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But Emma was here now, and she was clearly regretting her earlier decision to stay around.
‘It will be fine,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m good in the snow. If I drive carefully I’ll be able to get to the end of the road. The gritting lorries were already working on the motorway so I shouldn’t have any trouble getting home once I get to the main roads.’
‘And do you know how far it is to the main roads from here? Even if you make it out of the estate, which I doubt that you would, you have five miles of country roads that are always low on the priority list for whoever decides which part of our little island is gritted in bad weather.’
‘Well, I’ll give it a try anyway.’
‘I may be drunk,’ Lucas drawled, ‘but I’m not so drunk that I can’t recognise a truly bad idea when I see it. Call me selfish, but I don’t want to spend the rest of tonight trying to locate your frozen corpse. Nor do I want to find myself recruiting a new PA. I can’t stand the interview process.’
Her lips twitched as she tried to hold back a smile. ‘It’s all about you, isn’t it?’
‘Absolutely. I’m the most selfish bastard you’ll ever meet, you know that.’ So don’t look at me with those soft brown eyes. Don’t show me that you care.
But she’d already done that, hadn’t she? The moment she’d discovered that he hadn’t wanted a party, she’d set about quietly removing the evidence.
Hands clasped in front of her, she stared at the floor. ‘I was stupid, wasn’t I, coming here in the first place.’
‘Not stupid, no.’ Because he could barely keep his hands off her, Lucas strolled over to the fire and kept his back to her. ‘You were dedicated. Professional. Which is no more than I would have expected from you. It’s just unfortunate that you chose tonight.’ He didn’t state the obvious. That if it hadn’t been for what this night did to his mind, he wouldn’t have forgotten the damn file in the first place.
‘Lucas—’
‘This is what we’re going to do.’ Taking control, he turned, interrupting her before she could ask the question he knew she was going to ask. The question about why exactly this night was so painful for him. ‘You are wet, cold and, presumably, very tired. I’m going down to the kitchen to make us some soup and while I do that you are going to have a hot bath or shower—whichever—and then help yourself to whatever clothes take your fancy from my dressing room. Nothing will fit, but you’re a practical enough person to improvise, I’m sure. We’ll hang yours up and they’ll be dry in the morning.’
‘Lucas, I can’t—’
‘I’m going to light a fire in one of the other bedrooms, then it will be warm once you’re ready to sleep.’ Without looking at her, he strode towards the staircase, keeping his hands to himself. ‘There are plenty of warm towels in the bathroom. Help yourself.’
She should have argued, but one glance through the pretty arched window convinced her that he was right. In the half hour she’d spent clearing up downstairs, killing time until she could check on him again, it seemed as if half a ton of fresh snow had fallen. It glistened in the moonlight, a sparkly, silvery deathtrap. The decision whether or not to stay was out of her hands. She wasn’t going to be going home any time soon. She was stuck here with a man who clearly didn’t want her around when all she wanted was to be home with Jamie.
What she should have done was leave when it had been possible to do so, instead of putting him in a position where he had no choice but to offer her accommodation. And if there were other feelings sloshing around inside her, then she chose to ignore them, just as she was trying to ignore the recurring images of that one dangerous glimpse of him naked.
It was a shame he wasn’t flabby, she thought gloomily. A seriously out of shape boss would have been so much easier to forget than a boss with rock-hard abs and—
Emma squeezed her eyes shut and reminded herself that a luscious body didn’t maketh a man.
And there was no point in going back over what she could have done or should have done because she was stuck here now so she just had to make it work.
Resigned to the inevitable, she started by calling Jamie to tell him she wouldn’t be home. It was a call she dreaded making and she breathed a sigh of relief when the phone went to voicemail. After she’d left a brief message explaining the facts and promising to call the next morning once she’d had a chance to check the weather and road conditions, she eased off her soaking-wet shoes and put them close to the fire to dry off.
