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‘You damned woman!’ An answering voice roared back at her, slightly distorted through the thickness of the wooden door. ‘Open this door right now, or I’m bloody going to freeze to death out here!’
‘That’s it!’ she yelled back. ‘I’m going to fetch my husband this instant!’
‘You don’t have a husband!’
He had been spying on her. Watching her. How else did he know that she was on her own? The thought of the caveman looking at her while she took her walks, peering into the cottage as she cooked her dinner and read her book, sent a chill through her.
‘You open this door now, Abigail Palmer, or I’ll throttle you the minute I get my hands on you!’
The relief that washed over her was immense, and she fumbled with the bolt on the door, letting in a gust of freezing wind and snow, and also Ross Anderson, dressed in black from head to foot and not looking very happy.
‘What are you doing here?’ she stuttered, her eyes wide, her mouth half open with delayed surprise.
He didn’t answer. He slammed the door behind him and then strode across to the fire where he took off his gloves, flung them on the nearest chair, and began warming his hands, rubbing them together to get the blood circulation going again.
Abigail watched him with a stunned expression and finally he turned to face her.
‘You took your bloody time opening that door,’ was all he said, and she glared at him with resentment, forgetting how terrified she had been less than fifteen minutes earlier.
She had been having a fine time, she fumed, snow or no snow, electricity or no electricity, and now her peace had been invaded by the last person in the world she had any desire to see. To top it all, he was already acting as though she should be grateful to him for turning up here in the dead of night and scaring her half to death!
He removed his coat, which joined the gloves on the chair, then raked his fingers through his hair.
‘That feels better,’ he said. ‘Would you like to get me a cup of coffee?’
She remained where she was and folded her arms with a look of purpose on her face.
‘Would you like to tell me what brings you here?’ He might be her boss, but if he thought that she was going to run around behind him in her free time, fetching cups of coffee, then he was in for a sad shock. She was here to relax, and the sooner he took himself off, the better.
He slumped on the sofa and rubbed his eyes with his thumbs, and reluctantly she went into the kitchen with the matches and made them both some coffee, while she continued to seethe inwardly.
How did he find her? The question answered itself almost immediately. She had asked her where she would be staying, because he’d said that he knew the Lakes very well, and she had told him, in some detail, where the cottage was. She had never expected the piece of information to have brought him to the doorstep.
She went back out into the sitting-room, handed him the coffee, which he took without looking at her, and then she sat down on the ground with her back to the fire.
‘I haven’t heard you rushing to thank me,’ he said, when he had first drained the cup.
‘Haven’t you?’ she said in a lemony voice, a mixture of sweetness and acidity. ‘Well, thank you so much for giving me the fright of my life. It really made my day.’
‘Wrong answer,’ he drawled, and this time his eyes fell on her for the first time. They wandered over her, in her pyjama-clad state, and she was deeply grateful that the only light in the room was the shadowy light from the fire. That way he wouldn’t be able to make out the red embarrassment on her face.
Now that he had removed his coat, she could see that he was wearing a deep-coloured jumper, grey or black, she couldn’t tell, and a pair of dark jeans. His shoes he had kicked off but he was still wearing his socks, which were the same dark colour as the rest of his clothes.
‘You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here,’ she pointed out, flicking her hair behind her small ears, and he watched every movement in detail.
‘I would have thought that it was self-explanatory.’
‘I must be a bit dense in that case, because I’m stuck for an explanation.’ She sounded controlled enough, but she didn’t feel controlled. In fact, she wasn’t going anywhere near him if she could help it. She had deluded herself into thinking that Ross Anderson had only been part of the reason for her decision to flee London for a few days. Now, with him lying there on the sofa with his feet crossed at the ankles and looking, infuriatingly, as though he damn well belonged there, she realised that he had been the whole reason for her sudden departure.
