fit inside the car was even snugger than she remembered. His head brushed the top of the car and in order to accommodate his legs he had to draw his knees up towards his chest at an awkward angle.
She went to turn the ignition key but he reached out and covered her hand with his, and if anything this time the sensation was even stronger.
Her eyes, wide and startled, lifted to his. ‘What’s wrong?’
Besides the state of imminent collapse of my nervous system, that is?
‘This kissing thing.’
Darcy wriggled her hand from beneath his and clasped it protectively to her heaving chest. ‘What kissing thing?’ she asked, desperately affecting amnesia.
‘You wanting to kiss me.’
‘You wanting to kiss me.’
‘That too,’ he agreed. ‘The point is, now that you know I’m not a married man and I know you’re not a teenager…or for that matter a virgin…’ A choking sound emerged from Darcy’s throat. ‘Incidentally we have that much in common. There’s no actual reason we shouldn’t.’
‘Shouldn’t…?’ She hoped he wasn’t going to say what she thought he was going to say—he did.
‘Kiss.’
She almost kept the wobble from her cool response. ‘Other than the fact I’d scream blue murder, probably not.’ She sent up a silent prayer that her claim would never be put to the test.
‘Ah…! You’ve gone off the idea… Maybe it’s for the best,’ he conceded casually, before leaning back in his seat and closing his eyes.
Just like that! Heavens, she didn’t expect him to get suicidal because she’d said she didn’t want to kiss him, but he could at least have the decency to look as if he cared! It was, she decided, eyeing his profile with loathing, a matter of simple good manners!
Darcy knew straight off she’d not fall back to sleep for some time—her feverishly active mind was racing like an overwound clockwork toy. She glanced at the illuminated fingers of the clock on the bedside table and groaned: it was only two a.m.
Her tiny bedroom set beneath the eaves faced due north, and the wind was battering against the window-panes, sneaking through every odd crack or cranny in the well-insulated room. The Hall wouldn’t be well-insulated…
‘Oh, hell, why did I go and think that…?’ She rolled onto her stomach and pulled a pillow over her head to drown out the noise. I will not think about him, she told herself angrily.
Trouble was, she did.
Her family had been surprised when on her return she hadn’t brought home the invalid to eat with them. Their collective comments to this effect had served to add to the burden of her own guilty conscience until she’d eventually exploded.
‘If you want to feed him, feel free, but don’t expect any thanks. Me, I’ve had enough of him for one evening!’ she’d announced.
After that they’d let it alone, but she’d been able to tell that they thought she was being mean and she’d caught Nick regarding her speculatively several times during the evening.
Thirty minutes after she’d woken from her restless sleep Darcy, armed with a torch, blanket and a flask of coffee, made her way up the lane towards the Hall.
There was no front door to knock. The beam of her torch feebly illuminated a very sorry state of affairs. Horrified, Darcy explored further; things didn’t get any better.
‘And I didn’t even offer the man a cup of tea,’ she moaned, stepping over a pile of ladders that lay across her path. ‘And why…? Just because he accepted no means no. If I find him dead from hypothermia or in a coma it’ll be my fault.’ The knowledge increased the urgency of her search for signs of life.
A room with a door seemed a logical place to look. Her efforts were rewarded with the sight of the smouldering embers of a large fire in the wide inglenook.
Tentatively she approached the large human-sized bundle on the floor. She put down everything but the torch and knelt down beside the figure. Her ears were straining for signs of healthy breathing—in her present frame of mind she’d have welcomed the odd wheeze or two!
One minute she was shuffling a little closer to the figure with her hand raised, the next she was flat on her back, pinned beneath a heavy figure. An ungentle hand was pressed over her mouth.
‘If you don’t want to get hurt, stop struggling,’ an ugly growl advised her. ‘Are you alone?’
How the hell did he expect her to reply with a dirty great paw over her mouth…? It seemed her assailant’s thoughts were running along similar lines.
‘I’m going to take away my hand, but if you try and yell to your mates you’ll regret it. Understood…?’
Heart pounding, Darcy shook her head as vigorously as her position would allow. If she hadn’t known this was Reece she’d have already died of heart failure. To her relief the suffocating hand lifted.
‘For heaven’s sake, get off me, you idiot; I can’t breathe!’ she gasped.
‘Darcy!’
The pressure across her ribs eased but he didn’t shift completely. ‘Of course Darcy,’ she grumbled crossly. ‘Who did you think it was?’
‘A burglar.’
She heard sounds of him searching for something just before a strong light was shone in her face.
‘Will you take that out of my eyes?’ she pleaded, screwing her watering eyes up tight. ‘I can’t see a thing.’
She felt a hand tug at the knitted cloche she wore on her head and pull it off. The same hand ran gently through the soft waves that had been crammed beneath. Suddenly the pressure over her middle was gone, as was the hand… Disturbingly she had mixed feelings about her release; there had been something very soothing about those probing fingers—no, that wasn’t quite the right word…
She struggled to sit up and managed it with both hands braced behind her for support on the dusty floor.
‘I had a torch but I lost it when you leapt on me like that.’ She squinted into the dusty corners, hoping to relocate it.
Reece regarded her incredulously. ‘Well, what did you expect, woman, creeping up on a man in the middle of the night?’
Fair question if you stopped to look at it from his point of view—something that Darcy hadn’t done up to this point. She realised how foolish her impulsive behaviour might seem.
She watched nervously as he got to his feet and moved towards the fire, pausing to choose a couple of dry logs. The fire immediately began to sizzle as the flames licked the wood. Picking up a box of matches from the shoulder-high age-darkened oak mantel, he began to light half a dozen or so candles which were laid out there in various stages of demise. As they took hold he switched off the torch and slid it into his pocket—it came as no surprise that he’d been sleeping fully clothed.
