CHAPTER THREE
AMANDA’S head was aching. Opening one eye very cautiously, she found herself looking at something dark and curved only inches away from her face. She stared at it for a long time before her pounding brain registered that she was looking at the bottom of a steering wheel.
It hurt too much to think about what it was doing there. Amanda closed her eye again, but the effort of recognising a steering wheel had set her mind working, albeit slowly, and as she lay and willed herself to sink back into comfortable oblivion memories of the night before came filtering back in a series of odd, unconnected pictures: huddling under the bonnet in the sluicing rain, spluttering as the whisky burned down her throat, sitting very still as Blair undid the buttons of her shirt and being passionately glad of the darkness.
Blair... Until then, Amanda had been remembering in the peculiarly detached way of the half-asleep, but his image dissolved the last wisps of dream and brought her awake with a jolt. At the same moment, she became aware that fingers were twisting strands of her hair absently together and her eyes snapped open with the sudden realisation that she was sprawled across the front of the car with her head in Blair McAllister’s lap. His other hand was resting lightly at the curve of her hip, and his thighs were broad and firm and relaxed beneath her cheek.
‘At last!’ Blair must have felt her involuntary stiffening. ‘I thought you were going to sleep all morning.’
‘I didn’t realise...’ Horribly embarrassed, Amanda struggled upright, wincing at the stiffness of her limbs. Someone—presumably Blair—had stuffed a couple of jumpers from her suitcase around the handbrake, but it hadn’t stopped it digging into her. ‘Y-you should have woken me,’ she stammered.
‘I didn’t have the heart,’ said Blair. ‘You were sleeping like a baby.’
She blinked at him, disconcerted to find him at once a stranger and oddly familiar. For the first time she registered that it was light. The darkness of the night before had blurred the strength of his features and now, in the brightness of morning, it was as if she had never seen his face before.
It was his eyes she noticed first of all. They were an opaque blue-grey, the colour of slate, and beneath dark, sarcasticlooking eyebrows they held an unnervingly acute expression that gave focus to his face. For Amanda, it was as if the morning light had thrown everything about him into sharp relief: the angle of his jaw, the thick, dark hair, the prickle of stubble on his unshaven skin and, most of all, the way his mouth was set in a line that was already uncannily unfamiliar.
Aware that she was staring, and afflicted by sudden shyness, Amanda looked away. ‘I don’t feel as if I slept a wink,’ she said uncomfortably.
‘You slept more than a wink,’ said Blair. ‘You drank half my whisky, keeled over into my lap in the middle of a sentence and proceeded to snore for the rest of the night.’
Amanda looked appalled. ‘I didn’t, did I?’ She did vaguely remember drinking whisky out of a bottle, but she had no recollection of falling asleep at all. She looked suspiciously at Blair. ‘Anyway, I don’t snore.’
‘It sounded remarkably like snoring to me.’ His voice was sardonic, not unamused. ‘I’ve been listening to you ever since the wind dropped, so I should know. Still, I suppose I should be glad that one of us at least had a comfortable night.’
‘If someone asked me to describe my first night in Scotland, comfortable wouldn’t be the first word that sprang to mind,’ said Amanda sourly, grimacing as she stretched her stiff limbs. ‘I feel terrible.’
‘I’m not surprised, judging by the amount of my whisky you sank last night. I thought you weren’t supposed to like the stuff?’
Amanda held her aching head. ‘I don’t’ With her other hand, she twisted round the rear-view mirror and peered blearily into it. Her hair had lost its customary bounce and shine in last night’s rain and, although now dry, it stood up at impossible angles around her face, one side of which was marked with narrow red lines where her cheek had been pressed into Blair’s cords. Mascara was smudged beneath her gritty eyes and she moaned as she rubbed it away with a knuckle. ‘Ugh!’ was all she felt capable of groaning, and, unable to bear the sight of herself any longer, she turned the mirror away.
‘I must say that you don’t look quite as smart as you did when you got off the train last night.’ Blair pretended to look Amanda over critically, but she could tell that he was enjoying himself. He didn’t actually smile, but amusement lurked around his mouth and the crinkles at the corners of his eyes deepened. Involuntarily, she followed his gaze from the scarlet cashmere jumper, which she had managed to put on back to front, to the hideously clashing leggings and on down to the assortment of odd socks which she had pulled on last night in her haste to cover herself.
Some executive she looked now! Mortified, Amanda hurriedly pulled off her jumper and put it back on the right way round, making sure this time that both sides of her shirt collar lay neatly over the round neck. The small detail made her feel better and she patted the collar down, only to flush as she caught Blair’s mocking slate eyes.
‘What time is it?’ she asked crossly.
He glanced at his watch and told her.
Amanda shuddered. ‘I knew I wouldn’t like it,’ she grumbled, rubbing a hand round her aching neck.
‘Your previous charges must have been very well behaved if you’re not used to getting up at this sort of time,’ said Blair, callously indifferent to her suffering. He reached down to release the bonnet and opened his door. ‘Not that I’d call this particularly early. It would count as a lie-in on an expedition.’
‘Remind me never to join one of your expeditions,’ muttered Amanda, watching him morosely as he jumped out and went round to inspect the engine. Still grumbling to herself, she opened her own door and eased herself out to stand in the road in her mismatched socks and stretch painfully. Only then did she look round her and her jaw dropped.
They had spluttered to a halt on a long, straight stretch of road that swept down the hillside to the shores of a loch which was as smooth and still as dark glass below them. The fury of last night’s storm might never have been. Not a breath of wind stirred the surface of the water, and it reflected back the massive snow-capped peaks looming around it, sharply outlined against a clear, crisp sky. Amanda, whose image of Scotland until now had been of brown hills shrouded in grey mist, could only stare at the scene spread out before her like a vast postcard. The hills were a warm golden colour, separated from the blue of the sky by their crowns of white snow, and the crystalline light made her blink.
‘Oh,’ she said.
Blair glanced up from the engine. ‘It’s quite a view to wake up to, isn’t it?’
‘Ye-es.’ She looked slowly around her once more, her breath freezing in a white cloud. She didn’t think that she had ever seen anywhere as empty as this before. The thin ribbon of road stretching out into the distance was the only sign of civilisation; other than that, there were only hills and sky and water and cold, clear air. There was something overwhelming about the austere grandeur of the scene that made Amanda feel very small. The massive, uncompromising mountains reminded her of Blair, she decided, trying to shrug off the feeling. ‘It’s all a bit bleak, isn’t it?’
He looked disapproving at her lack of enthusiasm. ‘It’s magnificent country. You’re very lucky to see it like this.’
But Amanda was in no mood to admire the scenery. After the first shock of surprise, she had lapsed back into early-morning disgruntlement. ‘I feel a lot of things right now,’ she sighed, ‘but lucky is not one of them.’
She was dying to go to the loo, but trees or bushes seemed to be in short supply up here. For miles there seemed to be nothing but tussocky grass interspersed with clumps of heather, dead, battered bracken and the odd patch of unmelted snow. Peeling off her ridiculous socks, Amanda rummaged in her case for a pair of trainers. She was tempted to change all her clothes,