used wrapping her in delicious, heart-wrenching familiarity.
She slid her arms around his waist, flattening her palms against the broad columns of muscle that bracketed his spine, and he held her without speaking, while their breathing steadied and their hearts slowed, until the tension left them.
But then another tension crept in, coiling tighter, pushing out everything else until it was the only thought, the only reason for breathing.
The only reason for being.
She felt his head shift, felt the warmth of his lips press tentatively against her forehead, and she tilted her head and met his blazing eyes.
THE KISS WAS INEVITABLE.
Slow, tender, fleeting, their lips brushing lightly, then gradually settling. Clinging. Melding into one, until she didn’t know where she ended and he began.
She curled her fingers into his shirt, felt his fingers tunnel into her hair and steady her head as he plundered her mouth, taking, giving, duelling with her until abruptly, long before she was ready, he wrenched his head back and stepped away.
She pressed trembling fingers to her aching, tingling lips. They felt as if his had been ripped away from them, tearing them somehow, leaving them incomplete. Leaving her incomplete.
She looked up, and his eyes were black as night, his chest rising and falling unsteadily. She could hear the air sawing in and out of his lungs, see the muscle jumping in his jaw as he took another step away.
‘I think you’d better go to bed,’ he said gruffly, and handed her the baby monitor from the table.
She nodded, her heart thrashing, emotions tumbling one over the other as she turned and all but ran back to her room.
What had she been thinking of, to let him kiss her? After all that had happened, all the water under the bridge of their relationship, everything that had happened since—she must have been mad!
She’d finally found peace, after years of striving, of what had felt like settling for second best—which was so unfair on David, so unfair, but how could he compete with Sebastian? He couldn’t. And, to be fair to him, she’d never asked him to. But still, it had felt like that, and it was only with Josh’s birth and the bond that had formed between them after David’s death that peace had finally come to her.
And now Sebastian had snatched it away, torn off the thin veneer of serenity and exposed the raw anguish in her heart. Because she still loved him. She’d always loved him, and now she was hurting all over again, her heart flayed raw by the knowledge of what she’d lost and what she’d done to him, but there was no way she could go back to that lifestyle, to the way he lived and the man he’d had to become.
She changed into her pyjamas and crawled into bed, lying there in a soft cloud of goose down and Egyptian cotton while her thoughts tumbled endlessly and went nowhere.
She heard him come upstairs to bed at something after midnight, but the sound didn’t wake her because she was still lying awake, listening to the wind howling round the house, battering the windows with its unrelenting assault. There was no way she was getting out of there any time soon. The lane would be full to the top by now, the snow trapped against the crinkle-crankle wall with no escape, piling up endlessly as the wind drove it off the field.
Trapping her and Josh inside with Sebastian.
Oh, why had she let him kiss her?
Or had she kissed him? She wasn’t sure, she only knew it had been the most monumental mistake. It had broken down the barriers between them, ripped away her flimsy defences, opened the Pandora’s box of their relationship, and try as they might, they’d never get the lid back on it in one piece.
She closed her eyes. She was so not looking forward to tomorrow...
* * *
He just couldn’t sleep.
Well, there might have been a few minutes here and there, but mostly he just lay awake trying not to think about that kiss while he listened to the wind battering the house and blocking them in forever.
There was no way he was getting her out of here today. No way at all. Which was all made a whole sight more difficult by the fact that he’d let his guard down and weakened like that.
He should have kept his mouth shut, not dragged it all out again. And his voice cracking like that! What the hell was that about? He was over her...
Liar.
He sighed harshly. OK, so he wasn’t over her, not totally, but he hadn’t had to tell her that quite so graphically. He certainly hadn’t needed to kiss her!
And now they were stuck here, forced together, with no prospect of escape for days. He rolled onto his front and folded his arms under his head, banging his forehead gently on them to knock some sense into himself.
Not working. So he lay there, fuming at his stupidity and resigning himself to a fraught and emotionally draining couple of days ahead.
It could have been worse. At least they had Josh there between them. They could hardly fight over his head, and he’d just have to make sure they were only together when he was around.
Although that was a problem in itself, because Josh, with his mother’s eyes and engaging personality, was a vivid and living reminder of all he’d lost when she’d walked away. Josh could have been his son. Should have been his son. His first known living relative.
His family.
He swallowed hard, the ache in his chest making it hard to breathe.
It was no good. He’d never get to sleep again. He threw off the covers, tugged on his clothes and went downstairs. If nothing else, he could get some work done.
But he couldn’t concentrate, and he ended up in the kitchen making yet more coffee at shortly before six in the morning. He put in some toast to blot it up a bit and give his stomach lining a rest, then sat at the table to eat it.
Not a good idea.
Little boys, he discovered, woke early, and he ended up with company.
Georgia, sleep-tousled, puffy-eyed and with a crease on one cheek, stumbled into the kitchen with Josh on her hip and came to an abrupt halt.
‘Ah. Sorry.’
Not as sorry as he was. She was wearing pyjamas, but they were soft and stretchy and the child’s weight on her hip had pulled the top askew and exposed an inviting expanse of soft, creamy flesh below her collar bone that drew his eyes like a magnet.
She followed the direction of his gaze and tugged it straight, colour flooding her cheeks, and he dragged his eyes away and jerked his head at the kettle.
‘It’s just boiled if you want tea?’
‘Um—please. And do you have any spare milk? Josh usually has some when he wakes up.’
‘Sure.
