but there you are…
�Hi there. What are you doing?’
The new recruit grimaced as one of the naughtiest zephyrs blew playfully on his wings.
�I’m busy,’ he responded loftily. �So go away and bother someone else.’
With hindsight he acknowledged that it had probably been the wrong thing to say. It was common knowledge that this particular zephyr positively enjoyed her reputation for boisterous behaviour, and perhaps it was silly of him to have spread out all the head of department’s carefully written notes and instructions, along with the slips on which the names of the humans they related to were written.
�Go away like this, do you mean?’ she challenged him, taking a deep breath and sending all his precious papers flying as she exhaled noisily over them.
Of course afterwards she was contrite, and helped him to gather everything up. It was surprising just how much power there was in that ethereal frame, and by the time they had finally collected everything he was feeling out of breath himself.
But that was nothing to the feeling of dread filling him as he tried frantically to remember which couples had been paired together.
The zephyr did what she could, and in the end he was as sure as he could be that he knew what he was supposed to do.
�So, which couple are you going to do first?’ she asked him.
He took a deep breath. �This one,’ he told her, showing her their names.
She frowned as she looked at the names and their addresses. �But how are they going to meet?’ she asked him.
�I don’t know,’ he admitted. �I’ll think of something.’
�Can I help?’ she begged eagerly. This was so much more fun than blowing a few leaves off trees, which was all she was ever allowed to do.
�No,’ he denied firmly, quickly changing his mind when he saw her taking another deep breath.
As a first step in bringing the two ideally matched partners together, his job was to engineer a meeting between them according to the instructions he had been left.
Engineer a meeting…Right…
CHAPTER ONE
MAGGIE stared in disbelief at the downpour which had suddenly appeared out of nowhere, turning the road she had been driving along into a vast puddle and making her head ache with the tension of concentrating. From the moment she had seen the sale advertised she had been determined to buy the house. She was sure that it was exactly what her adored grandmother needed to lift her out of her current unhappiness.
Of course Maggie knew that nothing and no one could ever replace her grandfather in her grandmother’s life, but Maggie was convinced that returning to live in the house where her grandparents had started their married life, a house that was filled with memories of their shared love, would help to take her grandmother’s mind off the sadness of her loss. And Maggie was a woman who, once her mind was made up about anything or anyone, refused to change it. Which was why she was such a successful businesswoman—successful enough to be able to attend the auction being held to sell off the large Shropshire estate on which her grandparents had begun their married lives, in the rented house which was now being auctioned for sale.
Maggie had grown up hearing stores of Shropshire and its rich farmlands, but Maggie was a city girl; farms, rain, mud, animals, farmers—they were not for her. The company she owned and ran as a headhunter, her modern city apartment, her friends—single career woman like her—these were the things she enjoyed and valued. But her love for her grandparents was something else, something special. They had provided her with a secure and loving home when her own parents had split up, they had encouraged and praised her, supported her emotionally, loved her, and it both hurt and frightened her to see her once strong grandmother looking so frail and lost.
Until Maggie had seen the Shopcutte estate advertised for sale—its Georgian mansion, farmlands and estate properties, including the pretty Dower House where her grandparents had spent the first years of their marriage—she had been in despair, not knowing how to lift her grandmother’s spirits and terrified, if she was honest, that she might actually lose her. But now she knew she had found the perfect means of cheering her up. It was imperative that she was successful at the sale auction, that she acquired the house. And she was determined that she would.
But for this appalling and unforecasted torrential rain she would have reached her destination by now—the small country town adjacent to the estate, where the auction was to be held and where she had booked herself a room at the town’s only decent hotel.
When the rain had first started, appearing from nowhere out of a hitherto cloudless sky, she had had to slow her speed down to a crawl. The sky was far from blue now, in fact it was nearly black, and the road was empty of any other traffic as it narrowed and dipped at a perilously acute angle.
Was this really the A-class road she had been following? Impossible, surely, that she might have made a wrong turning. She simply did not do things like that. If there was one thing that Maggie prided herself on it was being in control.
From the top of her glossily groomed, perfectly cut blonde hair to the tips of her equally perfectly pedicured and painted toes Maggie epitomised feminine elegance and self-discipline. Her size eight figure was the envy of her friends—and that flawless skin, that equally flawless personal life, as devoid of the untidiness of emotional entanglements as Maggie’s home was devoid of clutter. Yes, Maggie was a woman to be reckoned with: a woman no man would dare not to respect or would risk tangling antagonistically with. After seeing the havoc and mess caused by her parents’ various sexual and emotional relationships, Maggie had decided that she intended to remain safely and tidily single. And so far none of the many men she had met had done anything to make her change that decision.
�But you are far too gorgeous to be alone,’ one would-be suitor had told her, only to be given one of her most scathing and dismissive looks.
Perhaps somewhere deep down inside herself she did sometimes secretly wonder just why she should be so immune to the dangerous intensity of emotional and physical desire experienced by other women, but she refused to allow herself to dwell on such thoughts. Why should she? She was happy the way she was. Or at least she would be once she had got this auction out of the way and was the owner of the Dower House.
It was ridiculous that she should have had to come out here at all, she fumed as she began a steep descent. She had tried to buy the house prior to the auction, but the agent had refused to sell it. So here she was, and…
�Oh, no. I don’t believe it,’ she protested out loud as the road turned sharply and she saw in front of her a sign marked �Ford’.
Ford…as in fording a river, as in some archaic means of crossing it surely more suitable to the Middle Ages rather than the current century. But that was what the sign said, and there in front of her was a shallow river, with the road running right through it and up the hill on its opposite side.
And this was an A road? Irritably Maggie started to drive through the water. That was the country for you, she fumed grittily.
She could hear above the noise of her car engine a loud rushing sound that for some reason made the hair at the back of her neck prickle, and then she saw why. Coming towards her at an unbelievable speed along the course of the river was a wall of water almost as high as the car itself.
