“I want an apology,” Leah demanded.

“An apology? For what?”

“For trying to seduce me!”

There, it was out. But Sean’s reaction was not at all what she had anticipated.

“For seducing you?” he echoed. “Oh, no, my darling Leah, I don’t apologize for anything that felt so right, so necessary. As a matter of fact, I would very much like to try it again some time.”

She glared at him furiously. “It’ll be a cold day in hell before I let you touch me again!”

“Is that a fact?” he drawled lazily. “Well, in that case I’d better make sure that I have a very cold shower instead of the hot one I had planned on. Are you sure I can’t persuade you to join me?”

KATE WALKER was born in Nottinghamshire, England, but as she grew up in Yorkshire, she has always felt that her roots were there. She met her husband at university and she originally worked as a children’s librarian but after the birth of her son she returned to her old childhood love of writing. When she’s not working, she divides her time between her family, their four cats and her interests of embroidery, antiques, film and theatre and, of course, reading.

Fiancée by Mistake
Kate Walker

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER ONE

SEAN GALLAGHER saw the car as soon as he rounded the corner into the quiet country lane. Saw it and recognised it as the one he had been looking for, fruitlessly, for the past couple of hours. A silver Renault, Pete had said, and here it was, right in front of him, just when he’d been about to give up.

‘Got you!’ he muttered, his voice rich with dark triumph. Little Miss Annie Elliot hadn’t escaped from him after all.

But the next moment his mood changed abruptly. As the wind stilled for a second, revealing what the swirling eddies of snow had hidden from him until now, he jammed on his brakes with a speed and force that were positively dangerous in the treacherous conditions.

‘Hell and damnation!’

Forcing his attention back to his driving, he controlled the powerful car with an effort, bringing it safely to the side of the road. The last thing he wanted was to join his quarry in the ditch.

It looked as if she had hit a patch of ice and skidded off the road. Hardly surprising, really, when you considered how the narrow lane twisted and turned, and how the snowstorm that had suddenly sprung up out of nowhere had rapidly developed into the worst blizzard in living memory.

Probably driving too fast in her eagerness to put plenty of space between herself and the mess she had left behind her, he decided cynically, getting out of the car and turning up his coat collar against the biting force of the wind. Her mind wouldn’t have been on what she was doing, but full of the new lover she had abandoned Pete for.

Well, her bad luck was very definitely his gain. Or, rather, Pete’s. Personally, he didn’t give a damn whether he found this woman or not. But a promise was a promise.

It was then that the silence, the total lack of movement inside the other car struck home to him, making him curse again, more violently this time. A promise was a promise, but this was a situation that neither he nor his brother had anticipated. What if the woman in the driving seat was badly injured, or worse?

With his head bent, his hair blown into wild disarray, he made his way towards the Renault as swiftly as he could, with his feet slipping and sliding over the frozen surface of the road.

‘Can I help you?’

They had to be the most wonderful words in the world, Leah thought hazily. The trouble was that with her mind still spinning from the panic of only moments before she couldn’t quite believe she had actually heard them.

Was it possible that they were not real, but only a figment of her imagination?

‘Can you…?’

As she echoed the question she didn’t dare to open her eyes, fearful that if she did she would discover that her deep-voiced rescuer didn’t exist.

‘Do you need help? Are you all right?’

The man’s tone—for it was unquestionably a masculine voice, dark and huskily sensual—sharpened noticeably on the question.

‘Are you hurt?’

‘Don’t think so.’

Mentally Leah checked herself over, carefully ticking off parts of her body on an invisible list.

Legs, two, intact. Arms, ditto, though one felt rather sore, as if badly bruised. Her shoulders ached miserably, and she felt as if she had jarred her back in the frantic effort to control the dangerous spin of the car, but it seemed she was still in one piece.

Unless…

Her closed lids flew open, violet eyes focusing swiftly on her own reflection in the car’s mirror.

No. Relief set in as she realised that the damp trail down her left cheek was not, as she had feared, the trickle of blood. Instead it had been caused by a single weak tear, probably the result of shock and disorientation. She hadn’t even been aware of having shed it.

Suddenly she was desperately, horribly cold. She was unable to decide whether the shiver that shook her was the result of delayed reaction to the danger she had been in or something else. Equally, it might have been a purely physical response to the icy wind that sneaked past the powerful frame of the man who held the car’s front door wide open.

‘Could you give me a definite answer?’

The voice was harsh now, jolting her out of her near dreamlike state and back into full awareness of the present. Of course, he must have seen her crash—seen her small car skid suddenly, veering right off the road and onto the rough verge at its edge. Naturally he was concerned.

‘I’m sorry…’

The words died in her throat, shrivelled into an unbelieving silence as she shifted in her seat, her eyes finally focusing on the rearview mirror. With her own head no longer blocking the view from the door, she caught her first glimpse of her rescuer, and couldn’t believe what she saw.

‘I…’

Dear God, perhaps she was hallucinating after all. It must be the after-effects of shock, or perhaps she had hit her head hard enough to scramble her wits. Knights on white chargers didn’t exist in reality, and they certainly did not appear in such a devastating physical form. She couldn’t be seeing what she thought was there.

‘Of course I can.’ This time she managed to get the words out, swivelling in her seat to face him as she spoke. ‘I—I’m fine.’ Oh, Lord, this was no better! In fact it was far worse. No matter how hard she forced herself to concentrate, her fuddled brain still registered exactly the same thing, confirming that what she had seen in the mirror was not the illusion she had believed, but actual fact.

The mirror image had softened the impact of hard, strongly carved cheekbones, a straight nose, a firm slash of a mouth, stunningly bright blue eyes and a shock of longish, rather wild black hair. The dramatic effect of that forceful profile etched against the darkness was matched by the imposing height and strength of the body that filled the open doorway, the man before her having to stoop quite considerably in order to look her in the eye.

But the impossible thing was that those features, that powerful frame, could only belong to one man. And it was his identity that made Leah doubt her sanity at this moment.

‘No!’

Weakly she shook her head, hoping to dispel the tormenting vision. Even in her wildest dreams she had never fantasised that she might meet up with Sean Gallagher. After all, he was the latest TV heart-throb, the man whose appearance in a hugely successful drama series had had the effect of bringing almost the entire female population of Great Britain to a complete halt every Thursday night.

‘No?’ her rescuer questioned, no softening evident in his tone. ‘Is that, No, there’s nothing wrong, or, No, you’re not fine after all? For God’s sake, woman! Can you string two coherent words together or not?’

‘Of course I can!’

Incensed by his rudeness, Leah’s impatience matched his now, anger sharpening her words. So much for fantasy, she told herself ruefully. Sean Gallagher might be the hunk of the year—of the decade—but it seemed that his stunning looks were in no way matched by an equally appealing character.

‘Yes, I’m fine. No, I’m not injured—at least as far as I can tell. But as I haven’t tried to stand up yet I can’t exactly swear to the total accuracy of that statement. Does that satisfy you, or would you like to interrogate me a bit more?’

‘Well, on the evidence of that outburst, I would have to agree that you are obviously not badly hurt.’ The thread of dry humour that warmed his attractive voice had an effect that was almost as devastating as the smile that softened and curved his hard mouth. ‘But I take exception to your use of the word “interrogate”—’

‘Except away!’ Leah returned sharply, riled by the mockery in his words. ‘You may be God’s gift to women, but you’re clearly not going to win any prizes for sensitivity. Has no one ever told you that someone who has just hit a patch of black ice and spun off the road into a ditch might actually be some way from fully in control? There is such a thing as shock, you know, and…’

‘I know, and I’m sorry.’

Unexpected gentleness drew the force of her tirade, reducing her to stunned silence. He actually looked shamefaced too, she acknowledged, grudgingly conceding him a favourable point or two.

