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Anger flushed away the worry about Harry. ‘If I had any mistletoe all I’d do with it is force-feed you the berries. I’m not in the mood, Dino—’
Without warning, he leaned towards her and for one breathless, heart-stopping moment she thought he was going to kiss her. His eyes glittered dark with sexual promise and Meg felt something she never let herself feel. She felt strangely disconnected, as if she were being controlled by some invisible force outside herself. Then she came to her senses and gave him a hard shove.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
‘You said you weren’t in the mood,’ he purred. ‘I was going to put you in the mood.’
‘I meant that I wasn’t in the mood for your flirting,’ she croaked, ‘not—anything else.’ It was disconcerting to realise that her hands were shaking. She knew that if she’d been standing up, her knees would have been shaking, too.
‘That’s what you meant?’ Those sexy eyes teased her. ‘Then you need to be more specific when you communicate.’
Her lips were tingling and the blood was rushing around her body. ‘Don’t ever do that again, Zinetti!’
‘Do what?’ Dino smiled and trailed a finger over her cheek. ‘I haven’t done anything yet. Maybe this is a good moment to teach you all the practical applications of the use of body warmth in the prevention of hypothermia.’
Meg skidded to the furthest point of the tent, too aggravated by her own response to notice his brief, satisfied smile. ‘I wouldn’t spend a night cosied up with you if we were the only two people left on the planet. I’d rather die of hypothermia.’
‘Beautiful Megan.’ His voice was soft. ‘A woman like you should have a man in her life, but you do everything alone.’
‘That’s the way I like it.’
‘Because you are afraid?’
It was like dropping a lighted match into a haystack. ‘Dino.’ Meg hauled the anger back inside herself. ‘You’re the one who should be afraid. Get out of my tent. I want to go down, now. I can’t stand another five minutes stuck on this rock face with a smooth-talking Italian. You’re more lethal than the weather.’
To her surprise he didn’t argue with her. Instead, he helped her pack up the equipment with his usual ruthless efficiency and then switched on the headlamp on his helmet.
Meg was so furious, so tumbled up inside that she barely noticed the steep descent. Dino stayed a metre in front of her all the way down, which gave her plenty of time to glare at his shoulders and plan various met
hods of revenge. Maybe she’d do something really embarrassing when he was surrounded by a bunch of nurse groupies. Maybe she’d even give him that kiss he’d been teasing her with. She could fry his brain and teach him a lesson. Just because she didn’t paint her nails, it didn’t mean she didn’t know how to kiss, did it?
They trudged and stumbled through the deep snow and the inky darkness until they reached low ground and all the time Rambo panted alongside her, his shape a reassuring presence in the vicious weather.
It was only as they were striding across the safety of the valley floor that the adrenaline ceased to pump round her body and her brain started to work properly. And then she realised what Dino had done.
She stopped for a moment, cursing herself for being dense and slow.
Dino turned with a frown. ‘Not a good place to stop, wolf-girl. Something wrong?’
‘You did that on purpose, didn’t you?’ The wind gusted, almost blowing her over. ‘You made me angry, you—’
With a maddening smile, Dino shrugged and carried on walking.
Meg glared after him, feeling like a fool. He hadn’t wanted to kiss her. It had just been a ploy to stop her worrying about Harry. She strode after him and caught up with him at the car. ‘There are times when you really drive me mad, Dr Zinetti.’
‘I rely on it. Need any help with that backpack?’ He slid his own off his back and threw it into the boot.
‘I can handle my own backpack.’ She spat the words. ‘And I can handle myself up a mountain. I don’t need you—’ She almost said ‘messing with my head’ but just in time she decided that she didn’t want him to know that the thought of kissing him filled her with anything other than feelings of boredom.
‘You were going to cry, wolf-girl, and I didn’t want a hysterical woman on the mountain with me. I’d rather deal with ten fractured skulls than one hysterical woman.’
‘I was not hysterical and I was not going to cry.’
‘You were getting really wobbly and there’s no way I could have got you down this mountain in that feeble state.’
‘Feeble!’ Meg took a breath as the extent of his manipulation sank in. ‘You never intended us to spend the night on the mountain—’
‘I enjoy extreme mountain survival as much as the next macho guy…’ he closed the boot ‘…but I was worried about you. You don’t exactly carry much body fat. Keeping warm would have been a challenge. Talking of which, we need to get out of this wind.’
