passed his hand over his eyes, as if to wipe away the vision. He didn’t want to relive that day. Not now, not ever again. Recalling himself with an effort to the present, he swiveled and paced to the window on the other side of the fire. A safe distance—from there the crackle of the logs muffled Lindsay’s words into unintelligible coos and murmurs. He dropped onto the sofa and watched her.
Lindsay Blaisdell. It was ironic, wasn’t it? Of all the people with whom he could have been snowbound…
He still hadn’t quite recovered from the shock of seeing her climb out of that helicopter. At first he’d thought she hadn’t changed a bit. With her long, dark, braided hair wet and tousled from the snow, her cheeks a bright, wind-stung pink, she had looked very much like the naive woman-child she’d been back then.
But fifteen minutes in her company had changed that impression for good. He took a sip of the coffee Roc had left on the end table and tried to analyze where exactly the change had come from.
It wasn’t her face. She still had the face of a teenage Madonna, her dark blue eyes set wide apart and tranquil, her mouth full, upturned, serene, her expression one of unassailable innocence.
No, the difference was in her body, he decided. Seen like this, with her back to him, the honeyed firelight trickling along her hip and thigh, which were outlined by her skirt as she leaned against the desk, she looked sexy as hell. Her hips, in particular, were a work of art. Erotic art, straight out of a bad boy’s dreams. And a grown man’s palms would cup perfectly around them, just where the swell began to flare out from her narrow waist.
Which brought him to Robert Hamilton. Or did it? Daniel gripped his coffee mug tightly, letting the heat burn into his palm. Though her shocked denial had rung true, still…something, somebody had to account for the way that body moved. Its sensuality was definitely awakened.
“Christy, honey, I’d better go now. This is long distance, and I’m using Mr. McKinley’s telephone.”
Lindsay looked at him over her shoulder, her face sheepishly apologetic, and instantly his emotional kaleidoscope refocused, innocence again dominating the picture. With her lower lip between her teeth and her brows knitted in the middle, she looked like a child herself, a nervous kid who was worried that she might have irritated the grown-ups.
He waved her concern away with an upturned hand, suddenly annoyed with himself. He took another swig of coffee, burning his throat with an ill-advised gulp. Oh, hell, what did it matter anyway? Maybe she was as pure as those snowflakes out there. Or maybe she and Hamilton were sleeping together twice a day, as regular as flossing. He, for one, didn’t give a damn.
“I’m sorry that took so long,” she said suddenly, and he looked up to see that she had cradled the receiver. Sighing, she rubbed the back of her neck with one hand. “I think this must be the onset of adolescence. She argues with me about absolutely everything.”
“Yes, I hear the teenage years can be fairly hairraising,” he said politely. “I assume Christy doesn’t consider going to her grandparents’ house exactly a trip to Disneyland.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Lindsay said, still kneading her neck. “Come to think of it, the old place does bear a slight resemblance to the Haunted Mansion.” She walked over to stand near him by the fire, her upraised hand resting behind her head, her loosened braid spilling in thick, dark waves over her arm. “But you’re right, of course. Christy doesn’t feel comfortable with her grandmother. Even before our parents died, we were never—” she seemed to be looking for the right word “—very close.”
“Well, maybe we’ll get lucky, and the storm will pass through quickly,” he said. He hoped it would, and not just for her sake. For three years now he had spent the winters up here alone. The snowbound days were the best. Cut off from work, friends, television, telephone and sometimes even Roc, he could sink numbly into the brooding silence. It felt right, this frozen prison. It was the only time he didn’t have to pretend to anyone, and he wouldn’t welcome having Lindsay Blaisdell as a cellmate. “You may be able to get home before she’s out of school tomorrow.”
“Oh, good heavens, yes! I have to get home by tomorrow,” she exclaimed, wide-eyed, as if she hadn’t considered the possibility that this could go on longer than twenty-four hours. “It’s only four days till Christmas!” She added the last as if that fact alone decided the matter.
He hesitated, hardly able to credit the ingenuous faith he heard in her voice. Apparently she still believed that Fate intervened to protect the dreams of the innocent. Usually such naiveté made him impatient—he had made a religion of facing difficult truths, and he insisted that those around him do the same.
Natural disasters didn’t pause for Christmas dinner. The storm front might stall right over them, trapping them here for days, only to be followed by treacherous winds, buried roads, ice storms, downed trees and power lines, a hundred dangers that would make escape impossible. She might be smarter to plan on celebrating New Year’s Eve with her little Christy.
Those were the facts, whether she liked them or not. But, strangely, the words wouldn’t come. He found himself curiously reluctant to burst that bubble of guileless innocence. It was really a rather pretty thing, though useless, of course…and doomed, too, like an exquisite ice sculpture sparkling under a noonday sun.
And so he didn’t speak. A moment of silence stretched into two, then three, as she toyed abstractedly with her braid and he sipped at his coffee.
In a moment she sighed and, letting go of her hair, seemed to straighten herself and return to business.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll need to telephone Robert, too,” she said, her manner crisp, as if she regretted her lapse into such a personal discussion. “He’ll be wondering when I’m coming back. I’ll be glad to charge it to his calling card—”
Daniel shifted against the cushions. Obviously she was uncomfortable with being obliged to accept the hospitality of a man she disliked. He understood the reluctance to put herself in his debt, but this was absurd. What would be next—offering to pay for her meals? “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “Call direct. I’m quite sure my company won’t go bankrupt over a few extra long-distance bills.”
She smiled coolly. “Sorry. It’s just that over at Hamilton Homes, you see, we worry a lot about things like that.”
“Yes,” he agreed, glancing at the stack of documents. “I suppose you do.” But she was still smiling, and he realized that her comment had been mildly sarcastic. So—she wasn’t quite as naive as all that, was she?
She drew a deep breath. “Mr. McKinley—”
“Daniel,” he corrected. “We’re living together, remember?”
“Yes…Daniel.” But she swallowed the last syllable, and he knew she felt funny saying the name. Well, that was only natural, he supposed. If she still worked for him, he would never have invited her to use his first name. And he suddenly wondered whether, if he made the clearly mad move of buying Hamilton Homes, she would be his employee once again.
“When I call Robert,” she was saying, “he’s going to want to know where the negotiations stand. I know you said there was only one chance in a million that you would ever accept this deal—”
“Right.”
She met his gaze directly, though a certain rigidity in her posture made him wonder if she were
