pausing to lean against a lamp post, head buried in the crook of her elbow.
‘Bloody woman,’ he muttered under his breath. He picked up speed as much as he could and reached her side just in time to scoop her up as she was about to slide to the ground.
Aggie shrieked.
‘Do you intend to wake the entire town?’ Luiz began walking as quickly as he could back to the bed and breakfast. Which, in snow that was fast settling, wasn’t very quickly at all.
‘Put me down!’ She pummelled ineffectively at his chest but soon gave up because the activity made her feel even more queasy.
‘Now, that has to be the most stupid thing ever to have left your lips.’
‘I said put me down!’
‘If I put you down, you wouldn’t be able to get back up. You don’t honestly think I missed the fact that you were hanging onto that lamp post for dear life, do you?’
‘I don’t need rescuing by you!’
‘And I don’t need to be out here in freezing weather playing the knight in shining armour! Now shut up!’
Aggie was so shocked by that insufferably arrogant command that she shut up.
She wouldn’t have admitted it in a million years but it felt good to be carried like this, because her legs had been feeling very wobbly. In fact, she really had been on the point of wanting to sink to the ground just to take the weight off them before he had swept her off her feet.
She felt him nudge the front door open with his foot, which meant that it had been left ajar. It was humiliating to think of Mrs Bixby seeing her like this and she buried herself against Luiz, willing herself to disappear.
‘Don’t worry,’ Luiz murmured drily in her ear. ‘Our friendly landlady is nowhere to be seen. I told her to go to bed, that I’d make sure I brought you in in one piece.’
Aggie risked a glance at the empty hall and instructed him to put her down.
‘That dumb suggestion again. You’re drunk and you need to get to bed, which is what I told you before you decided to prove how stubborn you could be by ignoring my very sound advice.’
‘I am not drunk. I am never drunk.’ She was alarmed by a sudden need to hiccup, which she thankfully stifled. ‘Furthermore, I am more than capable of making my own way upstairs.’
‘Okay.’ He released her fast enough for her to feel the ground rushing up to meet her and she clutched his jumper with both hands and took a few deep breaths. ‘Still want to convince me that you’re more than capable of making your own way upstairs?’
‘I hate you!’ Aggie muttered as he swept her back up into his arms.
‘You have a tendency to be repetitive,’ Luiz murmured, and he didn’t have to see her face to know that she was glaring at him. ‘And I’m surprised and a little offended that you hate me for rescuing you from almost certainly falling flat on your face in the snow and probably going to sleep. As a teacher, you should know that that is the most dangerous thing that could happen, passing out in the snow. While under the influence of alcohol. Tut, tut, tut. You’d be struck off the responsible-teacher register if they ever found out about that. Definitely not a good example to set for impressionable little children, seeing their teacher the worse for wear…’
‘Shut up,’ Aggie muttered fiercely.
‘Now, let’s see. Forgotten which room is yours…Oh, it’s coming back to me—the only one left with the en suite! Fortuitous, because you might be needing that…’
‘Oh be quiet,’ Aggie moaned. ‘And hurry up! I think I’m going to be sick.’
SHE made it to the bathroom in the nick of time and was horribly, shamefully, humiliatingly, wretchedly sick. She hadn’t bothered to shut the door and she was too weak to protest when she heard Luiz enter the bathroom behind her.
‘Sorry,’ she whispered, hearing the flush of the toilet and finding a toothbrush pressed into her hand. While she was busy being sick, he had obviously rummaged through her case and located just the thing she needed.
She shakily cleaned her teeth but lacked the energy to tell him to leave.
Nor could she look at him. She flopped down onto the bed and closed her eyes as he drew the curtains shut, turned off the overhead light and began easing her boots off.
Luiz had never done anything like this before. In fact, he had never been in the presence of a woman quite so violently sick after a bout of excessive drinking and, if someone had told him that one day he would be taking care of such a woman, he would have laughed out loud. Women who were out of control disgusted him. An out-of-control Chloe, shouting hysterically down the phone, sobbing and shrieking and cursing him, had left him cold. He looked at Aggie, who now had her arm covering her face, and wondered why he wasn’t disgusted.
He had wet a face cloth; he mopped her forehead and heard her sigh.
‘So I guess I should be thanking you,’ she said, without moving the hand that lay across her face.
‘You could try that,’ Luiz agreed.
‘How did you know where to find me?’
‘I watched you from the dining room. I wasn’t going to let you stay out there for longer than five minutes.’
‘Because, of course, you know best.’
‘Staggering in the dark in driving snow when you’ve had too much to drink isn’t a good idea in anyone’s eyes,’ Luiz said drily.
‘And I don’t suppose you’ll believe me when I tell you that this is the first time I’ve ever…ever…done this?’
‘I believe you.’
Aggie lowered her protective arm and looked at him. Her eyes felt sore, along with everything else, and she was relieved that the room was only lit by the small lamp on the bedside table.
‘You do?’
‘It’s my fault. I should have said no to that second bottle of wine. In fact, I was barely aware of it being brought.’ He shrugged. ‘These things happen.’
‘But I don’t suppose they ever happen to you,’ Aggie said with a weak smile. ‘I bet you don’t drink too much and stagger all over the place and then end up having to be helped up to bed like a baby.’
Luiz laughed. ‘No, can’t say I remember the last time that happened.’
‘And I bet you’ve never been in the company of a woman who’s done that.’
No one would dare behave like that in my presence, was what he could have said, except he was disturbed to find that that would have made him sound like a monster.
‘No,’
