The Perfect Match Read online

  'I don't think I'm ever going to want you to let go,'

  Chrissie admitted honestly, closing her eyes, caught halfway between tears and laughter as her emotions overwhelmed her. 'I still can't quite believe that all this is happening,' she added. 'I only came to Haslewich to sort out my...things here.'

  'You came because fate had already decreed that we should meet,' Guy corrected her softly.

  'I...I wouldn't even be here if I wasn't represent-ing...' Her voice tailed off. Despite what her mother had said to her, she knew she had to tell him the truth and explain exactly who she was.

  But Guy had other things on his mind and Chrissie abandoned any attempt to talk to him as he started to kiss her—again!

  'You're late and you're lucky we kept you a table,'

  his sister told Guy severely over two hours later when they finally made it to the restaurant.

  Standing at his side, Chrissie was blushingly conscious of just how she must look and of just how many of the subtle and not-so-subtle signs of how they had spent the past few hours must be clearly evident.

  No amount of make-up could possibly cover the tell-tale glow warming her skin or the softness of her eyes, the bee-stung, kiss-swollen shape of her mouth, the sensual languor that still possessed her body. And she was conscious, too, of the discreet but very thorough inspection Guy's sister was giving her.

  Like him, she, too, was dark-haired with arresting good looks. He had told Chrissie earlier when she had been unable to stop herself commenting with female appreciation on the powerful shape of his body and the dark golden warmth of his skin that he owed his physical appearance to the genes he had inherited from his Gypsy ancestor.

  'Theirs was a relationship that caused quite a scan-dal at the time,' he had explained wryly and told her the story of how he came to have Gypsy blood in his veins and how, even now, as a family they were not always totally accepted by everyone locally.

  'People in small towns have long memories and there was a time centuries ago when the description

  "gypsy" was synonymous with the word " t h i e f ' , at least in some people's eyes. I want you to know exactly what you're getting,' he had added, watching her. 'Good and bad, because, make no mistake, my love, I mean to be a permanent part of your life, a very permanent part of your life.'

  Chrissie had been too overwhelmed with emotion to make any coherent response or to tell him about her own family.

  'He's definitely in love with her,' Frances exclaimed positively to her husband once she had shown them to their table and returned to the kitchen. 'You can tell just by the way he looks at her.'

  'Of course you can,' her husband scoffed. 'Fran, Guy is damn near forty and to the best of my knowledge he's had any number of women running after him, yes and he's let a good few of them catch him as well and...'

  'This is different,' his wife interrupted him firmly, tutting in disgust at his male lack of perception. She glanced at her watch and wondered if there was time to make a few phone calls. The rest of the family were going to be interested in what she had to tell them.

  'You're going to have to stop looking at me like that or we'll have to leave,' Guy warned her.

  'Looking at you like what?' Chrissie asked.

  But of course she knew. It made her feel giddy, light-headed, light-years away from her real self, to know that she could barely take her gaze away from his mouth, his body...his... Her real self?

  'Stop it,' she begged him huskily when he returned her look with an open sensuality that made her whole body go hot. 'We've got to be sensible,' she told him.

  'We—'

  'Sensible?' he queried ruefully. 'That's the last thing I feel like being, but I suppose you have a point.

  I don't even know how long you're going to be here or—'

  'I don't know myself yet,' Chrissie told him. 'I've got an appointment with Jon Crighton tomorrow.'

  'Jenny's husband,' he interjected, adding, 'Jenny Crighton is my partner in the antiques shop.'

  Chrissie frowned. Something about the way he said the other woman's name and the way he looked struck a disconcerting warning note.

  'Presumably you're acting for the Platt family. It's hardly surprising that they didn't want to deal with things personally.'

  'They can hardly be blamed for what...for what Charles did,' Chrissie protested defensively.

  'No, but this is a small town and people have long memories and narrow minds, as my family has good cause to know. Charlie treated a lot of people very badly and rightly or wrongly anyone turning up here now and claiming to be related to him is bound to be treated with suspicion.'

