Personally, Holly thought that she might very well have missed her chance because she couldn’t imagine that there was anyone more on her wavelength than James had been. But he had been transferred south and had just not been able to tolerate the physical distance. She often wondered whether she should have tried harder because time moved on and…
She paused by the front door to reach for the keys to her ancient four-wheel drive and glanced at the reflection in the little brass mirror attached to the hooks for the keys.
This face would never suit the bright lights, she decided, and neither would this body. She lacked the fashionable angular lines that looked good in tight clothes and she had never quite cracked the art of make-up. The bright blue eyes staring back at her were rarely adorned with mascara or eye-liner. Her face was soft, gentle, too feminine to be sexy.
She turned away without dwelling further on her physical drawbacks.
Outside the snow was getting heavier, and she knew that there was no time for second thoughts, but her car was extremely sturdy and as she switched on the engine it let out its usual reassuring rumble.
There were several roads and lanes she could have taken but she unerringly went for the right one. It was the most hazardous. In the past four years, three accidents had taken place on one of the bends that forked left without warning. If that wasn’t the site of the car crash, then she would have no difficulty in picking up another lane.
Making her way through the snow, she spotted the car as soon as the narrow road allowed her an unimpeded view straight ahead. It was skewed into the field at an angle that made her urge her old car on faster. Snow was already gathering on it and even from a distance she could see that it was a complete write off.
She was squinting to make out the detail in the beam of her headlights and very nearly missed the figure at the side of the road, barely standing and signalling to her to stop.
A man, on his own, and not kitted out for the weather; she could make that much out as she carefully pulled to the side of the road.
‘Is there anyone else with you?’ Holly asked anxiously, hurrying over and wrapping her arm around his waist. Half-slumped, she was conscious of the firmness of muscle and the weight of someone much taller than her.
‘Just me.’ Luiz ground his teeth to bite back the agony of his leg as they hobbled, clutching each other, to a car that looked like the left-over relic from another century.
‘Your car…’
‘Completely destroyed.’
‘I’ll arrange for someone to come out and fetch it.’
‘Forget it. I couldn’t give a damn about it.’
Holly wondered who couldn’t give a damn about something as expensive as a car. Letting him go for the second it took to open the passenger door, she felt the brush of his body as he settled into the seat with a grimace of pain.
A thousand questions were running through her head. Which would be the quickest route to the hospital? He was standing and he was talking, but was he seriously injured? Should she be asking him about any family members she could contact? Should she do some sort of routine check to make sure that he wasn’t concussed?
She raised her eyes, one of those questions already forming on her lips, and was skewered to the spot by the sort of spectacular good looks that just made her want to stare and keep on staring. His eyes were deep and dark and the snow glistened on short black hair and on a lean-boned face that was breathtakingly, uncompromisingly masculine. He was exotically foreign, his skin the colour of burnished gold. Her heart set up a tempo that was so alien to her that she could feel bright, flustered colour invade her cheeks.
‘Are you comfortable?’ she managed to ask in a staccato voice that was very different from her usually calm, unruffled tone.
‘As comfortable as I can be with a leg that’s been ripped open.’
At which Holly roused herself out of her stupor sufficiently to look at the bloodied trousers and she gave a little gasp of horror.
‘You need the hospital.’ She switched on the engine. The snow was falling more heavily and it took her a little while before her tyres could grip the tarmac.
‘How far is it?’
‘Quite far.’ She had to fight the temptation to sneak one more look at that face. ‘You’re not from around here, are you?’
‘Is it so easy to tell?’ Luiz rested his head against the window and stared at her profile. He had the strangest feeling that he had crashed, died and gone to heaven, because she was the most angelic thing he had ever seen in his life. Her skin was as smooth as satin, her enormous eyes were the pure blue of cornflowers; her hair, flyaway blonde, cascaded down her back and over her shoulders in natural, wild disarray, so different from the poker-straight hairstyles that were everywhere in London. The pain in his leg was now a steady throb, pulsing underneath the trousers.
‘You’re wearing the wrong clothes. No one would venture out in weather like this without a few more layers. Look, it’s going to be impossible to get you to the hospital, but I can call and find out whether they can send a rescue helicopter for you.’
Luiz thought of the carelessness that had landed him in this mess and flushed darkly. ‘I can handle it myself. There’s no need for a rescue helicopter.’
‘You’re kidding.’
When she smiled, her cheeks dimpled. He had never seen anything like it.
‘I haven’t even introduced myself,’ Holly said shyly. ‘I’m Holly George.’
‘Well, Holly George,’ Luiz murmured, ‘What were you doing out on the roads in this weather? Won’t your parents be wondering where you’ve gone?’
‘I live on my own. Not very far away, as a matter of fact. I heard you crash so I jumped in my car and drove here. I was going to alert Ben and Abe but it would have taken them ages. That’s the problem with living in such a remote place; if you run into trouble in the depths of winter, you just have to keep your fingers crossed that you can hold out for a few hours.’
‘Who are Ben and Abe?’
‘Oh, Ben’s in charge of the fire station and old Abe is the local doctor.’
‘It all sounds very cosy.’
‘What were you doing on those roads?’
‘Getting rid of some of my demons.’
Holly glanced across at him at that intriguing statement but his eyes were veiled and she instinctively knew that he was not a man who would expand on anything if she chose to ask him a direct question. How did she know that? Where had that gut feeling come from?
‘Those lights up ahead…’ She turned off the main road and felt the familiarity of the grounds surrounding her cottage. ‘My cottage is there. I… I run an animal sanctuary.’
‘You do what?’
‘I run an animal sanctuary. You can just make out the buildings over there; they’re heated and covered. We have about fifty animals. Dogs, cats, two horses, a donkey… Last year we even had a pair of llamas, but fortunately they were taken in by a children’s farm.’
‘Cats… horses… a donkey…’ He had stepped into another world. This was so far beyond his realm of understanding that he could have been conversing with someone from another planet.
‘What do you do?’ Holly asked. ‘I mean, what’s your job?’