Page 9 of Modern Romance January 2025 1-4

‘The problem you mentioned,’ she reminded him, relaxing a little more again, knowing in her bones, without knowing how, that he was referring to her.

‘I only had one contraceptive in my wallet. I don’t bring women here. You’re the first. So, we will have to practise extreme caution when we get back into bed together again,’ he warned her.

‘Caution is fine,’ Lexy told him sunnily. ‘You get het up about the silliest things.’

‘If you say so.’

And then he was sliding her into the bed while kissing her breathless and that fast, she wasn’t thinking any more. It was the burn of his mouth on hers, the sizzling heat and growing ache at the heart of her and the wondrous caress of his hands that drove everything else out of her head. Although she had sworn she had had sufficient sleep, at some stage of their prolonged intimacy she drifted off again, comfortable and secure in his arms. The one thing she would later remember in detail, and loathe, was that at that moment she felt incredibly safe for the first time in years and quite ridiculously happy.

CHAPTER THREE

NICSHOOKHERAWAKE,hauled up her pillows, physically lifted her up to rest back on them and murmured, ‘Good morning...’

Lexy blinked before the unfamiliar surroundings locked into place and then centred on him: tall, dark, even more good-looking in harsh daylight than he had been in semi-darkness and the warmth of flickering flames. And she smiled, her heartbeat quickening as he slotted a tray onto her lap with the air of a man who had achieved something important to him.

‘Breakfast in bed?’ she gasped, not having to work at her stunned reaction at that much attention.

‘To prove that I’m not onlynothigh maintenance but also a reasonable cook,’ he shot back at her with amusement glimmering in his honey-gold eyes, which were not quite as dark in bright light. Not quite so dark but still beautiful, quite spectacular in truth, framed with those outrageously lavish long black lashes. He still took her breath away.

Lexy examined her beautifully cooked omelette and toast and tea and grinned. ‘I’m sensing that that expression “high maintenance” rankled last night. You do know that I’ve never had breakfast served to me in bed in my entire life?’

Nic frowned and sank down on the side of the bed beside her. ‘Surely for a treat when you were a child at least?’

Lexy shook her head. ‘Not once. If you weren’t at the table on the dot of the hour, you didn’t eat.’

‘Sounds like I’m likely to be spoiling you rotten,’ Nic said wryly of that strict childhood regime.

Lexy laughed as she tucked into her excellent omelette. ‘You’re not likely to get any objections from me.’

It was only as she finished actually eating and sipped her tea that she removed her mesmerised gaze from Nic and noticed that the snow had vanished from the trees outside. They were no longer white skeletons of winter trees clad in snow. ‘The snow stopped, I see,’ she muttered in surprise.

‘Yes, it started raining in the middle of the night and it’s mostly gone now.’

Pushing away the tray, she snatched up his discarded tee shirt again even though her brain told her that it was silly to be that modest with a guy she had spent the whole night in bed with. Cheeks pink, she emerged from its enveloping folds, catching the amusement in his gaze and lifting her chin in defiance of it because she couldn’t change her inclinations in the matter of a few hours of an intimacy that was entirely new to her. She scrambled out of bed to stand at the tall windows and in the distance she could see the black ribbon of the road, clear of snow. In reality, her heart sank at that view because she knew she wanted to stay with him for the rest of the weekend, but she also knew that she couldnotstay.

‘Can you drop me at the nearest railway station?’ she asked him uncomfortably.

‘Why on earth would I do that? I assumed you were staying on here with me,’ he intoned tautly.

‘I’m sorry. I would love to, but I can’t. I’ve got to be in London by tonight because I’m being picked up very early to attend a christening tomorrow in Cornwall.’

‘I’m sure your friends will understand that the vagaries of the weather have intervened,’ Nic countered drily.

Lexy spun back to him, read the tension in his lean, darkly handsome face and almost bottled out. ‘No, they won’t. I’ve been chosen as a godmother and I agreed,’ she pushed herself to declare.

‘Is this for a very close friend?’

‘I don’t think that comes into it.’ Lexy squared her slight shoulders and gazed back at him with a faint hint of reproach in her bearing. ‘I said I’d do it and just because it doesn’t suit me quite so much now isn’t an excuse to let them down.’

His ebony brows flared. ‘You didn’t know that you would be stuck in the wilds of Yorkshire when you agreed.’

‘A reasonable point, but I’m not stuck any more. I can see the road and it’s clear.’ Lexy could feel his annoyance and frustration with her and the irony was that she would have given almost anything to cave in and say that she would stay and forget her christening obligation. ‘But the truth is that when I make a promise, I keep it and I don’t let people down at the last minute. And, Nic? That’s not a bad trait to have, so don’t make me feel bad about it.’

‘I’m not trying to do...hell, pack up and I’ll get the car warmed up,’ he breathed curtly and she could literally see him accepting her argument and stifling his disappointment for her benefit and she relaxed again, as much as she was capable of relaxing when she was going against her own nature.

Clad in his tee shirt, she gathered up her discarded clothes in the room next door and hurried back downstairs to shower and pack as quickly as she could manage it. Was she crazy? she asked herself as she dried her hair. To leave a man whom she had just met but who had become outrageously important to her within a few hours? But that was life and if he wasn’t interested in an ongoing relationship of any kind, staying on with him for one more day and night wouldn’t be a guarantee either, she reminded herself doggedly. Either he was interested or he wasn’t: it was that simple.

As she arrived back in the hall with her case and bag, Nic stepped forward, his overcoat and boots on now. ‘You don’t even have a coat!’

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