his car when she slid in beside him, didn’t want to subject himself once more to the sight of those long, slender legs as she swung them inside and settled down in her seat. He needed to get back in control, remember what all this was about.
He took the few moments needed to open the boot and take out the small, battered suitcase in order to draw a couple of deep, calming breaths and impose some sort of order on his thoughts.
‘Get a grip!’ he muttered to himself furiously. ‘All you have to do is to take her to the cottage and keep her there until Pete comes to collect her.’ A promise was a promise after all.
But he had made that promise in complete ignorance, blind to any possible repercussions. He had been barely awake when his brother had phoned, dragged from a rare deep sleep by the shrill ringing of the telephone.
‘Sean?’ Pete’s voice had been sharp and urgent, in contrast to his own near inarticulate growl on picking up the receiver.
Hearing it, Sean had shaken himself awake and sat up swiftly, leaning up against the arm of the settee on which he had fallen asleep.
‘What’s wrong?’ Because something had to be wrong to put that note in his brother’s voice.
‘She’s left me.’ It was a stark, bleak announcement. ‘Says there’s someone else.’
‘She? Your fiancée? But the wedding’s—’
‘In the New Year, right. Or, rather, correction—it was to have been. But Annie’s called it off. She even gave me back the ring.’
Why wasn’t he surprised? Sean wondered cynically. Women. There wasn’t one of them who could be trusted. He knew that only too well. But he had hoped that for his kid brother things might turn out better.
‘When did this happen?’
‘Just now! We were having lunch at my place—our own private Christmas celebration, seeing as we won’t be together on the day—and it was obvious that something was wrong. When I asked her what it was, she just came right out with it. Said there was someone else, and then she left. She drove off in an almighty rush and I couldn’t follow her. I’d…’
‘Had rather too much to drink?’ Sean finished for him as he hesitated. It was there in the slight slur of his brother’s words, the emotion that he wouldn’t normally have shown.
‘A lot too much,’ Pete admitted ruefully. ‘There’s no way I’m remotely fit to drive. That’s why I thought of you.’
‘Me?’ Sean stared at the receiver as if it was actually his brother. ‘What can I do?’
‘You can go after her for me. No, listen, she wasn’t going home to Hexham but to her parents’ for Christmas. And they live in Carborough.’
Which was a long way south. To get there, she would have to pass Appleton village, Sean realised, seeing the direction in which his brother’s thoughts were heading.
‘Pete, be sensible! What am I supposed to do? Throw myself in front of the car?’
‘There won’t be any need for that. You see, she always breaks her journey at this all-night café—The Night Owl. Do you know it?’
Sean managed a murmur that might have been agreement. But his brother didn’t seem to need any encouragement.
‘All you have to do is be there—say between six and eight, to allow for any margin of error either way. When she arrives you just hang onto her…’
“‘Hang onto her”!’ Sean echoed, raking one hand through the darkness of his hair. ‘Look, baby brother, what am I supposed to do—kidnap her?’
‘Oh, you’ll manage something,’ Pete declared airily, but then suddenly his mood changed. ‘Please, Sean.’
Sean knew there was no way he could resist the appeal in his brother’s voice. After all, he owed him plenty after the past months. Pete had been there when he was needed. He could hardly let him down now.
‘I don’t even know what she looks like. I haven’t met the woman yet, remember, and she doesn’t even know I’m your brother.’
But that could be an advantage—if he decided to go along with Pete’s crazy plan.
‘You can’t miss her. Tall, dark hair, blue eyes. Oh, and she drives a silver Renault—H reg. Please, Sean, do this for me.’
Sean sighed, knowing he had no alternative. ‘Just tell me one thing,’ he said. ‘Is she worth it?’
‘More than you’ll ever know,’ his brother assured him. ‘Oh, I know I can’t expect an old cynic like you to believe that, but just you wait. One day it’ll hit you too. You’ll meet someone who’ll knock you right off balance the way Annie’s done to me, and you’ll never be the same again.’
And pigs might fly supersonic, Sean told himself privately. He had had more than enough of so-called romance to last him several lifetimes. And, even more privately, he doubted that his brother’s fiancée would ever consider going back to him, no matter how much talking they did. But he supposed everyone deserved a second chance.
‘All right, I’ll do it,’ he said resignedly. ‘But you’d better get yourself sobered up pretty damn quickly, and get down here fast.’
He would give it a couple of hours, no more, he told himself, replacing the receiver and getting to his feet. Just long enough to eat the supper he hadn’t felt like preparing earlier—or lunch, either, come to that. The Night Owl had a very good reputation, so perhaps now was the time to try it out. He would eat his meal, taking his time over it, and if Annie Elliot turned up then he’d take it from there.
‘Is something wrong?’
The soft question dragged Sean back to the present with a jolt. He had no idea how long he’d been standing there, his hand on the suitcase, lost in his thoughts.
‘No. No problem.’
Giving himself a mental shake, he pulled out the case and slammed the boot shut, carefully locking the car after him. Not that it was likely that anyone would make off with it. It would need skilled help to get it out of the ditch, and already the snow was piling up around it.
Hell, the weather was far worse than he had anticipated. And it was getting more dangerous with every minute that passed. They’d be lucky to make it to the cottage before the road closed completely.
Which meant that Pete would have an impossible job getting down here from Hexham. Which also meant that he would be stuck with the errant fiancée for far longer than the few hours his brother had implied.
Neither thought was the sort to improve on his already bad mood as he dumped the suitcase on the back seat of his own car, slamming the door after it in an echo of his feelings.
‘Have we far to go?’ his passenger asked as he slid into the driver’s seat and put his key into the ignition.
‘Five miles or so. We’ll have to crawl every inch of the way, but we should make it.’
He was concentrating on getting
