“How’d you know?”
“I – we – me and Doug. You know, hide-the-sausage Doug. We have a bistro, in London. One of our specialities is fine liquor, as you Yanks might call it. And this is a favourite of mine.”
It was also, she knew, bloody expensive. If he was an artist, he was doing well. Definitely not the starving type. Or maybe he’d married money. As soon as the thought pinged into her brain, it came out of her mouth.
“Where’s your wife? Why aren’t you together for Christmas?” she asked, feeling bolder as the warmth of the whiskey spread in her throat like liquid heat. There were gifts under the tree, and glittery Christmas cards propped up on the bookshelves, which might be from a wife. But there were no photos. No lists of DIY jobs for him to do. No actual woman either – unless he’d killed her, buried her in the woodshed. Nothing but that wide gold band glinting on his finger.
The Dutch courage had helped Leah to ask, and it was a valid question. She’d been feeling some fairly intense heat since she’d fallen into his arms last night, and not all of it came from the fire. She wasn’t arrogant, but she knew he’d been feeling it too. He could be as terse as he liked, but she had eyes. She could see what had been going on in those Levis. So far neither of them had acted on it, and it would be better by far if they never did. He was married, and she was heartbroken. Allegedly.
She hoped that talking about the absent missus might defuse the situation, at least for her. This was another woman’s man, after all, and she shouldn’t be pondering the fineness of his arms, or any other part of him.
“I’m not married,” he said quickly, his tone unexpectedly sharp. The mood had been mellow; relaxed. Christmassy, with the fire and the tree and the snow and the whiskey. Now, it was tense. Leah turned her face to his, saw the brooding darkness of his eyes. The gleam of the wedding ring on one long finger. And knew this was not an issue to press. He might as well have pulled out a ‘no entry’ road sign and stuck it on his frown-creased forehead. She saw the line of his jaw go rigid with anxiety, his body language screaming ‘none of your business’. A mystery. And not hers to solve.
“Okay,” she said, after a beat. She kept her gaze on the blaze of his eyes, smiled, aimed for a light-hearted tone that might bring him back down from red alert. “Well, me neither, as you know. Lucky us. And you were right, of course. I failed abysmally in my attempts to dig us out. Is it all right if I stay? Is there maybe room in a stable somewhere? I know I arrived in an Audi, not on a donkey, but I don’t mind roughing it if you need your space.”
“You can stay,” he answered, quietly. He was so glad she hadn’t asked any more about Meredith. He came here to escape talking about Meredith. His family seemed to think talking about her was the way to ‘cure’ him; and his sister-in-law Melissa never failed to try and reach out at this time of year, get him to open up. Idiots. Lovable, but idiots all the same. He’d resorted to flying to the other side of the world to avoid them all. The last thing he needed was Leah quizzing him as well. He could feel the attraction between them fizzing so loud he could almost hear it pop, like soda bubbles. That, he could cope with. He might end up with blue balls, but he could cope with it. Deep and meaningful conversations about his past, though? No way.
He shook it off. She’d lightened the tone, and he knew it was for his benefit, that she’d picked up on his signals. She’d mocked herself, pulled such a disgusted face at her path-digging failure that he’d had to smile. She’d backed off. In that one exchange she showed she was more in tune with his feelings than the entire Cavelli clan back home in the Windy City. She already understood and respected the boundaries that they relentlessly tried to demolish every year. They could do this: avoid the deep and meaningful. Hopefully avoid sex. Avoid everything with screw-up potential until he could safely get her out of there.
“You can stay, Leah,” he repeated, “but don’t get any ideas. I sleep with a rape alarm by my bed, and I’m trained in seven different types of martial art.”
She giggled and drained her whiskey. He was betting she’d be ready for a top up, and he knew he was. All of this suppressed lust was thirsty work.
“Damn,” she said. “And here was me planning to get you drunk and seduce you. The temperature’s dropping you know – we might be forced to strip off and share body heat to survive!”
She was joking. He knew she was joking. But there was something bubbling between them, something so powerful the rest of the room seemed to fade into the background. The radio was on in the kitchen, and choirboys were singing about little drummer boys. The reception was poor, and the sound was crackling. The logs in the fire were crackling. And they were crackling, with raw sexual energy.
Leah looked at him, noticing the quizzical upward twist of his lips, the sideways quirk his mouth took when he was amused or intrigued. It was strange, she thought, how after only a few hours in his company she could already spot his familiar expressions. His eyes, though, they looked completely new. There was a glimmer of golden flecks she’d never noticed before. Like the flames of the fire were somehow leaping around in the chocolate brown of his pupils.
“Only kidding,” she added, suddenly feeling a flush of heat rush through her – heat that had nothing to do with the blaze in the fireplace, or the excellent whiskey, and everything to do with the big man lying next to her.
“Do you always talk this much?” he asked simply, locking his hands behind his head and gazing up at her. His eyes skimmed her chest on the way to her face, and her nipples tightened in response. She felt her pulse rate soar and knew she was blushing. Again.
“Only when I’m…” Nervous, she thought. Terrified. Aroused. “…awake,” she said.
“Do you remember when you came to, last night? After you fainted so delicately into my arms, smashing whiskey and glass all over the place?”
“Sorry! But, no. Nothing at all. Just getting here, and being so relieved when you opened the door, then waking up this morning. Why? What did I miss?”
“You sat up, praised the Lord, and kissed me.”
“Oh! Sorry again! That was very forward of me!” she said, torn between embarrassment and laughter. In the end, laughter won out – surely it wasn’t such a big deal? She’d been barely conscious at the time. The ultimate let-out clause. Shame she hadn’t had a quick grope of his arse while she was at it, in fact.
“Well, how was it for you, then, this kiss? Obviously not that good for me, given that I don’t even remember it.”
She gave him a look she knew was way too flirtatious. She was still thinking about his bum, and wishing she could remember the way those luscious lips had felt on hers. Where was the harm in a bit of casual flirtation, anyway? After all, as they’d now established, neither of them was married – despite him wearing a ring and her turning up in a wedding dress. Appearances could be deceptive.
He didn’t reply, and she wondered if she’d blown it – he was a moody so-and-so, flirty one minute, closed off the next. Or maybe he was just so arrogant he couldn’t stand even a joking critique of his snogging skills.
He reached up and grabbed her shoulders, suddenly tugging her down onto his chest. She landed with a thud, and lay there for a second, stunned in several different ways. Oh. Yes. It was just as hard as it looked; pure muscle. And he smelled really, really good. Of wood and spice and something that took a direct route from her nostrils to somewhere much lower. Never had the simple act of breathing been such a turn-on. She lay still, inhaling the fresh cotton of his T-shirt, the hint of something gorgeous from the shower, and