For the first time in her life, Maggie panicked. The car’s wheels spun as she depressed the accelerator, but the car itself didn’t move, and the wall of water…
Finn was not in a good mood. His meeting had taken much longer than he had planned and now he was going to be late getting back. His mind was preoccupied with his own thoughts, so it gave him a shock to see the unfamiliar car motionless in the middle of the ford, but it gave him even more of a shock to see the swollen race of river threatening to overwhelm it.
He was in no mood to rescue unwanted and uninvited visitors with no more sense than to try to attempt to cross the river during what had to be the worst cloudburst the area had known in living memory, and in such an unsuitable vehicle. He frowned ominously as he dropped the Land Rover into its lowest gear.
He might have made the fortune which had enabled him to retire from the world of commerce by using what his mentor had once told him was the keenest and shrewdest financial brain he had ever come across, but that world and everything it encompassed was not one he ever wanted to return to. This was his métiere—what he wanted. But he wanted it permanently. And the lease on Ryle Farm could not be renewed when it ran out in three months’ time, which was why he had decided to bid for the Shopcutte estate. He knew that the house, the land and the other properties were being auctioned off in separate lots, but Finn wanted them all. He wanted and he intended to keep the estate intact, and with it his own privacy.
Protecting his privacy; guarding his solitude was vitally important to Finn, and fortunately, thanks to those hectic years he had spent working as one of the City’s most successful money market dealers, he had the financial means to buy that privacy and solitude—in the shape of the Shopcutte estate.
Those people who had known him in his early twenties wouldn’t be able to reconcile the man he had been then with the man he was now. He was a decade older now, of course, and in those days…In those days his high earning power had gained him an entrée into a fast-living world of trust fund socialites, models, money and drugs. But, as he had quickly come to discover, it was a world driven by greed and filled with insincerity. He had been too hardheaded to succumb to the easy availability of sex and drugs, but others he had known had not been so wise, or so lucky.
Already disenchanted with what had been going on around him, Finn had been filled with a sense of revulsion for the life he was living after the death of one of his colleagues from an accidental drug overdose. Finn had been openly and brazenly propositioned by girls crazed with need by their addiction, had attended parties thrown by clients where those same girls and the drugs that had ruined their lives had been handed round like sweets. It was a world that valued material wealth and held human beings cheap, and one day Finn had woken up and known that it could no longer be his world.
Perhaps unfairly, he had come to blame big city culture for sins that should have more appropriately been apportioned to his fellow human beings. But his own needs had forced him to question what he really wanted out of life, filling him with a craving for peace and a simpler, cleaner, more natural way of life, as well as a loathing for city life and, if he was honest, a wary hostility towards those who lauded it.
His mother had come from farming stock and he had obviously inherited those genes. He had made his plans, taken a calculated gamble on his own judgement which had netted him a profit that had run into millions. His employers had pleaded with him to stay, telling him he could name his own terms, but he had made his decision. Owning his own land would give him the opportunity to grow organic crops as well as breed cattle and increase his small herd of alpaca.
Unlike Maggie, the moment Finn heard the sound of the water thundering towards the ford he knew what it was, and immediately stopped his Land Rover, cursing under his breath as he realised that the huge flood of water filling the riverbed would mean that the ford would be impassable, even for his sturdy four-wheel drive, and that he would end up being marooned on the wrong side of the river. Angrily he looked at Maggie’s car. A trendy, top-of-the-range convertible that only a fool would possibly have attempted to take across a flooded ford.
The dangerously fast-flowing water was halfway up the side of the car—and rising. In another few minutes the car would be in danger of being swept completely away, and its blonde-haired driver with it.
Grimly Finn restarted his own vehicle and drove slowly and carefully through the swilling water towards Maggie, gritting his teeth as he felt the powerful surge of the water buffeting the side of the Land Rover and trying to force it downstream.
In her own car, Maggie could not believe what was happening to her. Things like this simply did not happen…especially not to her. How could she possibly be here, in the middle of a flooding river with water creeping higher and higher? She gave a shocked gasp as the car started to move, slewing sideways. She was going to be swept away completely. She might even drown. But she had seen the Land Rover coming up behind her and told herself that she was panicking unnecessarily. If its driver could cross the ford then so could she. Determinedly she tried to restart her car.
Finn simply could not believe his eyes. As he saw Maggie’s shiny blonde hair swing across her face when she leaned forward to restart her car he thought he must be hallucinating. What on earth was she doing? Surely she must realise that her car was not going to start? And even if by some remote chance it did…
Drawing alongside her, he carefully brought the Land Rover to a halt and wound down his window.
Maggie saw what he was doing and gave him a supercilious look, which Finn ignored. He could see now that she was a city woman, and his irritation and exasperation with her grew. Gesturing to her to wind down her own window, he returned her look with darkly bitter dislike.
Initially Maggie had intended to ignore his arrogant command—in the City a woman never responded to overtures from unknown men—but then she felt her car move again.
�What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Finn demanded irascibly once Maggie had lowered her window. �You’re driving a car, not a submarine.’
His obvious irritation and contempt infuriated Maggie, who was not used to being verbally mauled by the male sex. Normally her looks alone were enough to guarantee that they treated her gently.
�What I am doing,’ she responded acidly, �is trying to ford the river.’
�In this—a flood?’ Finn couldn’t keep the ire out of his voice.
�There was no flood when I started to cross,’ Maggie retaliated hotly, and then gasped as her car started to move again.
�You’re going to have to get out of the car,’ Finn told her. Any moment now, he suspected, the car would be completely swept away with her in it, if she didn’t move quickly, but he was worried that she would start to panic and make the situation even worse than it already was.
�And how do you suggest I do that?’ Maggie asked him with a sharp frostiness icing her voice and her eyes. �Open the door and swim for it?’