‘I was pretty shocked myself. After all, I’ve driven along this road day and night for weeks without seeing anyone. So you can imagine how I felt when I came round the corner to find your car nose-down in the ditch. Was that what happened? You hit a patch of ice?’

‘I think so.’

Leah’s voice was no longer as confident as it had been before. Her memories of the actual accident were hazy, and trying to recall them was distinctly unsettling.

‘I was driving along—crawling, really, because of the weather—and suddenly the car seemed to have a will of its own. It went into an uncontrollable skid, and the next thing I knew was that I was here…’

And where was here? She should have been over halfway to her mother’s by now, but in the appalling driving conditions she had missed the exit off the motorway and had had to take a smaller side road in order to get back to the route she wanted.

She’d made another wrong turning later, and was then hopelessly lost. As a result, she wasn’t at all sure where she’d ended up, only that it was somewhere in the wilds of Yorkshire, and obviously miles from anywhere. She couldn’t remember when she’d last seen a single house, let alone anything resembling civilisation.

And, if she was honest, her thoughts hadn’t exactly been on what she was doing. Foolishly, considering the whirling snow and swiftly dropping temperature, she had been distracted by the problems that had been fretting at her mind all week. That was why she had missed her turn-off in the first place.

‘I think you’d better get out of there. It doesn’t look exactly safe,’ her rescuer advised. ‘Can you stand?’

‘I think so.’

It was more of a struggle than she had anticipated. For one thing the front of the car was at a very awkward angle, one that necessitated an ungainly shuffle and an even less ladylike scramble in order to get her legs out of the door.

‘Here—’ Sean Gallagher held out a hand encased in a dark leather glove. ‘Let me help.’

It was only a hand, Leah told herself. And all he wanted to do was help. So why was she suddenly gripped by a rush of something that was neither fear nor excitement but a disturbingly volatile mixture of the two? Why did she feel that to touch him would…?

Would what? Now you’re being silly, she reproved herself sharply. Did she expect that just to take hold of his hand would spark off some explosion? Contaminate her in some way? Be sensible, Leah!

But common sense and reason seemed to have nothing to do with the way she was feeling. It was as if some primitive instinct older than time was warning her not to risk even the slightest contact with this man.

‘I can manage!’

She heard the words before she actually realised that her tongue had formed them and knew they were a mistake from the way his dark head went back, the long, powerful body stiffening in hostile response to her tone.

‘Suit yourself.’

It was curt, sharply dismissive, but what else had she expected? After all, her own inner unease had tightened her throat, making her declaration sound uncharacteristically tart and cold.

And, to compound the problem, her undignified scramble to get out of the car without any help had taken more effort than she’d realised. It had also resulted in the rucking up of the skirt of her red velvet dress, pulling it high up on her thighs.

Not for the first time Leah cursed the way her sudden decision to spend an extra day of the Christmas holidays at home had meant leaving in a rush straight after the agency’s party.

Her mother wasn’t even expecting her, believing that she wouldn’t be setting out until tomorrow morning. But Paula Elliot had sounded so sad and lonely when Leah had phoned her that she had decided on impulse to leave earlier. After all, Christmas was a time for families, and, without her father there, there was only Leah herself to fill that space in her mother’s life.

If she had planned more carefully, she could have found time to change into something much more appropriate for the long drive north. As it was, not anticipating the blizzard conditions that had set in once she was on the motorway, she had simply pulled on a warm coat over her party wear.

But a tight velvet Lycra sheath was definitely not the easiest of garments in which to manoeuvre her way out of a car perched at such a difficult angle. Particularly not with six feet two of very masculine hunk watching her every move with blatantly appraising interest.

‘Very nice,’ he murmured as Leah inched her way forward, wanting desperately to be upright and decently covered again as quickly as possible.

Those amazing blue eyes were on the slender length of her legs, brightening noticeably as an unwary movement pushed the tight skirt even higher, revealing the pale flesh of her thighs above the lacy tops of her stockings.

‘So tell me, what do you do for an encore?’ he asked provocatively.

‘Nothing!’

Leah aimed for freezing distance and missed it by a mile. Her snapped retort ended with a gasp of shock as, with her feet finally on the ground, she realised just how icy the road had become. The worn leather soles of the old shoes she wore for driving had no grip at all on the treacherous surface, and she felt her feet begin to slide from under her.

With a cry of panic, her hand went out automatically to grab at the nearest thing for support.

The ‘nearest thing’ was Sean Gallagher’s arm. Leah’s flailing fingers closed over the soft wool of his jacket sleeve just as, reacting with swift reflexes, he moved his other hand to come round her waist. He took the full weight of her body on that one arm with as much ease as if she had been a petite slip of a thing, and not five feet ten in her stockinged feet and built on decidedly generous lines, with curving hips and softly voluptuous breasts.

‘There will be no encore, Mr Gallagher!’ Leah managed, rather breathlessly.

‘Pity,’ he drawled. ‘I was enjoying the show.’

He didn’t react to her use of his name. Probably he was well used to having people, especially women, recognise him immediately. It would be one of the burdens of fame.

Or, more likely, this man would consider it one of the perks of his job. Certainly he had appeared in the gossip columns as frequently as he had on the television, and with an ever-changing cast of beautiful women in the role of his partner.

Though just lately she hadn’t read very much about him, Leah recalled. Probably because he had been busy filming the latest series of Inspector Callender. She doubted very much that his social life could have ground to any sort of halt.

‘You put on a great performance.’

Leah could hear the smile in Sean’s voice even though she couldn’t see his face. She was pressed against his chest, held too close to be able to look up at him.

“‘Performance”!’ she spluttered, struggling to twist free from the strength of his hold. ‘It was no such thing! If you think—’

But movement was a mistake. Instead of loosening his grip, he tightened it painfully, crushing her even closer to the warmth of his body. She was so near to him that she could feel the steady beating of his heart under her cheek.

‘Calm down.’ His voice was softer now, warm as the touch of his hand on her face, stilling her instantly. ‘You’ve had a shock. Take a minute or so to recover. Breathe slowly, deeply.’

Soothed by the gentle stroke of his thumb over her cheek, Leah obeyed automatically. But if breathing deeply was meant to calm her, it had exactly the opposite effect. It only added to her awareness of him in a new and disturbing way. The scent of some clean, tangy cologne tantalised her nostrils, but mixed in with it was the subtle, uniquely personal scent that was his alone.

Leah suddenly felt as if something had short-circuited inside her brain. She couldn’t think clearly, couldn’t focus on anything other than the warmth and strength that enclosed her, the pressure of Sean’s body all along the length of her own.

Her heart seemed to be racing in double time, sending her blood pounding through her veins until her head swam. There was a hot, tight knot of excitement deep inside her that, contrarily, made her shiver convulsively.

‘Are you cold?’

Being so very close, Sean couldn’t have missed her reaction. His hands closed over her arms, sliding under her coat, smoothing the soft skin below the short sleeves of her dress.

‘You’re frozen!’ Concern sounded in his voice and he increased the pressure of his touch. ‘You need to get your blood moving…’

How could that be? Leah wondered dazedly. How could her skin be cold when inside she felt so burning hot? And her blood didn’t need any assistance. Already it was searing through her with the white-hot force of molten lava.

There was one thing she did need, though, and the force of that desire was so great that she just couldn’t fight it.

With a low murmur of sensual awareness, she lifted her head and pressed her lips to Sean Gallagher’s neck, her mouth soft against the warm strength of the taut muscle of his throat. The roughness of a day’s growth of stubble abraded her cheek and the faint salt taste of his skin made her tongue tingle.

For the space of a heartbeat she felt him stiffen in shock, and knew the fear of rejection. That momentary panic was enough to bring home to her the foolishness of what she had just done, but before she had time to react the hostile tension in his long body suddenly changed to a new and very different sort of awareness. Leah had perhaps a second or two to register the change before he moved again.

‘So that’s your game, is it?’ he muttered, swinging her round sharply, so that instead of being at his side she was now clamped firmly against him.

