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Jess’s phone buzzed in her pocket as she watched Rufus walk away.
Oh, my God. Oh. My. God. What is going on with you guys?
Jess sighed. If only she knew she might be able to tell Lara.
Don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s just for the Gram.
Then she took a few atmospheric shots of her cosy set-up in front of the fire and hoped that would satisfy her friend.
Cosy. But the followers want more of Rufus!
Followed by a whole line of aubergine emojis. Subtle.
Well, Jess knew how the followers felt. There were parts of her anatomy that wanted a whole lot more of Rufus too. It was a shame that following those desires would be such a terrible idea. Not least because their recent conversation had made it perfectly clear that he wanted her too.
Not only that, but he’d also seen exactly why she was holding back and made her question herself.
She knew that her reasons for not having a serious relationship held up to scrutiny. There was no way that she was opening herself up to the chronic misery that had been eating away at the family for a dec
ade.
But they weren’t necessarily talking marriage here. In fact, it was hard to imagine a scenario less likely to lead to a serious relationship than two strangers with nothing in common being holed up in a remote location before one of them returned to their home hundreds of miles away. Well, if her home was hundreds of miles away. In all the drama of Rufus’s arrival, she’d half forgotten the job offer she’d received at the conference. But she’d promised to let them know her decision in the new year. She should be at least thinking about what she wanted to do for the next few years.
But even if she was living in the same county, she was hardly committing to him. No, what they had here were the perfect ingredients for a no-strings-attached fling.
She couldn’t understand what was making her hold back. Rufus had told her already that he had his own reasons for not wanting to get involved—but did they extend to something casual? Something they could walk away from before the new year, and pretend had never happened? That was a very tempting thought. She snuggled deeper into the cushions on the sofa and let her eyes close as a series of very tempting scenarios for how they could spend the afternoon crossed her mind.
Rufus could find her here, in front of the fire, pull the blankets around them as they slipped down onto the rug in front of the hearth.
Or he could lift her in his arms, carry her up the stairs and across the gallery to deposit her on the giant bed that dominated her bedroom. He’d pick her up as if she weighed nothing and throw her on the bed, holding nothing back.
Her eyes flew open at the creak of a floorboard behind her, and she felt her cheeks flame because there was only one person it could be.
‘Sorry, did I wake you?’
She answered no automatically, without thinking, and now she had to come up with a reason she was lying here with her eyes closed and her face burning red.
‘Resting,’ she told him lamely. Like an elderly aunt or a pre-schooler.
‘Resting,’ Rufus said with a smirk that made her wonder whether he had guessed the real answer—I was just lying here fantasising about you carrying me up to bed with your big, manly arms.
It was bad enough that she was thinking things like big, manly arms without him being able to guess how lame she was.
But from the look on his face, he didn’t exactly seem to mind that.
‘Did you sort out...whatever it was you needed to sort?’ she asked, cursing the way that words deserted her when too much space in her brain was being occupied by inappropriate fantasies.
‘Nearly done. I want to double-check the batteries in the torches in the upstairs rooms.’
‘Do you really think that we’ll lose power again?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t like how the lights keep flickering. If the storm tonight is worse than yesterday then I wouldn’t be surprised. Either way, I want us to be ready.
‘Ready for action,’ Jess said, and wanted to face-palm herself. Why did her mouth do this around him? Why couldn’t she put sensible words in the right order, just because she was preoccupied with how much she liked his arms, and his beard, and his thighs? And the fact that he heard more than she said out loud.
‘I just want to protect you,’ Rufus said with a catch in his throat that Jess wasn’t expecting. She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. Well, this conversation just took a swerve, she thought.
‘Why does that sound like we’re talking about more than the blizzard?’
