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‘Because she thought that what you two had going was more substantial than a romp in the hay, a few meals out and the occasional present.’
She unclasped his arms and he stood back, with his hands in his pockets.
‘Then I’d say that she made a dangerous assumption,’ he said calmly, while she gathered up the folded linen and began walking upstairs.
When she emerged thirty minutes later, she was wearing a pair of jeans and a red and blue striped cotton jumper, and she had shoved the sleeves up to the elbows. There might not be any central heating, but the log fire was burning vigorously, and giving out enough heat to warm the cottage.
Ross was in the kitchen and he turned around as soon as he heard her coming down the stairs, his dark eyes flicking over her in a casual but intimate way. He was busy cooking on the gas cooker.
‘Brunch,’ he explained, watching her curious expression as she stood next to him. ‘Fried bread, bacon, tinned tomatoes, fried potatoes, baked beans.’
‘Sounds healthy,’ Abigail remarked.
‘Set the table and don’t be so damned sarcastic, or I shall hand it over to you.’
Abigail laughed and began putting plates and cups on the table. Actually, it smelled wonderful and she was starving.
‘I didn’t think that you could cook,’ she admitted to him as she bit into a mouthful of food.
‘I’d hardly call this a gourmet meal,’ Ross pointed out drily. ‘As a matter of fact, though, I may not be brilliant at operating coffee-machines, but I’m a very able cook.’
‘Are you?’
‘There’s no need to look so surprised. I’m an unmarried man, of course I can knock up the occasional meal. Believe it or not, I don’t spend every evening dining out.’
‘There must be no end of women willing to cook meals for you, though,’ Abigail said, without thinking, and he frowned slightly.
‘I try not to encourage that,’ he commented, staring at her over the rim of his coffee-cup. ‘I don’t want any woman carving out a little niche in my apartment and then thinking that she’s indispensable.’
‘No, of course not,’ Abigail said evenly. ‘Indispensable isn’t a word that figures in your vocabulary, so I remember you telling me.’ And even if he hadn’t, she would have guessed. Ross Anderson was not a fireside and slippers man. Wasn’t that why he had found Martin so dull? Wasn’t that why he found the whole concept of stability so boring? He lived life in the fast lane, a wealthy, powerful man who preferred to avoid the clutter of a little woman back at the ranch, cooking supper and waiting for his return. He enjoyed women but he didn’t want to be encumbered with one.
In which case, Abigail thought, what am I doing here? The question confused her.
‘Should we try and see if we can clear a path out of here?’ she asked, changing the subject. ‘The snow doesn’t seem so bad, and perhaps if we could make it to the main road we’d be all right.’
Ross stood up and came over to where she was standing by the kitchen sink. ‘I’m not sure if I find the thought of leaving here all that appealing,’ he said in a low voice that made her head spin.
He slipped both his hands underneath her jumper and circled her nipples with his fingers, smiling as her breathing quickened.
‘Do you?’ he asked, pushing up the jumper so that her breasts were exposed.
‘Not when you do that,’ she said shakily, looking into his eyes and seeing the reflection of her own desire. He bent to lick the erect nipples and she groaned.
‘We should try and make a start,’ she murmured weakly and he sighed, straightening and lowering her jumper.
‘I suppose so. The snow’s definitely on the way out. I’ll go out and see what can be done. What kind of car have you got?’
She told him and he frowned thoughtfully. ‘I’ll start the engine anyway,’ he said. ‘Make sure that the damn thing will still go after this. If we can make it to my car, we’ll stand a better chance.’
The cottage seemed disconcertingly empty without Ross in it. The cosy charm which had filled her with a relaxed glow now irritated her, and was somehow lifeless and stifling. She kept peering out of the window, watching him while he shovelled away the snow, with the steady hum of the engine in the background. The car had started up first time and, because the cottage was set amid trees, the actual fall of snow on the ground was thick, but not so thick that it couldn’t be cleared, at least partially, with a great deal of work.