Her breasts were crushed against the hard wall of his chest, her pelvis tight against his. Then, as he leaned back against her car, he pulled her between his legs so that she felt enclosed by him on three sides. The bite of the wind receded as she felt the heat of his body reach her even through the layers of their clothes.

Sean’s mouth came down onto hers, taking it without care or consideration, crushing her lips back against her teeth and forcing a cry of shocked response from her. If her blood had seemed hectic moments before, now she felt that it was positively incandescent.

When his tongue probed the sensitive interior of her mouth she moaned out loud, as if the action had been a more intimate invasion. She couldn’t control her instinctive response to the arrow of need that sliced through her, making her writhe in an uncontrolled movement that drew a low growl from deep in Sean’s throat. It seemed as if some wild, electric charge had passed through every inch of her body, setting it alight with burning, tingling excitement.

She had no awareness of the darkness around them. She didn’t feel the stinging sensation of the whirling snow as it fell against her face, nor the icy drifts that pooled around her feet in the well-worn shoes. There was only herself and this man and the blazing electrical storm they had lit between them. Leah whimpered in blind delight as rough hands pushed under her coat, finding and closing over the sensitised swell of her breasts under the scarlet velvet.

With shocking suddenness Sean broke the intimate contact, wrenching his mouth away from hers with a violent imprecation. She was his brother’s fiancée! For several seconds more he swore with savage and unnerving eloquence, pushing her away from him with such force that she slid dangerously on the treacherous road surface.

‘And what was all that about?’ The blazing fury in his voice could be heard even above the wild cacophony of the howling wind. ‘Just what did you think you were doing?’

How could she answer that? Leah didn’t dare to even look into his face, keeping her eyes fixed on the ground as she tried to impose some order on her wildly confused thoughts.

What had she been doing? What had possessed her to throw herself at a man she had never met in her life before? A man she knew nothing about other than the stories in the tabloids and the fact that his face and form appeared on her television set once a week?

‘I—didn’t think.’

‘You didn’t think!’ he echoed scathingly. ‘Oh, I can believe that! But it wasn’t your mind that was driving you, was it, Miss Elliot?’

That brought Leah’s head up in a rush, wide, shocked eyes going to his face. How did he know her name? Where…?

But as her gaze focused on his strongly carved features the question in her mind never got past her lips. Instead it was stopped by her own hand, her fingers coming up to cover her mouth, the shock that kept her silent turning her eyes dark as pansies.

It was only now that she realised he had kept part of his face turned away from her. When he had opened the car door, and again when he had held out a hand to help her, she had only seen his right profile, the left staying hidden by the darkness. The rest of the time she hadn’t been looking at him and—hot colour flamed in her cheeks—she had kept her eyes closed when he had kissed her.

‘Sean!’

Now, for the first time, she could see all of his face, and the sight made her breath catch harshly in her throat. In spite of the darkness, there was no mistaking the devastating effect of the raw, jagged line that ran down his face from the corner of one eye, angling away from his mouth to end just on the strong, forceful jaw.

The barely healed scar was obviously recent, clearly the result of some dreadful accident. The handsome looks that had won Sean Gallagher so many fans were ruined; the face that adorned thousands of publicity photographs was destroyed for ever.

Watching her intently, Sean had seen the direction of her gaze, the response she couldn’t disguise.

‘Pretty, isn’t it?’ His cynicism was brutal.

‘Oh, Sean!’

Shock and sympathy drove every other thought from her mind. Reacting purely instinctively, she moved forward impetuously, only realising as he flinched back, away from her, that she had actually lifted a hand as if to touch his damaged face.

‘No way, lady!’ he warned roughly. ‘I don’t fall for that trick twice in a row.’

‘It was no trick!’

Furious at the way he had misinterpreted her gesture of concern, Leah actually stamped her foot hard, regretting her impulsive act instantly as it sent a spray of freezing snow over her feet and legs.

‘What sort of person do you think I am?’

‘The sort of female…’ deliberately he emphasised his use of a different noun ‘…who throws herself at any available man without a thought for the one she’s left behind.’

The arrogance of the man! He actually believed that just because he was a TV star any and every woman must be crazy about him, available solely for his pleasure! But then the exact words Sean had used hit home with a worrying clarity.

‘What do you know about any men in my life?’

She just managed to get the words out before the truth exploded inside her head with a force that made her head reel.

It didn’t matter how Sean Gallagher knew about Andy—if in fact he knew anything, and wasn’t just making a lucky guess. What mattered was that she hadn’t spared the other man a thought at all, not since Sean had appeared so unexpectedly.

Leah bit down hard on her bottom lip as her conscience reproached her bitterly. For the shock of the accident to have temporarily driven all thought of the man who had asked her to marry him from her head was one thing. But to discover that the man she had parted from only that evening had been completely wiped from her mind was quite another. How could she be so foolish—so shallow?

Sean’s smile in response to her question was cold, dangerous.

‘I get the impression that you’re the sort of woman who uses her undeniable charms to entrap poor, weak fools, only to chew them up and spit them out when you’re done with them.’

‘And on what evidence do you base this outrageous attack on my character? You don’t know—’

‘I don’t need to know.’ Sean’s icy response slashed through her indignant protest. ‘I have eyes to see.’

A contemptuous wave of his hand and the downward flick of his eyes made Leah suddenly aware of just how she must look.

Her long dark hair had fallen from its elegant coil and now tumbled in wild disarray around her face. Her skirt seemed to have stuck high up on her thighs, still revealing the lacy stocking tops, and her coat now hung wide open, exposing the smooth white curves of her breasts above the clinging, low-cut bodice. The wind had whipped up a hectic colour in her cheeks, making her eyes unnaturally bright above them.

Unable to bear Sean’s cold-eyed scrutiny, Leah pulled her flapping coat closely round herself like a defensive shield, tugging the belt tight at her waist.

‘I was at a party, for God’s sake! It is Christmas—peace and goodwill and all that!’

‘Goodwill to all men!’ he flung back at her. ‘Or just a select few?’

‘Now look here—’ Leah began, purple eyes flashing fire.

But the full effect of her anger was ruined by the way that her teeth chattered against each other, and the fact that she was shaken by a sudden, convulsive shiver. The snow was still falling steadily, now coming down thicker than ever, and in the thin-soled shoes her feet were like blocks of ice. With a grimace of distress, she shifted uncomfortably, trying to ease them.

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Sean exclaimed impatiently. ‘We can’t stay here like this. We’ll freeze if we do.’

‘I couldn’t agree more.’

Leah was glad of any excuse to end this embarrassing confrontation. All she wanted was to get her car back on the road and be on her way. Sean Gallagher might have seemed to be a knight coming to the rescue of a damsel in distress, but appearances were definitely deceptive. He appeared to be the most devastatingly attractive man she had ever met, but his character had to be the most unpleasant of any she had encountered in all her twenty-five years.

‘If you could just help me move my car…’ she began, her voice failing as she saw his dark head move in obdurate denial of her request.

‘No chance,’ he stated flatly. ‘There’s no way we can do anything with it without a tow-truck and some chains, and even then I doubt if it will start. I mean, look at it.’

Following the contemptuous wave of one hand, Leah had to admit he spoke nothing but the truth. Leaning at a perilous angle, its front wheels deeply embedded in the ditch and the snow piling up heavily all around it, the Renault looked totally immovable. It would take professional know-how and equipment to enable her to continue her journey.

‘Then perhaps you could drive me to the nearest garage or house.’

She looked hopefully to where Sean’s car was parked at the side of the road. A heavy layer of snow had built up on its bonnet and roof while they were talking, but it looked in much better shape than her own vehicle.

‘Please.’ Tact made her add the last word, though she felt very far from wanting to be strictly polite.

A harsh, humourless laugh left her in no doubt as to exactly what he thought of that idea.

