Snowbound With His Innocent Temptation

CHAPTER TWO (#u9ea8a3b4-9596-566b-b4eb-74d1b3eff204)

THE HOUSE SEEMED to shrink in size the minute he walked in. He’d fetched his computer from his car but that was all and Becky looked at him with a frown.

‘Is that all you brought with you?’

‘You still haven’t told me your name.’ The house was clearly on its last legs. Theo was no surveyor but that much was obvious. He now looked directly at her as he slowly removed his coat.

‘Rebecca. Becky.’ She watched as he carelessly slung his coat over one of the hooks by the front door. She could really appreciate his lean muscularity, now he was down to the jumper and trousers, and her mouth went dry.

This was as far out of her comfort zone as it was possible to get. Ever since Freddy, she had retreated into herself, content to go out as part of a group, to mingle with old friends—some of whom, like her, had returned to the beautiful Cotswolds, but to raise families. She hadn’t actively chosen to discourage men but, as it happened, they had been few and far between. Twice she had been asked out on dates and twice she had decided that friendship was more valuable than the possibility of romance.

Truthfully, when she tried to think about relationships, she drew a blank. She wanted someone thoughtful and caring and those sorts of guys were already snapped up. The guys who had asked her out had known her since for ever, and she knew for a fact that one of them was still recovering from a broken heart and had only asked her out on the rebound.

The other, the son of one of the farmers whom she had visited on call-out on several occasions, was nice enough, but nice enough just wasn’t sufficient.

Or maybe she was being too fussy. That thought had occurred to her. When you were on your own for long enough, you grew careful, wary of letting anyone into your world, protective of your space. Was that what was happening to her?

At any rate, her comfort zone was on the verge of disappearing permanently unless she chose to stay where she was and travel long distances to another job.

She decided that inviting Theo in was good practice for what lay in store for her. She had opened her door to a complete stranger and she knew, with some weird gut instinct, that he was no physical threat to her.

In fact, seeing him in the unforgiving light in the hall did nothing to lessen the impact of his intense, sexual vitality. It was laughable to think that he would have any interest in her as anything other than someone offering refuge from the gathering snow storm.

‘I can show you to one of the spare rooms.’ Becky flushed because she could feel herself staring again. ‘I don’t keep them heated, but I’ll turn the radiator on, and it shouldn’t take too long to warm up. You might want to...freshen up.’

‘I would love nothing more,’ Theo drawled. ‘Unfortunately, no change of clothing. Would you happen to have anything I could borrow? Husband’s old gardening clothes? Boyfriend’s...?’ He wondered whether she intended to spend the rest of the evening in the shapeless anorak and mud-stained boots. She had to be the least fashion-conscious woman he had ever met in his entire life, yet for the life of him he was still captivated by something about her.

The eyes, the unruly hair still stuffed under the woolly hat, the lack of war paint...what was it?

He had no idea but he hadn’t felt this alive in a woman’s presence for a while.

Then again, it had been a while since he had been in the presence of any woman who wasn’t desperate to attract his attention. There was a lot to be said for novelty.

‘I can let you borrow something.’ Becky shifted from foot to foot. She was boiling in the coat but somehow she didn’t like the thought of stripping down to her jeans and top in front of him. Those sharp, lazy eyes of his made her feel all hot and bothered. ‘My dad left some of his stuff in the wardrobe in the room you’ll be in. You can have a look and see what might be able to work for you. And if you leave your stuff outside the bedroom door, then I guess I can stick it in the washing machine.’

‘You needn’t do that.’

‘You’re soaked,’ Becky said flatly. ‘Your clothes will smell if you leave them to dry without washing them first.’

‘In that case, I won’t refuse your charming offer,’ Theo said drily and Becky flushed.

Very conscious of his eyes on her, she preceded him up the stairs, pointedly ignoring the bucket gathering water on the ground from the leaking roof, and flung open the door to one of the spare bedrooms. Had she actually thought things through when she had fled back to the family home, she would have realised that the ‘cottage’ was a cottage in name only. In reality, it was reasonably large, with five bedrooms and outbuildings in the acres outside. It was far too big for her and she wondered, suddenly, whether her parents had felt sorry for her and offered to allow her to stay there through pity. They hadn’t known about Freddy and her broken heart but what must they have felt when she had dug her heels in and insisted on returning to the family home while Alice, already far flown from the nest, was busily making marriage plans so that the next phase of her life could begin?

