Page 180 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 1-4

His attitude should have got her back up but somehow he’d managed to get under her skin, even though he hadn’t made the slightest effort to charm. She remembered all that.

But had shemisrememberedthe way the evening had progressed? Of course, she’d talked too much; that was just who she was. She’d talked and laughed, wine had been poured and his attitude had relaxed. He’d obviously chosen to go down the pragmatic road of accepting the inevitable with as good a grace as humanly possible Those cool, green eyes had rested on her... and that was when it all got a little blurry. Had she imagined a flicker of heat there? Had she imagined a thread of electricity that had ignited between them, sizzling quietly under the patter of their conversation like a firecracker?

He worked hard and he played hard...

She remembered that and she remembered wondering whether he’d been flirting with her, just for that second. It was all soblurry. Whatwasn’tblurry was the thought that had followed her to sleep and wakened her in the morning, and that was the realisation that something about the manexcitedher.

She didn’t know why but he did. She’d woken groggily a couple of hours earlier and had lain perfectly still for a few minutes, indulging in a bout of utter mortification that she might just have made a fool of herself the evening before.

Had she misread signals that hadn’t been there and said anything that could have been misinterpreted? She wasn’t used to alcohol and she couldn’t quite remember how much she’d drunk. On the plus side, she hadn’t fallen off her chair in a drunken stupor. On the minus side, she just might have stared at him a little too avidly, like a star-struck teenager, or worse—a desperate woman craving attention from a good-looking guy, having just recovered from a broken engagement. She might have attempted to flirt, having misinterpreted something said in jest.

By the time she’d dressed and left the room, she’d decided that the best route forward while she was stuck here—because one glance outside her window had killed any hope of heading back to her chalet today—was to pretend that the evening before hadn’t happened. To have no blurry memories of sparks that might or might not have been there. No trying to wade through and analyse whatever conversation they had had. No wondering whether he had flirted with her. And no constant chatting and over-sharing.

She had been unnaturally quiet as they had shared breakfast, and had politely insisted on doing the dishes while he’d dealt with whatever early-morning emails it seemed he had to do. When he had resurfaced an hour later, again with stunning politeness she had agreed that they should check what was happening outside.

It had been draining.

At any rate, here they were now, and she shivered and glanced sideways at him.

Unfairly, he was as devastatingly handsome this morning as he had been the day before. That was one instance where, unfortunately, her imagination had not been playing tricks on her.

‘At least the wind’s died down,’ she said.

‘Still snowing pretty hard, though.’

‘It’s a shame. I’d hoped it might have abated overnight.’ She wondered whether anyone ever spoke like that, using words such as ‘abated’.Shecertainly didn’t; it felt unnatural. ‘I’d hoped,’ she continued, ‘that I might have been able to ski back to my chalet this morning, and enjoy the rest of my holiday with my friends instead of being cooped up here, but I’m not entirely sure that’s going to happen.’

‘We should head back inside. No point freezing to death out here chit-chatting about how heavy the snow is.’

‘Indeed,’ Alice heard herself say.

He headed in and she followed, watching him as he preceded her and, much as she didn’t want to, appreciating the lithe grace of his body as he cut a path through the snow to his front door, making it easy for her to follow in his footsteps.

He was in black: black roll-neck jumper, black jogging bottoms and a black waterproof which he wore with careless elegance.

If she’d made the mistake of flirting with him the evening before, then Lord knew he’d probably spent the night roaring with laughter in his head. Even if he did something as boring as work in tech, he was so good-looking that women would probably beat a path to his door.

It was wonderfully warm inside and she shed her outer layers with alacrity, stripping down to one of his long-sleeved tee-shirts and some of his jogging bottoms.

Then she stood back and looked at him for a few seconds while he stared back at her.

‘Spit it out.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Alice said.

‘You’ve been acting a little odd all morning. What’s bothering you? Is it the fact that you’ve realised you have no choice but to staycooped up herefor another day?’

Alice flushed. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful.Cooped upisn’t the right word. I was, yes, just hoping that I might be on my way, so you’ll have to excuse me if I’m not my usual self this morning.’

‘You barely had any breakfast. You must be hungry.’

‘I had more than enough.’ Alice drew herself up to her very unimpressive five-three height and sucked in her stomach.

‘Right. Well, I suppose we should discuss how the day is going to unfold. More coffee?’

He headed off to the kitchen without waiting for an answer and Alice followed him. In the cold light of day, and freed from the aftermath of her near-death experience on the slopes in a blizzard, she had taken the opportunity to really look at the chalet properly.

It was very,veryluxurious but in an understated way. There was nothing flash anywhere but she could tell that all the bathroom fittings in heren suitewere of the highest standard. There was a lot of marble and the towels were the sort that must have cost the earth. And, again, the bedroom was understated luxury. The linen was soft and silky and probably had the highest possible thread-count. The cupboards were made of solid wood and the rug on the ground, like all the rugs in the lodge, was softly faded, with the sheen of pure silk.

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