‘The nearest garage, my dear Ms Elliot, is more than ten miles in that direction.’ He gestured back towards the way he had come. ‘I’ve just negotiated that road once on the way here, and believe me it was no fun at all in this weather. I’ve no intention of doing it again and risking my life for anyone. Have you tried the emergency services?’

‘I’m not a member of a breakdown service or anything like that. Oh, I know!’ she exclaimed as she saw the scathing look that told her exactly how he felt about that. ‘I probably should have joined—as I’m sure you did—ages ago! But I only took possession of this car last weekend. And besides, I’d need a mobile phone to call them from here—something I don’t run to on my salary.’

She glanced at the sleek and obviously expensive lines of his own BMW. A new light brightened her eyes and she looked at him expectantly.

‘I suppose you’ve got the very latest model in your car. I could—’

As a matter of fact, no, I haven’t,’ Sean put in coolly. ‘When I’m on the road I prefer to be unobtainable. And I know for a fact that there are no houses any closer than my own cottage. One of the reasons I bought it in the first place was because it is so isolated.’

‘But what can I do? How am I going to get home?’ A note of desperation threaded through the question.

Broad shoulders under the navy woollen jacket lifted in a dismissive shrug.

‘Strikes me you’ve got two possible choices. You can stay here till morning…’

The look of scorn Leah turned on him made it only too plain that she wasn’t going to take that suggestion seriously. She’d freeze before midnight. ‘Or?’

‘Or you can come with me. My house isn’t far from here. We should make it before the roads become impassable if we’re careful—and quick. You’ll have to leave your car, I’m afraid. But as no one’s likely to be able to move it, even if they were out in this blizzard, it should be safe enough. You can spend the night with me.’

‘Spend the night with you!’ Leah echoed in blank disbelief. ‘You have got to be joking!’

At last her brain seemed to be functioning again. The idea of getting into this man’s car and letting him drive her off to God knew where was not one that appealed in the slightest. She didn’t trust him as far as she could throw him, and he had already proved to be extremely dangerous in more ways than one.

When her uncomfortable conscience put in the reminder that, judging by her earlier behaviour, she probably had more to fear from her own foolish impulses than anything Sean Gallagher might do, she pushed it aside furiously.

‘No way! I’d rather take my chances with the elements!’

As her defiant words were whipped away on the wind she nerved herself for his response, expecting an angry protest laced with dark scorn at her foolishness.

It never came. Instead he shrugged again, even more dismissively than before.

‘Your choice, lady.’

Already he was turning away.

‘Have a good night.’

Leah watched, open-mouthed, in frank disbelief. He couldn’t mean it! She couldn’t believe that he would actually leave her here.

But it seemed that he would. He had turned his back on her and was moving purposefully towards the dark, sleek shape of his parked car. Without even his ambiguous presence the silent lane seemed suddenly very dark and cold, and full of darkly threatening shadows.

‘You can’t do this!’ Her words had to be pitched high against the manic howling of the wind. ‘You can’t just go and leave me here alone!’

For a brief second he paused, glanced back, eyes narrowed against the whirling snow.

‘Try me,’ he tossed at her, and turned back towards his car.

CHAPTER TWO

HE MEANT it too, Sean told himself as he strode away from her. Never once in all the thirty-four years of his life had he left a woman in a position of need when he could offer help, but there was always a first time, and this was it.

This woman was far more trouble than she was worth, and quite frankly the thought of letting her into his house, the home he had kept as his own very private haven until now, was not something that appealed in the slightest.

He couldn’t work out just what it was about this particular female that affected him so badly, but it seemed as if his thinking processes, normally as cool and rational as any scientist’s, had seized up from the moment he had left his car and headed for hers.

But could he really leave her here, alone and unprotected, in such appalling weather conditions?

His steps were already slowing when he heard her voice behind him.

‘Wait! Please!’

She had finally pulled her skirt down, he noted automatically as he swung round in response to the sharp cry of distress. And the black coat was now fastened close across that stunning cleavage. Sean didn’t know whether relief or disappointment was uppermost in his mind. He only knew that it was a damned sight easier to think more clearly when there was so much less of her body on display.

‘Changed your mind? Decided to see sense?’

‘I—realise I have no choice.’

The admission had had to be dragged from her, her stilted tone said. Her reluctance to speak to him was emphasised by the way she held her head proudly upright, those amazing violet eyes watching him as if he was something particularly unpleasant that a cat had just brought in.

‘I’ll freeze if I have to stay here. So if your offer of shelter still stands I’d—like to take you up on it.’

‘Like’ obviously didn’t come in to it. She knew she had no alternative, and she hated being obliged to admit it.

‘In that case we’d better get moving. Do you have anything you want to bring with you?’

‘My case. It’s in the boot.’

She was turning back to the Renault as she spoke, her keys in her hand, but Sean reached out and took them from her.

‘I’ll fetch it. You get in the car.’

He didn’t want to be already in his car when she slid in beside him, didn’t want to subject himself once more to the sight of those long, slender legs as she swung them inside and settled down in her seat. He needed to get back in control, remember what all this was about.

He took the few moments needed to open the boot and take out the small, battered suitcase in order to draw a couple of deep, calming breaths and impose some sort of order on his thoughts.

‘Get a grip!’ he muttered to himself furiously. ‘All you have to do is to take her to the cottage and keep her there until Pete comes to collect her.’ A promise was a promise after all.

But he had made that promise in complete ignorance, blind to any possible repercussions. He had been barely awake when his brother had phoned, dragged from a rare deep sleep by the shrill ringing of the telephone.

‘Sean?’ Pete’s voice had been sharp and urgent, in contrast to his own near inarticulate growl on picking up the receiver.

Hearing it, Sean had shaken himself awake and sat up swiftly, leaning up against the arm of the settee on which he had fallen asleep.

‘What’s wrong?’ Because something had to be wrong to put that note in his brother’s voice.

‘She’s left me.’ It was a stark, bleak announcement. ‘Says there’s someone else.’

‘She? Your fiancée? But the wedding’s—’

‘In the New Year, right. Or, rather, correction—it was to have been. But Annie’s called it off. She even gave me back the ring.’

Why wasn’t he surprised? Sean wondered cynically. Women. There wasn’t one of them who could be trusted. He knew that only too well. But he had hoped that for his kid brother things might turn out better.

‘When did this happen?’

‘Just now! We were having lunch at my place—our own private Christmas celebration, seeing as we won’t be together on the day—and it was obvious that something was wrong. When I asked her what it was, she just came right out with it. Said there was someone else, and then she left. She drove off in an almighty rush and I couldn’t follow her. I’d…’

‘Had rather too much to drink?’ Sean finished for him as he hesitated. It was there in the slight slur of his brother’s words, the emotion that he wouldn’t normally have shown.

‘A lot too much,’ Pete admitted ruefully. ‘There’s no way I’m remotely fit to drive. That’s why I thought of you.’

‘Me?’ Sean stared at the receiver as if it was actually his brother. ‘What can I do?’

‘You can go after her for me. No, listen, she wasn’t going home to Hexham but to her parents’ for Christmas. And they live in Carborough.’

Which was a long way south. To get there, she would have to pass Appleton village, Sean realised, seeing the direction in which his brother’s thoughts were heading.

‘Pete, be sensible! What am I supposed to do? Throw myself in front of the car?’

‘There won’t be any need for that. You see, she always breaks her journey at this all-night café—The Night Owl. Do you know it?’

Sean managed a murmur that might have been agreement. But his brother didn’t seem to need any encouragement.

‘All you have to do is be there—say between six and eight, to allow for any margin of error either way. When she arrives you just hang onto her…’

“‘Hang onto her”!’ Sean echoed, raking one hand through the darkness of his hair. ‘Look, baby brother, what am I supposed to do—kidnap her?’

‘Oh, you’ll manage something,’ Pete declared airily, but then suddenly his mood changed. ‘Please, Sean.’

