Cinderella’s Wedding Wish

So it wasn’t until Elvira proudly showed them to their room later that night that Miranda and Rafe were alone together. ‘I’ve had a lovely evening,’ she said, kissing them both. ‘You’ve made me very happy.’

There was utter silence in the room as Rafe closed the door behind them, and they listened to Elvira shuffling off down the corridor.

‘I’m sorry about this,’ said Rafe at last. ‘I never thought for a minute she’d put us in the same room. She’s always been so strait-laced before.’

‘It’s fine,’ said Miranda, wandering over to the big bay window and trying not to look at the vast bed. ‘There was no point in making a fuss.’

‘I can find somewhere else to sleep tonight,’ he offered. ‘She’ll never know.’

‘No.’ Miranda drew a deep breath and turned from the window to face him across the room. She had had time to think this afternoon while she was walking the dogs. ‘There’s no need for that,’ she said, surprised to find that her voice was quite steady. ‘I was wondering if we should renegotiate the terms of our deal for tonight.’

Rafe was still standing with his back to the door, but his eyes were dark and alert. ‘Which particular clause were you thinking of?’

Miranda moistened her lips. ‘The one where we don’t sleep together.’

‘What are you proposing instead?’

‘That we do.’

This time the silence stretched until it strummed. Rafe didn’t move until, abruptly, he levered himself away from the door and crossed the room. He stopped a few feet from where Miranda stood, straight backed and chin up, in the window.

‘You want to sleep with me?’

‘Just for tonight,’ she said quickly.

Still he didn’t move. ‘You don’t have to do this, Miranda,’ he said. ‘Do you know how many bedrooms there are in this place? I can easily find somewhere to kip.’

‘I want to do it.’ Miranda ran the tip of her tongue over her lips again. ‘I’ve been thinking about it all day. I was remembering how I told Octavia she would need to take a risk for what she wanted, and I realised I never do that. I never have.’

Swallowing, she made herself look straight into his eyes. ‘You once told me that I was scared, and I think that might be true. I am scared. I’m afraid of losing control. When I was growing up, the rest of my family seemed to thrive on chaos, but I hated it. I learnt to be sensible and steady, because that way I felt safe, but I never got what I wanted either.’

‘And what do you want now, Miranda?’ Rafe’s voice was very deep and it seemed to reverberate across the floor and up Miranda’s spine.

‘I want one night where I don’t have to be sensible,’ she said without taking her eyes from his. ‘I want to not think about the future or the pretence or…or about anything. I want to be able to touch you and feel you and…’

She trailed off, unnerved by his silence. What was she doing, asking Rafe Knighton to make love to her, Rafe who must have made love to countless women far more beautiful and desirable than she? It was nice of him not to laugh in her face.

‘But only if you want to, of course,’ she finished lamely.

Rafe smiled then. Closing the gap between them, he cupped her face very lightly between his hands, feathering his thumbs over her cheekbones, along her jaw, tracing the line of her mouth.

‘I think I might force myself,’ he teased, but his blue eyes were serious and intent.

She bit her lip. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Are you?’

‘Yes, I’m sure.’

And she was. She had gone too far to turn back now and, anyway, he was there, touching her, smiling. Miranda knew that she might-almost certainly would-regret it later, but for now this was all she wanted, and it felt completely right.

‘In that case,’ said Rafe, ‘I can tell you that this is all I’ve been able to think about ever since you moved in with me. Night after night, you’ve been lying there across the corridor and I thought about doing this,’ he said, kissing the wildly beating pulse below her ear, ‘and this…and this,’ he murmured as his lips traced a delicious path down her throat while Miranda shuddered with pleasure.

His fingers found the zip at the side of dress. ‘This is a dream come true.’

‘What else happens in your dream?’ she asked with a low, shaky laugh, and Rafe eased the straps from her shoulders until the dress slithered over her skin and fell in a puddle at her feet.

‘I’ll show you,’ he said.

‘Remind me why it took us so long to do this,’ said Rafe lazily.

Miranda lay within the curve of his arm. Her head was on his shoulder and she was playing idly with the hairs on his chest. Making love to her was supposed to have been a way to get her out of his system, but that didn’t seem to have worked at all. Rafe remembered that breathtaking, heart-swelling, bone-melting mixture of passion and tenderness and excitement and a wild, unexpected sweetness, and his arm tightened around her.

‘Because it was a very bad idea,’ said Miranda, rather muffled against his chest. ‘And you don’t need to remind me it was mine.’

‘It didn’t feel bad to me,’ said Rafe, stroking the hair back from her face and craning his head to try and see her expression. ‘Wasn’t it good for you?’

‘You know it was. Too good,’ she said honestly. ‘How am I going to pretend what we just shared never happened?’

‘Do you have to? Why can’t it happen again?’

She shook her head slowly. ‘There’s no future for us, Rafe. We both understand that. We want completely different things.’

‘We wanted the same thing a few minutes ago,’ he reminded her, a smile in his voice. ‘We don’t have to think about the future. Can’t we just enjoy the present?’

Miranda was very still, and he began to hope that she was changing her mind, until she said in a small voice, ‘I’m scared. Tonight was wonderful, but it doesn’t change what I really want. I’m going to Whitestones and you’ll stay in London, and if I get used to nights like this one I’m afraid it’ll hurt too much when I go. It’ll be too hard to say goodbye, and we’re going to have to say that some time soon.’

Rafe was silent. How could he argue with her? The last thing he wanted was to hurt her, and, besides, she was right. They didn’t have anything in common. They wanted different lives. Miranda wanted the fairy tale, and he couldn’t give her that. The sensible thing would be to admit that this had been a mistake and agree not to repeat it.

But it didn’t feel like a mistake when her skin was silky and her hair smelt of flowers and when losing himself in her had left him with an extraordinary sense of peace and a rightness he had never felt before.

CHAPTER TEN

AS THE days passed, though, it began to seem more and more like the mistake Miranda had called it.

Rafe tried to carry on as before, but it was impossible. He couldn’t get the feel of her, the taste of her, out of his mind. Her scent and her softness and her sweetness seemed to be imprinted on every fibre of his being. Now he avoided touching her at all, afraid that if he did he wouldn’t be able to stop at taking her hand or resting his hand on her back to guide her through a crowd, but would end up yanking her into his arms and doing something stupid like begging her not to go.

Because she would go. Miranda was stubborn. Whitestones had been her goal all along, and now that it was in her sights she wouldn’t change her mind.

Rafe told himself that he didn’t want her to. He wanted a clever, sophisticated wife who would be a companion and a partner, who would run his houses for him and entertain and support him as he transformed Knighton’s and