“The worst that’s going to happen to you is that you’re going to get even wetter if you stand out here any longer,’ he pointed out in a crushing voice. ‘So I suggest you stop wittering and get in the car.’
‘Can you turn on the lights again?’ she pleaded. It was so dark that she couldn’t even see Blair and she edged closer along the car towards the sound of his voice. ‘I can’t see a thing.’
‘Feel your way round the bonnet,’ Blair began, but, as if against his better judgement, he reached out into the blackness until his hand brushed against hers. Amanda clutched at it thankfully. ‘Here,’ he said gruffly, leading her round to the other side of the car and opening the passenger door. ‘You’d better get in.’
The opening of the door gave her enough light to climb in out of the storm, but Amanda was strangely reluctant to let go of his hand. ‘Thank you,’ she said humbly.
Moving confidently through the pitch-dark, Blair was banging his own door shut only moments later. He reached up to click on the overhead light and began stripping off his jacket. ‘Well, we seem to have survived the monsters against all the odds. Or are they circling the car even now, slavering in anticipation at the thought of us both trapped here?’
‘Very funny,’ said Amanda, unappreciative of his sarcasm, but she locked her door anyway. She watched him toss his sodden jacket over the boxes in the back and run a hand over his wet hair before wiping the worst of the rain from his face. In the dim light she could see a trickle still heading down towards his jaw and for one extraordinary moment even considered reaching across to stop it with her finger. Her hand tingled with the thought and she looked abruptly away. ‘What do we do now?’ she asked, clearing her throat.
‘Wait.’
No one could accuse Blair McAllister of garrulity, Amanda thought with an inward sigh. ‘Is that it?’ she said after a moment
‘Unless you can do mechanics by Braille, yes,’ he said tersely. ‘If you hadn’t dropped that torch, we could be on our way by now. What made you drop it, anyway?’ he went on, turning in his seat to look at her. ‘One minute you were standing there quietly, and the next you were jumping around life a scalded cat.’
‘I was cold,’ said Amanda, who had no intention of telling him why she had been so tense. ‘My hands were numb. It was like the North Pole out there.’ She shivered and wrapped her arms around her body. ‘It’s like the North Pole in here, come to that.’
‘It’s nothing like the North Pole,’ said Blair impatiently. Of course, he would have been there, wouldn’t he? He leant closer and touched the sodden material of her suit. ‘You’re soaking!’ His voice was suddenly sharp. ‘You’d better get that suit off.’
‘I bet you say that to all the girls,’ she muttered.
‘Only when I’ve known them longer than two hours,’ he said. His face was quite straight, but amusement threaded his voice and when Amanda looked at him suspiciously one corner of his mouth twitched.
For some reason, she felt a blush stealing up her cheeks. She felt ridiculously ruffled. This was Blair McAllister, she reminded herself with an edge of desperation. All he had done was smile at her—and not even a proper smile at that!—so why was she having trouble breathing properly?
‘I’ll get your suitcase out,’ he was saying with a return to his usual manner. Leaning over the seat, he manoeuvred her case so that it was lying flat on top of the boxes behind her. ‘I suggest you take off those wet things first, and then find something warm and dry to put on instead.’
‘Yes...yes, I’ll do that.’ Amanda pulled herself together with an effort. She must be even more tired than she had thought to let a smile—a suggestion of a smile—discompose her. She leant forward to struggle out of her jacket, but she was so cold that Blair had to help her, and the feel of his hands grazing against her only made her more awkward.
‘That shirt’s sodden too,’ he said when he eventually managed to peel off the jacket and spread it out in the back. ‘Go on, take that off too. There’s no point in being modest if it means you dying of pneumonia, and if you’re worried about me, I have had a very long, trying day, not improved by hanging around at the station for an hour and half or breaking down, and I can assure you that seduction is the last thing on my mind!’
‘The thought never occurred to me,’ said Amanda stiffly through chattering teeth.
Blair sat back in his seat and studied the bedraggled figure beside him. The meagre light was enough to see that the shiny brown hair was plastered to her head and as he watched she sniffed and drearily wiped a trickle of rain from her nose in an unconscious gesture of tiredness. ‘Come on, huny up before you freeze to death,’ he said almost brusquely. ‘It’s not exactly the ideal situation for a spot of lovemaking anyway, is it?’ he went on casually as Amanda began to fumble with the tiny buttons of her shirt. ‘I prefer a little more comfort myself.’
Amanda tried to imagine the dour Blair McAllister making love and found to her discomfort that she could manage it with unnerving clarity. She had known the man for something less than three hours, had seen him clearly for less than three minutes...how was it that she could picture him so vividly, reaching out, leaning over, bending down for a kiss? What made her picture him with a slow smile and slow, sure hands?
Her fingers were still numb with cold, and the distracting image of Blair was making her even clumsier as she struggled awkwardly with the buttons. They were tricky at the best of times and she muttered with a mixture of embarrassment and frustration as her hands slipped again.
‘Here, let me have a go,’ said Blair abruptly, and before Amanda quite realised what was happening he had leant over to undo the top button. He must have been as cold as she was, but his fingers were deft and impersonal, and warm where they brushed against her skin.
Amanda was intensely grateful for the dim light that disguised the wave of colour that swept up her cheeks. Her fingers might be numb with cold, but inside she could feel herself burning with an excruciating awareness of the man so impersonally unbuttoning her shirt with fingers that were just as slow and sure as she had imagined.
‘Seduction is the last thing on my mind,’ he had said, but she couldn’t stop herself wondering what it would be like if it wasn’t. What would it be like if he was thinking about making love now, what if he was thinking about her? What if he were unbuttoning her shirt like a lover and not like a nanny undressing a tiresome child? What would it be like if he slid his hands beneath the silk to caress her skin? Amanda’s heart was thudding slowly, painfully against her ribs and her throat was tight and dry. God, what was the matter with her? She must stop this; she must—
‘I must choose a more comfortable place to undress you next time,’ said Blair. ‘This would be much more fun if we were both warm and dry and weren’t squashed into the front seat of a damp car, wouldn’t it?’ The sound of his voice wrenched her back to reality, but she heard only the undercurrent of laughter in his voice and stared blankly at him.
‘Joke,’ he quoted her own explanation back at her. ‘Just trying to lighten the atmosphere.’
Amanda swallowed and smiled weakly. If only he knew how close he had been to reading her mind! ‘It’s just as well the seats are so wet, then, isn’t it?’ she said feebly as Blair undid the last button and pulled the shirt off her to reveal the dull gleam of the cream silk camisole she wore.
‘Just as well,’ he said after a moment.
There was a long pause, and then he looked up directly into Amanda’s eyes. The light wasn’t good enough to read his expression. It threw a fuzzy glow over one side of his face, blurring the forceful features but paradoxically heightening the impression of granite strength that already seemed so much a part of him. In the darkness he was a massive presence, at once reassuring and disturbing.
Amanda was held, pinned by