Sean knew there was no way he could resist the appeal in his brother’s voice. After all, he owed him plenty after the past months. Pete had been there when he was needed. He could hardly let him down now.

‘I don’t even know what she looks like. I haven’t met the woman yet, remember, and she doesn’t even know I’m your brother.’

But that could be an advantage—if he decided to go along with Pete’s crazy plan.

‘You can’t miss her. Tall, dark hair, blue eyes. Oh, and she drives a silver Renault—H reg. Please, Sean, do this for me.’

Sean sighed, knowing he had no alternative. ‘Just tell me one thing,’ he said. ‘Is she worth it?’

‘More than you’ll ever know,’ his brother assured him. ‘Oh, I know I can’t expect an old cynic like you to believe that, but just you wait. One day it’ll hit you too. You’ll meet someone who’ll knock you right off balance the way Annie’s done to me, and you’ll never be the same again.’

And pigs might fly supersonic, Sean told himself privately. He had had more than enough of so-called romance to last him several lifetimes. And, even more privately, he doubted that his brother’s fiancée would ever consider going back to him, no matter how much talking they did. But he supposed everyone deserved a second chance.

‘All right, I’ll do it,’ he said resignedly. ‘But you’d better get yourself sobered up pretty damn quickly, and get down here fast.’

He would give it a couple of hours, no more, he told himself, replacing the receiver and getting to his feet. Just long enough to eat the supper he hadn’t felt like preparing earlier—or lunch, either, come to that. The Night Owl had a very good reputation, so perhaps now was the time to try it out. He would eat his meal, taking his time over it, and if Annie Elliot turned up then he’d take it from there.

‘Is something wrong?’

The soft question dragged Sean back to the present with a jolt. He had no idea how long he’d been standing there, his hand on the suitcase, lost in his thoughts.

‘No. No problem.’

Giving himself a mental shake, he pulled out the case and slammed the boot shut, carefully locking the car after him. Not that it was likely that anyone would make off with it. It would need skilled help to get it out of the ditch, and already the snow was piling up around it.

Hell, the weather was far worse than he had anticipated. And it was getting more dangerous with every minute that passed. They’d be lucky to make it to the cottage before the road closed completely.

Which meant that Pete would have an impossible job getting down here from Hexham. Which also meant that he would be stuck with the errant fiancée for far longer than the few hours his brother had implied.

Neither thought was the sort to improve on his already bad mood as he dumped the suitcase on the back seat of his own car, slamming the door after it in an echo of his feelings.

‘Have we far to go?’ his passenger asked as he slid into the driver’s seat and put his key into the ignition.

‘Five miles or so. We’ll have to crawl every inch of the way, but we should make it.’

He was concentrating on getting the car going, breathing a silent word of thanks when the engine caught first time. He didn’t want to be stranded here for any longer than he absolutely had to—and for reasons that had nothing at all to do with the weather.

From the moment he had got into the car he had been supremely physically aware of the woman in the passenger seat. At least her coat was now firmly wrapped around her body. But those long legs were stretched out dangerously close to his own, and just the memory of the delicate lace at the top of the gossamer-fine black stockings was enough to dry his throat, so that he licked his lips in a betraying gesture.

‘The trouble is that this looks as if it will settle.’ Anxiety threaded through her words. ‘Is your home very isolated?’

‘You could say that. I don’t have any near neighbours, that’s for sure.’

Sean was grateful for the way that the whirling blizzard forced him to keep his attention on the road. One glance at the woman beside him had been enough to threaten his concentration once and for all.

Pete had said that she was a looker, but he had put that down to love being blind. He had had enough experience of the fairer sex to know that, as with many a brightly wrapped parcel, the outer appearance often totally belied the truth of the contents.

What he hadn’t been prepared for was the instant pull he felt towards this woman, the overwhelming force of purely physical attraction that had tied his nerves into knots. Not that there was anything remotely pure about his feelings, he told himself wryly. Just the whispering sound of silk against silk as she uncrossed her legs had his lower body tightening in instant response.

‘Then we could be stuck for ages—days.’ Her voice showed how little the idea appealed to her. ‘You said there was a town back the way you came. Perhaps you’d better turn around and—’

‘And risk getting completely stranded in the worst snowstorm this decade? No way, lady! You might be prepared to put your life in danger that way, but quite frankly the idea doesn’t appeal to me at all. I have first-hand experience of just what it feels like to be in a car that’s out of control, and, believe me, it’s not the sort of thing I care to repeat.’

That brought her head swinging round, her long hair flying so that it caught against his cheek, making him shiver in reaction. Her face was a pale blur in the shadows as she turned to him.

‘Was that how it happened? A car crash?’

For one awful moment he thought that she was going to put a hand on his arm, and instinctively he stiffened, silently communicating his rejection of the possible gesture. But all the same his heart accelerated wildly as he stared determinedly out through the windscreen, struggling to catch glimpses of the darkened road through the whirling snow and the rhythmic movement of the wipers.

‘I’m sorry.’ Her voice was low and soft. ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’

‘Why not?’ Sean shrugged off her concern. ‘It’s a fact, after all. But I don’t need your pity…’

‘It wasn’t pity! I meant, obviously you don’t want to talk about it, so I shouldn’t intrude. You must want to forget…’

‘Forget!’ It came on a harsh bark of laughter, one that was totally devoid of any trace of humour. ‘If I could forget it would make things easier. It’s remembering that’s hell. If I close my eyes…’

He didn’t even have to do that. It was there, in his mind, just behind his eyes. If he let his control drop it would all come rushing back. ‘No!’

This time she did move to clutch at his arm, but in a gesture of panic rather than the sympathy he had dreaded earlier. All the same, the touch of her hand seemed to sear over the exposed skin of his wrist, as if her fingers had been white-hot, and he couldn’t control the impulse to shake himself free.

‘Oh, don’t worry, sweetheart, I don’t plan on doing that right now. There are those who value your pretty face too much to see it mangled by flying glass.’

His brother, for one, and he would do well to remember that. She was Pete’s fiancée, for God’s sake! The girl his brother loved and wanted to marry. Which meant she was strictly out of bounds to the likes of him.

‘I didn’t mean…’ Her voice trembled, and out of the corner of his eye he could see that she was shivering.

‘I’m sorry, are you cold?’

Glad of the opportunity to distract himself, he moved swiftly to turn up the heating, barely hearing her murmured words of thanks as he kept his eyes glued to the little he could see of the road ahead.

At least he recognised the turn-off to the driveway of his cottage. In reality it was little more than a track, easy enough to miss at the best of times.

‘Almost there.’ He hoped he sounded more reassuring than he actually felt. ‘Though this bit might be tricky. This road’s bad enough even in decent weather. I doubt if I’ll be able to dodge the pot-holes now that they’re under six inches of snow, so you’d better hang onto your seat.’

He cursed himself for opening his mouth when, taking his instruction literally, she did just as she was told. The movement of her hands to fasten over the sides of her seat meant that her coat fell away from her body once more, and that, together with the heat in the car, wafted a heady perfume straight towards him.

The scent was like the woman herself. Superficially rich and floral, it deepened to a stronger, muskier undertone that made him want to groan aloud with the force of the memories it brought to his mind. It was impossible not to recall how she had cuddled close to him, the soft warmth of her lips against his neck, the way she had felt in his arms. She had yielded to him so easily, and the taste of her mouth…

Dear God, this was worse than ever. The primitive, purely masculine urge to slam on the brakes, gather her up in his arms and kiss her senseless was one he could subdue only with the utmost determination. Concentrate on what you’re doing, you fool!

‘Are you all right?’

Hell, had something of his thoughts shown in his face? Or, worse, in his breathing or other, more obvious parts of his body?

‘I mean, it must be a terrible strain for you having to drive in this after…’

After your accident. She didn’t complete the sentence but let it hang in the air with both of them knowing exactly what was in her mind.

‘Perhaps I could take over for a while.’

