Snowbound With His Innocent Temptation. CATHY WILLIAMS

ask her why she had chosen to retreat to the country to live when she could have had a job anywhere in the country.

      When he looked at her, it was without that lazy, assessing speculation that made her blood thicken and made her break out in a cold sweat.

      He complimented her on the meal and asked her about her diet, about how she managed to fit in her meals with the hours she worked.

      He could not have been more meticulously polite if he had been obeying orders with a gun held to his head and she hated it.

      His arrival at the house was the most exciting thing that had happened to her in a long time and it had occurred just when she had been questioning her whole life, putting it into perspective, trying to figure out a way forward. It had occurred hard on the heels of her sister’s phone call, which had stirred up a grey, sludgy mix of emotion in her, some of which she didn’t like.

      It also felt as though fate had sent him along to challenge her.

      And how was she going to respond to that challenge? By running away? By retreating? She was going to be challenged a lot more when her job came to an end and the roof over her head was sold, and what was she going to do then? Dive for cover, close her eyes and hope for the best?

      Where was the harm in getting into some practice now when it came to dealing with the unexpected? It wasn’t as though there would be any repercussions, was it? You could bare your soul to a stranger on a plane and then walk away when the plane landed, safe in the knowledge that you wouldn’t clap eyes on that person again, so if they happened to be a receptacle for all your secrets, what difference would that make?