�Too dangerous—the current’s too strong,’ Finn informed her brusquely, ignoring her attempt at sarcasm. Giving her slender body a brisk inspection, he told her crisply, �You’ll have to climb out through the window; there should be enough room. I’m parked close enough for you to be able to crawl into the back of the Land Rover through the rear passenger window.’
�What? You expect me—?’ Maggie was almost lost for words. �I am wearing a designer suit and a pair of very expensive shoes, and there is no way I am going to ruin them by crawling anywhere—least of all into an extremely muddy Land Rover.’
Finn could feel his blood pressure rising, and along with it his temper. He had never met anyone who had irritated him as much as this impossible woman was doing. �Well, if you stay where you are it won’t just be your shoes you’ll be in danger of losing. It could be your life as well—and not just your own. Have you any idea of the—?’ Finn broke off as her car rocked with the force of the water buffeting it. He had had enough.
�Move. Now,’ he ordered her, and to her own shock Maggie found that even before he had finished speaking she was scrambling through her car window.
The feel of two strong male hands supporting her, almost heaving her towards the Land Rover’s open window as though she were a…a sack of potatoes, only increased her sense of outrage. As she wriggled and slipped head-first into the rear of the Land Rover the breath whooshed out of her lungs at precisely the same time as her shoes slid off her feet.
Without even having the courtesy to check that she was all right her rescuer was continuing to cross the river, his vehicle somehow pushing its way through the flood which had threatened her own car. As she struggled to sit up Maggie saw her car start to move downstream as the flooding river finally overwhelmed it. She was shivering with shock and reaction, but the driver of the Land Rover seemed totally unconcerned about her as they finally emerged onto dry land and he started to drive up the hill.
Another few seconds and that idiotic woman would have been swept away with her car, Finn fumed once he had safely negotiated their passage back onto dry land. Now, until the river went down, the farm was effectively marooned. There was no other road off the property, which was enclosed on both sides by steep hills.
�You can drop me in the centre of the town,’ Maggie informed him in a dismissive clipped voice. �Preferably opposite a shoe shop, since I now have no shoes.’ And not anything else, she recognised. No luggage, no handbag, no credit cards…
�The centre of what?’ Finn demanded incredulously. �Where the hell do you think you are?’
�On the A road, five or so miles from Lampton,’ Maggie told him promptly.
�On an A road…Does this look like an A road?’ Finn’s voice was loaded with male disbelief.
Now that she looked at it—properly—Maggie could see that it didn’t. For one thing it was barely more than single track, which meant…which meant that somehow or other she must have taken a wrong turning. But she never took wrong turnings—in any area of her life.
�Things are different in the country,’ she informed Finn contentiously. �Any old road can be an A road.’
Her arrogance infuriated him.
�For your information this is a private road, leading only to a farm…my farm.’
Maggie’s soft brown eyes widened. She studied the back of Finn’s head whilst she tried to assimilate what he had told her. He had a strong bone structure, and thick, very dark brown hair. His hair needed cutting. It covered the collar of his shirt. She wrinkled her nose fastidiously as she took in the shabbiness of his worn coat. She could almost see the forcefield of male anger and hostility that surrounded him, and she felt equally antagonistic towards him.
�So I must have made a wrong turning somewhere.’ She gave a small shrug. Only she knew just how much it cost her to admit that she might have got something wrong.
�If you hadn’t virtually hijacked me I would have been able to turn round and—’
�Turn round?’ Finn interrupted her with a derisive snort. �If I hadn’t turned up you’d have been damned lucky to be alive right now.’
The brutality of his harsh words sent a shiver running through her, but Maggie refused to let him see it. Instead she did what she had trained herself to do, which was to focus on her ultimate goal and ignore everything else.
�How long will it be before the river goes down?’ she asked him. �If we wait here?’
�Wait…?’ Finn couldn’t keep the disbelief out of his voice. �Lady, a river like this could take days to subside,’ he told her, impatient of her naivety. People like her shouldn’t be let loose in the country. They had as much idea of how dangerous nature could be as a child had of crossing a motorway.
�Days…?’
In his driving mirror Finn saw the panic flaring briefly in Maggie’s eyes, and against his will he wondered what had caused it. What the hell was he doing, getting curious about her?
�How…how many days?’ Maggie asked, fighting not to betray her concern.
Finn shrugged. �That depends. The last time we had a flood like this it was well over a week.’
�A week…’ Now there was no hiding the despair in Maggie’s voice. And, if the road really did lead only to the man’s farm, it looked as if she had no choice but to spend that week with him.
They were almost at the top of the hill now, and automatically she turned round in her seat to look back the way they had come. The Tarmac glistened wetly, a narrow black ribbon against the autumn landscape, and as for her car—she could just about see its roof above the floodwater as it lay at an angle, wedged against a tree.
With the initial shock of what had happened over, Maggie was filled with unfamiliar panic and anxiety. Her clothes, her mobile phone, her bag—with her money and credit cards and all those taken-for-granted things that reaffirmed who and what she was—had gone, swept away from her by the flood with her car. She was, she recognized with stomach-dropping resentment, totally dependent on her rescuer.
In his rearview mirror Finn carefully monitored the emotions shadowing Maggie’s eyes. He knew how to read people, and how to second-guess their thoughts; city life had taught him that. City life, like this city woman. What was a woman like this one doing in such an out-of-the-way country area? Everything about her screamed that she was not a country-lover. And every instinct he had was telling him that she was trouble.
Finn knew danger when he saw it, right enough, but for some reason he couldn’t understand he had an overwhelming urge to go ahead and walk right into it, he recognised, with a grim disbelief at his own totally uncharacteristic behaviour as he heard himself saying, �If you’ve got friends in the area you can ring them from the farm to tell them what’s happened.’
