Despite the snowflakes just beginning to flurry around them, she felt heat arcing between them.
Her heartbeat was jittering in her chest, her blood was pumping hot and thick in her veins, and she had the most overpowering urge to reach up and smooth his hair back from his forehead.
Instead, she curled her fingers into her palms and took a deep breath. “It's coming down harder. We should start back.”
Six
By the time they reached the lodge, snow had dusted their hair and shoulders and was thick enough in the air that every breath tasted like ice.
When Keira would have turned down the driveway to head for her truck, Nathan caught her elbow and tugged her up the back steps to the house by the lake.
“Nathan …”
He stopped on the top step, looked down into her soft green eyes and said, “You might as well wait out the storm here.”
She hunched deeper into her jacket, swung her snow-dusted hair out of her eyes and said, “It might not stop for a few hours.”
Glad to hear it, he almost said and was glad he'd managed to clamp his jaw shut. But the truth was, he didn't want to go back into that too-damned-quiet lodge. It was bad enough to be trapped there in the silence when the sun was shining. He had a feeling that being alone with the falling snow and lowering clouds would make him feel as though he were buried alive in a dark cave. Not something he really wanted to experience.
“And it might stop in a few minutes,” he pointed out, but, as if to prove that prediction false, the wind kicked up and the snow flew in frenzied flurries.
“If I was home right now,” Keira said, “I'd make myself some hot chocolate.”
“I can probably handle that,” he said. “Or, there's some excellent brandy.”
She climbed up a step, coming that much closer to him, and the depths in her green eyes called to him, reached for him. “Brandy would be good, too. Got anything to eat?”
He held out one hand and waited for her to take it. When she did, his fingers folded tightly around hers. “There's plenty of stuff in the fridge.”
She took the last step that brought her beside him and gave him a smile that warmed him through, despite the icy wind and the snow sneaking beneath the collar of his jacket. “Then why are we still standing in the storm?”
They walked across the covered deck, stepped into the mudroom and pulled off their jackets and boots. Then, together, they went into the kitchen. The room was cavernous, with built in niches for the stainless steel appliances and a mile of granite counter. The walls were painted to give them an antiqued finish, and the colors were warm cream and brown, making the kitchen seem cozy even in the midst of a storm.
“Let's get that brandy first, worry about food later,” Nathan said, and led the way from the kitchen to the great room.
“Good plan,” she said and shivered a little as she followed him down the hall.
A fire was blazing in the hearth and Keira moved straight toward it as Nathan walked to the wet bar. He poured them each a drink, then walked to join her by the fire. Handing her one of the crystal snifters, he watched the amber liquid swirl in the bottom of his glass for a long moment before he took a sip.
He swallowed and felt the alcohol fueled fire rush through him as he shifted his gaze to Keira. Firelight played on her skin and danced in her eyes. The ends of her hair shone with a nearly incandescent light and when she lifted her glass to her lips, everything inside him tightened.
After taking a sip, she blew out a breath, smiled and looked up at him. “Wow. Well, that warms you up fast, doesn't it?”
Nathan ground his teeth together and then took a sip of his own brandy. The heat it produced was nothing like the other kind of heat swamping him. Just looking at Keira made him burn.
For more than a week now, he had tried not to think about her, to put this insane attraction out of his mind. But he hadn't been able to manage it. When he closed his eyes, he saw her. When he dreamed, he touched her. When he thought he would go out of his mind from the silence in this place, she arrived and he nearly went out of his mind for different reasons entirely.
She sat down on the stone hearth, the fire at her back, and looked up at him as she cradled the brandy snifter between her palms. “So, Nathan, are you the Barrister Hotel guy?”
One eyebrow rose and he took another sip of his brandy, welcoming the steady fire. “Hotel guy? Yeah. I suppose I am. How'd you know?”
She smiled. “Just a guess. Hunter's Landing isn't exactly on the moon. We get newspapers and magazines here, too. Which one of your hotels is your favorite?”
He shrugged carelessly. “I don't really have a favorite, they're all top-of-the-line establishments, each of them with their own unique pluses and minuses.”
“Boy, feel the enthusiasm.”
“I'm sorry?”
“Well, come on, Nathan, you own four-star hotels—”
“Five-star,” he amended automatically.
“Right. In beautiful, exotic places all over the world. You talk about them as if they're nothing special. As if they're no different from any other exclusive hotels. Is that really what you think?”
Nathan frowned, sat down beside her and instantly appreciated the heat of the fire warming his back. “It's the family business, Keira. They're valuable properties with impeccable reputations that I work hard to maintain.”
“Uh-huh,” she said and nudged his upper arm with her shoulder. “And do you ever drop in on one in say … Paris, or Dublin … just for fun?”
“No,” he said and wondered why he cared that she looked disappointed at his statement. “I have a rigorous schedule I adhere to. The managers of the hotels know when I'm coming, know to have everything ready for my inspection and—”
She sighed.
“What?”
“Do they salute? Click their heels together when you walk into a room?”
He scowled at her. “I'm not a general or something.”
“Could have fooled me,” she muttered, and took another sip of brandy. “Seriously, do you scare all the people who work for you? I bet you do.”
“Certainly not,” Nathan said and wondered why he suddenly sounded so damn pompous, even to himself.
“You know,” she said, lifting her brandy glass to peer at the room through the amber liquid, “if you changed up your schedule once in a while, you might actually catch people unaware. Find out what life in your hotels is really like.”
He stared at her, but she wasn't looking at him. Her words, though, were running through his brain as if they'd been etched in neon. Funny, but he'd never thought to do something like that. He was a man who lived his life as efficiently as possible. And to do that, he required
