‘No way! I’d rather take my chances with the elements!’
As her defiant words were whipped away on the wind she nerved herself for his response, expecting an angry protest laced with dark scorn at her foolishness.
It never came. Instead he shrugged again, even more dismissively than before.
‘Your choice, lady.’
Already he was turning away.
‘Have a good night.’
Leah watched, open-mouthed, in frank disbelief. He couldn’t mean it! She couldn’t believe that he would actually leave her here.
But it seemed that he would. He had turned his back on her and was moving purposefully towards the dark, sleek shape of his parked car. Without even his ambiguous presence the silent lane seemed suddenly very dark and cold, and full of darkly threatening shadows.
‘You can’t do this!’ Her words had to be pitched high against the manic howling of the wind. ‘You can’t just go and leave me here alone!’
For a brief second he paused, glanced back, eyes narrowed against the whirling snow.
‘Try me,’ he tossed at her, and turned back towards his car.
CHAPTER TWO
HE MEANT it too, Sean told himself as he strode away from her. Never once in all the thirty-four years of his life had he left a woman in a position of need when he could offer help, but there was always a first time, and this was it.
This woman was far more trouble than she was worth, and quite frankly the thought of letting her into his house, the home he had kept as his own very private haven until now, was not something that appealed in the slightest.
He couldn’t work out just what it was about this particular female that affected him so badly, but it seemed as if his thinking processes, normally as cool and rational as any scientist’s, had seized up from the moment he had left his car and headed for hers.
But could he really leave her here, alone and unprotected, in such appalling weather conditions?
His steps were already slowing when he heard her voice behind him.
‘Wait! Please!’
She had finally pulled her skirt down, he noted automatically as he swung round in response to the sharp cry of distress. And the black coat was now fastened close across that stunning cleavage. Sean didn’t know whether relief or disappointment was uppermost in his mind. He only knew that it was a damned sight easier to think more clearly when there was so much less of her body on display.
‘Changed your mind? Decided to see sense?’
‘I—realise I have no choice.’
The admission had had to be dragged from her, her stilted tone said. Her reluctance to speak to him was emphasised by the way she held her head proudly upright, those amazing violet eyes watching him as if he was something particularly unpleasant that a cat had just brought in.
‘I’ll freeze if I have to stay here. So if your offer of shelter still stands I’d—like to take you up on it.’
‘Like’ obviously didn’t come in to it. She knew she had no alternative, and she hated being obliged to admit it.
‘In that case we’d better get moving. Do you have anything you want to bring with you?’
‘My case. It’s in the boot.’
She was turning back to the Renault as she spoke, her keys in her hand, but Sean reached out and took them from her.
‘I’ll fetch it. You get in the car.’
He didn’t want to be already in his car when she slid in beside him, didn’t want to subject himself once more to the sight of those long, slender legs as she swung them inside and settled down in her seat. He needed to get back in control, remember what all this was about.
He took the few moments needed to open the boot and take out the small, battered suitcase in order to draw a couple of deep, calming breaths and impose some sort of order on his thoughts.
‘Get a grip!’ he muttered to himself furiously. ‘All you have to do is to take her to the cottage and keep her there until Pete comes to collect her.’ A promise was a promise after all.
But he had made that promise in complete ignorance, blind to any possible repercussions. He had been barely awake when his brother had phoned, dragged from a rare deep sleep by the shrill ringing of the telephone.
‘Sean?’ Pete’s voice had been sharp and urgent, in contrast to his own near inarticulate growl on picking up the receiver.
Hearing it, Sean had shaken himself awake and sat up swiftly, leaning up against the arm of the settee on which he had fallen asleep.
‘What’s wrong?’ Because something had to be wrong to put that note in his brother’s voice.
‘She’s left me.’ It was a stark, bleak announcement. ‘Says there’s someone else.’
‘She? Your fiancée? But the wedding’s—’
‘In the New Year, right. Or, rather, correction—it was to have been. But Annie’s called it off. She even gave me back the ring.’
Why wasn’t he surprised? Sean wondered cynically. Women. There wasn’t one of them who could be trusted. He knew that only too well. But he had hoped that for his kid brother things might turn out better.
‘When did this happen?’
‘Just now! We were having lunch at my place—our own private Christmas celebration, seeing as we won’t be together on the day—and it was obvious that something was wrong. When I asked her what it was, she just came right out with it. Said there was someone else, and then she left. She drove off in an almighty rush and I couldn’t follow her. I’d…’
‘Had rather too much to drink?’ Sean finished for him as he hesitated. It was there in the slight slur of his brother’s words, the emotion that he wouldn’t normally have shown.
‘A lot too much,’ Pete admitted ruefully. ‘There’s no way I’m remotely fit to drive. That’s why I thought of you.’
‘Me?’ Sean stared at the receiver as if it was actually his brother. ‘What can I do?’
‘You can go after her for me. No, listen, she wasn’t going home to Hexham but to her parents’ for Christmas. And they live in Carborough.’
Which was a long way south. To get there, she would have to pass Appleton village, Sean realised, seeing the direction in which his brother’s thoughts were heading.
‘Pete, be sensible! What am I supposed to do? Throw myself in front of the car?’
‘There won’t be any need for that. You see, she always breaks her journey at this all-night café—The Night Owl. Do you know it?’
Sean managed a murmur that might have been agreement. But his brother didn’t seem to need any encouragement.
‘All you have to do is be there—say between six and eight, to allow for any margin of error either way. When she arrives you just hang onto her…’
“‘Hang onto her”!’ Sean echoed, raking one hand through the darkness of his hair. ‘Look, baby brother, what am I supposed to do—kidnap her?’
‘Oh, you’ll manage something,’ Pete declared airily, but then suddenly his mood changed. ‘Please, Sean.’
Sean knew there was no way he could resist the appeal in his brother’s voice. After all, he owed