For Christmas, Forever: The Yuletide Engagement / The Doctor's Christmas Bride / Snowbound Reunion. Barbara McMahon
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had come as a complete shock to her. But she would think about that later. Once Gareth had left. Because he was leaving. Soon!
He smiled. ‘Well, I wouldn’t go quite that far,’ he mocked.
Her eyes widened. ‘You’re suggesting that I become part of some harem?’
‘Of course not, Ellie.’ He chuckled. ‘If everything goes according to plan, I should be getting married soon. But that’s no reason for us to break off our relationship. If things were different between us,’ he added pointedly.
If everything went according to plan! What plan?
She swallowed hard. ‘If the two of us were lovers, you mean?’ she clarified icily.
Gareth shrugged. ‘Well, it would hardly be worth the risk otherwise, now, would it?’
‘Get out,’ Ellie told him shakily, her hand on the table beside her for support; her legs felt so shaky she thought she might fall over otherwise.
‘Now, Ellie, there’s no reason to be like that,’ he cajoled huskily, taking a step towards her.
She straightened, her chin raised challengingly. ‘I said, get out, Gareth, and I meant it. And God help the poor woman you’re planning to marry,’ she added disgustedly.
He had come to a halt some distance away from her. ‘Frigid,’ he repeated scornfully.
Her eyes glazed coldly. ‘You’ll never know,’ she bit out forcefully.
He smiled. ‘But I already do know, Ellie,’ he assured her derisively. ‘Oh, well.’ He shrugged in the face of her stony expression. ‘I made the offer. See you around.’ He raised a hand in farewell before letting himself out of the house.
She turned to Patrick now, having no intention of relating any of that conversation to him. It was bad enough that she still remembered every painfully humiliating word of it, without sharing it with anyone else. Least of all Patrick!
She gave him a dismissive smile. ‘It isn’t important what happened, Patrick,’ she told him lightly. ‘Gareth hurt me with words, that’s all. And as my mother always said, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me”,’ she quoted ruefully.
Patrick looked unconvinced. ‘Bones heal; words can never be forgotten.’
How true that was. She hadn’t forgotten a single word Gareth had said to her six weeks ago, whereas a broken finger or wrist would have healed and been dismissed by now.
‘Surely it’s Gareth’s problem if he considers that any woman who doesn’t want to sleep with him must be frigid.’ She shrugged.
Grey eyes widened. ‘He actually said that? To you?’ Patrick sounded incredulous.
Ellie gave him a disgruntled frown. ‘Yes, he said that to me,’ she repeated irritably.
Patrick chuckled softly. ‘You’re right, Ellie.’ He gave a rueful shake of his head. ‘He isn’t important,’ he explained at her questioning look. ‘He obviously didn’t get to know you very well at all, did he?’ he added derisively.
‘Exactly what do you mean by that remark?’ she demanded defensively.
He looked at her consideringly before answering. ‘Ellie, you are one of the warmest, most responsive women I have ever had the pleasure to meet.’
Her cheeks coloured hotly. It was no good denying what he said; her response to him whenever he touched her was undeniable.
‘I’ll tell you something else,’ Patrick added huskily as he stood up to move round the table and pull her unresistingly to her feet. ‘I’m glad Davies never got close enough to you to discover that for himself,’ he murmured throatily, before bending to lightly brush Ellie’s lips with his own.
So was she.
She hadn’t always felt that way, had wondered in the days and then weeks that had followed Gareth’s abrupt departure from her life whether she could indeed be frigid. But she only had to be in the same room with Patrick to be completely aware of him, and when she was actually in his arms like this…!
No, she wasn’t frigid. She was just a woman who only responded to the right man. The right man for her. Because, although he was unsuitable in every other way—rich, powerful, successful, completely removed from her own lifestyle—she knew she had fallen in love with Patrick McGrath.
She had been fighting that knowledge for some time now, refusing to allow the thought to even enter her head. But alone here with him in the silence of her kitchen, held in his arms, their two bodies moulded perfectly together, she could no longer deny how she felt about him.
To herself, at least.
To Patrick it was another matter!
‘Well, I’m relieved to hear it,’ she told him lightly, at the same time moving determinedly out of his arms. ‘Maybe there’s hope for me after all,’ she added with deliberate self-derision.
Patrick’s gaze followed her frowningly. ‘Ellie—’
‘I just heard a car in the driveway, so I think Toby must be home,’ she told him with a certain amount of relief.
Her mother used to say something else to her, about ‘jumping from the frying pan into the fire’. Well, she had certainly done that where Patrick was concerned; he was a more unsuitable man for her to have fallen in love with than Gareth had ever been!
Chapter Eight
‘DID you enjoy yourself on Saturday?’
Ellie gave a startled glance towards the open door of her office, her gaze narrowing as she focused on Gareth standing in the doorway, looking incredibly cheerful. As well as self-confident.
The latter instantly made Ellie more wary than she would normally have been in his unwanted presence, and she glanced towards the door that connected hers to George’s, to make sure it was firmly shut, before replying. ‘The Delacortes gave you and Sarah a wonderful engagement party,’ she answered noncommittally.
Gareth grinned, coming fully into the room before closing the door behind him. ‘That didn’t exactly answer my question, now, did it?’ he reproved derisively, moving to sit on the edge of her desk as he looked down at her with mocking blue eyes.
Ellie sighed. ‘I didn’t think it really needed an answer,’ she dismissed, still eyeing him warily, sure his pleasantness wouldn’t last for long; nowadays it usually didn’t.
Besides, she remembered all too well his nastiness on Saturday evening. Still had the bruises to prove how angry he had been then.
He shrugged. ‘Thanks for the cut-glass crystal vase, by the way. Sarah will be writing to everyone formally, of course, but I thought I would come and thank you personally.’
Cut-glass crystal vase? Ellie had been aware that Patrick had carried a gift-wrapped present into the house on Saturday evening, of course, but even if it had been a cut class crystal vase, what did it have to do with her…?
‘"Congratulations, love from Patrick and Ellie",’ Gareth continued tauntingly. ‘You’ve been “Patrick and Ellie”; for how long?’ he added scathingly.
A matter of days. Except they weren’t ‘Patrick and Ellie’ at all.
She’d had no idea that Patrick had put her name beside his on the gift card that had accompanied the engagement present he’d given to his cousin on Saturday. She realised why he had done it, of course, but he might have warned her!
She gave Gareth a stony look. ‘Gareth, I have no idea why you should be in the least interested,’ she scorned.
‘I’m not. Not really.’ He still looked incredibly pleased with himself. ‘It will be quite a coup for the Fairfax family if you and Toby manage to pull this off.’