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I bet it wasn’t this cold in Oxleigh.
I wrapped my arms around me and shook my head. “This place is amazing. How could you not want to live here?”
“The watchtower doesn’t have plumbing?” William offered, laughing next to me. “And while you could bathe in the loch, you’d get hypothermia more often than not.”
“That’s true,” I replied, slowly nodding. “Not really ideal, is it?”
“Certainly not. Especially the toilet situation.”
“At least we don’t have to throw waste out of our windows anymore.”
“There’s a factual nugget for everything in your brain, isn’t there?”
“At least ten,” I replied, smiling at him. “I’m not much fun at parties.”
“On the contrary, I think you would be. There’s always that relative who thinks they know everything.”
“That’s my stepmother, and she’s the one who insists I’m not fun at parties,” I joked. “Not that she’d know fun if it bent her over its knee and spanked her.”
“That’s not an image I wanted.” William laughed. “Are you cold? You left your scarf with the snowman.”
“He was naked. It was undignified.”
“He’s a snowman, Grace. He doesn’t have any dignity, and if he did, he lost it when you momentarily considered sculpting him a builder’s crack.”
I pressed my lips together. “It was a slight lapse in judgement, all right?”
He chuckled and unwound his scarf from his neck. “Here. Put this on.”
“No, I’m fine. It’s not that bad.”
“Grace.”
“William.”
“I will put this on you.”
“No, you won’t.”
He folded the scarf in two and quickly looped it over my head, using it a bit like a lasso, and yanked me around to face him. There wasn’t much space between our bodies, and his eyes twinkled with mischief as he raised it up to my neck and pushed the ends through the loop and tightened it.
“That’s not too tight, is it?”
“No,” I grumbled.
“Then you’ll live.” He stepped closer and slid his fingers along my neck between my skin and my hair, freeing it from being trapped under the scarf.
It wasn’t even his fingers, just the gloves, but the gentleness of his touch sent a shiver down my spine. His lips quirked, almost as if he knew that shiver was from him and not the cold, and I couldn’t help but think of the last time we were here.
I’d wanted to kiss him.
And he’d almost kissed me last night.
I had so many conflicting emotions where William was concerned. I didn’t know which one to focus on, and all that did was make them swirl and whirl around until I couldn’t make head nor tail of them.
I cast my gaze over his face. He was so handsome it almost hurt to look at him, and there was justsomethingabout him that drew me to him, that made me want to throw all my thoughts and feelings out of the window and make a series of bad choices.
I wasn’t even sure if I’d regret them, to be honest.