‘No way, sunshine!’

Just the thought was enough to drive everything else from his mind. The heated sensations of a moment earlier subsided so quickly that it was as if he had just opened a window, letting in a blast of the arctic air outside.

‘I spent a lot of money on this car. I have no desire to see it nose-down in a ditch!’

‘Under normal conditions I am a careful and perfectly competent driver.’ Her tone was icy enough to lower the temperature in the car by several degrees. ‘But this—’ one slim hand gestured towards the swirling blanket of snow that surrounded them ‘—can hardly be described as “normal”.’

‘And anyone who deserved the accolade of “careful” driver would have thought more than twice about setting out in weather like this in the first place.’

She hadn’t liked that. Her breath hissed through her teeth in fury.

‘That has to be the most blatant case of a particularly grubby pot calling a kettle black I’ve heard in a long time! Might I point out to you that you were on the road too? And, as you were clearly nowhere near as far away from home as I was, you would have had the advantage of being able to judge the weather more accurately before you left. It wasn’t even snowing when I set out!’

‘Nor was it when I left the house!’ Sean returned sharply. ‘Though I have to admit that I wish it had been. That way I would have had the perfect excuse not to venture out.’

And the perfect excuse to refuse Pete’s request. The perfect reason not to go out on what he firmly believed was a wild-goose chase. He had never held out any real hope that his brother’s ex-fiancée would put in an appearance at the Night Owl, let alone that he would recognise her, be able to strike up a conversation and persuade her to come back home with him.

In fact he had been so convinced of the impossibility of the task that he hadn’t even bothered to order a meal, opting instead for just a pot of delicious coffee. It had barely been delivered to his table when the gathering darkness outside, the grey, lowering skies, had alerted him to the advent of the wild winter storm that had persisted ever since.

If Annie Elliot had any sense she would never try to travel in this, he had decided, paying his bill hastily and setting out for home while it was safe to drive. He had still not worked out whether it had been good luck or bad that had resulted in his coming on the silver Renault as he had.

But fate had decided that he would, and that there at the wheel, tall, dark and every bit as beautiful as his lovelorn brother had described her, was Miss Heartbreaker Elliot herself, dazed and off balance and only too willing to be befriended and taken to his home.

‘And of course then you wouldn’t have had to lumber yourself with me!’ The girl’s indignant voice dragged his thoughts back to the present.

‘I never said—’

‘You didn’t have to say anything! But you’ve made it blatantly obvious that you would have been a lot happier if someone else had come along and rescued me so that you wouldn’t have been obliged to do it. Well, you needn’t worry! I don’t want to be stuck with you any more than you do with me.’

‘I couldn’t agree more.’

It was expelled on a sigh of exasperation. Damn Pete for getting him involved in all this, and damn her too…

For what? For being so beautiful that any man would want her? So lovely that he only had to look at her to burn with desire?

And she knew it, damn her! She had only just left his brother, having tossed his ring back in his face, and she already had a new man lined up. And yet she hadn’t been able to resist trying it on with him in the first five minutes.

She had set out to entice him like some little alley cat, displaying her body in the clinging dress, writhing so seductively against him. And he knew why.

She’d recognised him, hadn’t she? Even used his name as familiarly as if they were old friends. It happened so often now that he’d become inured to it. People saw not the real man but a myth created by the medium in which he worked. To the public at large he was simply a face on a TV screen, a glossy photograph in a magazine—that hated thing, a ‘pin-up’.

‘Well, the best thing is for you to let me use your phone as soon as we get inside. I’ll call the garage and—’

‘I think not.’ Cold, controlled rage turned his voice into a blade of ice slashing through her words.

Forget Pete, and keeping her here until his brother could come and plead with her to take him back! She wasn’t worth it. She’d take the poor kid’s heart and use it as a toy until she was tired of it, and then she’d snap it in two and toss it aside without even bothering to look where it landed.

Women like this one were just predatory spiders, waiting for the next poor sucker of a fly who foolishly wandered into their carefully spun webs. Marnie had been a mistress of the art as well. But Marnie was out of his life now, thank God. Out of his life and flaunting her brand-new wedding ring and the rich husband to go with it.

But he could use his own experience to teach this lady a much needed lesson. He’d play along with her for now, let her think she had him hooked, and then, just as she enjoyed her triumph, he’d show her that she couldn’t play fast and loose with people’s feelings.

‘You’re not going to get away that easily.’

“‘Get away”?’ For the first time it seemed that her confidence had slipped. A seam of anxiety ran through her repetition of his words.

He’d better take things more carefully. It would do no good at all to frighten her off right at the start. Far better to lull her into a false sense of security at first, and only reveal his hand when she had no hope of escape.

So he turned a wide smile in her direction and concentrated on making his tone light and friendly.

‘See sense, sweetheart! If the garage tow-truck would have found it difficult to reach you earlier, it will be damn near impossible now. They’d need a snow-plough to get through this. We’re grounded—stuck together for the duration—so we’ll have to make the best of it.’

CHAPTER THREE

‘WE’RE here.’

Leah registered Sean’s comment, and the fact that the car had slowed, only vaguely. She was grateful for the fact that the nightmare of a journey was over, but only now was it beginning to dawn on her that the tension that had gripped her had more to do with the man beside her than the more obvious danger of the blizzard raging outside.

Her nerves felt stretched tight, as if some cruel hand had gripped them and twisted them hard. Was she imagining things, or had Sean’s words been laced with a dark element of threat?

Certainly his declaration that ‘You’re not going to get away that easily’ had sounded ominous. But when she’d queried it he had dismissed her concern with an easy answer and an even easier smile. Though that smile had failed to convince, she admitted, drawing in a sharp, uncomfortable breath.

‘You don’t look very impressed.’

The lightness of his tone made a nonsense of her feelings.

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ With an effort she forced herself to focus on the house before her, or at least on the little she could see through the thickly whirling snow. ‘It’s just it’s not exactly what I was expecting.’

That much was true at least. Small and square, with its grey stone blending in with the wintry surroundings to give it an almost ethereal quality, the cottage was far more basic, more workmanlike than she had anticipated.

‘It’s not very Sean Gallagher, is it?’ her nervousness pushed her to ask.

Immediately all the light vanished from his face, his smile fading and his lips compressing to a cold, thin slash in his face.

‘You shouldn’t equate the publicity I get with the reality,’ he declared, each word cold and clipped, and in a sudden rush of inspiration she suddenly realised just what was wrong.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that you were like the part you play.’

A dismissive shrug lifted the powerful shoulders under the fine wool of his jacket.

‘It’s a common mistake. People see me in a role every week and they tend to assume that role is me.’

And he didn’t like that assumption one little bit. It was stamped into every line on his face. Which was why he had seemed so prickly, so downright hostile at moments during their journey.

She had made it plain that she had recognised him from the first; she had been in no state to hide anything from him. And, being used to people reacting to his screen persona rather than the real one, he had written her off as one of his lovesick fans who would do anything for a single glance from their idol’s brilliant blue eyes.

But while her blood seemed to curdle in her veins at the thought of being so carelessly pigeonholed, a part of Leah’s mind recognised that this fact could actually be her salvation. If Sean saw her simply as an empty-headed worshipper, he would assume that her actions earlier had been the result of excitement at coming face to face with him so unexpectedly.

So, while she couldn’t explain, even to herself, just what had possessed her to kiss him, perhaps it was better that way. She couldn’t face the prospect of him probing deeper into matters that had already severely rocked her sense of mental balance.

‘Well, are we going to make a move, or do you intend to sit here all night until we end up deep-frozen? Here’s the key…’

He tossed it at her as she gathered up her handbag, already pushing his own door open.

‘Leave the door open. I’ll be right behind you when I’ve got your case.’

The freezing blast of icy air in her face was enough to put wings on Leah’s feet. Slipping and sliding, she dashed for the cottage porch, grateful for even the minimal shelter it provided.

