AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She saw the amazingly blue eyes narrow in irritation. ‘Are you always this stubborn?’
The smell of soot was thick in her nostrils and she was so cold her fingers were numb. All she wanted was for him to leave so she could sit down and howl. ‘Please go,’ she said weakly.
It was like talking to a brick wall. Somehow in the next few minutes she found herself covering the floorboards with a thick layer of newspapers—Morgan had fetched these from the potting shed and to his credit he didn’t make any comment whatsoever—before fetching her handbag and coat and locking the front door of the cottage. She felt shivery and shaky and it was just easier to comply rather than argue, besides which she was cold and hungry and the thought of tackling the cleaning-up process tonight was unbearable.
It wasn’t until Willow reached the rickety garden gate that she noticed the Harley-Davidson parked down the lane on the grass verge. As Morgan walked over to the powerful machine she stopped dead. ‘That’s yours? You came on that?’
‘Yep.’ She could see his blue eyes glittering in the deep shadows as he turned and smiled. ‘When I saw the flames I figured I’d better get round here as fast as I could.’
She waved her hand helplessly. ‘But you live next door.’
‘A minute or two can make all the difference with fire. I didn’t know whether I was going to have to pull you out of a burning house at that stage.’ He shrugged. ‘It can happen.’
He started the engine and the quiet of the night was rudely shattered as he drove to her gate. ‘Get on.’
She had already noticed that he was even taller than she had thought him to be when he was perched on the wall. Morgan Wright was big, very big, and it was muscled strength that padded his shoulders and chest. In fact he gave off an aura of strength from his face—which was rugged with sharply defined planes and angles and no softness—to his feet, which were encased in black leather boots. The thought of clambering up on the bike and holding onto the hard male body was blushingly intimate, but she could hardly walk beside him. She had no choice but to agree.
Blessing the fact she had changed from her pencil-thin office skirt to jeans, Willow slid onto the bike, her handbag over one shoulder. Morgan wasn’t wearing a coat, just jeans and a shirt, and as she put her arms round his waist the warmth of his body flowed through her fingers. She felt him jerk.
‘Hell, you’re like a block of ice,’ he muttered.
Funnily enough, she was aware of that herself. ‘Sorry.’
There was no chance to say anything more before they roared off. After some two hundred yards Morgan turned into his own grounds through open six-foot wrought-iron gates. The drive wound through mature trees and bushes, which hid the house from the road, but then a bowling-green-smooth lawn came into view and the manor house was in front of them. It was quite stunning.
The motorbike drew to a halt at the bottom of wide semicircular stone steps, which led to a massive studded front door that could have graced a castle. Willow could hear dogs barking from within the house and they sounded ferocious.
‘Are you OK with dogs?’ Morgan asked as he helped her off the Harley. ‘There’s a few of them so be prepared.’
‘If they’re OK with me,’ she said more weakly than she would have liked. ‘And I prefer they don’t look on me as food.’
He grinned. ‘They’ve already been fed for the night.’
‘That’s comforting.’
He took her arm, leading her up the steps. ‘My housekeeper and her husband will be back shortly—they’re visiting a friend in hospital—and dinner’ll be about eight, but that’ll give you time for a long hot soak. You’re shaking with cold.’
Willow was glad he was already opening the door and she didn’t have to reply. For the life of her she couldn’t have said if it was the icy night air making her tremble or the enforced intimacy with the very male man at her side. And he smelt delicious, the sort of delicious that would cost a small fortune for a few mls and definitely came courtesy of a designer label.
Contrary to what she had expected the dogs didn’t come at them pell-mell but in an orderly group that sat at their feet without any jostling. ‘I’ll introduce you and you can give the obligatory pat—that way they’ll know you’re a friend and off the menu. They never eat my friends.’
Morgan’s lazy tone and the laughter in his eyes informed her he was well aware of her unease and enjoying it. Willow looked at him coldly. She didn’t know why but everything about Morgan Wright irritated her, ungrateful though that was in the circumstances. Criminally ungrateful, to be truthful.