What the hell was he doing, practically inviting her to involve him in her life? Finn asked himself angrily. There was no way he wanted to be there. She irritated and antagonised him to the point where…To the point where he just knew he had to take her in his arms and see if that deliciously full soft mouth felt as good as it looked.
Finn clenched his jaw. What the hell was happening to him? To think…to imagine…to want…He shook his head, appalled by the sheer inappropriateness of his unwelcome thoughts.
�I’m not visiting friends,’ Maggie denied tersely.
Finn waited, expecting her to elaborate, and then when she didn’t wondered why he should find her refusal to confide in him so intensely aggravating. By rights he should have been pleased that she was so determined to keep her distance from him.
Maggie could feel herself starting to bristle with irritation as she recognised that her rescuer was expecting her to tell him what she was doing in Shropshire. As though she was a child being called to account by an adult. Well, her business was none of his, and besides, the very nature of Maggie’s career meant that secrecy and discretion were of prime importance—so much so that they were now second nature to her. Anyway, why should she divulge her very private reasons for being in the area to this…this farmer?
They had crested the hill now, and the lane narrowed even more ahead of them, meandering through pastureland towards a pretty Tudor farmhouse. A small herd of animals grazing in one of the fields was disturbed by the Land Rover and raced away from the fence, capturing Maggie’s bemused attention.
�What are those? Llamas?’ she asked, unable to check her curiosity.
�No, llamas are much larger. These are alpaca. I keep them for their wool.’
�Their wool?’ Maggie repeated, watching as the small herd stopped and one of its braver members craned its long neck to stare at them.
�Yes, their wool,’ Finn repeated, adding sardonically, �It’s highly prized and very expensive—and I wouldn’t be surprised if your �designer’ hasn’t used it in his clothes.’
The way he’d said the word �designer’ was so challenging that Maggie itched to retaliate, but before she could do so he had put the Land Rover in a higher gear and switched on the radio, so that any attempt she might have made to talk would have been drowned out by the sound of the announcer.
�Sounds like we’re not the only ones to be caught out by this freak storm,’ Finn commented.
�Thank you,’ Maggie told him tartly. �But I don’t need a translation. I do speak English.’
The auction was in six days time—the river had to have gone back to normal by then. She wished now that she had not given herself this extra time, but she had hoped to be able to convince the agent, when she talked with him face to face, to accept her offer for the Dower House prior to the auction taking place. She was fully prepared to pay, and to pay generously to secure the house. Anything to see her grandmother smile again.
They were driving into the farmyard now—in the paddock beyond it Maggie could see hens scratching in the grass and ducks on the pond. An idyllic scene, no doubt, to some people. But not to her, no way, and especially not when it came inhabited by a man like the one who was now turning round in his seat towards her.
�Let’s just get one thing straight,’ he was telling her grimly, �I don’t like this situation any more than you do, and, moreover, I was not the one who stupidly drove my car into a river which was plainly in full flood. Neither was I the one who made a wrong turning and ended up—’
�There was no flood when I tried to cross the ford,’ Maggie interrupted him sharply. �It just seemed to come out of nowhere—as though…’ As though some malign fate had been waiting for her, she wanted to say, but of course she was far too sensible to make such a silly comment. �And, since you apparently own this wretched place, I should have thought you would have a legal obligation to warn motorists of just how dangerous it is to use the supposed ford.’
Ignoring her mistaken belief that he owned the farm—this was no time to become involved in minor details—Finn barred his teeth savagely in an unfriendly smile whilst he reminded Maggie unkindly, �Since this road is private, and on privately owned land, there isn’t any need.’
�That’s all very well,’ Maggie countered immediately, �but perhaps you could explain to me just how a person is supposed to know that, if there isn’t a sign to tell them so?’
�There doesn’t need to be a sign,’ Finn told her through gritted teeth. �It’s perfectly plain from any map that this is virtually a single-track road which leads to a dead end. Women,’ he exploded sardonically. �Why is it they seem pathologically incapable of reading maps?’
Maggie had had enough—all the more so because of the small inner logical voice that was trying to tell her unwantedly that her adversary had a point.
�I can read a map perfectly well, thank you, and I can read human beings even better. You are the rudest, most arrogant, most…irritating man I have ever met,’ she told him forcefully.
�And you are the most impossible woman I have ever met,’ Finn retaliated.
Silently they looked at one another in mutual hostility.
CHAPTER TWO
MAGGIE finished the call she had just made to her assistant explaining to her what had happened and asking her to organise the cancellation and reissue of her credit cards.
�Do you want them sent direct to you where you are?’ Gayle had asked her.
�Er, no…Get them to send them to the hotel for me instead, please Gayle. Oh, and when you report what’s happened to my insurance company and the garage make sure they know I’m going to need a courtesy car, will you?’
She had kept the details of what had happened brief, cutting through Gayle’s shocked exclamations after she had retreated to the room Finn Gordon had shown her to, clutching the mobile telephone he had loaned her. It galled her to have to ask him for anything, and she frowned now as she quickly dialled her grandmother’s number. She hadn’t told her what she was planning to do, had simply fibbed instead that she was going away on business for a few days.
The fraility in Arabella Russell’s voice when she answered Maggie’s call choked Maggie’s own voice with emotion.
Standing outside the partially open door, with the cup of tea he had made for his unexpected and unwanted guest, Finn heard the soft liquid note of love in her voice as she asked, �Are you all right, darling?’
Stepping back sharply from the door, he wondered why the knowledge that there was a man, a lover in Maggie’s life should be so unwelcome.
They had exchanged names earlier, with a reluctance and formality which in other circumstances he would have found ruefully amusing. Despite her bedraggled state, Maggie still managed to look far too desirable for his comfort. He had tried to reassure himself that his preference was and always had been for brunettes, and that he preferred blue eyes to brown, but he had still found himself staring at her for just that little bit too long.
