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He held and she had to let him hold. She needed him.
Which was crazy. She didn’t need anyone. She’d made that vow as a ten-year-old, in the fourth or fifth of her endless succession of foster homes. She’d yelled it as her foster mother had tried to explain why she had to move on yet again.
‘It’s okay!’ she’d yelled. ‘I don’t need you. I don’t need anyone.’
Her foster mother had cried, but Jo hadn’t. She’d learned never to let herself close enough to cry.
But now she was close, whether she’d willed it or not. Her rescuer was holding her in a grip so strong she couldn’t break it even if she tried. He must be feeling her shaking, she thought, and part of her was despising herself for weakness but most of her was just letting him hold.
He was big and warm and solid, and he wasn’t letting her go. Her face was hard against his chest. She could feel the beating of his heart.
His hand was stroking her head, as he’d stroke an injured animal.
‘Hey, there. You’re safe.’
And before she could even suspect what he intended he’d straightened, reached down and lifted her into his arms.
His Cinderella Heiress
Marion Lennox
MARION LENNOX has written more than one hundred romances and is published in over a hundred countries and thirty languages. Her multiple awards include the prestigious US RITA® Award (twice), and the RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award for ‘a body of work which makes us laugh and teaches us about love’. Marion adores her family, her kayak, her dog and lying on the beach with a book someone else has written. Heaven!
To Mitzi. My shadow.
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
A WOMAN WAS stuck in his bog.
Actually, Finn Conaill wasn’t sure if this land was part of the estate, but even if this wasn’t the property of the new Lord of Glenconaill he could hardly ignore a woman stuck in mud to her thighs.
He pulled off the road, making sure the ground he steered onto was solid.
A motorbike was parked nearby and he assumed it belonged to the woman who was stuck. To the unwary, the bike was on ground that looked like a solid grass verge. She’d been lucky. The wheels had only sunk a couple of inches.
She’d not been so lucky herself. She was a hundred yards from the road, and she looked stuck fast.
‘Stay still,’ he called.
‘Struggling makes me sink deeper.’ Her voice sounded wobbly and tired.
‘Then don’t struggle.’
Of all the idiot tourists... She could have been here all night, he thought, as he picked his way carefully across to her. This road was a little used shortcut across one of County Galway’s vast bogs. The land was a sweep of sodden grasses, dotted with steel-coloured washes of ice-cold water. In the distance he could see the faint outline of Castle Glenconaill, its vast stone walls seemingly merging into the mountains behind it. There’d been a few tough sheep on the road from the village, but here there was nothing.
There was therefore no one but Finn to help.
‘Can you come faster?’ she called and he could hear panic.
‘Only if you want us both stuck. You’re in no danger. I’m coming as fast as I can.’
Though he wouldn’t mind coming faster. He’d told the housekeeper at the castle he’d arrive mid-afternoon and he was late already.
He spent considerable time away from his farm now, researching farming methods, investigating innovative ideas, so he had the staff to take care of the day-to-day farming. He’d been prepared to leave early this morning, with his manager more than ready to take over.
But then Maeve had arrived from Dublin, glamorous, in designer clothes and a low-slung sports car. She looked a million light years away from the woman who’d torn around the farm with him as a kid—who once upon a time he was sure he wanted to spend his life with. After a year apart—she’d asked for twelve months ‘to discover myself before we marry’—what she’d told him this morning had only confirmed what he already knew. Their relationship was over, but she’d been in tears and he owed her enough to listen.
And then, on top of everything else, there’d been trouble lambing. He’d bottle-fed Sadie from birth, she was an integral part of a tiny flock of sheep he was starting to build, and he hadn’t had the heart to leave until she was safely delivered.
Finally he’d tugged on clean trousers, a decent shirt and serviceable boots, and there was an end to his preparation for inheriting title and castle. If the castle didn’t approve, he’d decided, it could find itself another lord.
And now he was about to get muddy, which wasn’t very lordly either.
At least he knew enough of bogland to move slowly, and not get into trouble himself. He knew innocuous grassland often overlaid mud and running water. It could give way at any moment. The only way to tread safely was to look for rocks that were big enough to have withstood centuries of sodden land sucking them down.
After that initial panicked call, the woman was now silent and still, watching him come. The ground around her was a mire, churned. The bog wasn’t so dangerous that it’d suck her down like quicksand, but it was thick and claggy so, once she’d sunk past her knees, to take one step after another back to dry land would have proved impossible.
He was concentrating on his feet and she was concentrating on watching him. Which he appreciated. He had no intention of ending up stuck too.
When he was six feet away he stopped. From here the ground was a churned mess. A man needed to think before going further.
‘Thank