back so the creamy skin of her throat was exposed.
Rob, being still male, couldn’t help but notice the way the movement made her breasts jut out just a fraction more as she filled her lungs with air and giggled. He wanted to pull that skin-tight T-shirt up, and bury his face in them. Lord, how was he expected to resist her? Should he even try? Where had this sudden attack of morality come from anyway? Must be a Christmas thing. He’d been infected with goodness. Hopefully it was only temporary. He was only flesh and blood, after all.
“I had actually noticed you’re a man,” she said, liquid amber eyes running over his body, taking a lazy inventory of what she saw. Slowly she looked him up and down: legs that seemed as long as her whole body; Levis clinging low to his hips; the curved ridge of pectoral muscles evident through the jersey top. Powerful shoulders, biceps that flexed even as she looked…Gosh, he was an absolute treat. She stared, licked her lips, and filed the image away in her brain. Under S for Sexbomb.
He might be married, but that hadn’t made her blind. She couldn’t be the only woman who noticed how handsome he was, and anyway, there was no harm in window shopping. Look, but don’t touch: the same theory she had for the Stella McCartney shop in Selfridges. Except, in this case, it was harder to resist. She couldn’t help wondering if those biceps were as firm as they looked, if that chest was as hard and sculpted as it seemed under the long-sleeved T; how that backside would feel snuggled into the grip of her hands. Whether the tell-tale bulge she could see in his jeans was as promising as the ever-tightening denim suggested. Her eyes lingered low, and she had the suspicion the answer to that one was a resounding ‘yes’.
Stop it, Leah Harvey, she told herself. Look at his ring finger instead. Left hand. He’s married. To an anorexic dwarf. And anyway, this is not the time for new romance. Or even hot, dirty sex. Your life’s in tatters. The man you were about to spend the rest of your years with is a philandering pig. You have no job. No home. No money. And you’re supposed to have a broken heart.
Except it wasn’t exactly her heart she could feel beating right now. It was something lower, and altogether more primal. She gazed into those dark brown eyes, and had the sense they could stand like that forever, both of them feeling that same beat, both of them frozen in time. They’d be discovered in hundreds of years’ time by archaeologist; sexually frustrated mannequins, looking but never touching.
Rob broke eye contact first. He shook his head like a wet dog shedding rain, and murmured something so indistinct it sounded to her like ‘Aunt Mimi’. He looked instead out of the window, into the distance. The fields for miles around were white with virgin snow, with more still falling, drifting to the ground like cotton wool buds made of crystal.
“No mobile signal,” he repeated. “No landline. No internet. Roads unpassable. And the front door’s barely opening, there’s been so much snowfall overnight.”
“Just you and me then?” she asked.
“Yes. You and me and the snow.”
“Right. Have you got a shovel?”
An hour later she gave up. Each time she shovelled a path clear enough to walk along, more caved in from the sides, covering it in new piles of snow. She was freezing. And wet. And tired. And wondering if Doug had bothered sending out a search party by now. Or whether the guests had eaten the wedding cake and guzzled the bubbly and danced to the mock Motown act without her.
When she first ran out on the wedding party, she’d planned to call him when she got back to the flat. Let him and her friends know she was safe. Family, luckily she supposed, wasn’t an issue. She’d hoped to grab the few clothes and belongings she needed and then do a dramatic disappearing act, exit stage left from her old life, and into her vaguely formed new one.
Huh, she thought, that had worked out well. Not. She looked around at the endless, eye-searingly white snow. A woman could go blind out here. And not for any fun reasons.
All things considered, it was depressing. She couldn’t even run away properly.
She trudged back into the cottage, kicking off green wellies that were six shoe sizes too big and came up over her knee caps. She could practically feel her nose glowing, and her hair was damp from snow and wasted manual labour. Face it, Leah, she thought – you’re just a useless urban gnome trapped in the wilds of the North Pole. Apparently determined to lose your fingers to frostbite one way or another.
Still, she told herself, pausing to look at Rob sprawled over the sofa in front of the fire. It could have been worse. At least she was a useless urban gnome trapped in the North Pole with God. What her situation lacked in snow ploughs it did make up for in eye candy. Better to focus on the positives than wallow in self-pity, after all. He was reading a book, one arm propping his head up, body stretched so long the T-shirt had crept up over his belly. A few inches of taut, olive-toned skin peeked out. Leah felt her cold nose twitch, like Sabrina the witch, and wondered if she could cast some kind of X-ray-vision spell so she could see the rest of it.
Rob glanced up, gave her a nod of acknowledgement, barely managing to hide the smirk playing around his lips. The bastard. He’d given her the shovel. Told her to knock herself out; that if she managed to dig her way back to civilisation it’d be the greatest escape since Colditz.
Obviously, she’d failed. Maybe she could try faking her papers and digging a tunnel next. She’d probably need to grow a moustache and start wearing an RAF jacket first though.
“Drink?” Rob asked, gesturing to the end of the sofa, where a tumbler of warm whiskey was waiting on a side table. It was practically glowing with deliciousness, and he’d timed it perfectly – just warm enough, as though he’d known exactly when she’d throw in the towel. He was one of those people, she realised – the ones who were good at sport and clever and witty and always in charge of the room. Not to mention sexually irresistible to any creature with a pulse. Leah had no doubt that if he’d tried to dig a bloody path, it would be so good it would win the Scottish Path of the Year award.
Rob remained silent, watching as she chewed on her full lower lip, knowing she was weighing up the pleasures of the drink vs telling him to go screw himself. Her hair was scooped into a messy pony tail with an elastic band she’d found in the kitchen. She was wearing his coat, the sleeves rolled over so many times her arms were as big as Popeye’s. Peaches and cream skin gone all rosy from the cold, jacket hanging down over her knees, eyes glimmering with chill-sprung tears. Frosty and snowy and perfect; if he could find a way to shrink her, he could hang her from the vast pine tree in the corner of the room as a bauble.
“Okay,” she said, hanging up the coat and walking over to the fire. “Move up then. I don’t want to have to sit on you.”
That, she admitted to herself as he shuffled his legs over slightly, was a big fat lie. She was trying to ignore how big he was, but it was impossible. He was so long, filling the sofa, filling the room. Filling her vision. His hair was messy. The paperback was open, splayed on his broad chest. The truth was she’d very much like to sit on him. Or lie on him. Or curl up in his arms and go to sleep…Those would be mighty fine arms for a woman to curl up in. The fire crackling in the background; the enormous Christmas tree was filling the room with the scent of pine, and there he was. Lying like Adonis on the sofa, asking for trouble. How would he react if she curled up around him like a snoozy kitten?
She raised her glass, and said: “Happy Christmas!”, before sipping the whisky.
“Mmmm.
