Carole Mortimer Romance Collection. Carole Mortimer

at that moment he turned with forceful strides towards the door, obviously forgetting the low height of the ceiling, as he cracked his head on one of the beams, while at the same time seeming to catch his foot on something too as he went sprawling across the room, narrowly missing hitting his head again, this time on the dresser that stood against the far wall.

      It was all over in a matter of seconds, and Cyn could only stand by helplessly as she watched the series of events, totally baffled as to what had actually happened—although she moved quickly enough once she realised Wolf wasn’t about to get immediately back up on to his feet.

      He lay on the carpet lengthways across the room, and part of her marvelled at the fact that he had actually managed to avoid crashing into any of the furniture, the small two-seater sofa behind him, the coffee-table in front of him. Not that she thought he was going to be in the least grateful for that—when, or if, he got up.

      Cyn quickly moved the coffee-table out of the way, going down on her knees beside Wolf. His eyes were closed, and he still wasn’t moving. Oh, God, he hadn’t been knocked out, had he? What were you supposed to do with someone who was knocked out? Perhaps she should telephone for an ambulance? For a doctor, at least?

      But when she picked up the receiver to dial the emergency number it was to discover the line was dead. And no amount of pressing down on the connection made any difference to that eerie silence.

      ‘You’re wasting your time with that; it’s what I tripped over!’

      The harshness of Wolf’s voice in the otherwise silent room almost made Cyn drop the receiver and fall over herself. She turned to him with wide eyes, relieved to see he was now sitting up, at least. But from the grim expression on his face, he couldn’t see anything to feel relieved about!

      She put down the useless receiver. ‘How are you feeling?’

      ‘How—!’ He drew in a controlling breath, shooting her an impatient glare. ‘How the hell do you think I’m feeling, with half a mile of telephone line wrapped around my ankle!’

      That was when Cyn saw what he had meant by his first remark; her telephone line wasn’t just wrapped around his ankle, he had actually ripped the socket out of the wall. No wonder the line had been dead just now. So much for calling him a doctor!

      ‘I was trying to get help for you—I don’t think you should move until a doctor has looked at you,’ she told him quickly as he seemed to be trying to get to his feet. Trying, because he didn’t seem to be doing a very good job of it; he was obviously in pain somewhere as he gave a low groan. ‘You were only unconscious for a few moments,’ she acknowledged as she put her hand on his shoulder to stop him from moving any further. ‘But it was long enough to—’

      ‘I wasn’t unconscious at all, Cyn,’ Wolf rasped, the expression in his eyes no longer just impatient; the furious glitter was back in the golden depths. ‘I was lying down here with my eyes closed counting up to a hundred so that I didn’t immediately strangle you for the fact that you always did like a mile of telephone line so that you could move from room to room while you talked on the telephone!’

      She moved back as if she had been stung, colour darkening her cheeks as she remembered the fact—as Wolf obviously did too!—that seven years ago he had had to call in an engineer to his apartment to put in a longer telephone line after she had ‘moved from room to room as she talked on the telephone’ and pulled the wire from the socket several times and disconnected her calls. It was disconcerting to realise this man knew her so well...

      ‘Obviously you only need half a mile of extra line in this doll’s house,’ Wolf continued disgustedly, having managed to untangle the line from his leg now, and impatiently throwing it to one side. ‘But it’s still enough for me to have almost broken my neck on it!’

      Cyn didn’t think now was the time to tell him that this was a cottage, that they were supposed to be small. Character, the estate agent’s blurb had called it, and she happened to like it exactly as it was.

      All of which was totally irrelevant to what had just happened, she accepted ruefully. If it had been anyone else but Wolf...!

      But of course it wouldn’t have been—would it?—not the way her luck had been going lately. If things had been going her way at all at the moment Wolf wouldn’t have turned out to be Rebecca Harcourt’s fiancé in the first place, and then she wouldn’t have met him again at all.

      Not that that was really relevant either; she had met him again, and he was now prostrate on her sitting-room floor—apparently unable to get up again, she realised with horror, as he attempted to move and could only give that pained groan once again.

      Cyn was on her knees beside him, looking him over worriedly; it seemed as if they were going to need a doctor after all. ‘Where does it hurt?’ she frowned. ‘Is it your head?’

      ‘My head just has a lump on it—the size of an egg!’ he muttered with a pained wince after he had put up a hand to the side of his head and discovered the lump there. ‘But maybe that will have knocked some sense into me—at last!’ he grated, glaring at her once again. ‘It’s my ankle that seems to be preventing me from getting up.’ He shook his head with self-disgust at his inability to be able to do such a simple thing as get to his feet.

      Cyn looked down at the injured ankle, inconsequentially noting as she did so that both Wolf’s socks were black; obviously he was no longer ever so distracted that he put on odd socks. She knew it was a stupid thing for her to have even noticed, but it was nevertheless yet another indication that this man wasn’t the Wolf she had known in the past; unless she had been there to remind him, that Wolf had often—as he had told her at their very first meeting that he did—gone out with odd socks on.

      ‘I solved that particular problem by buying all black socks,’ Wolf spoke gruffly as he obviously guessed her thoughts.

      She gave him a sharp look, quickly looking away again at the rueful humour she saw in his eyes. ‘I’m sure that’s more sensible, with all those dark business suits you wear,’ she dismissed abruptly. The Wolf of the past had never been sensible. But then that Wolf hadn’t worn business suits either, would have dismissed any suggestion that he should do so.

      Once again Cyn wondered what had happened to him during the last seven years. And she refused to believe, no matter what he had said to the contrary, that it had anything to do with her; nothing she could have done would ever have turned him into a businessman. And she wouldn’t have wanted it to. She had been proud of his painting, so sure he was going to succeed.

      ‘I wish all my problems could have been solved as easily,’ Wolf added grimly now. ‘Cyn—’

      ‘Let’s see if we can get you moved,’ she said briskly, standing up to bend down and put her hand under his arm. ‘If not, with the telephone being out of action, I’ll have to drive to the doctor’s and get him to come out here to you.’

      Wolf made no attempt to move, but sat looking up at her, so close she could see the black flecks in the gold of his eyes. ‘End of conversation?’ he prompted gruffly.

      Cyn refused to meet his gaze. ‘The past is best forgotten, Wolf,’ she told him offhandedly.

      His hand moved out to grasp her arm. ‘I’m not talking about the past—’

      ‘Well, don’t fool yourself into thinking there’s a now!’ she bit out scornfully. ‘The only here and now we have is your injured ankle—and I intend getting professional help for that as soon as possible,’ she said briskly, deliberately moving so that his hand fell from her arm. ‘Can you try to at least get into a chair so that I can take a better look at your ankle?’ It was cramped, to say the least, sandwiched as he was between the sofa and the coffee-table.

      He continued to look up at her for long, tension-filled minutes, then he nodded slowly, his expression grim at the effort it took for him to move at all; the ankle was obviously very painful indeed.

      In fact, when Cyn finally looked at it once he was in the