Ramming the key into the lock, she turned it with frantic haste, pushing open the door and stumbling into the stone-flagged hallway with a sigh of relief.

True to his word, Sean was close behind her. Dumping her case on the floor, he slammed the door shut behind him as soon as he was over the threshold.

Like Leah, he had already acquired a fine coating of snow on his head and shoulders, the white flakes brilliant and delicate against the darkness. They even, with hearts-topping effect, clung to the thick black lashes that framed his stunning sapphire eyes.

‘The kitchen’s through there…’

He waved a hand towards the end of the hall as he stamped his feet to clear the snow from his shoes, shaking himself like some large, powerful animal, spattering her with the cold drops of moisture that spun from his hair.

‘The stove will still be banked down, so it should be warm, and you’ll need…’

The words trailed off into silence as his eyes met her widened gaze, caught and held.

Why couldn’t she move? Leah berated herself. She must look so foolish—and so disgustingly vulnerable—staring at him like this. Why couldn’t she just pull off her coat and head in the direction he had indicated?

But it seemed as if her feet were rooted to the spot. She felt as if every cell in her body, every nerve-ending, was sharply attuned to some elemental magnetism that emanated from the man at her side. Any awareness of the rest of her surroundings seemed to have blurred and faded from her sight, so that there was only him and that potent tug of need which had formed in the deepest, most primitive part of her being.

If he had looked big and strong outside, in the space of the countryside, then now he appeared impossibly so—dark and powerful, the confines of the small hallway dominated by the height and breadth of him. His lean, strong body seemed too vital, too forceful to be restricted by its narrow space, its cosy domesticity.

He was more at one with the wild elements outside, as untamed as the wind that buffeted the stone walls of the cottage and came howling down the chimneys.

Because her attention was so firmly fixed on him, she knew the exact moment that the change began. She saw how his long body stiffened, freezing in the act of shrugging out of his coat. She saw the sudden darkening of his eyes, the burning black obliterating the rich blue. With her hearing made acute by heightened sensitivity, she caught the change in his breathing, the faint sound as he swallowed deeply.

‘This is the first time I’ve seen you in the light,’ he said, and his voice was strangely husky, raw-edged, as if it had not been used for some time. ‘Your eyes—they’re almost purple, the colour of pansies.’

‘They’re like Elizabeth Taylor’s, everyone always says,’ Leah responded, hearing the words and yet feeling unaware of having actually produced them. ‘But of course I don’t really look like her. My hair isn’t black, for one thing.’

Her lips felt disturbingly dry, and she wet them nervously with the tip of her tongue, then froze as she saw his dark gaze drop to follow the tiny, betraying movement. The intensity of his stare made her heart kick in her chest. Suddenly she saw the gesture from his point of view, realising the unconscious provocation it had offered.

‘I prefer your hair colour,’ he murmured. ‘That sort of sable-brown is much softer. Though right now it’s dark enough to pass for black.’

His hand came out to stroke one of the sodden strands that lay over her shoulder. His touch was very gentle, but with every cell in her body hypersensitive to the pull of his physical appeal Leah had to fight the instinctive reaction that almost had her jumping away like a nervous cat.

‘Liz Taylor is regarded as one of the world’s greatest beauties.’

‘Fishing for compliments?’

A slow smile, its sensual appeal lethal to her composure, curled the corners of that beautiful mouth.

‘Believe me, you don’t need to. You must know that you are an exceptionally lovely woman, the sort any man would be proud to have on his arm. Or…’ the smooth voice deepened deliberately ‘…in his bed.’

Those vivid eyes held Leah’s hypnotically, sapphire locked with violet in spellbound isolation from which she was totally unable to break free. She no longer saw the flawed beauty of the damaged side of his face, the raw, red marks that marred the sculpted line of his bones, the plane of his cheek. She was aware only of the glossy darkness of his hair, the unexpected softness of his mouth—and, above and beyond anything else, the burning, mesmeric force of his gaze.

‘I…’

It was all she could manage before her voice failed her completely. Twice she swallowed deeply, opened her mouth, but each time no sound came out, her ability to speak having deserted her.

The silence in the small house was so profound that his breathing seemed unnaturally loud. She could almost sense each exhalation as a warm caress across her skin, raising goosebumps of reaction all over her body.

‘I…?’ said Sean softly, lifting the single syllable on a questioning note.

His smile, the light in his eyes, seemed to say that he knew exactly what she was thinking and that he shared those thoughts. Shared the shivering sense of awareness, the heightened sensitivity to everything around them. With infinite slowness his head tilted, came nearer.

The tiny movement was enough to have Leah closing her eyes in panic, but only for a second. Suddenly fearful that he might interpret her reaction as an invitation to kiss her, she forced them open again, focusing determinedly on a single dark lock that had broken free from the sleeked back smoothness of his snow-soaked hair so that it fell forward over one straight black eyebrow.

‘Sean…’

As she spoke a single drop of molten snow slid, hung, and finally fell from his hair onto his skin, trailing slowly down towards the corner of his eye. Acting purely instinctively, Leah reached out and stopped it with a gentle fingertip, slowly retracing its path to wipe the cold dampness from his skin.

‘Don’t!’

Sharp and hard, it was a rough command that stilled the movement at once. Her eyes flew to his in a look of stunned confusion.

‘But it would have gone into your eye!’

Almost all the blue had disappeared from his iris, she realised. In its place was just a pool of black, with the tiniest rim of colour at its outer edge.

‘It might have stung.’

‘And you would hate to see me suffer even the slightest distress?’

The mockery in his voice was at odds with the heavy-lidded sensuality of his gaze, the warmth that softened his mouth.

As Leah watched with disbelieving fascination that smile grew, and with a slow, indolent movement he turned his head slightly into the hand that still rested against his face. She felt the heat of his skin, warm satin underneath her fingertips, but rougher lower down, where the day’s growth of beard abraded her palm.

She couldn’t hold back a soft murmur of response, a murmur that turned into a choking cry as she felt the new warmth of his lips against her palm. His soft kiss sent a burning reaction like a wild electric shock crackling through every nerve in her arm.

Drawing in a sharp breath, she snatched her hand away, cradling it against her breasts as if it had actually been scorched. Above it, her eyes were wide and dark as pansies in shocked reaction.

‘Why did you do that?’

‘Why?’ he echoed thickly. ‘Because I wanted to. Because it felt right, and I enjoyed it. And because…’

Blue eyes smoky with unconcealed desire, he took a step closer, then another. He reached out for her hand, lifting it once more to his lips.

‘Because…’

With his dark eyes still on her face, he traced the shape of her palm in soft, brief kisses, adding the touch of his tongue as he moved up her index finger. He planted a final kiss right on its tip before turning it towards her, letting it rest on her parted mouth as if to deliver the caress back to her. Leah shuddered faintly as she tasted the mixture of herself and Sean on her own skin.

‘Because you wanted it too, didn’t you?’

‘Oh, God!’ She choked the words out, unable to respond to his soft-voiced question.

‘Didn’t you?’

She could deny it, but what would be the point? She knew he was right, and he knew it too. He could read it in her eyes, in their darkness that matched the intensity of his own, in the heightened breathing that brought hot colour to her cheeks and to the creamy breasts that rose and fell rapidly under the tight-fitting bodice of her dress.

‘Yes…’

It was a sigh of resignation, of defeat, but as soon as she had spoken she felt strangely liberated, as if some great weight had dropped from her shoulders.

‘Yes,’ she repeated more firmly, conviction lifting her voice. ‘Yes! Oh, yes!’

‘I knew it.’

A soft thud as the coat he had been in the process of removing finally hit the floor was the last thing Leah was aware of as Sean reached for her, his arms closing round her and hauling her hard up against the lean length of his body. Rough hands in her hair pulled her head back, lifting her face to his, and her mouth was captured in a wild, bruising kiss. With a tiny moan she opened her lips to him, her tongue tangling with his in instant response.