Her call to her grandmother over, Maggie examined her surroundings. The room Finn had shown her to was large, and mercifully possessed its own bathroom. Its dormer windows looked out onto fields, beyond which lay some awesomely steep hills clothed in trees. The autumn light was already fading. What on earth was she going to do, stuck here until the river subsided? Maggie wondered bitterly.
Her request to her �host’ for access to his computer so that she could e-mail Gayle had met with a grim and uncompromising, �I don’t have one. I prefer to choose whom I allow to intrude into my life.’
Which had been a dig at her as well as a reinforcement of his dislike of technology, Maggie suspected. The man was positively Neanderthal. Everyone had a computer. Everyone, that was, but this farmer she had managed to get herself trapped with. Crossly Maggie acknowledged that if fate had done it deliberately to annoy her it couldn’t have produced a man who would antagonise and irritate her more, or whose lifestyle was so much the opposite of hers. So far as she was concerned the river could not go down fast enough—and not just because of the impending auction.
In his kitchen, Finn was listening to the local weather forecast on the radio. As yet no one had been able to come up with any an explanation for the freak storm that had been so oddly localised and which, it seemed, had caused chaos which was only limited to within a few miles of the farm.
Finn hoped the river would be crossable in time for the auction. He preferred to bid in person rather than by phone; he liked to see the faces of his competitors so that he could gauge their strengths and weaknesses. Not that he was expecting to have much competition for the estate so far as the main house and the agricultural land went. However, when it came to the estate cottages it was a different matter. There was no way he wanted second home owners or holidaymakers living on his land. No, what he wanted was his privacy. What he wanted—
He turned round as the kitchen door opened and Maggie walked in. She had removed the jacket of her suit and the thin silk blouse she was wearing revealed the soft swell of her breasts, surprisingly well rounded in such an otherwise fragile fine-boned woman. The sight of her in silk shirt, plain gold earrings and straight tailored black skirt, but minus her shoes, caused Finn to smile slightly.
Immediately her chin came up, her eyes flashing warningly. �One word,’ she cautioned him. �Just one word and I’ll…’
Finn couldn’t resist. �You’ll what?’ he goaded her. �Throw something at me? A shoe, perhaps?’
�I’m a mature woman,’ Maggie told him through gritted teeth. �I do not throw things…ever.’
�What? Not even caution to the winds, in the arms of your lover?’ Finn derided her. �How very disappointing that must be for him.’
Maggie couldn’t believe her ears. How on earth had they managed to get on such personal ground?
�I do not have a lover,’ she heard herself telling Finn sharply.
Finn digested her too-quick denial with silent cynicism. He already knew that she was lying. She embodied everything he most disliked about the life he had left behind him. So why did he feel this virtual compulsion just to stand and look at her? He had seen more beautiful women, and he had certainly known far more sexually encouraging women. She had an almost visible ten-foot-high fence around her, warning him to keep his distance—which was exactly what he wanted and intended to do. So why was a reckless part of him hungrily wondering what it would feel like to hold her, to kiss her, to…?
Compressing his mouth against the folly of such thoughts, he said curtly, “I’m going out to lock up the fowl for the night. If you want something to eat help yourself from the fridge.’
Help herself? Eat on her own? Well, he certainly believed in being hospitable, Maggie reflected waspishly as she watched him walk out into the yard. If she’d been in the City now she would still have been working. She rarely finished work before eight, often leaving her office even later, and most evenings she either had dinner with clients or friends; if with friends at one of the City’s high-profile restaurants, if with clients somewhere equally expensive but far more discreet.
Her apartment possessed a state-of-the-art stainless steel kitchen, but Maggie had never cooked in it. She could cook, of course. Well, sort of. Her grandmother was a wonderful cook and had always encouraged Maggie to concentrate on her studies whilst she was growing up, and somehow there had never been time for Maggie to learn domestic skills from her.
Well, at least if she had something to eat now she could retreat to her room and stay there. Who knew? By tomorrow the river might be fordable again. Certainly if it was possible for a person to will that to happen then that person would be Maggie.
Skirting the large table in the middle of the room, she looked disparagingly at the untidy mess of books and papers cluttering it. An old-fashioned chair complete with a snoozing cat was pulled up in front of the Aga, not a bright shiny new Aga, Maggie noticed, but an ancient chipped cream one. The whole house had a rundown air about it, a sad shabbiness that evoked feelings in her she didn’t want to examine.
Maggie had spent the early years of her childhood being dragged from one set of rented lodgings to another by her mother after the break-up of her parents’ marriage. Every time her mother had met a new man they had moved, and inevitably, when the romance ended, they had moved again. In some people such a life might have created a deep-seated need for stability and the comfort and reassurance of a close loving relationship with a partner, in Maggie it had created instead a ferocious determination to make herself completely and totally independent.
This house reminded her of those days and that life and she didn’t like it. Nothing in Maggie’s life now—the life she had created for herself—was shabby or needy, nothing was impermanent or entered into impulsively without cautious and careful thought. Everything she surrounded herself with was like her: shiny, clean, groomed, planned, ordered and controlled.
Or rather like she normally was, she corrected herself, as she looked down at her unshod feet in their expensive designer tights. Maggie never went barefoot—not even in the privacy of her own home—and most certainly never in anyone else’s home. To her being barefoot was surely synonymous with being poor, and vulnerable, and either of those things made her feel weak and afraid and angry with herself for feeling that way.
Quickly she went to open the fridge door. She was becoming far too dangerously introspective. As she looked into the fridge her eyes widened.
Finn pushed open the back door and removed his boots. The paddock was a quagmire of mud, partially due to the activities of the ducks and partially to the recent downpour. He had had the devil of a time catching one of the bantams, and had even got to the point of consigning the little wretch to the devil and the nightly marauding fox, but in the end his inherent concern for its safety had won out and he had persevered, finally managing to lock it up safely.
