Briarwood Cottage by Joann Ross Page A

looked up into his face with those lake-blue eyes, and Duncan had known, in that frozen moment in that faraway place, that he was lost.
    “You’re Duncan McCaragh.”
    “That would be me,” he’d said. “The man who’s going to marry you,” he’d heard himself saying. “So I suppose, now that the shooting’s stopped, it’d be a good time for you to tell me the name of my future children’s mother.”
    She’d both surprised and impressed him by laughing at a time when she would have been forgiven for screaming bloody murder after what they’d been through.
    “Sorry, I’m not in the market for a husband.”
    “Don’t worry. I’ll change your mind.”
    She’d laughed again, obviously not taking him seriously. “Give it your best shot.”
    “I intend to.” That had been true then. And was now. “But any good campaign needs proper intel. So, it’d help to know the name of my future wife.”
    She’d shaken her head in friendly exasperation. “I’m beginning to see why they call you Mad Dog. I can’t believe that line actually works. Although I’m too smart to fall for it, I’m Cassandra Carpenter.”
    He’d recognized her name immediately. “The Cassandra Carpenter who wrote that five-part investigative piece on the murder of the Chinese prostitutes enslaved in Kabul?”
    She’d gone undercover as an expat American broker allegedly running an undercover prostitution ring and had later revealed, in vivid, heartbreaking detail, that even in a country as ultraconservative as Afghanistan, sex was for sale. Tragically, at an often deadly price.
    “That would be me,” she tossed his own words back at him. “The journalist you beat out for the Pulitzer.”
    “Ouch. I’m sorry about that. But getting grazed by shrapnel undoubtedly won me some sympathy votes that should have gone to you.”
    “You may have been wounded, which I heard was a lot worse than a ‘graze,’ but your piece deserved to win without any sympathy votes.”
    “I like that. It shows that you’re not only talented, you have the capacity to forgive.” He’d taken hold of her bruised, skinned hand and lifted it to his lips. “Which is even more reason you have to marry me, Cassandra Carpenter. Because we’re a match made in journalist heaven.”
    Although she’d always insisted that his over-the-top proposal was born solely from the adrenaline rush of their situation, that was another truism that hadn’t changed. At least to his mind.
    After they’d cleaned up in their individual rooms at the Kabul hotel, he’d taken her to dinner. Before they’d made it to the cheese plate, he’d put the meal on his GNN Platinum card and walked her back to her room, where they’d spent the night heating up the sheets.
    From that day forward, Cass had been the only woman for him. Google “animal magnetism” and you’d undoubtedly find their picture. And despite her refusal to admit it after that debacle in Egypt, he’d always be the only man for her.
    The challenge, Duncan had decided after hearing that she was on her way to Castlelough, would be to make the most of this serendipitous time together to remind her of what they’d once had. To convince her that while they could never go back to that innocent, sunset time they’d gotten married on a tropical beach, they could reclaim their once-in-a-lifetime bond.
    One problem was the way they’d parted that morning at Shannon. Which he’d long ago accepted had been his damn fault. His only excuse for acting like an overbearing chauvinist male was the blood-chilling fear of losing her. Too many journalists had already been killed in the Middle East. The possibility of his bride becoming another statistic, one of those tragic fatality stories fellow correspondents would rush to file, had been unthinkable.
    Which was why he’d lost his temper when she’d insisted on going to Egypt. A country she’d covered before, and one, as she’d pointed out at the time, that hadn’t been as