  'Is that what you would do?' Chrissie asked him a little stiffly.

  Guy smiled at her as he reached across the table to take hold of her hand and shrugged. 'Does it matter?

  If I'm honest, I don't suppose I would be inclined to look charitably on another member of the Platt family, but right now neither Charlie Platt nor anyone else is of the remotest interest to me. In fact, right now, there is only one person on my mind....' He smiled into her eyes tenderly. 'Right now, the only person I want to think about or talk about is you....'

  'There isn't anything to tell,' Chrissie fibbed uncomfortably. How could she tell him who she was after what he had just said? 'I'm here to represent the Platt family and I've got to see his solicitors and get the house put up for sale.'

  'Well, Jon Crighton will help you do all that. His family have been the town's solicitors for heaven knows how many years now. In fact, the original Crighton connection with the law goes back even beyond that, to Chester, where Jon's ancestor actually came from.

  'There are still Crightons practising as barristers and solicitors in Chester. And Jon and Jenny's elder son, Max, is presently a practising barrister in London. They're quite an extended clan, not quite so extensive as the Cookes, of course, but then, we have the advantage of our extremely prolific Gypsy genes to thank or blame for our colonisation of the town.'

  Prolific! How prolific? Chrissie wondered uneasily, suddenly acutely conscious of something she had neglected to discuss with Guy in the fierce immediacy of their need for one another. Something she was now shamefully aware she should have mentioned, checked...insisted upon, out of practical considera-tions and health-conscious maturity, if nothing else.

  But she had been too overwhelmed, too hungry for the feel of Guy inside her to spare a thought for something so practical, and Guy, she suspected, must have felt exactly the same.

  'Is something wrong?' she heard him asking her quietly.

  Quickly she shook her head. The contraceptive pills she had been prescribed to regulate her monthly cycle would normally have protected her, but she was guilti-ly aware that her most recent prescription was still unfilled in her purse and she had taken her last pill a few days ago. First thing in the morning, she would make sure she went to the chemist's, she promised herself.

  'Er...no...nothing,' she assured him, too distracted by the realisation that his sister was walking towards them to tell him what was bothering her.

  'Is everything all right?' Frances asked Guy wryly, as she surveyed their barely touched, and now cold, food.

  'Fine, but neither of us had much of an appetite,'

  Guy replied.

  'Not for food,' Chrissie thought she heard the other woman murmur wryly as she gestured to a waitress to collect their plates.

  'What time are you due to see Jon tomorrow?' Guy asked as soon as his sister had gone. 'Only I'm due to visit Lord Astlegh's estate manager in the morning to check over things for the Antiques Fair I'm organising there and I wondered if you'd like to come with me. It's quite an interesting house with some spectacular gardens.'

  'I'd love to,' Chrissie told him warmly. 'My appointment isn't actually until three...'

  'Wonderful, we can have lunch together, somewhere a little more private,' he added ruefully.

  His sister had sharper eyes than he had given her credit for, he acknowledged inwardly, and
she had certainly guessed exactly how he felt about Chrissie.

  He suspected she would lose no time in passing her discovery on to the rest of their family.

  'If you don't want anything else we could leave and have coffee somewhere a little quieter...'

  Chrissie looked at him knowing that everything she was feeling was in her eyes. 'Yes... I'd like that,' she told him a little breathlessly.

  She wasn't totally surprised when she discovered that he was taking her to his home, but her heart was thumping heavily when he guided her up the narrow pathway to the immaculately painted front door of the handsome, brick-built, three-storey terraced house with its Georgian facade.

  They entered a narrow but high-ceilinged hallway off which Guy opened a door, flicking on the lights to illuminate an elegantly furnished sitting room carpeted in a neutral sisal matting that showed off perfectly the room's antiques and at the same time blended with the two large, squashy, creamy damask-covered sofas that faced one another across the fire-place.

  'Make yourself at home,' Guy invited her. ' I'll go and make some coffee.'

