I’ve heard in a long time! Might I point out to you that you were on the road too? And, as you were clearly nowhere near as far away from home as I was, you would have had the advantage of being able to judge the weather more accurately before you left. It wasn’t even snowing when I set out!’
‘Nor was it when I left the house!’ Sean returned sharply. ‘Though I have to admit that I wish it had been. That way I would have had the perfect excuse not to venture out.’
And the perfect excuse to refuse Pete’s request. The perfect reason not to go out on what he firmly believed was a wild-goose chase. He had never held out any real hope that his brother’s ex-fiancée would put in an appearance at the Night Owl, let alone that he would recognise her, be able to strike up a conversation and persuade her to come back home with him.
In fact he had been so convinced of the impossibility of the task that he hadn’t even bothered to order a meal, opting instead for just a pot of delicious coffee. It had barely been delivered to his table when the gathering darkness outside, the grey, lowering skies, had alerted him to the advent of the wild winter storm that had persisted ever since.
If Annie Elliot had any sense she would never try to travel in this, he had decided, paying his bill hastily and setting out for home while it was safe to drive. He had still not worked out whether it had been good luck or bad that had resulted in his coming on the silver Renault as he had.
But fate had decided that he would, and that there at the wheel, tall, dark and every bit as beautiful as his lovelorn brother had described her, was Miss Heartbreaker Elliot herself, dazed and off balance and only too willing to be befriended and taken to his home.
‘And of course then you wouldn’t have had to lumber yourself with me!’ The girl’s indignant voice dragged his thoughts back to the present.
‘I never said—’
‘You didn’t have to say anything! But you’ve made it blatantly obvious that you would have been a lot happier if someone else had come along and rescued me so that you wouldn’t have been obliged to do it. Well, you needn’t worry! I don’t want to be stuck with you any more than you do with me.’
‘I couldn’t agree more.’
It was expelled on a sigh of exasperation. Damn Pete for getting him involved in all this, and damn her too…
For what? For being so beautiful that any man would want her? So lovely that he only had to look at her to burn with desire?
And she knew it, damn her! She had only just left his brother, having tossed his ring back in his face, and she already had a new man lined up. And yet she hadn’t been able to resist trying it on with him in the first five minutes.
She had set out to entice him like some little alley cat, displaying her body in the clinging dress, writhing so seductively against him. And he knew why.
She’d recognised him, hadn’t she? Even used his name as familiarly as if they were old friends. It happened so often now that he’d become inured to it. People saw not the real man but a myth created by the medium in which he worked. To the public at large he was simply a face on a TV screen, a glossy photograph in a magazine—that hated thing, a ‘pin-up’.
‘Well, the best thing is for you to let me use your phone as soon as we get inside. I’ll call the garage and—’
‘I think not.’ Cold, controlled rage turned his voice into a blade of ice slashing through her words.
Forget Pete, and keeping her here until his brother could come and plead with her to take him back! She wasn’t worth it. She’d take the poor kid’s heart and use it as a toy until she was tired of it, and then she’d snap it in two and toss it aside without even bothering to look where it landed.
Women like this one were just predatory spiders, waiting for the next poor sucker of a fly who foolishly wandered into their carefully spun webs. Marnie had been a mistress of the art as well. But Marnie was out of his life now, thank God. Out of his life and flaunting her brand-new wedding ring and the rich husband to go with it.
But he could use his own experience to teach this lady a much needed lesson. He’d play along with her for now, let her think she had him hooked, and then, just as she enjoyed her triumph, he’d show her that she couldn’t play fast and loose with people’s feelings.
‘You’re not going to get away that easily.’
“‘Get away”?’ For the first time it seemed that her confidence had slipped. A seam of anxiety ran through her repetition of his words.
He’d better take things more carefully. It would do no good at all to frighten her off right at the start. Far better to lull her into a false sense of security at first, and only reveal his hand when she had no hope of escape.
So he turned a wide smile in her direction and concentrated on making his tone light and friendly.
‘See sense, sweetheart! If the garage tow-truck would have found it difficult to reach you earlier, it will be damn near impossible now. They’d need a snow-plough to get through this. We’re grounded—stuck together for the duration—so we’ll have to make the best of it.’
CHAPTER THREE
‘WE’RE here.’
Leah registered Sean’s comment, and the fact that the car had slowed, only vaguely. She was grateful for the fact that the nightmare of a journey was over, but only now was it beginning to dawn on her that the tension that had gripped her had more to do with the man beside her than the more obvious danger of the blizzard raging outside.
Her nerves felt stretched tight, as if some cruel hand had gripped them and twisted them hard. Was she imagining things, or had Sean’s words been laced with a dark element of threat?
Certainly his declaration that ‘You’re not going to get away that easily’ had sounded ominous. But when she’d queried it he had dismissed her concern with an easy answer and an even easier smile. Though that smile had failed to convince, she admitted, drawing in a sharp, uncomfortable breath.
‘You don’t look very impressed.’
The lightness of his tone made a nonsense of her feelings.
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ With an effort she forced herself to focus on the house before her, or at least on the little she could see through the thickly whirling snow. ‘It’s just it’s not exactly what I was expecting.’
That much was true at least. Small and square, with its grey stone blending in with the wintry surroundings to give it an almost ethereal quality, the cottage was far more basic, more workmanlike than she had anticipated.
‘It’s not very Sean Gallagher, is it?’ her nervousness pushed her to ask.
Immediately all the light vanished from his face, his smile fading and his lips compressing to a cold, thin slash in his face.
‘You shouldn’t equate the publicity I get with the reality,’ he declared, each word cold and clipped, and in a sudden rush of inspiration she suddenly realised just what was wrong.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that you were like the part you play.’
A