Becky cringed.

Her parents would never, ever have denied her the cottage but they weren’t rich. They had bought somewhere tiny in France when her grandmother had died, and they had both continued working part-time, teaching in the local school.

Becky had always thought it a brilliant way of integrating into life in the French town, but what if they’d only done that because they needed the money?

While she stayed here, paying a peppercorn rent and watching the place gradually fall apart at the seams...

She was struck by her own selfishness and it was something that had never occurred to her until now.

She would phone, she decided. Feel out the ground. After all, whether she liked it or not, her lifestyle was going to change dramatically once she was out of a job.

Theo looked at her and wondered what was going through her mind. He hadn’t failed to notice the way she had neatly stepped past a bucket in the corridor which was quarter-full from the leaking roof.

It was startling enough that a woman of her age would choose to live out in the sticks, however rewarding her job might be, but it was even more startling that, having chosen to live out in the sticks, she continued to live in a house that was clearly on the verge of giving up the fight.

When he bought this cottage, he would be doing her a favour by forcing her out into the real world.

Where life happened.

Rather than her staying here...hiding away...which surely was what she was doing...?

Hiding from what? he wondered. He was a little amused at how involved he temporarily was in mentally providing an answer to that ridiculous question.

But if he had to get her onside, manoeuvre her into a position where she might see the sense of not standing in his way when it came to buying the cottage, then wouldn’t it help to get to know her a little?

Of course, there was no absolute necessity to get anyone onside. He could simply bypass her and head directly to the parents. Make them an offer they couldn’t refuse. But for once he wasn’t quite ruthless enough to go down that road. There was something strangely alluring underneath the guard-dog belligerence. And he was not forgetting that there were times when money didn’t open the door you wanted opening. If he bypassed her and leant on the parents, there was a real risk of them uniting with their daughter to shut him out permanently, whatever sums of money he chose to throw at them. Family loyalty could be a powerful wild card, and he should know... Wasn’t family loyalty the very thing that had brought him to this semi-derelict cottage?

She was switching on the ancient heating, opening the wardrobe so that she could show him where the clothes were kept, fetching a towel from the corridor, dumping it on the bed and then informing him that the bathroom was just down the corridor, but that he would have to make sure that the toilet wasn’t flushed before he turned on the shower or else he might end up with third-degree burns.

Theo walked slowly towards her and then stopped a few inches away.

When Becky breathed, she could breathe him in, masculinity mixed with the cold winter air, a heady, heady mix. Leaning against the doorframe, she blinked, suddenly unsteady on her feet.

He had amazing lashes, long, dark and thick. She wanted to ask him where he was from, because there was an exotic strain running through him that was quite...captivating.

He had shoved up the sleeves of his jumper and, even though she wasn’t actually looking, she was very much aware of his forearms, the fine, dark hair on them, the flex of muscle and sinew...

Her breathing was so sluggish that it crossed her mind...was it actually physically possible to forget how to breathe?

‘I don’t get why you live here.’ Theo was genuinely curious.

‘Wh-what do you mean?’ Becky stammered.

‘The house needs a lot of work doing to it. I could understand if your parents wanted you in situ while work was being done but...can I call you Becky?...there’s a bucket out in the corridor. And how long do you intend emptying it before you face the unpalatable fact that the roof probably needs replacing?’

Hard on the heels of the uncomfortable thoughts that had been preying on her mind, Theo’s remarks struck home with deadly accuracy.

‘I don’t see that the state of this house is any of your business!’ Bright patches of colour stained her cheeks. ‘You’re here for a night, one night, and only because I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I had sent you on your way in this weather. But that doesn’t give you the right to...to...’

‘Talk?’

‘You’re not talking, you’re—’

‘I’m probably saying things that have previously occurred to you, things you may have chosen to ignore.’ He shrugged, unwillingly intrigued by the way she was so patently uninterested in trying to impress him. ‘If you’d rather I didn’t, then that’s fine. I have some work to do when I get downstairs and then we can pretend to have an invigorating conversation about the weather.’