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‘I could do without any more complications if you’d fallen in,’ he muttered, looking away but only for a second. ‘This is a pointless conversation.’
‘I grew up where snow was something that happened once a year!’ Celia snapped, patches of bright colour staining her cheeks. ‘I know how to handle being in it! Whichyou,’ she added, ‘evidently do not!’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaningthat when you decided to do your knight-in-shining-armour routine and rescue the damsel in distress, you didn’t stop to think that braving a snowstorm in some cotton track pants and a jumper and...and shoes without socks might not have been the best idea in the world!’
But hehadplayed the knight in shining armour, hadn’t he? And whatever he’d said about only rushing out to save her from her own carelessness because he didn’t want the hassle of her breaking a leg on him, sheknewthat he had reacted on instinct. The instinct to protect someone he thought might have been in a vulnerable situation. That was who he was, whether he wanted to admit it or not, and when was the last time she had laid eyes onanyknights in shining armour?
Celia knew that her one disappointing experience with Martin, her youthful mistake of being in love with the idea of being in love without the maturity to delve deeper into her headlong rush into an engagement with a guy she’d liked but not loved, had made her cautious, but had her retreat from the messy world of men and dating also made her cynical?
Leandro had been right when he’d told her that she was a romantic, that she wanted the whole fairy-tale happy-ever-after ending for herself.
But was that something she believed for herself because that was just the way she’d been brought up? Did she take the whole business of romance for granted because it was in her DNA to think that she would end up like her parents, in love after so many years, travelling down a straightforward road to a predictably happy destination?
In the meanwhile, had her feverish building of protective walls around herself gradually turned her into someone who had bit by bit been losing the ability to trust? Had holding all men at arm’s length, while she waited for Mr Right to magically come along, curdled her natural softness into hard-baked cynicism?
It was easy to dwell on the marvels of True Love from a distance. If you never took risks, then you would never get hurt. Had she drifted towards that place? Safely marooned on her little island, all by herself? Prickly and incapable of just beingniceto a guy who had hurtled out of this house because he’d thought she might have been in mortal danger?
Even if she was familiar with this sort of inclement weather a lot more than he was?
But he got to her...made her behave out of character...threw up her defences even though she knew she was being silly...
And he was savvy enough to figure out that she was prickly around him!
‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered, casting her eyes downwards even though her body language was still rigid with tension at the wayward direction of her thoughts. ‘You rushed out because you thought I might have been in danger of hurting myself and I appreciate that.’
He didn’t reply, instead spinning round on his heel and heading to the kitchen.
‘I... I also didn’t expect to see you,’ she confessed, following him as he stripped off the soggy jumper to the tee shirt underneath.
‘I’d better go and get into some dry clothes,’ he said, turning to her and raking his fingers through his damp hair.
‘You should.’ Truce in place. Felt better. She might feel safer when she was angry with him, because that way she could shut the door on inappropriate reactions, but a truce felt better and she realised that, over the past few days, she had become accustomed to not arguing with him about the situation.
She’d grown used to the way he sometimes raised his eyebrows and half smiled when she dug her heels in and argued with him about something and nothing. She enjoyed the absent way he sometimes let slip things about himself without really realising it and the way he had of making her laugh, because, oddly for someone who could be so arrogant and autocratic, he was also very good at doing that.
‘You’ll get your death of a cold if you hang around for too long in wet clothes.’
‘That’s an old wives’ tale.’ But he glanced down at his loafers, which he proceeded to kick off, as though only just remembering that his feet were wet. ‘Never had a cold in my life.’
Their eyes collided and Celia drew in a shaky breath, which almost managed to clear her head but didn’t quite seem to dispel the sudden flare of crackling tension that had sprung up from nowhere. Was it her imagination or was she reading something in the depths of those dark eyes, something that was thrilling and unsettling at the same time?
Or were her own contraband thoughts interfering with her common sense and making her sense something that wasn’t there? She blinked and looked away but she knew that she was flushed and breathing fast.
‘Internet’s down.’ Leandro broke the stretching silence and Celia breathed a sigh of relief at the normality of his remark, something to cling onto to distract her from her misbehaving mind.
‘You’re kidding. When did that happen?’
‘A couple of hours ago. I tried to do as much as I could without it, but it was hopeless.’
‘Is that how you managed to spot me outside?’
‘I was heading towards the kitchen.’
They had, thankfully, managed to contact Julie via Facebook two days previously, to tell her about her father’s condition, even though the conversation had been limited because of the Internet wherever they were falling in and out of service in the continuing poor weather. It had been Celia’s idea because Leandro, to her surprise, was not connected on Facebook or interested in any other form of social media that could get an uninvited foothold into his private life.
‘I guess you’ll have to discover what life is like without being connected to the rest of the world via a computer.’ Celia smiled a little shyly and he grinned back at her.
