Huh, she thought, that had worked out well. Not. She looked around at the endless, eye-searingly white snow. A woman could go blind out here. And not for any fun reasons.
All things considered, it was depressing. She couldn’t even run away properly.
She trudged back into the cottage, kicking off green wellies that were six shoe sizes too big and came up over her knee caps. She could practically feel her nose glowing, and her hair was damp from snow and wasted manual labour. Face it, Leah, she thought – you’re just a useless urban gnome trapped in the wilds of the North Pole. Apparently determined to lose your fingers to frostbite one way or another.
Still, she told herself, pausing to look at Rob sprawled over the sofa in front of the fire. It could have been worse. At least she was a useless urban gnome trapped in the North Pole with God. What her situation lacked in snow ploughs it did make up for in eye candy. Better to focus on the positives than wallow in self-pity, after all. He was reading a book, one arm propping his head up, body stretched so long the T-shirt had crept up over his belly. A few inches of taut, olive-toned skin peeked out. Leah felt her cold nose twitch, like Sabrina the witch, and wondered if she could cast some kind of X-ray-vision spell so she could see the rest of it.
Rob glanced up, gave her a nod of acknowledgement, barely managing to hide the smirk playing around his lips. The bastard. He’d given her the shovel. Told her to knock herself out; that if she managed to dig her way back to civilisation it’d be the greatest escape since Colditz.
Obviously, she’d failed. Maybe she could try faking her papers and digging a tunnel next. She’d probably need to grow a moustache and start wearing an RAF jacket first though.
“Drink?” Rob asked, gesturing to the end of the sofa, where a tumbler of warm whiskey was waiting on a side table. It was practically glowing with deliciousness, and he’d timed it perfectly – just warm enough, as though he’d known exactly when she’d throw in the towel. He was one of those people, she realised – the ones who were good at sport and clever and witty and always in charge of the room. Not to mention sexually irresistible to any creature with a pulse. Leah had no doubt that if he’d tried to dig a bloody path, it would be so good it would win the Scottish Path of the Year award.
Rob remained silent, watching as she chewed on her full lower lip, knowing she was weighing up the pleasures of the drink vs telling him to go screw himself. Her hair was scooped into a messy pony tail with an elastic band she’d found in the kitchen. She was wearing his coat, the sleeves rolled over so many times her arms were as big as Popeye’s. Peaches and cream skin gone all rosy from the cold, jacket hanging down over her knees, eyes glimmering with chill-sprung tears. Frosty and snowy and perfect; if he could find a way to shrink her, he could hang her from the vast pine tree in the corner of the room as a bauble.
“Okay,” she said, hanging up the coat and walking over to the fire. “Move up then. I don’t want to have to sit on you.”
That, she admitted to herself as he shuffled his legs over slightly, was a big fat lie. She was trying to ignore how big he was, but it was impossible. He was so long, filling the sofa, filling the room. Filling her vision. His hair was messy. The paperback was open, splayed on his broad chest. The truth was she’d very much like to sit on him. Or lie on him. Or curl up in his arms and go to sleep…Those would be mighty fine arms for a woman to curl up in. The fire crackling in the background; the enormous Christmas tree was filling the room with the scent of pine, and there he was. Lying like Adonis on the sofa, asking for trouble. How would he react if she curled up around him like a snoozy kitten?
She raised her glass, and said: “Happy Christmas!”, before sipping the whisky.
“Mmmm. This is good,” she said. “Glenfiddich?”
“Yeah,” he replied, surprised. “How’d you know?”
“I – we – me and Doug. You know, hide-the-sausage Doug. We have a bistro, in London. One of our specialities is fine liquor, as you Yanks might call it. And this is a favourite of mine.”
It was also, she knew, bloody expensive. If he was an artist, he was doing well. Definitely not the starving type. Or maybe he’d married money. As soon as the thought pinged into her brain, it came out of her mouth.
“Where’s your wife? Why aren’t you together for Christmas?” she asked, feeling bolder as the warmth of the whiskey spread in her throat like liquid heat. There were gifts under the tree, and glittery Christmas cards propped up on the bookshelves, which might be from a wife. But there were no photos. No lists of DIY jobs for him to do. No actual woman either – unless he’d killed her, buried her in the woodshed. Nothing but that wide gold band glinting on his finger.
The Dutch courage had helped Leah to ask, and it was a valid question. She’d been feeling some fairly intense heat since she’d fallen into his arms last night, and not all of it came from the fire. She wasn’t arrogant, but she knew he’d been feeling it too. He could be as terse as he liked, but she had eyes. She could see what had been going on in those Levis. So far neither of them had acted on it, and it would be better by far if they never did. He was married, and she was heartbroken. Allegedly.
She hoped that talking about the absent missus might defuse the situation, at least for her. This was another woman’s man, after all, and she shouldn’t be pondering the fineness of his arms, or any other part of him.
“I’m not married,” he said quickly, his tone unexpectedly sharp. The mood had been mellow; relaxed. Christmassy, with the fire and the tree and the snow and the whiskey. Now, it was tense. Leah turned her face to his, saw the brooding darkness of his eyes. The gleam of the wedding ring on one long finger. And knew this was not an issue to press. He might as well have pulled out a ‘no entry’ road sign and stuck it on his frown-creased forehead. She saw the line of his jaw go rigid with anxiety, his body language screaming ‘none of your business’. A mystery. And not hers to solve.
“Okay,” she said, after a beat. She kept her gaze on the blaze of his eyes, smiled, aimed for a light-hearted tone that might bring him back down from red alert. “Well, me neither, as you know. Lucky us. And you were right, of course. I failed abysmally in my attempts to dig us out. Is it all right if I stay? Is there maybe room in a stable somewhere? I know I arrived in an Audi, not on a donkey, but I don’t mind roughing it if you need your space.”
“You can stay,” he answered, quietly. He was so glad she hadn’t asked any more about Meredith. He came here to escape talking about Meredith. His family seemed to think talking about her was the way to ‘cure’ him; and his sister-in-law Melissa never failed to try and reach out at this time of year, get him to open up. Idiots. Lovable, but idiots all the same. He’d resorted to flying to the other side of the world to avoid them all. The last thing he needed was Leah quizzing him as well. He could feel the attraction between them fizzing so loud he could almost hear it pop, like soda bubbles. That, he could cope with. He might end up with blue balls, but he could cope with it. Deep and meaningful conversations about his past, though? No way.
He shook it off. She’d lightened the tone, and he knew it was for his benefit, that she’d picked up on his signals. She’d mocked herself, pulled such a disgusted face at her path-digging failure that he’d had to smile. She’d backed off. In that one exchange she showed she was more in tune with his feelings than the entire Cavelli clan back home in the Windy City. She already understood and respected the boundaries that they relentlessly tried to demolish every year. They could do this: avoid the deep and meaningful. Hopefully avoid sex. Avoid everything with screw-up potential until he could safely get her out of there.
“You can stay, Leah,” he repeated, “but don’t get any ideas. I sleep with a rape alarm by my bed, and I’m trained in seven different types of martial art.”
She