Her groan was matched by an identical one from Sean himself, and then he was kissing her again, but very differently this time. He took her lips hotly, greedily, snatching at her mouth, her face, her neck, like a man who had been starved for a long, long time and was now presented with such an array of dishes that he didn’t know which one to taste first.

One strong hand held the back of her head, keeping her face imprisoned against his, while the other tugged at her already loosened coat, wrenching it from her body and discarding it carelessly beside his own. Inserting one powerful thigh between both of hers, he pushed her backwards until she came hard up against the wall, trapped by the strength of his body.

The heat of his skin reached her through the fine velvet of her dress, and even the heavy denim of his jeans could not conceal the burning evidence of his desire for her as he crushed it against the cradle of her hips. He inched her legs further apart and she yielded willingly, sighing aloud once more as the pressure at the juncture of her legs inflamed the heated need his caresses had created there.

‘Sean…’

His name was a moan of yearning, of hunger, and his raw-edged, shaky laughter in response told her that he recognised the craving that had her in its grip. Recognised it and shared it in every way.

‘I don’t know how this happened.’ It was a rough mutter, thick and raw against her skin. ‘I only know there was no way of avoiding it. That it was inevitable from the moment I first set eyes on you. When— Dear God!’

A shudder ran through his long body.

‘I thought you were dead, or badly hurt! I thought—’

‘Sean!’ Hungry impatience made her break into his words. ‘Will you shut up and kiss me?’

‘With the greatest pleasure!’

He did more than kiss her. His mouth seemed to have turned into a finely tuned instrument of pleasure, touching, caressing, nibbling, occasionally administering tiny, sharp, demanding bites down her throat and on to the creamy skin exposed by the neckline of her dress.

And all the time his hands were busy too, moving over her body, cupping and holding her breasts. His thumbs circled the shape of her nipples, rubbing softly, bringing them into tight, excited life beneath the clinging fabric.

Leah’s head was thrown back, her eyes closed. She was on fire, every inch of her body burning up, every cell ablaze with need. Her urgent fingers pushed aside the navy sweater, sliding over the broad leather belt at his waist, a choking cry of delight escaping her as her fingertips encountered the heated softness of his skin.

Fingers spread wide, she smoothed her hands outwards and upwards over the strong lines of his chest, feeling the powerful muscles bunch and jerk under her caress. Her sensuous exploration found the rasp of body hair, the tiny, hard buds of his male nipples, and delighted in all the differences between his physique and her own.

Beneath her touch she sensed the heavy pounding of his heart, and with a deliberately sinuous, almost feline movement she slid her hips against the hardness of his arousal. Her smile was one of triumph as she sensed his heartbeat accelerate dramatically.

‘I think we’d be more comfortable in another room,’ Sean muttered against her cheek, having dragged his mouth from hers with obvious reluctance.

‘You have a point.’

Her words were almost unintelligible, but the undercurrent of shaken laughter told its own story.

With her arms linked around his neck, he half carried, half walked her towards the nearest room, kicking open the door before manoeuvring her inside. Leah had a brief glimpse of a Victorian-style tiled fireplace and large, squashy chairs covered in a rich bronze velvet before she was swung off her feet and deposited on the softness of the settee, Sean coming down on top of her.

‘Better?’ he enquired unevenly, his breathing as ragged as if he had just completed a marathon.

‘Much better,’ Leah assured him with a lazy smile, writhing languorously beneath his imprisoning weight.

‘Now perhaps I can kiss you properly.’

When Leah opened her mouth to demand to know precisely what he had been doing before, if not kissing her ‘properly’, he promptly took the opportunity to prove exactly what he meant. The thrust and movement of his tongue was a deliberate attempt to tease and tantalise her with the promise of how a more intimate invasion of her body would feel.

The hunger that had built with each touch, each caress, was now raging out of control. It pulsed through every nerve-end, making her twist violently beneath him. She needed to touch him more intimately, wanted to feel his hot skin against hers, wanted his hands on her own body.

‘You’re wearing too many clothes,’ she muttered in mock petulance, tugging at the navy sweater with impatient fingers.

‘I could say the same about you.’

‘Mmm, so you could.’ Leah moved her hips provocatively. ‘And this dress is far too tight.’

‘Is that a fact? Well, I think I could help you there.’

The Lycra that made her dress cling so closely also made it easy for him to ease the top down from her shoulders, the bra beneath as swiftly discarded. Pausing only to peel off his jumper and toss it aside, Sean came back to her again, dragging her up against him and deliberately moving his chest against the peaking tips of her nipples. His smile grew into a wide grin of triumph as he heard her sigh of uninhibited pleasure at the sensation of the roughness of his body hair against their tight sensitivity.

‘You are one sexy lady,’ he murmured against her skin, trailing hot kisses down from the smooth roundness of one shoulder to the pink-flushed curves of her breasts. Slowly, tormentingly, his mouth moved lower, so that she was whimpering with need before it finally closed over one throbbing peak, drawing it into its moist heat.

‘Oh, God!’

Leah’s body arched upwards convulsively, her head flung back in total abandon as she offered herself to the delicious sensation. Sean’s gentle tugging at her breast sent a pulse of white-hot excitement straight from its tip down to the very centre of her femininity.

‘Don’t stop!’ she begged, and felt his laughter feather warmly across her flesh.

‘I don’t intend to.’

His hands were tugging her skirt upwards, exposing the lacy tops of her stockings, the frivolous fastenings of her suspender belt. Automatically Leah raised herself to help him.

When his questing fingers slid over her hip-bones and under the wisp of silk that was the only flimsy barrier left between him and her most intimate core, she cried out sharply, the sound of her voice clashing with the soft chiming of a clock somewhere in the room.

‘God, but you’re ready for me,’ he breathed. ‘So ready. I can see that making love to you just once is never going to be enough for me. I’d want to do it again…’

His fingers tangled in the damp curls, probed gently for a second, making her move uncontrollably.

‘And again…’

Each word coincided with the stroke of the clock in the corner, creating a rhythm that forced itself through the fevered haze inside Leah’s head. It pounded against her brain, refusing to be pushed away until, in spite of herself, she found she was counting along with them.

Six… Seven

‘And again!’

Eight… Nine…

Nine! The final stroke slashed into her consciousness like a blade of ice, incising the passion from her thoughts with a single blow.

Nine o’clock! There was something— She had promised— Oh, God, what was happening to her?

‘No!’

It was a cry of shocked distress, so sharp, so shaken that even in his state of fevered desire Sean heard it and paused in confusion. Blue eyes dark and glazed with passion went to her face.

‘Sweetheart…’

‘I said no!’

She wrenched herself up into a half-sitting position, shaking fingers going to her exposed breasts, then down to her skirt in an ineffectual attempt to cover herself. But when she realised that Sean’s hands still lingered intimately at the top of her thighs she pushed them away with a violence that clearly surprised him.

What had she done? How could she have let this happen? How could she have been so foolish as to let things go this far?

Nine o’clock! She had promised Andy she would phone him at nine to let him know she had arrived safely at her mother’s house.

But she wasn’t at her mother’s, or anywhere near it. And she certainly wasn’t safe! She was here, with a man she had met only a couple of hours before—a man she knew nothing about except for his appearances on her television set, a man she had let…

‘No!’

This time it was a wail of distress and shame. How could she have forgotten? How could she have let him drive it from her mind?

‘This mustn’t happen! It’s wrong! So very wrong! I’m— I’m engaged to someone else!’

She didn’t know what she had expected his response to be. A protest, at least. Or perhaps some attempt at seductive persuasion—a few sultry kisses, a murmured, Forget him, darling, he’s history. You and I are meant to be together.

Instead, the man above her turned white with shock. The words were barely out of her mouth before he had snatched his hands away from her so swiftly that she might just have told him she was infected with some appalling disease.

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