Merlyn's Magic (3 page)

'For God's sake,' the man at her side exclaimed, 'let's
get inside where it's at least dry!'

It was 'at least' the most beautifully furnished house
Merlyn had ever seen, the whole of the downstairs area that was visible
from the entrance hall decorated in subtle greens, greys, and
off-white. Huge cut-glass chandeliers adorned the high ceilings and the
delicately ornate staircase in front of her was like something out of a
fairy-story—or a film-set, Hollywood-style, that is; things
weren't done as grandly in England. What was clearly apparent was that
it wasn't a hotel but a family home!

Her dismay was obvious as her gaze returned to her
reluctant host. 'I'm sorry, I seem to have —Atishoo!' The
force of the sneeze made her shake uncontrollably, her eyes starting to
water.

'You
seem
to have caught pneumonia,'
her host remarked wryly. 'Come on.' He took her arm and pulled her
towards the staircase.

'Where are we going?' Merlyn voiced her alarm. After all,
what did she know about this man? She had no way of telling if he had
any more right to be here than she did; he could just be taking refuge
from the storm too. He certainly didn't look wealthy enough to actually
own this house! Unless he was the caretaker? That was quite possible.
If she had a house like this she wouldn't want to leave it unattended.
But the man facing her didn't look the type she would entrust her
lovely home to either! Well, maybe
she
would.
After all, she suspected she could entrust her heart to him without too
much encouragement.

'Upstairs,' he murmured softly. 'Scared?'

The recipient of a lot of teasing from a much older
brother, Merlyn had never liked to be mocked, her eyes sparkling
challengingly. 'Of you?' she taunted in a derisive voice.

His mouth quirked. 'Why not? As soon as I get you upstairs
I'm going to rip all your clothes off,' he stated calmly.

Merlyn stiffened, drawing herself up to all of her five
feet five inches in height, aware even as she did so that the man
seemed to tower over her by nearly a foot, and that he weighed at least
a hundred and eighty pounds. As she had driven up she hadn't seen
another house anywhere near this one, and she was well aware that she
would stand little or no chance against his weight and size if he
should decide to take advantage of her vulnerability.

Nevertheless, she stood her ground. 'I might have
something to say about that,' she murmured.

Dark brows rose. 'Judo expert, are you?' he mocked.

'I could be,' she evaded determinedly.

'Do you usually make this much fuss about taking your
clothes off for a shower?' he taunted.

'Shower?' she blinked. 'You—'

'Yes?' he teased softly.

There were two red spots of anger in her otherwise pale
cheeks, her indignation apparent by the scathing look she was sending
him, the whole effect ruined by the ignominious sneeze she suddenly
gave.

'No more arguments,' he declared, pulling her up the
stairs with little regard for her stumbling, pushing her into a bedroom
and stripping her coat off her before she had time to stop him. She did
manage to pull back as he began to unbutton her blouse. 'What is it?'
He frowned at her modesty. 'I have seen the unclothed female body
before,' he told her impatiently.

She didn't doubt it. There was a raw masculinity about him
that bespoke an intimate knowledge with women and his power over them.
But he hadn't seen
her
body before, and that was
the one she was worried about. Her hands placed over his halted his
movements. 'I don't even know your name,' said Merlyn in exasperation.

His brow cleared, the mockery back. 'You mean that if we
had been formally introduced you would have let me take your clothes
off without protest?' he drawled.

This time the twin spots of colour in her cheeks were from
embarrassment. 'No, I—'

'You can call me Rand.' He sighed his impatience with her
indignant anger. 'And if you won't let me undress you then at least
have the good sense to do so yourself, and then get into a hot shower.
I'll be downstairs making us some coffee.' He walked forcefully from
the room.

Merlyn was left with the impression that she had just
survived a whirlwind. She sank slowly down on to the bed behind her,
until she realised her sodden clothes would be dampening the silky
peach coverlet. She stood up to undress, her thoughts with the puzzling
man downstairs.

