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She grinned, unable to resist a challenge. Or that look on his face, apparently. ‘Competitive snowman-making. You do know how to make a girl happy.’
She started gathering snow in a pile around her, pushing it together to form a ball. Her gloves were soaked through within seconds, and her fingers started to sting as the cold set in. But she glanced over at Rufus and smiled at the fierce concentration on his face as he piled snow on top of snow until he had a pile nearly to his hips. She took a couple of photos while he was looking the other way, getting bright blue skies and clear winter sun in the background. On a summer’s day she’d look at that sky and expect to bake beneath it. But apparently all it meant for them for the next few days were temperatures that never crept above zero.
The main roads would be gritted and cleared pretty soon, she guessed. But out here in the wilds of the moors at the end of a winding lane, they just had to wait for the thaw.
And try not to get into trouble in the meantime, she reminded herself, realising she had been staring at Rufus’s arse for way longer than could be considered appropriate. Especially for someone who had sworn to herself, at least once already this morning, that she was steering well clear of the chemistry she had to acknowledge existed between them.
Rufus glanced over his shoulder, and she was glad she’d already shifted her gaze upwards and hadn’t been caught perving on him. That would have been awkward.
‘You’ve slowed down,’ Rufus commented. ‘You ready to go in and warm up?’
Jess rolled her eyes. ‘Nice try.’ With that she started to roll the snowman’s body around, gathering more snow as she went, until it was as high as her waist. She made a smaller ball for the head, added her hat and scarf, and glanced over to check out how the competition was getting on.
Rufus had built a rather austere-looking snowman and was currently carving out arm shapes. Jess came to stand beside him and grinned at the concentration on Rufus’s face.
‘Okay, you make a good snowman,’ she acknowledged. ‘I’ll give you that.’
He turned and smiled at her, and it was so unexpected that it caught her off guard, disarming her with its easy openness. Woah. She clearly needed much better defences. She picked up her phone and took a couple more pictures of the snowman. Everything seemed that little bit safer through the lens of a camera.
Rufus slung an arm around the snowman’s really-quite-impressive shoulder and took a selfie. Jess leaned into the shot from the other side and grinned at the lens as Rufus took another couple. He came round to show her, and she grinned at the result.
‘Nice work. He’s very handsome,’ she told him. ‘But your nose is red. You look cold.’
‘Yours is red too. And don’t think I didn’t notice that your hands are fr
eezing.’
‘I wasn’t hypothermic yesterday. We should go inside.’
Rufus shook his head. ‘I haven’t checked the fuses. Or fetched in the wood.’
‘They’ll still be there in an hour,’ she told him. ‘Anyway, I finished my coffee ages ago and my caffeine levels are slipping dangerously low. It’s my turn to put the kettle on.’
Rufus hesitated, so she pulled out the big guns. ‘I’m not going inside until you do. So if you want me to warm up, you’re going to have to go in too.’
‘Fine. You’re stubborn. I’ll go in, we’ll make coffee and I’ll head back out soon.’
Jess nodded. ‘Acceptable.’ She retrieved her hat and scarf from the snowman, and winced when the snow inside the hat settled on her head. Rufus laughed and brushed snowflakes off the length of her hair. As it had earlier, the touch of his hand stopped her dead, and the smile fell from her face as she realised that she’d let herself get too close. Again. And maybe Rufus was feeling it too, because he hadn’t moved either. His hand had come to rest on the side of her face, where she could feel a single snowflake melting on her cheekbone. She waited for Rufus to brush it away, thinking that would break the spell. But his hand didn’t move. His fingers were cold, but her skin beneath them was aflame. And either he had taken a step towards her or she had moved towards him, because somehow his chest was brushing against the front of her coat, and his mouth was the only thing that she could see.
And his hand was cupping her cheek—and how was hers on his waist?—and their frozen breath was mixing between them.
The touch of his cold lips on hers shocked her out of her paralysis and she took a decisive step back.
‘I’m sorry,’ Rufus said immediately.
‘No need to apologise,’ Jess said, trying to school her features into something neutral. ‘It was as much me as it was you. But I don’t think it’s a good idea.’
‘No, of course not. I feel the same. Can we just forget this?’
Ouch. Surely him agreeing with what she had already said shouldn’t hurt quite so much?
It was just her ego, she told herself. And her ego had no business sticking its nose into this. All her decisions when it came to Rufus were to be made entirely by her head. No other body parts got a say in the matter at all. She had to be sensible about this because if the electricity in that kiss was anything to go by, this would get very dangerous very quickly if she wasn’t on guard against it.
‘It’s already forgotten,’ she said, and hoped he couldn’t sense the size of her lie, because she was sure that she’d never told a bigger one.
They walked slowly back to the house, trying to ignore the atmosphere, but once they were enclosed in the porch it seemed to swell and fill the space.
Jess breathed a sigh of relief as the old iron latch on the door gave way, and they walked through to the space of the great hall. The fire was roaring now, the heating on full blast too, and Jess shed layers as she crossed over to the kitchen to put the kettle on, warming her hands on the Aga and waiting for the feeling to come back to her fingers. While the coffee was brewing she went digging around in the pantry, looking for mince pies. Lara knew that Christmas wasn’t Christmas without them. They were the only saving grace of this time of year as far as she was concerned, and her best friend wouldn’t have forgotten them.
