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The ground shook beneath them. He raised his head. The oak lay just a few feet away.
He turned his attention back to Rosalind. She lay beneath him, face white, eyes wide as she stared at the tree.
“Are you all right?”
Slowly, she nodded. She looked at him, then down at their bodies pressed together. A blush stole over her cheeks. The sight summoned the desire that had invaded earlier as she’d stood in the hall, beautiful in her kindness, frightening in her perceptiveness, stunning in her defiance.
He quickly shifted, rolling off her before she felt the evidence of his arousal. Standing, he held out his hand and pulled her to her feet.
His eyes followed hers to the fallen tree. Before they’d even set eyes on the house, his mother had fallen in love with the towering oaks. His father had joked they didn’t even need the house, just the trees.
Centuries. The tree had stood for centuries, withstood war and changing seasons, birth and death in the manor just beyond.
Now it lay on the ground, chunks of bark scattered across the seashells like dark wounds.
A vise clamped around his heart, squeezed. His gaze moved over the leaves still clinging to the branches, then down to the jagged edges of where the tree had split from the trunk, portions of it blackened by the lightning’s fury.
Foolish to get sentimental over a damned tree.
He turned his back on it, focused his attention on the woman who had drawn him out into the storm.
“Miss Sutton—”
The clouds unleashed their fury, the rain turning from a spatter to a downpour. It was impossible to see more than a few feet ahead. He grabbed her hand and yanked her forward. When she resisted, tried to pull away, he tightened his grip and tugged her close until her body pressed against his.
“We need to get back to the chateau.” His lips nearly brushed her ear.
“I’m not five,” she retorted. “I can make my own—”
“And get separated in this rain? Tumble into a ravine? Catch pneumonia?”
“Are those possibilities or personal fantasies?”
“My fantasy is to be warm, dry and not worrying about whether you’re wandering my property or lying under a tree.”
He pulled her forward again. She followed, keeping pace with his long strides as he kept his eyes on the seashells. He followed the path, catching glimpses here and there of familiar shapes beyond the rain.
Then, at last, light pierced the darkness. The lanterns on the front wall of the house glowed gold in the deluge. They stumbled up the stairs and into the grand hall. Griffith slammed the door behind them.
And immediately realized he was trapped in a hell of his own making.
Rosalind stood in the center of the hall, water dripping from her trench coat onto the tiled floor. A leaf clung to one wet curl. Mud coated her knees and streaked her calves. She stared at him with intense dislike, her lips pursed as if she was trying to hold back one of her pithy insults.
And he had never wanted a woman more than he did in that moment. A woman who had ensnared him with just the sound of her voice and her fierce tenacity in the face of adversity. Adversity he had created to keep her and everything she represented at arm’s length.
Instead of faltering, she’d hit back stronger and harder. Then, when he’d resorted to petty threats, she’d stood up to him and told him exactly where to stick it.
He didn’t want to like her. Didn’t want to admire her. Didn’t want to imagine stripping off that coat, leading her upstairs and into his palatial shower, leaving a trail of wet clothes as he pulled her beneath a steaming hot spray and—
Stop!
Indulging in those kinds of thoughts would only make this more difficult.
Although, he realized as he glanced around the hall, the situation was about as difficult as it could be. From what he’d been able to see, the tree had landed on the bridge. He would go down after the storm had passed to confirm his suspicions. But if that were true, they were stranded at the chateau until next week when the housekeeper, Beatrice, and her husband journeyed up from their village to bring food and clean.
A hard knot formed at the base of his spine as a headache began to pound away at his temples. When he’d contacted Beatrice and told her he was coming for an extended stay, she’d reminded him the chateau didn’t have internet and had very unreliable cell phone reception. He’d told her those conditions would work perfectly for the isolation he sought.
Except now it had left him alone with a woman as tempting as she was infuriating...
