The Perfect Match Read Online Free Page A

the satisfaction of knowing that every single nook and cranny of the small house was now clean. She still had the remnants of some of the cobwebs on her person to prove it, she acknowledged ruefully as she caught sight of the small grubby mark on her once pristine white T-shirt.

CHAPTER THREE
    GUY knocked briefly on the cottage door and then waited. Knowing the way Charlie Platt had lived, he had deliberately changed into a pair of faded, well-worn jeans and an equally faded and now rather close-fitting T-shirt. The days when he had been considered an undersized weakling were now long past. It had caused him a certain amount of wry amusement when he attended antique fairs to be mistaken for one of the helpers brought in to carry the heavier pieces of furniture.
    Chrissie heard the knock on the door and went to open it. Guy started to glance at her with brief dis-interest, preparatory to introducing himself, and then looked at her again whilst Chrissie returned his look with the same shocked intensity.
    She had heard, of course—who hadn't?—of 'love at first sight' but had always wryly dismissed it as a fairy-tale fantasy.
    Surely no one in these modern times could possibly be stricken so instantly, so totally, in the space of less than a minute, or know immediately that this was the one, the only person with whom they could spend the rest of their lives.
    But none of these admirably logical and sensible thoughts came anywhere near entering her head now as she simply stood and returned the intensity of Guy's silent visual contact with her.

    Outside in the street, in the rest of the world, people went about their normal daily business, but the two of them were as far removed from that kind of mundanity as it was possible to be, transported to a world of their own where only the two of them existed.
    Chrissie could feel her pulse jumping, her heart beating with frantic haste, her breathing growing far too fast and shallow, as she and Guy continued to search one another's face, the recognition between them both instant and compelling.
    That he was good-looking and very physically male she had noted automatically when she opened the door, but her reaction to him now went deeper than that, much, much deeper. It encompassed not just his outward appearance, his physical attributes, but his deeper inner self, as well.
    It was almost as though there was some psychic, soul-deep bond between them that both of them had instantly recognised and responded to. There could surely be no other reason for the sheer intensity of their shared sense of recognition and awareness, Chrissie reasoned as she mechanically stepped back into the cottage knowing that Guy would follow her in.
    Guy couldn't believe what was happening to him.
    He knew there was a story within the family that along with the physical genes inherited from their wild Gypsy ancestor, there were those Cookes who also inherited some of his more spiritual and psychic gifts, but he had never had any occasion in the past to consider himself one of those so gifted, nor indeed to put very much credence in their existence.
    He was far too much a modern twenty-first-century man for that, and yet he was intensely aware of that startling moment of unexpected insight he had experienced when the cottage door opened and he had seen her standing there, had known the moment he looked at her that he was confronting his own fate. Somehow he already knew just how that wonderful waterfall of dark red hair would feel slipping through his hands, against his body...how she would feel, how she would taste, how she would smell and even how she would look...cry out in the moment of their shared physical coming together. He knew...he knew...
    He could hear the blood pulsing in his ears and feel the rapid-fire volley of his heartbeat that sounded like a warning drum roll. He knew as he looked at her that she was the woman, the one woman, who would make his life-—him—complete. He knew, too, that if he