Rand. It had a nice sound to it. Her glance fell to the
bed beside her. How would it feel to be in that bed beside him, her
body entwined with his, crying out his name as he possessed her?
Because that man would possess, not merely make love. That warm
tingling she had known when she first looked at him returned to her
body as she envisaged his dark head next to her fiery one on the
pillows. He—

'Here you are.' Rand walked back into the room without
warning, carrying her suitcase and vanity now, his eyes narrowing on
the nakedness of her flesh beneath the dark blue of her unfastened
blouse. Merlyn didn't need to look down to know that her flesh looked
like pale ivory against the dark material.

Again that feeling of time standing still possessed her,
and she made no effort to conceal the rounded curve of her breasts from
his gaze. Instead, she made a rather provocative movement which brought
the barely concealed nipples into thrusting prominence against the
silky caress of the material.

Rand turned away abruptly. 'I thought you might like a
change of clothes,' he bit out. 'Come downstairs when you're ready.
I'll be in the lounge.'

As the breath slowly released from her lungs, Merlyn
became aware that she hadn't drawn a breath since the moment Rand had
burst in with her cases. No man had
ever
had this
effect on her, and she found the feeling very disquietening. She didn't
go around thrusting her body at men she had just met either. But then,
she had never wanted a man like this before! Something was definitely
making her act out of character, because she came from a family that
masked their emotions, that didn't make any overt shows of feeling.
Thrusting herself at Rand had been positively blatant!

The hot shower she took soothed the chill from her bones,
it also stopped her teeth from chattering, what it didn't do was dampen
that inner heat she had known from the moment she set eyes on Rand, as
if her body knew and recognised him.

It was so ridiculous, had to be part of some sort of
fever. For the first time in her life she wished flu on
herself—she certainly couldn't actually want to make love
with a complete stranger.

Pointedly keeping her gaze averted from the bed that had
given her such erotic thoughts a few minutes ago, she gratefully pulled
on dry denims and a warm jumper, although in the centrally-heated house
the latter would probably be too hot once she was thoroughly rid of the
chill that still racked her body. Her hair was already part-way dry,
and she brushed it loosely down her back, ruefully accepting that it
would become a mass of thick curls without the use of her hair-dryer to
style it. In a profession where appearances often counted for
everything, she had forgotten the last time her hair had been allowed
to dry in this wild way. Oh well, what was the point in worrying about
that now, when there wasn't a thing she could do about it? And she
couldn't possibly look any worse than she had when she arrived!

The door to the bedroom opposite hers stood open now and,
her curiosity piqued, Merlyn couldn't resist a glance inside. Like the
rest of the house it was a splendidly furnished room, very masculine,
and obviously belonged to her reluctant host, the huge bed easily able
to accommodate his large frame, the peach and brown decor warm but
lacking any femininity. It was a man's room, and—

Merlyn felt as if the breath had been knocked from her
body as she stared at the photograph on the table beside the bed. It
was of a beautiful, dark-haired woman with laughing blue eyes, love
glowing in those eyes for the person on the other side of the camera.

Merlyn was drawn like a magnet to the inscription in the
bottom right-hand corner of the photograph. 'Darling, I love you'. It
didn't say who darling was, but because it was Rand's bedroom it had to
be him, there was no signature to the declaration, but there didn't
need to be one; no one who had lived in England the last ten years
could help but know the woman who had dominated both British screen and
theatre for that time. Suzie Forrester…

He had said his name was Rand, but—
Brandon
?
Was that man downstairs Brandon Carmichael, Suzie's husband?

It wasn't surprising Merlyn hadn't recognised him, the
only photographs she had seen of him had him dressed like the
millionaire businessman that he was; the man downstairs wore faded and
old clothes, and he didn't look as if he had shaved or had his hair cut
for years. Years?
Two
years? Since the death of
his wife…

Suzie Forrester's illness and then tragic death had been a
blow to everyone who had ever seen her act, but to her husband of eight
years it had been a loss from which he was reported never to have
recovered.

