‘Are you serious?’ Morgan stared at her through the rain, which had settled down to a fine drizzle. ‘You could lose the whole cottage. The chimney is on fire, for pity’s sake.’
‘But a chimney is supposed to have smoke and flames go up it,’ she answered sharply. ‘That’s what they do.’
‘Up it, yes. If it catches fire that’s a whole different ball game. Did you have it swept before you lit the first fire?’
‘Swept?’ He could have been talking double Dutch.
‘Give me strength.’
He shut his eyes for a moment in a manner that made Willow want to kick him, but then the fire engine had screeched to a halt and in the ensuing pandemonium she forgot about Morgan.
Half an hour later the fire engine and the very nice firemen left and Willow stood staring at the devastation in her sitting room. She was barely aware of Morgan at the side of her until he murmured, ‘What is it with you and fire anyway?’
She wanted to come back at him with a cutting retort, but she knew if she tried to speak she would cry. Swallowing hard, she picked her way across the wet, sooty floor and reached for the photograph of her parents on the mantelpiece. Wiping the black spots off the glass, she held the photograph to her when she turned to face him. ‘Thank—thank you for calling the fire brigade.’ The fireman had said she’d been minutes away from having a major catastrophe on her hands. ‘I want to start cleaning up now, so if you don’t mind…’
He didn’t take the hint. ‘I’ll help you mop up the worst and then I suggest you leave the main clearing up till tomorrow. Nothing will seem so bad after a good night’s sleep and a hearty breakfast.’
Willow stared round the room and her expression must have spoken volumes because Morgan smiled the lopsided grin that she’d registered the first time she had met him before saying wryly, ‘OK, it might, but this’ll take hours and it’ll be better in daylight.’ He shivered, adding, ‘Haven’t you any heating in this place? It’s as cold in here as it is outside.’
Willow’s eyes went involuntarily to the blackened fireplace.
‘No central heating? No storage heaters or fan heaters?’
She shook her head. ‘Not yet, but I will do something soon.’
‘OK, this is what we do,’ he said after a moment’s silence. ‘We mop up like I said and then you’re coming home with me for a hot meal and a bath before you spend the night at my place. I’ll bring you back in the morning and we’ll tackle the cleaning then. At least you’ll be in a better frame of mind to cope.’
Was he mad? Adrenalin surged in a welcome flood, enabling her to straighten and say steadily, ‘Thank you, Mr Wright, but that’s really not necessary. I can manage perfectly well.’
‘I’ve seen the results of you managing…twice.’
Willow’s chin raised a notch. ‘Thank you,’ she said for the third time, her voice thin, ‘but I’d like to be on my own now. I’m not a child so please don’t treat me like one.’
She saw the amazingly blue eyes narrow in irritation. ‘Are you always this stubborn?’
The smell of soot was thick in her nostrils and she was so cold her fingers were numb. All she wanted was for him to leave so she could sit down and howl. ‘Please go,’ she said weakly.
It was like talking to a brick wall. Somehow in the next few minutes she found herself covering the floorboards with a thick layer of newspapers—Morgan had fetched these from the potting shed and to his credit he didn’t make any comment whatsoever—before fetching her handbag and coat and locking the front door of the cottage. She felt shivery and shaky and it was just easier to comply rather than argue, besides which she was cold and hungry and the thought of tackling the cleaning-up process tonight was unbearable.
It wasn’t until Willow reached the rickety garden gate that she noticed the Harley-Davidson parked down the lane on the grass verge. As Morgan walked over to the powerful machine she stopped dead. ‘That’s yours? You came on that?’
‘Yep.’ She could see his blue eyes glittering in the deep shadows as he turned and smiled. ‘When I saw the flames I figured I’d better get round here as fast as I could.’
She waved her hand helplessly. ‘But you live next door.’
‘A minute or two can make all the difference with fire. I didn’t know whether I was going to have to pull you out of a burning house at that stage.’ He shrugged. ‘It can happen.’
He started the engine and the quiet of the night was rudely shattered as he drove to her gate. ‘Get on.’
She had already noticed that he was even taller than she had thought him to be when he was perched on the wall. Morgan Wright was big, very big, and it was muscled strength that padded his shoulders and chest. In fact he gave off an aura of strength from his face—which was rugged with sharply defined planes and angles and no softness—to his feet, which were encased in black leather boots. The thought of clambering up on the bike and holding onto the hard male body was blushingly intimate, but she could hardly walk beside him. She had no choice but to agree.
Blessing the fact she had changed from her pencil-thin office skirt to jeans, Willow slid onto the bike, her handbag over one shoulder. Morgan wasn’t wearing a coat, just jeans and a shirt, and as she put her arms round his waist the warmth of his body flowed through her fingers. She felt him jerk.
‘Hell, you’re like a block of ice,’ he muttered.
Funnily enough, she was aware of that herself. ‘Sorry.’
There was no chance to say anything more before they roared off. After some two hundred yards Morgan turned into his own grounds through open six-foot wrought-iron gates. The drive wound through mature trees and bushes, which hid the house from the road, but then a bowling-green-smooth lawn came into view and the manor house was in front of them. It was quite stunning.
The motorbike drew to a halt at the bottom of wide semicircular stone steps, which led to a massive studded front door that could have graced a castle. Willow could hear dogs barking from within the house and they sounded ferocious.
‘Are you OK with dogs?’ Morgan asked as he helped her off the Harley. ‘There’s a few of them so be prepared.’
‘If they’re OK with me,’ she said more weakly than she would have liked. ‘And I prefer they don’t look on me as food.’
He grinned. ‘They’ve already been fed for the night.’
‘That’s comforting.’
He took her arm, leading her up the steps. ‘My housekeeper and her husband will be back shortly—they’re visiting a friend in hospital—and dinner’ll be about eight, but that’ll give you time for a long hot soak. You’re shaking with cold.’
Willow was glad he was already opening the door and she didn’t have to reply. For the life of her she couldn’t have said if it was the icy night air making her tremble or the enforced intimacy with the very male man at her side. And he smelt delicious, the sort of delicious that would cost a small fortune for a few mls and definitely came courtesy of a designer label.
Contrary to what she had expected the dogs didn’t come at them pell-mell but in an orderly group that sat at their feet without any jostling. ‘I’ll introduce you and you can give the obligatory pat—that way they’ll know you’re a friend and off the menu. They never eat my friends.’
Morgan’s lazy tone and the laughter in his eyes informed her he was well aware of her unease and enjoying it. Willow looked at him coldly. She didn’t know why but everything about Morgan Wright irritated her, ungrateful though that was in the circumstances. Criminally ungrateful, to be truthful.
Introductions