‘Earlier.’ She refilled his mug and began cracking eggs, only pausing when he told her to sit down and talk to him for a few minutes rather than rushing into making breakfast.
Brianna blushed and obeyed. Nerves threatened to overwhelm her. She sneaked a glance at him and all over again was rendered breathless by the sheer force of his good looks and peculiar magnetism. ‘There’s a lot to do when you run a pub.’ She launched into hurried speech to fill the silence. ‘And, like I said, I’m doing it all on my own, so I have no one to share the responsibility with.’
Leo, never one to indulge his curiosity when it came to women—and knowing very well that, whatever information he was interested in gathering, certainly had nothing to do with her so why waste time hearing her out?—was reluctantly intrigued. ‘A curious life you chose for yourself,’ he murmured.
‘I didn’t choose it. It chose me.’
‘Explain.’
‘Are you really interested?’
‘I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t,’ Leo said with a shrug. He had wondered whether she was really as pretty as he had imagined her to be. Subdued lighting in a pub could do flattering things to an average woman. He was discovering that his first impressions had been spot on. In fact, they had failed to do her justice. She had an ethereal, angelic beauty about her that drew the eye and compelled him to keep on staring. His eyes drifted slightly down to her breasts, small buds causing just the tiniest indentations in her unflattering, masculine jumper, which he guessed had belonged at one point to her father.
‘My dad died unexpectedly. Well, maybe there were signs before. I didn’t see them. I was at university, not getting back home as often as I knew I should, and Dad was never one to make a fuss when it came to his health.’ She was startled at the ease with which she confessed to the guilt that had haunted her ever since her father had died. She could feel the full brunt of Leo’s attention on her and it was as flattering as it was unnerving, not at all what she was accustomed to.
‘He left a lot of debts.’ She cleared her throat and blinked back the urge to cry. ‘I think things must have slipped as he became ill and he never told me. The bank manager was very understanding but I had to keep running the pub so that I could repay the debts. I couldn’t sell it, even though I tried for a while. There’s a good summer trade here. Lots of fantastic scenery. Fishing. Brilliant walks. But the trade is a little seasonal and, well, the economy isn’t great. I guess you’d know. You probably have to keep a firm rein on your finances if you’ve packed your job in...’
Leo flushed darkly and skirted around that ingenuous observation. ‘So you’ve been here ever since,’ he murmured. ‘And no partner around to share the burden?’
‘No.’ Brianna looked down quickly and then stood up. ‘I should get going with my chores. It’s snowing outside and it looks like it’s going to get worse, which usually means that the pub loses business, but just in case any hardy souls show up I can’t have it looking a mess.’
So, he thought, there had been a man and it had ended badly. He wondered who the guy was. Some losers only stuck by their women when the times were good. The second the winds of change began blowing, they ran for the hills. He felt an unexpected spurt of anger towards this mystery person who had consigned her to a life on her own of drudgery, running a pub to make ends meet and pay off bills. He reined back his unruly mind and reminded himself that his primary purpose wasn’t as counsellor but as information gatherer.
‘If you really meant it about helping—and I promise I won’t take advantage of your kind offer— you could try and clear a path through the snow, just in case it stops; at least my customers would be able to get to the door. It doesn’t look promising...’ She moved to one of the windows and frowned at the strengthening blizzard. ‘What do you intend to do if the weather doesn’t let up?’ She turned to face him.
‘It’ll let up. I can’t afford to stay here for very long.’
‘You could always incorporate a snow storm in your book.’
‘It’s a thought.’ He moved to stand next to her and at once he breathed in the fragrant, flowery smell of her hair which was, again, tied back in a pony tail. His fingers itched to release it, just to see how long it was, how thick. He noticed how she edged away slightly from him. ‘I’ll go see what I can do about the snow. You’ll have to show me where the equipment is.’
‘The equipment consists of a shovel and some bags of sand for gritting.’ She laughed, putting a little more distance between them, because just for a second there she had felt short of breath with him standing so close to her.
‘You do this yourself whenever it snows?’ he asked, once the shovel was in his hand and the door to the pub thrown open to the elements. He thought of his last girlfriend, a model who didn’t possess a pair of wellies to her name, and would only have gone near snow if it happened to be falling on a ski slope in Val d’Isere.
‘Only if it looks as though it would make a difference. There’ve been times when I’ve wasted two hours trying to clear a path, only to stand back and watch the snow cover it all up in two minutes. You can’t go out in those...er...jeans; you’ll be soaked through. I don’t suppose you brought any, um, waterproof clothing with you?’
Leo burst out laughing. ‘Believe it or not, I didn’t pack for a snow storm. The jeans will have to do. If they get soaked, they’ll dry in front of that open fire in the lounge area.’
He worked out. He was strong. And yet he found that battling with the elements was exercise of a completely different sort. This was not the sanitised comfort of his expensive gym, with perfectly oiled machinery that was supposed to test the body to its limits. This was raw nature and, by the time he looked at his handiwork, a meagre path already filling up with fast falling snow, an hour and a half had flown past.
He had no gloves. His hands were freezing. But hell, it was invigorating. In fact, he had completely forgotten the reason why he was in this Godforsaken village in the first place. His thoughts were purely and utterly focused on trying to outsmart and out-shovel the falling snow.
The landscape had turned completely white. The pub was set a distance from the main part of the village and was surrounded by open fields. Pausing to stand back, his arm resting heavily on the shovel which he had planted firmly in the ground, he felt that he was looking at infinity. It evoked the strangest sensation of peace and awe, quite different from the irritation he had felt the day before when he had stared moodily out of the window at the tedium of never-ending fields and cursed his decision to get there by car.
He stayed out another hour, determined not to be beaten, but in the end he admitted defeat and returned to the warmth of the pub, to find the fire blazing and the smell of food wafting from the kitchen.
‘I fought the snow...’ God, he felt like a caveman returning from a hard day out hunting. ‘And the snow won. Don’t bank on any customers today. Something smells good.’
‘I don’t normally do lunch for guests.’
‘You’ll be royally paid for your efforts.’ He stifled a surge of irritation that the one thing most women would have given their eye teeth to do for him was something she clearly had done because she had had no choice. She was stuck with him. She could hardly expect him to starve because lunch wasn’t included in the price of the room. ‘You were going to fill me in on the people who live around here.’ He reminded her coolly of the deal they had struck.
‘It’s not very exciting.’ She looked at him and her heartbeat quickened. ‘You’re going to have to change. You’re soaked through. If you give me your damp clothes, I can put them in front of the fire in the snug.’
‘The snug?’
‘My