He was never going to believe that Merlyn's arrival here
had been accidental. He was going to think the whole thing had been
staged so that she could meet him!

She
looked at her host with new eyes when she joined him in the lounge,
able to see some remnants of styling left in the overlong dark hair,
also able to see the grey among the black on closer inspection. She
knew Brandon Carmichael, or
Rand
Carmichael as he
seemed to prefer to be known by those he chose to admit into the
intimacy of his friendship—and after the way she had
blundered in here she doubted she would ever be admitted into that
small circle—was thirty-nine years old and, despite the
youthfully overlong hair and the lean muscularity of his body, he
looked it!

He was watching her in return, those silver eyes narrowed
speculatively as she eyed him nervously. 'You'll want to telephone the
hotel,' he spoke with sudden impatience.

'Will I?' She blinked cat-like eyes, wondering where all
her confidence had gone when she needed it so desperately. 'I mean, I
will. Of course I will,' she dismissed, irritated with herself for
acting like a bumbling idiot. 'Anne will be worried about me.'

Those silver eyes glinted warily now. 'You're a friend of
hers?'

She wouldn't recognise the other woman if there were only
the two of them in the same room together! But she didn't stand a
chance of persuading this man into letting her play the part of his
wife now, had ruined any chance of that the moment she struggled to
open those iron gates and drove inside. She should have known a hotel
wouldn't shut its gates in that way, and she probably would have done
if she hadn't felt so wet and cold by that time that she just wanted to
take shelter somewhere, anywhere. Christopher was going to be far from
amused when she told him what she had done, she didn't find it all that
amusing herself!

'Sort of,' she answered Rand evasively, avoiding going
into the details of that acquaintance as she frowned up at him. 'Is the
hotel far from here?'

He shrugged. 'A couple of miles. It's at the other end of
the estate.'

Merlyn knew from her research on Suzie Forrester that the
Forrester sisters had been the only children of wealthy land-owner John
Forrester, and that his estate had been left jointly to his daughters
on his death. As she had initially guessed, this was the main house, so
Anne must have built her hotel on her half.

'Don't worry,' Rand mocked, positioned to the left of the
fireplace, a cheery fire burning there in the chill of this mid-summer
day. 'You're far from the first person to make this mistake, this house
is called The Forresters, the hotel, The Forest.' He shrugged. 'They're
too similar. Although usually the wall and gates keep people out of
here,' he added dryly, seeming to imply as he did so that there was
nothing 'usual' about her!

She was blushing more today than she had the last eight
years, and she felt incredibly stupid. 'I'm sorry,' she grimaced. 'I've
driven up from Manchester, taken so many wrong turns that I must have
added twenty miles on to my journey; I was just desperate to reach the
hotel by the time I spotted your gates.'

He nodded. 'I'll pour the coffee while you call Anne. You
aren't going to be able to make it there tonight, I'm afraid.'

'What?' she gasped, her horror reflected in her eyes. 'But
you said it's only a couple of miles away.' She shook her head. 'I can
leave straight after I've had my coffee.'

'Unfortunately not,' he drawled, pouring the coffee.

'Why not?' she attacked. She had driven up here, she could
drive back out again!

'You remember the ford you crossed about half a mile from
here?' He arched dark brows, down on his haunches beside the low table.

She had been so blinded by the rain by that time that she
had been lucky to stay on the road, let alone remember crossing a ford;
the whole road had looked like a river to her. But if he said there was
a ford then she believed him; she doubted many people disbelieved what
this man said. If they did they were fools.

'It's flooded.' Rand straightened, the silver eyes cold at
her dismayed expression.

'You mean it's completely impassable?' she groaned,
needing to have her worst fear confirmed rather than just imagined.

'Unless your car floats, yes.' He gave a mocking
inclination of his head.

'Is there another hotel near here?' Merlyn could feel her
panic rising at the thought of being stranded here and left dependent
on this man. When she had to tell him who she was she would be lucky if
he didn't throw her out into the rain again to take her chances!