over the top.
‘I’d love to chat with you, but we have no time for a debate. Also, for the record, I am not being chivalrous, this is purely practical. I’m wearing layers.’ And even through them the bite of the cold went bone deep.
The chill went deeper still when he thought of what sort of condition she would have been in if he had not found her when he had. How long would she have lasted—another hour…less?
He felt his anger surge. She seemed utterly oblivious to the danger she was in.
‘You are dressed for a stroll along a beach.’ The harsh condemnation in his voice made Neve take an involuntary step backwards. ‘It is people like you,’ he continued, warming to the theme, ‘people who have no respect for nature and the elements, who wander into the mountains ill equipped and expect other people to risk their lives to save them for their foolishness.’ He shook his head and searched the pale face tilted up to him; it felt like yelling at a kitten. ‘You’ve no idea what I’m talking about, have you?’
‘I’ve never tried to climb a mountain.’
He released a hissing sound of irritation and said, ‘The subject is closed. We are wasting time.’
‘You’re right.’ Neve was relieved he understood the urgency of the situation. ‘I was thinking if we found some high ground—’
What school of survival had she attended? ‘We need shelter, not high ground.’
‘No, that won’t work, we need to see—’
Sounding annoyed at the interruption, he cut across her. ‘See what exactly?’
‘Hannah,’ she said, finally placing the accent that had intrigued her since he began to speak: Italian.
There had been several Italian waiters in the restaurant they had stopped at for lunch. It would be a coincidence if he had been one of them. Though now that she thought about it, she did not remember any of them being this tall.
He shook his head. ‘Hannah?’
‘I was heading towards…’ she made a vague gesture behind her with her hand ‘…That way and she was just in front of me in a blue—’ Neve shook head crazily; she couldn’t recall the make of her own car ‘—car. Which way did you come? Did you see her?’ He shook his head and turned away, scanning the horizon, sizing up the most direct route back to the road.
Neve caught his sleeve and tugged hard. He turned his head, his glance drifting from the fingers curled into the fabric of his sweater to the tumble of wild copper-gold curls around the heart-shaped face turned up to his.
‘But you must have. Were you on the road?’
‘I saw no one.’ Severo struggled to contain his escalating impatience. ‘We are not equipped to undertake a rescue operation.’ Bit late in the day to realise this, and for all he knew this Hannah might be a figment of this woman’s imagination. If not he hoped she had already found safety, but the brutal truth was if she hadn’t adding to the casualty list with their own lives was not going to help. ‘This woman, if she exists, will have to take care of herself.’
‘She’s not a woman, she’s a child! What do you mean if? We have to—’
‘We?’
Neve grimaced as she realised she had been presuming he would be willing to help her. Clearly she had been wrong; she didn’t usually judge, but it was hard not to feel contemptuous of someone who looked after number one.
She began to unzip the jacket.
‘Fine, I’ll find her myself. But when you’re able, could you inform the authorities that a fourteen-year-old is missing? If that’s not too much bother?’
As it was nobody even knew Hannah was out there somewhere. ‘And that’s my fault too, for not thinking,’ she mumbled as she tried to shrug off his jacket.
Severo swore under his breath and, leaning down, pulled the two sides of the jacket together. ‘You can tell them yourself when we get back to civilization,’ he said as he pulled the zip all the way up to her chin again.
Neve zipped it down far enough to speak. ‘No you don’t understand. I can’t go back. I have to find Hannah. She was—’
‘No, you don’t understand.’ The woman had the survival instincts of a lemming.
‘Hannah—’
Severo gritted his teeth and tightened his grip on her shoulder as she struggled desperately to pull free. ‘What we have to do is find shelter.’ It would not be as easy as it sounded; in the last few minutes the snow had begun to fall heavier than ever.
Severo lifted his narrowed eyes to the leaden sky. Another half-hour and the light would be gone. Their best bet, he reasoned, was to head back to the abandoned off-roader. That would provide at least some shelter from the elements. Even retracing his footsteps in this near white-out was not, he recognized, going to be easy in the unfamiliar terrain. He had a good sense of direction, but in these conditions it would be all too easy to become fatally disorientated.
‘No…no!’ Neve panted, struggling wildly but with little effect against the steely restraint of his grasp. ‘You don’t understand, I have to—’
Severo, his voice harsh with impatience, cut across her shrill impassioned plea. ‘You may have a death wish, but I do not.’
Neve regarded him with contempt and set her jaw. ‘Fine, you go back or wherever, but I’m going on.’
Severo watched her lips, seeing them move, tuning out the hysterical babble, but unable, even at a moment when all his attention needed to be concentrated on the crucial matter of survival, not to appreciate the lushness of the pink outline.
Under the ski mask a fleeting grimace twisted his wide sensual mouth. As he acknowledged the male weakness a moment later it was replaced by an expression of steely resolve. Time was of the essence; to be out here when darkness fell was not a good idea.
‘What are you—?’ Neve let out a startled yelp as she found herself heaved casually off the ground a moment later and slung over a male shoulder. ‘Put me down!’ she shrieked.
He grunted in response to the kick she landed, but did not reply to her demand. He just carried on walking, head bent against the driving snow.
Chapter Three
SEVERO placed his burden down on her feet.
He shot out a steadying hand when her knees sagged. ‘You are all right?’
He sounded more irritated than concerned, and Neve weakly batted his gloved hand away. All right? Just her luck to get rescued—or was it kidnapped?—by a man of few words and all of them stupid!
‘No, I’m not all right!’ she panted.
She had been hauled cross country against her will with all the dignity of a sack of coal, she was exhausted, she was cold, she was paralysed with fear and guilt every time she thought of Hannah!
All
