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‘Just ten minutes. Right?’ Jake asked as she joined him.
‘Right.’ The smile she gave him was unpremeditated. But the look of approval in his eyes as he swept them over her altered, casual appearance had warmed away all her cool defences.
And his suggestion had been a good one. The air was stingingly cold, but it made her feel suddenly alive. Vitally, joyously alive—something she hadn’t experienced since they’d separated. The misty orange sun was low in the washed-out blue of the sky, casting long, dark shadows on the glittering snow.
Bella quickened her pace, revelling in the way her blood seemed to positively bounce through her veins, until Jake gently hauled her back, the strength of his hand tight and protective on her arm.
‘Hey! Cool it. The track’s slippery as hell now. A broken leg we can do without!’
Eyes wary, her heart beating skittishly, she fell in step beside him, expecting him to release her arm as soon as he’d successfully reined her in. He didn’t. He held her more tightly, gathering her towards him, tucking her closely to the side of his body.
Every nerve-end stood to attention, and her stomach lurched. Didn’t he know what his touch did to her? Had he forgotten that she only had to be near him to go up in flames? Were his memories of all they had been to each other so easily, so callously erased?
Her eyes fixed on the now-glassy surface of the compacted snow on the track ahead, she battled to find something to say, something to defuse the sharply coiling sexual tension that seemed to be eating her alive.
She came up with, ‘So you didn’t tell Mr Evans who had vandalised your car.’ Her voice was shaky. She tried to turn the wobble into a laugh. ‘The poor guy will spend months wondering if he’s going to wake up in the morning and find no wheels on his tractor. He’ll be looking at perfectly innocent local lads—wondering which of them has developed the urge to sneak around putting other people’s vehicles out of commission!’
Jake stopped, his black eyes glittering down at her. ‘What would you have had me say?’ he wanted to know. ‘That my wife arranged a little sabotage?’ He turned back towards the cottage, his grip on her arm tightening cruelly.
Bella dug her heels into the compacted snow, dragged her arm from his grasp and flung at him, ‘I had nothing to do with it—nothing!’ Her eyes narrowed, anger whipping colour into her cheeks, she planted her hands on her hips and shouted, ‘I don’t know which makes me madder—what Evie did or you refusing to believe she did it!’
Jake quirked an eyebrow and had difficulty keeping his mouth straight. She looked incredibly fragile, and endearingly feisty. A kitten spitting tacks at a tiger! And he knew that nothing, short of kissing her until she was breathless, would stop the tirade.
Something deep inside him shuddered. Kissing her would be a bad mistake, the worst he could make.
‘If she was here right now I’d throttle her!’ Her mouth compressed against her teeth as she spat out tightly, ‘What gives her the right to interfere? She’s done it before, in a big way. It turned out OK that time—but this time it’s an unmitigated disaster!’
She pushed the hair out of her eyes with an angry swipe. ‘I’m going in. I’m cold! And I’m sick of the company I’m being forced to keep!’
She stamped along the track. She wasn’t cold, she was burning with rage. At him. At Evie. At every mortal thing! And she was sick of him thinking she didn’t know the meaning of truth!
She felt her feet go from under her at the very same time she heard Jake’s warning shout, felt him reach out for her—but too late. She was floundering in the huge pile of snow shifted by the snow plough, all the breath knocked out of her lungs, with Jake’s big body sprawled on top of her because he’d lost his footing trying to prevent her from falling.
He saw her eyes go wide, diamond lights glittering in those water-clear depths, and knew she hadn’t hurt herself. There was nothing wrong with her except for a bad case of temper.
Her silky black hair was spread against the soft white snow, her kissable lips parted, her breasts straining against him as she tried to recapture her breath. Sudden desire for her—the desire that had never died no matter how hard he’d tried to kill it—hit him like a hammer-blow. Blood pounded through his veins, throbbing at his temples.
She was magic, and, as ever, he was under her spell. Whatever she was, whatever she had done, he wanted her, needed her...
Bella glared up at him, at his face just inches from hers. The utter humiliation of taking a header into the snow added to her rage. She wanted to tell him to let her up, get off her, but hadn’t got her breath back. She did the only thing she could—grabbed a handful of snow and pushed it in his face.
Jake brushed the snow away with what to Bella seemed like contempt; the suddenly hard line of his mouth was a fearful thing.
He was fighting for control. Her puny attack invited retaliation—and he knew how to subdue her, what it would take. A long, slow mastery, first of her senses and then of her body—a slow and very deliberate and highly satisfactory easing of the tension, an assuaging of the long, aching emptiness that was hunger—taking her with him to where they could both find the sweet solace of physical release.
But that wasn’t the way, he knew that, and as his mind won over his physical needs he pushed his hands beneath the bulk of the sweater she wore, his own sweater, and began to tickle her remorselessly. His strong features relaxed into a grin as the anger went out of her lovely face and she giggled and writhed and hiccuped beneath his relentless fingers.
‘Right, madam!’ He let his hands slide away, giving in at last to her squeals for mercy, pulling himself up onto his knees. ‘Punishment over. Don’t push snow in my face again or you’ll know what to expect!’ The impossibly inviting yet potentially damaging situation was defused, or so he thought.
Until her eyes met his. Sparkling with the laughtertears that spangled and tangled her long dark lashes, they drew him closer, ever closer, inviting, promising... An irresistible promise fatally reinforced by the curved, parted lips...
Jake groaned silently, trying to force his body’s response out of existence—the incredible hardening, tightening, the pooling of scalding heat in his loins, the thudding beat of his heart, the desperate need for her and only her.
If he took what was being offered he knew he would be doomed—binding himself to her again, with the knowledge of her previous unfaithfulness, the mental agony of wondering if she was sneaking off to be with Maclaine whenever his back was turned eating into him like acid.
The mental reminder of her lover got him to his feet. He bru
shed the powdery snow from his clothes, his eyes glinting narrowly as she made no move to get to her own feet She simply held out her hands to him, her eyes still dancing with laughter. Or wicked, wilful, wanton promise?