He was cold and hungry and his afternoon’s unscheduled meeting with the alpaca breeder had meant that he hadn’t made the chilli he had intended to prepare for his supper. He had an evening’s worth of paperwork in front of him, which he wasn’t looking forward to. Perhaps he was making life harder for himself than it needed to be by refusing to install a computer. It would certainly make his paperwork easier.
As he kicked off his muddy boots he could see Maggie staring into the open fridge.
�What’s wrong?’ he demanded as he walked across to her.
�Everything in here’s raw,’ Maggie responded in consternation. Like him, she was hungry, and had somehow been expecting…well, if not the kind of meal that would be served at one of London’s stylish restaurants, then at least a pizza.
An answering frown of disapproval furrowed Finn’s own forehead, as he listened to her.
�What else did you expect? This is a farm, not a supermarket,’ he told her dryly. �We live at the beginning of the food chain, not at its end.’
�But it all needs cooking,’ Maggie protested. She was looking at him with a mixture of hauteur and disdain that made Finn long to shake her.
�Look, this isn’t some fancy city restaurant; of course it needs cooking.’
To his astonishment Maggie slammed the fridge door shut and stepped back from it. �I’ve decided that I’m not hungry,’ she told him coolly.
�Well, no, I don’t suppose you are. You look as though you don’t live on much more than a few overrated radicchio leaves,’ Finn told her unkindly.
Maggie wasn’t sure what infuriated her most, his contempt for her figure or his contempt for her lifestyle. And anyway, how did a man like him know to name the City’s current of-the-moment salad ingredient? Maggie wondered sourly.
�Well, you may not be hungry, but I most certainly am,’ he told her, reaching past her to re-open the fridge door.
At such close quarters Maggie could actually feel the male heat coming off his body as well as see its unwantedly disturbing male strength. What on earth was the matter with her? She had never been the kind of woman who had been interested in or affected by the sight of a well-defined muscular torso. And he had the kind of facial bone structure that any male model would pay a plastic surgeon thousands for, she decided unkindly, driven by a raw need to somehow punish him for making her aware of him at all, even if it was only in the privacy of her own thoughts. He was all taut male planes and angles, and as for his eyes—surely it was impossible for a man with such dark brown hair to have such shockingly dangerous steel-blue eyes?
�Changed your mind?’ she heard Finn asking her.
�What…? I…?’ As she started to stammer with unfamiliar self-consciousness she wondered how on earth he could have guessed that she was unexpectedly being forced to revise her first impression of him as a man she found physically unappealing, despite his good looks.
�You look hungry,’ Finn explained patiently.
She looked hungry! Maggie felt her face start to burn, and then realised that Finn couldn’t possibly mean what she had thought he meant, that he couldn’t possibly know what she was thinking and feeling…yes, feeling…For a man she hardly knew—a man she didn’t want to know. What on earth was happening to her? The thoughts she was having—they were…they were impossible, inadmissible, unthinkable. But as they stood facing one another, with the fridge door open between them, the most peculiar feeling was sweeping over Maggie, an odd sort of light-headedness combined with an awareness of Finn as a man in the most shockingly intimate sort of way, so shocking, in fact, that—Maggie shook her head, trying to dispel her riotously erotic thoughts, her face growing pink at their temerity and inventiveness. This was totally alien to her. She had never before imagined, dreamed, nor wanted to imagine or dream such things, such needs, such desires. Even the air she was breathing seemed to be filled with a sense of urgency and excitement—of expectation, almost—that she was totally at a loss to understand. It was almost as though someone or something outside herself was forcing her to see Finn in a different light…
Finn’s eyes narrowed assessingly as he saw Maggie’s pupils dilate. She had started to breathe more quickly, her lips parting, her breasts rising and falling in a way that made it impossible for him not to be aware of her femininity. He had the most extraordinarily intense desire to close the fridge door and to take her in his arms and…
Grimly he turned away from her.
�I intended to cook a chilli for my own supper; there’ll be more than enough for two.’
He sounded curtly dismissive, as though he was secretly hoping she would refuse. Well, tough—why should she? She wasn’t going to go to bed supperless just to please some arrogant, impossible man. No way.
�I take it you won’t be cooking dinner wearing that?’ she said tartly, determined to wrest control of the situation into her own domain as she flicked a deliberately disparaging glance at his ancient coat.
The look Finn gave her sent a prickle of alluring excitement that was totally alien to her racing down her spine.
�No, I won’t be,’ he agreed, his voice mock affable as he added carelessly, �In fact you could get the chilli started whilst I go up and have a shower. Here’s the mince,’ he informed her as he removed a covered container from the bottom of the fridge. �I shan’t be long.’
Helplessly Maggie stared at the container he had given her before going over to the worktop and reluctantly opening it. What she should have done was tell him in no uncertain terms before he had left the kitchen that there was no way she was going to be turned into some kind of unpaid domestic help and that he could make his own supper. But, having missed that opportunity to put him in his place and save her own face, she had no option other than to try to cook the wretched stuff. There was no way, not ever in a hundred years, a thousand years, that she was going to admit to him that she had no idea how to cook it.
Anyway, it couldn’t be that difficult, could it? She had seen her grandmother cooking whilst she worked on her homework at the kitchen table. It was surely just a matter of putting it in a pan and…Her forehead furrowed into a frown of concentration as she tried to remember just what her grandmother had done, mentally picturing her in the comfortable kitchen of the home that she had made Maggie’s. She could visualise her grandmother plainly enough, smiling, bustling between the cooker and the sink whilst delicious mouthwatering smells filled the room. But as to what she had actually been doing…
Maggie mentally squared her shoulders. She could do it. She had to do it. There was no way she would ever concede victory to that…that farmer.