Abigail watched the steady rise and fall of Ross’s shoulders, the grim concentration on his face. It would be strange getting back to London. She wanted to keep seeing Ross, even though she hated the dependency she was beginning to feel. It was as if he had got into her bloodstream and, now that he was there, was running wild through her, turning her into someone else. The calm, detached person had given way to someone more elemental, and that frightened her.
There’s nothing wrong in sleeping with him, she argued with herself. Why shouldn’t she enjoy the pleasure he gave her while she could? What would be the point in fighting the intense physical attraction she felt for him? Would that make her a better person?
She drifted back to the sofa and tried to read, while outside the snow cleared to give way to hazy, unwilling sunshine.
It was mid-afternoon when Ross came back inside, stripping off his clothes immediately and wiping his face with his arm.
‘Well?’ she asked, jumping up.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘what about some coffee and I’ll deliver my progress report?’
She made him a cup of coffee, with her body on red alert now that he was back inside the cottage, and waited while he thirstily drank.
‘I think we could be out of here tomorrow morning,’ he said. ‘The snow’s stopped and with any luck that’ll be the end of it, and with what I’ve cleared, and some thawing overnight, it shouldn’t be a problem.’
‘That’s a relief,’ she said dubiously, and their eyes met in shared understanding.
‘It’s not going to end just because we’re no longer here,’ he said. ‘I’d still want you whether we were in the Lake District, London or Timbuktu for that matter.’
‘I can’t work for you and…’
‘Why not?’
She shrugged and turned away. Now that she was facing it, the prospect of returning to reality was frankly awful. She didn’t want to get back to the steady grind of London, and she could already feel an insistent voice in her telling her that what had happened between them had been madness, lunacy. For a while they had been swept out of time, but she would have to come back down to earth.
‘Look at me, Abby,’ he commanded, putting down the coffee-cup and turning her to face him. ‘There’s an electricity between us, and there’s no point in pretending that it doesn’t exist. Neither of us is looking for any kind of commitment, and we get along well together. Why agonise about it?’
He shot her a persuasive smile, a question in his raised brows.
When he smiled like that, Abigail found it very hard to think straight.
‘Tell me that you don’t want my company and I’ll get out of your life,’ he murmured, with a hint of caress in his voice.
‘It’s not as simple as that,’ she said, muddled. ‘Martin and I, well, I thought that he was the real thing, I thought that what I felt for him was love.’
‘Love confuses things,’ Ross said bluntly. ‘I’ve witnessed enough divorces among my friends to be in any doubt that what starts out as love ends up as bitterness. Love is a selfish emotion and a misleading one. People in love think that it will get them through anything, but love and real life don’t go together.’
‘That’s very cynical,’ she said, disturbed.
‘Is it? The statistics prove my point.’
‘The statistics also prove that for every one marriage that ends in disaster, there will be another that doesn’t,’ she pointed out, and he shook his head impatiently.
‘That’s a gamble I’d rather live without.’ He stared at her and his eyes were hard and inflexible. ‘If you’re looking for love, Abby, then we might just as well finish this before it starts.’
‘Is that the speech you give to all of your girlfriends?’ She didn’t want him to see how much his words had affected her. It was a silly, hypothetical conversation anyway. She wasn’t looking for love. She had too soon ended one relationship to even think about finding another, not that Ross Anderson would qualify as a candidate for a serious relationship anyway. She was intensely attracted to him, but it was a purely physical thing.
‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ he said, searching her face.
‘Oh, you couldn’t,’ she said lightly, turning away so that his probing eyes couldn’t read the expression on her face. ‘You’re right, neither of us is looking for commitment, and you could only hurt me if I did want something more, if I were in love with you.’ She laughed and it sounded brittle. ‘And of course, I’m not.’
‘That’s good,’ he said, looking away, with a dull flush on his cheekbones.
‘I still don’t think that I could become your mistress, though,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I know that it’s a bit like trying to lock the stable door after the horse has bolted, but…’ She hesitated. ‘I’ve never…I’m not promiscuous; I don’t run around with men.’