She had always acknowledged his staggering, terrifying sexy charm, the sensuality beneath the dark, hard features, but it was only recently that she had acknowledged the effect that they had on her.
Physical attraction seemed too mild a term for the overwhelming, choking craving that she felt for him, and it was that that had sent her running up to the cottage so that she could muster her forces and return to London with her personality intact.
‘I came,’ he said lazily, with his eyes closed and his hands linked behind his head, ‘because I heard on the television that snow had started here and was due to worsen, and that some parts had already lost electricity. I knew where you were and I telephoned the weather centre for more information.’
‘How did you make it here?’ she asked.
‘Oh, I didn’t drive the distance from London, before you overwhelm me with your concern. I took a helicopter to my parents’ house and made it to within striking distance of this place in the Range Rover, but then the roads seized up on me and I had to walk the rest of the way.’
‘How far?’ she asked, horrified.
‘About a mile.’
‘Thank you,’ she mumbled under her breath, and he said, opening his eyes,
‘I don’t think I caught that.’
‘Thank you,’ she repeated in a loud voice, ‘but there was really no need. I was fine.’ Scared witless but fine. Now I’m anything but fine.
‘I take it the electricity’s been cut off.’
‘Yes,’ she conceded, ‘some time during the night. I woke up to go to the bathroom and nothing. So then I came down here and lit a fire. Why didn’t you knock on the door,’ she asked suspiciously, ‘instead of lurking around the cottage?’
‘Because,’ he said patiently, ‘I didn’t know whether you were asleep or not. I knew the fire was lit, but you could have done that and gone back upstairs to bed, in which case, if the back door had been unlocked, I would have simply let myself in without waking you.’
He stood up abruptly and stripped off his jumper to the short-sleeved T-shirt underneath, then she watched in horror while he divested himself of his trousers and socks, and lay back down on the sofa clad in only the T-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts.
This wasn’t going to do, she thought worriedly, this wasn’t going to do at all. Her nerves were all over the place and her heart was doing a frantic tattoo in her chest.
‘Damp,’ he explained casually, yawning, and rather than just sit where she was, frozen and staring, Abigail stood up and busied herself laying the clothes in front of the fire. With any luck they would be bone-dry within minutes and he could get them back on again.
His eyes were on her, she could feel them sending prickles of awareness along her spine.
‘While you’re on you feet,’ he said, yawning again, ‘you couldn’t get me something to eat, could you?’ It was phrased as a question, but he didn’t expect her to refuse.
‘It’s late. Have you any idea what time it is? You can’t be hungry.’
‘Try telling that to my stomach.’ He studied her face and, with a shrug, she headed back towards the kitchen, and groped through the drawers until she found some candles. Then she lit three of them and stood them up in a line on the window-ledge. Making two mugs of coffee by the light of the fire in the sitting-room was one thing, but fixing a meal was another.
He should never have come, she thought to herself disgruntedly. Did he make a habit of showing up unexpectedly where he wasn’t wanted? He might have thought at the time that he was doing the right thing, saving her from a fate of hypothermia, but that didn’t alter the fact that he was here now, larger than life, making her feel jittery and on edge.
She opened a can of baked beans, which had been in the cupboard, buttered a couple of slices of bread, which she had thankfully brought with her in some abundance, and covered the lot with grated cheese, then she reluctantly walked back into the sitting-room and handed it to him.
‘It’ll have to do,’ she informed him, and he shot her a dry look.
‘I wasn’t expecting caviar and lobster.’ He began eating, and she returned to her safe place by the fire, with her arms wrapped round her knees.
‘How long do they expect the snow to last?’ she asked after a while, and he replied, concentrating on the plate of food,
‘A few days.’
‘A few days! A few days! That’s ridiculous!’ We can’t stay cooped up here together for a few days, she wanted to wail. I’ll go to pieces.
‘Have a look outside,’ he returned calmly. ‘I’ll bet you that it’s gathered force even since I’ve been here.’
