of her feet was making it well nigh impossible for her to judge where her steps fell. The natural stone building ahead seemed reassuringly close, however, and she tried to push herself on but stumbled again. Expelling his breath in an impatient hiss, Andreas bent down and lifted her up into his arms to trudge the last few yards.
Instantly, Hope exploded into embarrassed speech. ‘Put me down, for goodness’ sake…you’ll strain yourself! I’m far too heavy—’
‘You’re not and if you fall, you could easily break a limb,’ Andreas pointed out.
‘And you don’t want the hassle,’ Hope completed in a small voice as he lowered her to the beaten earth floor towards the back of the dim barn, which was open to the elements on the side closest to the road.
Before she could even guess what he was doing, Andreas tugged off her coat. Her suit jacket peeled off with it. ‘My goodness!’ she gasped, lurching back a step from him in consternation.
‘When you get the rest off, you can use my coat for cover,’ Andreas declared, shrugging broad shoulders free of the heavy wool overcoat and extending it with decisive hands.
Hot pink embarrassment washed colour to the roots of Hope’s hair. Grasping the coat with reluctance, she hovered. She was too practical to continue questioning his assertion that she had to take off her sodden clothing.
‘I’ll get on with lighting a fire so that you can warm up,’ Andreas pronounced, planning that he would then leave her ensconced while he sought out a house and a phone. He would get there a hell of a lot faster on his own.
There was a massive woodpile stacked against the wall. She stepped to the far side of it, rested his coat over the protruding logs and began with chilled hands to clumsily undress. Removing her trousers was a dreadful struggle because her fingers were numb and the fabric clung to her wet skin. She pulled off her heavy sweater with equal difficulty and then, shivering violently and clad only in a damp bra, panties and ankle boots, she dug her arms into his overcoat. The coat drowned her, reaching down to her ankles, hanging off her shoulders and masking her hands as though she were a child dressing up in adult clothes. The silk lining made her shiver but the very weight of the wool garment bore the promise of greater warmth. Wrapped in the capacious depths of his carefully buttoned coat, she crept back into view.
Andreas was industriously engaged in piling up small pieces of kindling wood with some larger chunks of fuel already stacked in readiness. Again she was impressed by the quiet speed and efficiency with which he got things done. He was resourceful. He didn’t make a fuss. He didn’t agonise over decisions and he didn’t moan and whinge about the necessity either: he just did the job. She had definitely picked a winner to get stranded with in the snow.
She studied him, admiring the trendy cut of his luxuriant black hair, the sleek, smooth and undoubtedly very expensive tailoring of the charcoal-grey suit he wore teamed with a dark shirt and a silk tie. He looked like a high-flying business executive, a real urban sophisticate, the sort of guy she would have been too afraid even to speak to in normal circumstances.
‘One small problem…I don’t smoke,’ he murmured.
‘Oh…I can help there,’ Hope recalled, hurriedly digging into her handbag and producing a cheap plastic lighter. ‘I don’t smoke either but I thought my future employer might and I didn’t want to seem disapproving.’
As he waited for her to complete that rather intriguing explanation Andreas glanced up and registered in surprise that she was very far from being the least attractive woman he had ever met. In the dim interior, her pale blonde hair, now loose and falling almost to her shoulders, glowed like silver against the black upraised collar of his coat. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright. She was smiling at him and when she smiled, her whole face lit up. Lost in the depths of his coat, she looked startlingly appealing.
‘Here…’ Hope extended the lighter.
‘Efharisto…’ Andreas thanked her gravely, mentally querying her unexpected pull for him. She was blonde and rather short and he went for tall, leggy brunettes.
‘Parakalo…you’re welcome,’ Hope responded with a weak grin, striving to move her feet to instil a little feeling back into her toes. ‘So, you’re Greek?’
‘Yes.’ Protecting the minuscule blaze of wood shavings from the wind whistling through the cracks in the wall, Andreas fed the fire. She was virtually naked below his coat. It was that knowledge that was making her appear appealing to him, he told himself in exasperation. He resisted a foolish urge to look at her again. Why would he even want to look at her again?
‘I love Greece…well, I’ve only been there once but it was really beautiful.’ When her companion failed to grab that conversational opener, Hope added, ‘You’re used to lighting fires, aren’t you?’
‘No, as it happens,’ Andreas remarked, dry as dust. ‘But I don’t need to be the equivalent of a rocket scientist to create a blaze.’
Hope reddened. ‘I’m talking too much.’
Andreas told himself that he was glad that she had taken the hint. Yet when he looked up and saw the stoic look of accepting hurt in her face, he felt as though someone had kicked him hard in the stomach. When had he become so rude and insensitive?
‘No. I’m a man of few words and you’re good company,’ he assured her.
She gave him a huge surprised smile and, blushing like a schoolgirl, she threaded her hands inside the sleeves of his over-large coat and shuffled her feet. ‘Honestly?’
‘Honestly,’ Andreas murmured, taken aback by her response to the mildest of compliments and involuntarily touched.
He coaxed the fire into slow life. She was so cold she was shivering without even being aware of it. As the fire crackled he sprang up to his full height of six feet four and approached her. ‘There’s a hip flask in the left pocket of my coat.’
Hope reached in and lifted it out.
‘Take a drink before you freeze.’
‘I’m not used to it…I couldn’t—’
Andreas groaned out loud. Taking the flask from her, he opened it. ‘Be sensible.’
Hope sipped and then grew bolder. When the alcohol raced like a leaping flame down her throat she choked, coughing and spluttering.
Closing the flask for her, Andreas surveyed her and rueful amusement tilted his wide, sensual mouth. ‘You weren’t joking when you said you weren’t used to it.’
Hope sucked in a jerky breath and wrapped her arms round herself. ‘I didn’t know I could feel this cold,’ she confided in a rush.
Andreas uncrossed her arms, closed lean, strong hands over hers and slowly drew her close. ‘Think of me as a hot blanket,’ he urged.
Her lashes fluttered in confusion. ‘I don’t think I could…’
‘Try. It will be a while before the fire puts out enough heat to defrost you.’
Hope lifted wide eyes as turquoise as the Aegean Sea on a summer day. ‘I suppose…’ she mumbled.
‘Do you wear coloured contact lenses?’ Andreas enquired,
