‘Oh,’ she blushed.
‘Do you also have a sleeping bag in that seemingly bottomless saddlebag?’
‘Yes,’ she frowned her puzzlement.
‘Then you can share my bed—in the safe cocoon of your sleeping bag, of course.’
‘Oh no, I—I’d rather sleep down here on the sofa. If you don’t mind.’
‘Oh, but I do mind. I can’t have a guest of mine sleeping on the sofa,’ his words taunted her.
‘Then couldn’t you—–’
‘No, I could not! For one thing the sofa isn’t long enough for either of us to sleep on, for another thing it’s my bed. And I’m not willing to put myself out that much for someone I didn’t even invite here.’
‘I’ve said I’ll go—–’
‘I wouldn’t even send a dog out in that mist. And although reporters are the lowest form of life to me I can’t be sure that you are one. But I can’t be sure you aren’t either,’ his voice hardened. ‘So tonight you’ll stay with me, where I can keep an eye on you.’
Sabina gulped, her eyes wide. ‘K-keep an eye on me?’
‘I’m still not sure about you, Miss Smith,’ he managed to put a wealth of sarcasm into his voice. ‘So I’m not leaving you down here where you could snoop about.’
‘I don’t want to “snoop about” anywhere,’ she denied angrily. ‘I wouldn’t have bothered you at all if I hadn’t been lost and it’s pouring down with rain.’
‘Can you cook?’ he asked suddenly.
She frowned. ‘Cook?’
‘Mm,’ her reluctant host nodded. ‘Before I came here I had never felt the necessity to learn to cook. Since my arrival here I’ve had to learn the hard way. Even Satan wouldn’t touch some of my earlier efforts.’
‘You want me to cook you a meal?’
‘That was the general idea.’
‘Why, you—–’
‘What’s the matter, can’t you cook either?’
‘Of course I can cook, but—–’
‘Good.’ He sat down in the fireside chair, his long legs stretched out in front of him. ‘You’ll find the makings of a meal out in the kitchen.’
‘You really expect me to cook for you?’
He turned from his contemplation of the fire. ‘Is that too much to ask for your board?’
‘Well—no, I suppose not,’ but her look was resentful.
‘Well then?’ he raised his eyebrows.
‘Okay, okay!’ She slammed angrily into the kitchen, only to have the door open again seconds later, her dark tormentor standing there. ‘What’s the matter now?’ she challenged. ‘Have you come to make sure I don’t poison you? There isn’t much I could do wrong with bacon and eggs,’ she dismissed tautly. ‘Even you couldn’t ruin them.’
‘Maybe not,’ he conceded. ‘But if there’s a woman around I don’t see why I should do the work.’
‘Oh, I see.’ Sabina slammed the ancient frying pan down on the even more ancient electric cooker. ‘You believe a woman’s place is in the kitchen,’ she derided.
‘Or the bedroom,’ he mocked. ‘But that can come later. I just came to tell you that I’ve brought in your saddlebags, so don’t try escaping out of the back door.’
‘I wasn’t going to. I’m hungry too.’ It seemed like years ago, not hours, since she had eaten that early lunch at the hotel.
‘For food or love?’ he asked huskily, watching the rise and fall of her breasts.
‘Food!’ she angrily turned her back on him.
‘Shame.’ He sounded amused. ‘I would willingly have forgone my food to have satisfied my other appetite. At the moment I think that one is more in need. A year is a long time to go without a woman.’
‘For a man like you I’m sure it is,’ Sabina snapped waspishly.
His fingers clamped about her wrist, pulling her round to face him, very close in the confines of the dimly lit kitchen. ‘A man like me?’ he ground out.
‘Well, I—– You—you’re obviously a very virile man.’
‘Oh yes,’ he breathed huskily, ‘I’m virile. At the moment, very much so.’
She knew that, his body hard against hers, his thighs leaping with desire. ‘Could I get on with the cooking now?’ She was too aware of his sensual mouth on a level with her eyes, of the way her body was reacting to his.
He instantly released her. ‘Go ahead. You’ll have to excuse my keeping touching you—I’ve been away from a beautiful woman too long.’
‘Why—I’m sorry,’ she said hastily as his expression darkened. ‘I—I won’t ask again.’
‘Make sure you don’t,’ he snapped, leaving her.
Dinner was a quiet affair, Sabina wrapped up in her own thoughts, her host seeming to be the same. Satan had appeared halfway through the meal, sitting patiently on a third chair about the old-fashioned table, those slitted green eyes watching every morsel of food that entered their mouths.
‘Doesn’t he have his own food?’ Sabina was beginning to feel uncomfortable under that watchful stare, especially as the cat seemed to resent her eating the food.
Her host patted the black cat, tickling it behind the ears. A loud purr sounded in the silence. ‘Of course he has his own food, he just prefers ours. You’re almost human, aren’t you, boy?’
Quite frankly the black cat frightened Sabina, not because of its size, in fact it was only a small cat compared to some she had seen, but because of the venom in its green eyes every time it looked at her, a look almost of jealousy.
Once again she felt tired; the walk in the mist and rain after her bicycle tyre went flat had made her feel more exhausted than she had the previous evening. But she didn’t want this man to know how tired she was, didn’t want him to suggest that they go upstairs and share that bed.
‘I’ve put your gear upstairs,’ he remarked as if reading her thoughts.
‘My bicycle has a puncture.’ She hastily spoke of something else.
He nodded. ‘I’ll take a look at that tomorrow, if the mist clears.’
‘Are we far from the road here?’
‘Thinking of walking?’
She shrugged. ‘If my bicycle can’t be mended I just may have to.’
‘We’re about two miles from the road you left.’
‘Only two miles?’ she gasped. ‘But it took me hours!’
‘And it exhausted you.’ He stood up. ‘Time for bed.’
‘No!’ Panic filled her. ‘I mean—I—I’m really not tired.’
‘Liar!’ he said softly. ‘Your eyelids have been drooping for the past hour. Come on,’ he put out a hand to pull her to her feet, ‘a good night’s sleep will do you good.’
That was the last thing she would get, spending the night with this man. He had already shown her, more than once, that her type of beauty appealed to him—‘a weakness for blondes’, he had called it. And she had no guarantee he wouldn’t try to make love to her, not when he