  'I'll come with you,' Chrissie told him huskily, giving him a faintly tremulous smile as he extended his hand towards her and drew her down the hallway.

  It was so unlike her to be like this, to be so up front and femininely demanding in her intense desire for him. Words, feelings and desires she simply could not contain seemed to have swept aside her normal cau-tion and replaced it with emotions and needs so boldly brilliant that they filled her whole consciousness, blinding in that brilliance, in the same way that Guy's presence seemed to fill the unexpectedly large and well-planned kitchen he was now moving capably about, opening cupboards, removing mugs, filling a kettle.

  Whilst he stood with his back to her, reaching up into the cupboard above him for a jar of coffee, Chrissie studied him openly, greedily absorbing the satisfying sight of his body. His shoulders were broad, tapering to a narrow waist, his legs long and lean, topped with neat buttocks. And as she had good cause to know, the flesh beneath his shirt would feel warm and smooth, sheer heaven both to touch and kiss. She was tempted to go over to him, wrap her arms round him, tease his shirt out from his belt and...

  'What is it, what's wrong?' Guy asked her with concern, turning round just as the small yearning sound she had been trying to suppress escaped her lips.

  'No, nothing,' she managed to tell him, but Guy continued to frown slightly at her as he spooned the coffee into their mugs.

  'Coffee's almost ready,' he announced unnecessari-ly as the kettle boiled. But Chrissie's mind was made up. After spending these past few pulse-rate-inflating minutes standing in his kitchen, watching him, absorbing his every movement, wanting him, she knew exactly what she ached for and needed, and it certainly wasn't a cup of coffee.

  'No...' Chrissie shook her head, caught off guard both by the trembling of her body and the surge of desire that possessed her. 'I...I don't want anything to drink,' she murmured, then admitted honestly,

  'I...I just want you.'

  'Oh God, what have I done to deserve you?' Guy groaned as he took her in his arms and showed her just how thoroughly her feelings, her needs, were returned. 'You don't know how much I ache for you right now,' he breathed into her mouth.

  'Show me,' Chrissie invited him, shamelessly winding her arms round his neck and pressing her body close to his.

  Somewhere on the edge of her consciousness was a vague memory of something she ought to tell him, but so many more pressing needs were demanding her attention, and right now all she could think of was just how good that unmistakable hardness she could feel in his body would be once it was inside hers.

  She had never felt so completely overwhelmed by her own physical needs before or by the urge to express and share them. Swiftly she dismissed the unwanted jarring voice that dared to try to spoil the perfection of her new-found love.

  The bedroom he took her to upstairs was furnished with the same sturdily constructed antique country furniture she had admired in the sitting room, the cen-trepiece a fine four-poster oak bed.

  'I did at one time think of making a career in in-terior design,' Guy confessed when Chrissie commented on how much she liked the clever combination of heavy, natural, masculine-looking fabrics he had used. 'We're sometimes called in as consultants by clients.'

  'You chose the decor for the restaurant, didn't you?' Chrissie guessed, recalling that despite her pre-occupation with Guy she had still been aware of the comfortable and easy ambience of the restaurant.

  'Yes,' Guy agreed. 'Frances and Roy are planning to extend and add on a conservatory area for summer dining and private parties, and with that in mind I felt that the Mediterranean colours we used in the main eating area would blend best with that kind of exterior and the outside eating area Frances and Roy hope will go with it.

  'I spent a couple of years living and working in Italy and I have to confess that they have the art of alfresco dining to perfection.'

  'Italy...mmm...I spent several months there myself during my gap year. I loved Florence.'

  Her gap year. Guy grimaced inwardly. The idea of a gap year either before or after university had been an unheard-of luxury when he had been that age. He had gone to Italy, driven by a restless urge to experience a different environment from the somewhat enclosed world he had grown up in, but he had had to work his way there—hard, dirty, manual work in the main. He had worked in Italy, too, harvesting pota-toes, working in bars and kitchens, doing anything and everything he could to keep himself solvent.