She needed a pan first, and the logical place for that had to be in a cupboard close to the Aga. Pleased with her own intelligence, she went towards it.
Five minutes later, when she had checked every cupboard in the kitchen, red-faced and fuming, she finally found what she was looking for on the opposite side of the room. And men had the audacity to claim that women were illogical. Ha!
Decanting the contents of the container into the pan, she grimaced in distaste. It looked unappealingly raw. She carried the pan over to the Aga and stood nonplussed in front of it before tentatively lifting one of the covers. The heat coming off the hotplate made her wince before hastily putting the pan down on it and stepping back. Now all she had to do was to wait for the stuff to cook. Good.
Upstairs in his bedroom, Finn rubbed his damp hair dry and then dropped the towel to reach for a clean shirt to pull over his naked torso. He didn’t want to analyse why he had found it necessary not just to shower but to shave as well, and he wasn’t going to.
A pungent smell was beginning to fill the air. He sniffed it warily and then frowned. Something was burning. Without bothering to put on his shirt, he made for the door.
In the kitchen, Maggie couldn’t understand what was happening. A horrid pall of smoke was filling the room—and as for the smell! The mince couldn’t be cooked yet, surely? She had a memory, admittedly vague, of her grandmother spending far longer than a mere few minutes cooking hers!
Cautiously she approached the Aga, and was just about to lift the lid off the pan when Finn came bursting into the kitchen.
�What the hell are you doing?’ he was demanding as he strode past her and grabbed the pan off the stove, carrying it over to the sink, where he dumped it unceremoniously then removed its lid to peer in disgust at its smoking contents before turning on the tap.
�It’s not my fault if your cooker isn’t reliable,’ Maggie informed him with a bravado she was far from feeling.
�My cooker!’ Finn exclaimed through gritted teeth. �It isn’t the cooker that’s unreliable, it’s the cook. Why on earth didn’t you add some more water to it?’
Some more water. Maggie gulped and looked away, feigning disdain, but obviously her acting wasn’t good enough, because to her chagrin she heard Finn saying in an oh, so dangerously soft voice, �You did add water, didn’t you?’
Maggie swallowed. Her grandmother had had very strong views about lying, but surely on this occasion…
�You didn’t, did you?’ Finn breathed in disbelief.
Maggie affected a nonchalant shrug. �So we favour different schools of cooking…’
�Different schools?’ His eyes narrowed. �You haven’t a clue, have you?’ He scoffed sardonically. �Thank you, fate. Not only have I got to house her; I’ve got to feed her as well. Tell me,’ he invited unkindly, �just how many other non-skills do you possess that are likely to bring havoc to my life? You can’t read a map, you can’t cook, you—’
�Stop it.’
Maggie wasn’t sure which of them was the more shocked by the sound of her tear-filled voice.
The silence it caused seemed to stretch for ever, hostility giving way to shock, shock to a soft little prickle of sensual tension which in turn led…
�I’m sorry.’ It was the gruff note of real apology in Finn’s voice that did it, Maggie assured herself later. That and the fact that she had really been intending to walk past him and out of the room—would have walked past him if her eyes hadn’t been blurred by tears of shame and anger causing her instead to walk into him, into him and into…into his arms.
CHAPTER THREE
�I’M SORRY. I didn’t mean to hurt you,’ Finn apologised gruffly, as he pushed the silky hair back off Maggie’s face, his fingertips enjoying the soft delicacy of her skin. Her throat seemed to fit the curve of his hand perfectly. She was trembling slightly, and in his own body…
�You haven’t. You didn’t,’ Maggie responded huskily. She couldn’t stop looking at him; their glances were meeting, meshing, mating; she didn’t want to stop looking at him.
�I’ll make us something else to eat,’ Finn offered. He knew he should release her, but he didn’t want to, couldn’t bear to.
Maggie shook her head. �It’s you I’m hungry for,’ she whispered softly. �Not food. Just you. Only you, Finn.’
As she lifted her face towards his Maggie knew that she had never done anything in the whole of her life that felt more right than this, more right than Finn.
Finn tried to apply the brakes of caution and common sense to the escalating urgency of his response to her, but one look into the dark haze of her passion-filled eyes had much the same effect on those brakes as the wall of water sweeping down the river had had on Maggie’s car.
His kiss was tentative at first, his lips exploring the soft curves of hers, but then she moved closer to him, nestling into his arms, her breathing quickening, the look in her eyes making Finn groan out loud.
�Kiss me, Finn,’ Maggie whispered insistently, adding with a shaky urgency that made Finn catch his own breath in fierce longing, �Properly this time.’
�Like this, do you mean?’
Finn’s hand slid beneath her hair, supporting her head as they gazed helplessly at one another. They kissed quickly, as though equally wary of what they were doing, equally wary of their mutual hunger for one another. Brief, fierce kisses were snatched, as though they were starving, in fear of being deprived of the means of satisfying their hunger. But slowly their kisses became longer, deeper.
Behind her closed eyelids, Maggie savoured the richness of the texture of Finn’s mouth. His kisses were the most extraordinarily sensual she had ever experienced. Without doing anything more than holding her and kissing her he had made her whole body come alive with longing for him. Everything about him was having the most erotic aphrodisiacal effect on her, making her think things, want things, want him, with a female ardour and urgency that left her breathless. Breathless and aching, eager, hungry, and wanting him. Just as he wanted her. Finn was a man, and even if his kisses hadn’t shown her that he wanted her as passionately as she did him his body would have given him away.
Experimentally she slid her tongue-tip into his mouth. The arm he had wrapped around her body tightened and she felt him shudder, felt too the corresponding quiver of reaction that set her own limbs shaking.
�Don’t do that unless you mean it,’ Finn warned her rawly. Heat flamed in his eyes, and beneath her explorative fingertips the hard high planes of his cheekbones burned.
