this lovely?’ she murmured against his chest as she gazed into the flames leaping in the fireplace.
‘Ummm.’
‘And aren’t Tark and Wren the sweetest couple? I just adore them both.’
‘Ummm hmmm...’
Natalie took her fingertip and drew it tentatively across Rhys’s chest. ‘Rhys, darling—?’
‘Hmmm?’
‘I’m feeling a bit...amorous. Are you?’
There was no answer.
‘Are you?’
Silence.
‘Rhys,’ she exclaimed, indignant, ‘are you even listening to me?’
She lifted her head and looked over at him enquiringly in the flickering firelight. He was sound asleep.
‘Poor man.’ She leant down and tenderly kissed his forehead. ‘All that driving in the blizzard did you in, didn’t it?’ she whispered. She snuggled up behind him, breathing in his reassuring male scent, and fell at once into a dreamless, untroubled sleep.
Helen woke to sunlight streaming into her eyes. She stretched and sat up, blinking. She was on a sofa, in a tiny living room. For a moment she was disoriented and couldn’t work out where she was; but the banging of pots and pans in the kitchen and a man’s muttered cursing brought everything back – the snow, the embankment, getting locked out of her car, her aching ankle – and she realized that her reluctant host must be fixing breakfast.
He returned a moment later with a tray and thumped it down on the coffee table before her.
‘Good morning,’ she ventured.
‘There’s toast, a boiled egg, and tea, if you’ve a mind to eat.’
‘Thank you, that’s very kind—’
‘I’ve work to be doing, paths to shovel and fallen branches to clear off the drive. After you eat, you’ll have to go.’ His eyes – hazel, she noted irrelevantly – met hers without apology.
‘Go?’ she echoed, disconcerted. ‘But my car—’
‘It’s still in the ravine, where it’ll stay until it’s towed out. In the meantime,’ he reached for his parka, hanging on a peg by the door ‘I’ll start the truck. I’ll take you up when you’ve finished.’
His peremptory manner irritated her. ‘Take me up where, exactly? Can you tell me that much?’
‘To the castle. You can call for a towing truck from there. Not that anyone’ll be out to get your car anytime soon,’ he added.
‘Right,’ Helen said tightly, and swung her legs – still clad in yesterday’s trousers – over the side of the sofa. ‘Would it be possible to have a shower before I go? Or is that asking too much?’
He jerked his head towards the narrow staircase. ‘There’s a bathroom at the top of the stairs. Mind you don’t use all the hot water.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ she snapped.
Colm cast her an unreadable look and slammed out of the back door without reply.
Natalie dreamt she was Snow White, walking through a thickly treed Scottish wood as birds twittered and swooped around her. She was hopelessly lost.
Suddenly a bluebird flew down from a branch and landed on her shoulder.
‘Have you seen the castle?’ she asked the bluebird. ‘I can’t seem to find it, and I really need the loo.’
In answer the bird twittered into her ear, and the soft tickle of its tiny beak and feathers made her giggle.
‘Such a funny little creature,’ she murmured, and rolled over in bed.
‘Little? I’ve been called a lot of things, darling,’ Rhys said against her skin as his lips moved along her neck to the slope of her shoulder, ‘but little’s not one of them.’
‘Rhys!’
She sat up on her elbow, clutching the blankets to her chest.
He raised his brow. ‘Who else would it be?’
‘I was just dreaming about the sweetest little bluebird,’ she began as he pulled her back down next to him and nuzzled the skin behind her ear. ‘I was lost, and it was dark, and I really needed to find a loo...ooh,’ she sighed, ‘that’s nice...’
‘I thought,’ Rhys said as he began to unbutton Natalie’s nightgown with leisurely motions, ‘that we might christen this room, you and I.’
‘Christen it?’ she echoed, and giggled. ‘Rhys! You mean…?’
He gave her a lazy smile and lowered his mouth to kiss her. ‘Yes. That’s exactly what I mean.’
‘Good thing there’s lots of blankets on this bed,’ Dominic grumbled as he burrowed under the duvets and pulled Gemma closer, ‘otherwise we’d be a pair of effin’ icicles by now.’
Gemma, still half asleep, mumbled something incoherent. She’d been dreaming that she’d just topped 300,000 followers on Tweeper...
‘Babes.’
‘Hmmm.’
‘Babes...’
‘Ahrm.’ She snuggled deeper into her pillow. She desperately wanted that blue celebrity checkmark on her Tweeper page, and she was close, so very close to getting it...
‘Babes!’ Dominic hissed.
Gemma’s eyes flew open. ‘What?’ she snapped. ‘I’m trying to sleep, Dom!’
He slung an arm around her and kissed her bare shoulder. ‘Don’t you want to start trying for that baby, then?’ he asked.
She levered herself up on one elbow and stared at him. ‘You mean…you mean you’re ready for us to have a baby?’
Dominic slid his hand along the warm curve of her hip and nodded. ‘Yeah. Yeah, Gems, that’s exactly what I mean.’
Fifteen minutes later, Helen emerged from the cottage and made her way cautiously – her ankle still twinged a bit, despite the aspirin she’d gulped with her morning tea ‒ to the waiting truck, an ancient Range Rover.
Although Colm had started the engine earlier, the interior was still frigid, and Helen could see her breath as she climbed inside.
Bloody cold. Bloody man. Bloody Scotland.
Colm, who was looking at something under the bonnet, slammed it shut
