Fugitive Wife by Sara Craven Read Free Book Online

Logan deftly forestaled her next question. ‘The kitchen is through the door opposite.’ He pointed. ‘Perhaps you’d like to make that coffee I mentioned while I have a shower.’ She was glad to have something to do. Filing the kettle and setting it to boil, and finding mugs and the jar of coffee occupied her hands, but did nothing to ease the mounting uncertainty within her. And she had no one to blame but herself for the current situation, she told herself, her shaking hands spiling coffee granules on to the worktop as she attempted to spoon them into the mugs.

    It was entirely of her own making. She’d folowed Logan and thrown herself at his head, and if she turned and ran now, she would only be making an even bigger fool of herself. Yet if she stayed… Briony’s imagination refused to consider the implications of the next hour or two.
    She made the coffee and carried the mugs into the living room, but it was deserted. He was stil in the shower, and now, if ever, was the time to beat an ignoble retreat. She set the mugs down on the corner of the desk and looked round for her bag. She’d put it down on the sofa as she’d come in, but it wasn’t there. Nor was it on the desk, or on the floor, or on any of the shelves of the fitment which covered one wal, and housed books and a complicated-looking stereo player. It had vanished.

    Or had she simply left it on the smal table in the hal, she wondered desperately. She opened the living room door and peered out, but the table was bare except for the discarded envelopes from Logan’s letters.

    There was only one other explanation. Logan had taken her bag with him when he went off to have his shower, in order to prevent her from running out on him. The realisation set the match to her temper, relegating her fears and forebodings to a poor second. How dared he? she raged inwardly. She had taken several impetuous steps along the hal when one of the doors opened and Logan emerged, and the sight of him halted her dead in her tracks. He was wearing a damp towel hitched loosely round his hips, and his tawny hair was darkly streaked with water. His eyes, as they encountered Briony’s openly hostile gaze, were enigmatic.

    He said smoothly, ‘Coming to meet me halfway, sweetheart?’

    ‘I was coming to find my handbag.’

    He gestured towards the door opposite him. ‘It’s in there.’

    After only a second’s hesitation, she turned and walked into the room he had indicated. She had guessed it was his bedroom and she was right. Her bag was there, lying in the middle of the bed-a double bed, she registered in silence. There was little other furniture. Like the living room, it suggested that its occupant was Someone constantly in transit, living out of suitcases, and there were few personal touches.

    She picked her bag up from the bed, and turned. Logan was lounging in the doorway watching her, and she could read nothing from his
    expression, but his presence there meant that her retreat was effectively cut off.

    ‘You didn’t bring the coffee.’ His tone was almost conversational. .

    ‘1―1 didn’t want any.’ Damn! she thought in vexation. Why hadn’t she said it was waiting in the living room, and thus made good her
    escape?

    ‘Then I won’t bother either.’ he said affably, and walked forward. ‘After al, why waste time when we have more important things to do?’

    She took a step backwards. ‘No.’ she got out. ‘I―I can’t!’

    ‘Can’t you?’ He didn’t hurry as he covered the distance between them. He didn’t have to. It wasn’t a large room, and she was standing with her back against one wal. There was simply nowhere else to retreat to.

    ‘You can.’ he said. ‘It’s easy―I’l show you.’

    He detached the bag from her suddenly nerveless fingers and tossed it on to a nearby chest of drawers, folowing it with her suit jacket which he slipped expertly from her shoulders, almost before she realised what he was doing, and then