Guilty Love (Completed)

Chapter Thirty'Nine

"I'm fine," she protested. "It was shock, not an injury, that made me remember."

"Well, anyway, I want to make sure you're okay," Ritchie insisted, getting to his feet and pulling her up with him. "And I must ring the stables and tell them what has happened. That stupid horse has probably gone straight back there, and they might send out a search party for me, in case I was thrown and injured. They're going to laugh like hyenas. I told them I was a highly experienced rider! And then to get thrown, like a novice! I shall never be able to show my face there again."

She gave a faint smile. "That will teach you to hunt women down and try to drag them on to your horse!"

He laughed, unrepentant. "So it will!" She was a little unsteady on her feet, his face changed, and he looked at her anxiously. "Maybe you should sit down and I'll get my car and come and pick you up."

"I'm fine," she insisted.

He put an arm around her waist and she leaned on him a little as they began to walk along the lane.
His car was hidden, as he had said, behind a little plantation of young trees on the edge of the wood. Ritchie unhooked his car phone and made a brief call, laughing at whatever the person at the other end said to him.

"Well, I'm glad he got back safety," he murmured. "I'll let you know in advance next time I want a ride. See you."

He rang off, looked at her with one eyebrow raised.
"Now, what's your doctor's number around here?"

"I've no idea, and I don't want to see a doctor, Ritchie!"

He looked at her uncertainty. "I think you should. Why don't we go up to London and make an appointment for you to see a good Harley Street man?"

"Maybe tomorrow," she compromised, and with that he had to be satisfied. He slid her into the front passenger seat, got behind the wheel and drove back to the cottage.

"That reminds me, Ritchie," she said, suddenly remembering, "Where are my sparking plugs? I want them back! I ought to have called the police and reported you for such lowdown  sneaking trick!"

"Except that you had no phone!" he told her, grinning.
"Were you furious when you realised what I've done?"
"Furious!" she said, but laughed.

"It was all I could think of, to keep you there. I was afraid you'd run away again if I left you alone, that I'd get back to find the cottage empty and you gone. I didn't want to start hunting for you all over again. So I tried to make it difficult for you to leave, although I couldn't make it impossible. I hoped that by the time you discovered the car wouldn't start it would be too late for you to start walking to the nearest phone."

She looked at him through her lashes, her face altering, a questioning look in her blue eyes. "But why did you leave at all, after.....?" She broke off, blushing, and he laughed softly.

"After the way we made love?" He pulled up outside her cottage and turned to look at her, passion in his eyes.

She found it hard to hold his gaze, her face full of scalding colour. "You were so offhand afterwards, so curt and distant!" she reproached him. "Why did you change like that, then leave so abruptly? I thought you had seduced me just to get some sort of revenge on me. After you'd gone I felt so miserable!"

"Linzi, you can't have thought that!" He sounded shocked, shaken. "After the way we'd made love? My God, don't you know how i felt after that? I could barely walk, let alone speak. Just breathing was an effort. What I'd wanted to do was fall asleep in your arms, but I had to get up and dress and fly back to London with Ted, but believe me it was one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life."