�I do mean it,’ Maggie responded. Automatically she looked round the kitchen, and, correctly sensing what she was seeking, what she was thinking, Finn released her from his arms and took hold of her hand, silently leading her out of the kitchen and towards the stairs.
His bedroom was on the opposite side of the landing to the room he had given her. Silently he drew her into it, and equally silently Maggie went with him. It was simply and traditionally furnished, and at any other time she would have turned her nose up its shabbiness and lack of style. But the bed was large, with heavy iron head and footboards.
The air in the room was clean and slightly cold, so that Maggie shivered a little.
Watching her, Finn remembered how cold he too had found the farmhouse when he had first moved in. It didn’t possess any central heating, but he had grown used to its lack of modern conveniences.
As she shivered again Maggie instinctively moved closer to Finn, seeking the warmth of his body. The sensation of his arms closing around her was so intense that it rocked her on her heels. As they kissed Maggie felt as though Finn’s warmth was wrapping itself all around her, enfolding her. She could feel his hands moving over her body and she started to tremble. Not with cold now, but with a growing ache of need.
Unable to resist their temptation, Finn explored the taut shape of Maggie’s breasts. Her nipples, tight and erect, pressed into his palms through the fine silk of her shirt. Opening his eyes, he absorbed the eroticism of their tautness pushing against the fabric before slowly circling them with his thumb-tip.
Maggie had forgotten that she had ever been cold now. Feverishly she slid her palms over Finn’s naked torso. She ached to see all of him. To touch all of him, and now, oh yes, right now.
She had just made the very interesting discovery that when she trailed her fingertips across his collarbone and then down his arm his whole body shuddered in sharp response, and when she placed her hand flat against his chest and then moved it lower, so low that it was resting on the belt of his jeans, that shudder became a whole lot more intense.
His own hand was travelling the length of her spine, taking her mind off the way he was reacting and focusing it instead on the way she was feeling. Arousal, hot and sharp, lifted her skin in tiny goosebumps against his touch, as though it just couldn’t get close enough to him.
She exhaled softly as Finn’s hand moved to the buttons on her shirt, and then found that the sensation of his fingertips brushing against her naked skin as he unfastened them was making it impossible for her to breathe in again.
As he pulled the fabric back from Maggie’s body Finn acknowledged that what was happening between them was destroying virtually every belief he had about what he wanted from life.
Watching him, and seeing the open, raw male sensuality blazing out of his heavily-lidded eyes, Maggie exhaled.
The feel of her soft sweet breath gusting warmly against his bare skin made Finn grit his teeth against the ferocity of his reaction to her. The air ached with the sexual tension stretching between them.
As Finn leaned forward to kiss first one of her naked breasts and then the other, Maggie moaned sharply, her body arching towards him in mute supplication.
It was too much for Finn’s self-control; she was too much for his self-control. Quickly removing the rest of her clothes and his own, Finn lifted Maggie onto the bed.
The coldness of the cotton duvet beneath her bare back made Maggie shiver, but the heat of her desire for Finn soon burned away that cold. Her body throbbed with longing for him, and the feel of his hands on her skin as he lowered himself against her and slid them beneath her to lift her hips to meet his own made her cry out, a wild tormented female sound of need that echoed the turbulence darkening her eyes.
�Finn,’ she cried out his name as she wrapped herself around him, pressing wild hot kisses against his skin, his throat, his jaw, his mouth, holding it captive with her own whilst her body shook. �Now, Finn,’ she begged him passionately. �Now.’
It was the force of the river at full flood, the warmth of the sun on a tropical beach, the cool magical clarity of a frosty sky married to the purity of newly fallen snow; it was every pleasure she had ever know intensified a million times. He filled her body with joy and her heart with an emotion so intense that it spilled from her eyes in pure gleaming tears and from her mouth in a golden sound of loving words. It was a revelation, and somehow an affirmation. It was a world she had always stubbornly refused to believe could exist and at the same time a world a secret part of her had always longed to inhabit. It was. It was Finn and it was love. And as her body came down from the heights his had taken it to and she lay drifting on the soft safe warm afterswell of pleasure, lying at peace in his arms, Maggie turned to look at the man who had just totally changed her life.
Gazing deep into his eyes, she lifted her fingertips to his face, tracing its contours wonderingly. Looking back at her, Finn took her hand and held it against his lips, tenderly kissing her fingers.
�I love you.’
Maggie could see shock followed by an intense burn of emotion darkening Finn’s eyes as she said the simple words.
Saying them had shocked her as well—so much so, in fact, that she immediately longed to call them back, wondering frantically why she had ever uttered them, furiously angry with herself for the vulnerability they were now causing her to feel. As though desperate to escape them she tried to turn away from Finn, but he refused to allow her to do so, taking hold of her instead, his hands gentle on the tense resistance of her body.
�What is it? What’s wrong?’ he asked her quietly.
�Nothing,’ Maggie lied sharply as she tried to evade the quiet depth of his searching gaze.
�Yes, there is.’ Finn contradicted her. �You’re angry because you said you love me.’
�No,’ Maggie denied fiercely, but she could tell from the expression in Finn’s eyes that he didn’t believe her.
�I don’t know why I said it.’ She tried to cover herself. �It must have been some kind of knee-jerk adolescent reaction to the fact that we…’
When she stopped Finn supplied softly for her, �That we made love? Is that what you’re trying to say?’
Maggie shook her head. She had been intending to use the words �had sex’, if for no other reason than to remind herself of just what the reality of their situation was. But something in Finn’s eyes had warned her against doing so.
�We’re both adults, Maggie,’ Finn was telling her gently. �Why should it be so difficult for us to use the word �love’ about what we’ve just shared, about one another? There was love between us. And to deny that…’
He paused and shook his head, whilst Maggie, thoroughly unnerved by what he was saying burst out sharply, �We hardly know one another. We can’t.’
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