Cinderella’s Wedding Wish

remember that terrible row?

He nodded. ‘I thought you’d be the best person.’

‘I’m surprised you’d want advice from someone boring and repressed!’ she couldn’t help saying, unable to keep the hurt from her voice.

‘You were never boring, Miranda,’ said Rafe gently. ‘I never called you that.’

‘You implied it. You said I didn’t know how to be happy.’

‘Are you happy?’

Instantly her chin came up. ‘Of course I am. I’ve never been happier. I’ve got everything I’ve always wanted, especially now I’ve got you,’ she added to the puppy, who was struggling to get off her lap. Carefully, she lifted him up and set him down at her feet, where he gambolled a little way before tripping over his paws and flopping down onto the grass.

She smiled brilliantly at Rafe and gestured out at the sea, which was glittering silver in the afternoon sun. ‘How could I not be happy here?’

‘Ah,’ he said, and looked away. ‘I’m glad.’

Miranda glared at his profile. Honestly, how obtuse could he be?

‘Of course I’m not happy,’ she said crossly. ‘I’m miserable. Is that what you wanted to hear?’

He turned at that. ‘It is, actually.’

His eyes held a smile, but Miranda couldn’t look at him. Biting her lip, she jerked her gaze away. ‘Probably serves me right for dumping spaghetti on you,’ she said.

To her horror, tears clogged her throat without warning, and she had to swallow painfully before she could produce a bright, bright smile. ‘Anyway, I’m glad you’ve met the right woman for you,’ she managed after a moment. ‘What’s she like? Is she nice?’

‘Well, I like her,’ said Rafe. ‘She’s different. She prefers dogs to people, can you imagine that? She doesn’t like being in the city and she hates dressing up and going to parties.’

As his words sank in Miranda’s heart began to thud. It was slamming steadily, painfully against her ribs, and, hardly daring to believe that it wasn’t a cruel joke, she turned her head very, very slowly to meet his eyes once more.

They were dark and blue and very warm. ‘She wears dull little suits and ties her hair up,’ he went on, ‘and if you watched her dealing with a photocopier, say, you would think she was really repressed.’

Miranda moistened her lips. ‘I can’t think why you would want to marry someone like that,’ she said unsteadily.

‘The thing is,’ Rafe confided, ‘only I know that when she lets down her hair and takes off that suit, she’s the wildest, most exciting, most beautiful woman I could ever hope to meet. Making love to her was a big mistake, in fact, because once I’d done that, I knew that only she would do.

‘The thing is,’ he said again, his voice very deep and low, ‘nothing is quite right without her. I’m not right without her. I tried to be. I tried as hard as I could. I told myself that I could easily love someone else, that marriage was better approached practically rather than emotionally. That’s what I wanted to feel. It’s what I felt I should feel. The trouble was that once she’d gone, I realised that it wasn’t what I did feel.’

Hope was gripping Miranda’s heart so tightly it was almost painful, and it was all she could do to breathe past the constriction in her chest. ‘What did you feel?’ she asked huskily.

‘I felt that I had found the one person I didn’t know that I had been looking for all these years,’ said Rafe quietly. ‘The one person who could make me feel complete.’

Reaching out, he took Miranda’s hand at last. ‘I didn’t think it could be you, Miranda. There seemed to be too many reasons why it shouldn’t be you, but it is you,’ he said.

His fingers curled around hers, his clasp warm and strong and infinitely reassuring. ‘Dad always complained that I never stuck at anything. I thought I had to stick at Knighton’s to prove him wrong, but I don’t. All I need is to prove to you that I love you.’

Rafe lifted their clasped hands to his lips and kissed her knuckles. ‘I’m asking you for the chance to prove that I can stick with you for ever.’

‘Rafe…’ Miranda’s heart was so full she couldn’t speak. She could just stare at him, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears as happiness seeped like sunshine along her veins.

‘I’m not asking you to leave Whitestones, Miranda. I know what it means to you. If you-and the dog-’ he added, nodding at the puppy which was snuffling inquisitively through the long grass, ‘will have me, I’ll move down here too. It’s not as if I’m short of a bob or two. I don’t need to work. I could unblock those gutters for you.’

He was babbling, Rafe realised, and he made himself stop. His fingers tightened around hers. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think,’ she said slowly, ‘that you need Knighton’s more than you think you do, Rafe. Your father entrusted the company to you, and you need to fulfil that trust.’

‘But then I’d have to be in London, and you would hate that. You need to be here, at Whitestones.’

‘I need you more,’ said Miranda, and reached for him as the tears spilled over at last. ‘If London is where you are, that’s where I need to be too.’

‘Miranda…’ Rafe held her away from him just long enough to look down into her face and see the love in her eyes before he pulled her into his arms for a long, sweet, almost desperate kiss.

‘Are you sure?’ he asked raggedly when they broke for breath. He rested his cheek against her shining hair and held her tightly. ‘It’s not just about you. You’ve got the dog to think of now, remember.’

Miranda laughed shakily. ‘There are parks in London,’ she reminded him, ‘and we can come down here at weekends, can’t we?’

‘We can.’ Rafe pulled back to take her face between his hands and fix her with serious eyes. ‘But maybe we need to think about this. I can’t ask you to come back when you hate it so much.’

‘Well, maybe I don’t hate London quite as much as I thought I did,’ Miranda confessed. ‘I’ve been down here for nearly a month, and, to be honest, I’m dying for a cappuccino!’

Rafe laughed and wrapped his arms around her once more. ‘I’ve missed you so much, Miranda,’ he told her with a sigh.

‘I’ve missed you too,’ she said, nestling closer, still hardly able to believe that he was there. ‘I’ve been so lonely without you.’

‘I’m so sorry for all those terrible things I said to you,’ said Rafe. ‘I didn’t mean any of them. I was just feeling desperate. I wanted you so much, but I knew I couldn’t give you the fairy tale you wanted. I still can’t,’ he said seriously, tipping back her head to look down into her face. ‘It won’t be perfect all the time, but I love you and I need you and I think that as long as we’re together, we can get through anything.’

Miranda smiled through her tears. ‘That is the fairy tale, Rafe,’ she said, and she kissed him again.

Much later, they lay on the rough grass together as the puppy clambered over them, licking their chins and chewing their fingers with sharp little teeth.

‘Ouch,’ said Miranda, laughing, and tugged gently at his ears. ‘I had thought I might go back to work, but I can see you might turn into a full-time occupation!’ she told the dog.

Rafe lay with his hands behind his head, watching the clouds drifting across the sky. He had discarded his jacket and his shirt was unbuttoned at the neck. ‘It’s hard to think about work when you’re down here,’ he said. ‘Have you missed it?’

‘Sometimes,’ she admitted. ‘I quite like being in an office with lots going on. And, of course, you never know who you’re going to meet when you’re at the photocopier!’

He laughed and pulled her down beside him. ‘I’m very glad that agency sent you to Knighton’s. I might never have met you otherwise.’

‘I suppose it wasn’t too bad as assignments go.’

‘Do you fancy another one?’

Miranda tucked herself into his side and rested her cheek on his chest with a contented sigh. ‘That depends what kind of assignment you’re talking about.’

‘I’m in need of a wife,’ said Rafe in a mock businesslike tone. ‘It’s a permanent position, and you’d have to be