bricks. Narrow muscled hips and long powerful legs filled out his dark jeans. By the time she reached his big, got-to-be-size-fifteen hand-tooled boots the tour had effectively rendered Sybella slightly dazzled and a whole lot mute.
She realised she’d just checked him out.
It was either her silence or the raptness of her regard that had him look up from shaking out his coat and give her that once-over thing men did, the subtle up and down assessment as to whether or not he’d consider sleeping with her...and Sybella had the humiliating thought he’d caught her staring and assumed she was doing the same thing.
Which she was. Unintentionally. Not because she was considering sleeping with him. Goodness, no. She hadn’t meant to ogle him. It had just happened. But he didn’t know that.
What made it worse was the Climb and Ski gear had currently turned her perfectly nice woman’s body into a flotation device and the likelihood of him finding anything attractive about her was zilch.
‘Care to tell me what you were really doing jumping out at me in the dark?’ His eyes held a new awareness now that she’d pretty much flagged she found him attractive. Sybella could feel her cheeks hot as coals. He made her feel like a teenage girl with a boy she liked. It was ridiculous at her advanced age of twenty-eight.
‘I didn’t jump out at you. You threw luggage at me!’ He had moved across to the open boot-room door to hang up his coat. Sybella followed him, a tiny tug boat to his tanker.
‘I expected to be greeted by staff,’ he said.
She guessed that put her in her place. Sybella surreptitiously admired his rear, which like the rest of him appeared to be pure muscle, which was when he just tossed the grenade in.
‘I also thought you were a man.’
And there went what was left of her self-image tonight.
‘Wh-what?’ she bleated, like a stupid lamb for slaughter.
‘I mean, obviously you’re not,’ he said, frowning at her as if he’d just noticed her stricken expression and was assessing what it meant.
‘No,’ she choked, ‘not a man. Thanks.’
‘It was dark and you’re wearing unisex clothing.’ He was hanging up his coat, drawing attention to the flex of muscles along his back.
‘This isn’t unisex.’ Sybella looked down at her considerable padded bulk. ‘It’s oyster-pink.’
His expression told her he didn’t make the connection.
‘Pink is traditionally a female colour,’ she spelt out.
He continued to look doubtful.
She huffed out a breath. ‘Look, this parka was clearly marked “Women Size L” on the rack,’ she insisted. Then stopped.
Had she just informed him she was size large?
Yes—yes, she had.
‘It was dark,’ he repeated, and the frown was back.
He closed the door behind him, crowding her back out into the corridor.
When she picked up her bruised and bloodied self-esteem from the floor, Sybella would remind herself she was tall, wearing layers and a ski mask, and he was right—it was dark. Her throat felt tight, because it wasn’t that dark.
Sybella only felt worse when he took the main stairs with an effortless stride that left her labouring as best she could in his wake, because by now she was not only wet through, the all-weather gear was making it difficult to move freely.
It begged the question how people climbed mountains in these things when she was finding a staircase hard going.
She was a little out of breath at the top.
‘You need to get a bit more exercise,’ he said, stopping to look down at her. ‘You’re out of shape.’
Really? That was what he had to say to her? The only time she ever got to sit down was on a quiet afternoon at the records office where she worked.
‘Shouldn’t you be on your way up to see your grandfather?’ she said instead, no longer at all keen to explain anything to him. She just wanted to go home. Preferably to a hot bath where she could enjoy a little cry.
‘He’ll keep.’
He’ll keep? What sort of grandson was he? Well, she knew the answer to that. The absent kind. She scowled at his back. If he hadn’t been absent she wouldn’t be in this fix.
Sybella followed him down the Long Gallery. She regularly conducted tours of this room, pointing out the features, recounting the history of the house. She suspected Mr I-thought-you-were-a-man wouldn’t be very happy if he knew.
There were six Jacobean chairs piled up in the middle of the room, awaiting a home.
‘What in the hell?’ he said, circling them.
She opted for a cheerful, ‘Don’t you love these? Your grandfather had them brought down from storage in the attics. We haven’t worked out where to put them.’
‘We?’ He rounded on her. ‘You’re interested in the contents of the house?’
As if she were some kind of criminal. Sybella found herself backing up a bit. ‘No, I’m interested in the past.’
‘Why?’
A little flustered by the way he was looking at her, all suspicious and hard-eyed but making her feel very much a woman despite what he’d said, she found herself struggling for an answer. ‘I don’t know. I just am.’
He looked unimpressed.
She had to do better. She rummaged around for something he’d believe. ‘If you grew up like I did in a very modern house in a relentlessly upmarket housing estate you’d see the beauty in old things too.’
He looked skeptical.
‘It was the most soulless place on this green earth. I knew from an early age there had to be something better. More meaningful.’
Sybella took a breath, realising she’d told him a little more than she had meant to.
‘Why does furniture have more meaning if it’s old?’
‘Because old things have stories attached to them, and the furniture that’s survived tends to have been made by craftsmen and women. Artists.’
‘You’re a romantic,’ he said, again as if this were a crime.
‘No, I’m practical.’ She’d had to be. ‘Although I guess as a child I read books about other children who lived in old houses and fantasised that might be me one day.’
‘Is that so?’
Nik was tempted to ask her if she could see herself in this house.
‘It’s