  Without her having to say, he already knew that Chrissie came from a very different background from his own; that she had grown up in a typical, comfortably affluent upper-middle-class household, where her father had no doubt been in one of the professions and her mother, if she had worked at all, had done voluntary work for a pet charity. Chrissie herself had probably gone to a private school.

  He had sensed her reluctance to discuss her background and wondered if it was because she had guessed how very different it was from his own. Class differences in this modern age were supposed to be a thing of the past, dead and gone, but of course they were not.

  His own parents, whilst thrifty and hard-working, had had a lifestyle a world away from that enjoyed by the upper middle classes.

  His father had joined the navy after leaving school—there was a tradition in the Cooke family of its young men joining the armed services—and then after he had met and married Guy's mother, he had taken over the tenure of one of the town's public houses—another family tradition.

  It had been the restlessness inherited from his Gypsy forebear that had spawned Guy's youthful travel bug. The years spent travelling and working on the continent had broadened his horizons, but there was a part of him that was aware that despite his financial success, or maybe even because of it, there was still a certain section of the town's population who treated him slightly warily.

  'Tell me more about this antiques fair you're organising,' Chrissie commanded him sleepily as she snuggled deeper into his arms, her body relaxed and sated from their lovemaking.

  'There isn't much to tell,' Guy protested, only half-truthfully.

  As Jenny had remarked only the previous week, it had been an achievement in itself for him to have persuaded Lord Astlegh to agree to their using Fitzburgh Place as the venue for the fair, and of course it was that venue that attracted the very high quality of participators in the event.

  Guy had been meticulous, too, in ensuring that only high-quality food outlets and caterers would be allowed to participate. The orchestra from a local music school had been engaged to play, along with a string quartet; traditional jugglers and other street acts in period costume would add a touch of liveliness and vibrant colour to the scene.

  There had been a good deal of press interest both locally and nationally in the three-day event, which was to commence with a champagne reception hosted by the Lord Lieutenant of the county and held in the house itsel
f.

  'Organising the security for it must have been a real nightmare,' Chrissie commented as she snuggled even deeper into his arms and remembered the problems her mother had had in getting adequate insurance and security cover for one of her charity events.

  'It certainly was,' Guy agreed dryly.

  He had lost count of the number of meetings he had had with the patient police inspector whose responsibility the event had become, and then there had been the additional headache of hiring security staff and even acquiring portable alarms.

  'We can't provide for every eventuality,' he told Chrissie, 'and ultimately it's the responsibility of every participator to check the terms of their own insurance coverage and organise their own security if they feel it's necessary. One of our biggest headaches, in fact, has been getting the permission of insurers to hold the event.'

  'I suppose Lord Astlegh must own a considerable amount of valuable antiques himself,' Chrissie commented.

  'A very considerable amount,' Guy agreed. 'As well as an exceptionally fine art collection and a good deal of very rare porcelain.'

  Chrissie, who had often helped her mother organise her charity events, smiled sympathetically as she leaned over to kiss him and then promptly forgot about the Antiques Fair and everything else as he kissed her back and proved to her own astonishment that she wasn't quite as sleepy as she had thought after all.

  'Mmm...' Chrissie moved languorously against the teasingly explorative hand stroking her body.

  'Wake up, sleepyhead,' Guy instructed her. 'It's gone nine o'clock in the morning.'

  'What...?' Chrissie opened her eyes in disbelief. 'It can't be,' she protested.

  'See for yourself,' Guy told her with a smile, showing her his watch. 'Nine o'clock,' he repeated, 'and you've been snoring your head off.'

  'Snoring?' Chrissie repeated indignantly as she sat up in bed, her indignation giving way to laughter as she realised that Guy was teasing her.

  Threateningly she reached for her pillow but before she could aim it at him, Guy started to wrestle it from her. Only somehow or other it was her naked body his hands were touching and her own laughter died as she recognised the look in Guy's eyes and felt herself responding to it.