Page 10 of Undoing His Innocent Enemy (Hot Winter Escapes)

‘Mr Colton, wait?’ she shouted. The doorway led into another stunning architectural space. A wall of glass bricks revealed a panoramic view of the undulating forest rising across a gorge at the back of the property, which was blanketed in a thick layer of snow. The snow continued to cascade from the darkening sky in swirling gusts of white.

She slipped and slid in her socks on the stone floor, past the sunken fire pit and the couch she vaguely remembered being deposited on the night before. Two staircases led to other levels, one up, one down.

‘Mr Colton, where are you?’ she shouted, choosing the staircase down, because the staircase up might lead her to his bedroom, and she suspected heading there would not improve this situation at all.

She got no reply. Her indignation rose as she found herself lost in a complex series of passageways, lit by skylights. She walked past the door to a fully equipped gym—which had to explain those impressive pecs.

So not the point, Cara.

She didn’t care if he’d saved her life. That didn’t mean he got to be a judgemental jerk.

At last, she came to another staircase leading to a covered walkway insulated against the storm outside. It led to a large wooden structure constructed under the trees. She spotted him through the floor-to-ceiling glass panels on one side, standing in the light airy space, leaning over a worktable. He had his back to her as she burst through the door, her footsteps and heavy breathing covered by loud music—the tune one from a rock band from decades ago—blaring from an impressive sound system.

The workshop—for that was surely what it was—was the only messy place in the whole house, every available surface strewn with drawings, sketches, and an array of tools.

Organised chaos was what it seemed.

But then she saw the sculptures that stood in the far corner. Lifesize renderings of animal and plant life—the most striking of which was a black bear in full attack mode.

She drew a staggered breath...

The sculpture was exquisite. The bear looked so lifelike, but also stylised, its lumbering body rendered in the layered grain of the wood, the intent in its eyes, somehow both real and yet also mythic. The carving captured the power and strength as well as the natural grace of a species she had observed herself during the summer months.

Even her photographs could not have captured the magnificent creature so perfectly.

She stood spellbound for a moment.

But then her host turned, sensing her presence, and that searing blue gaze fixed on her face. He barked something in Finnish and the music died.

All she could hear was her own breathing.

The deep frown didn’t alleviate the dark intensity in his expression one bit.

Breathe, Cara.

She forced herself to suck in a breath past the hot lump that had got jammed in her throat... And now sank between her thighs.

Oh, for the love of...

‘Leave,’ he said, in that charmingly erudite way he had—as if every word cost him a billion euros to utter.

But before he had a chance to turn his back on her again, she managed to locate her outrage, which had momentarily malfunctioned in the face of his staggering arrogance. And the striking beauty of his work.

‘That’s exactly what I want to be doing. But the storm is not my fault...’

‘Leave myworkshop,’ he said as if she were an eejit, while completely missing the point. ‘I want you where I am not.’

She would have congratulated herself on managing to get another whole sentence out of him—which, from the rusty sound of his voice, she suspected was an achievement. Except what he had said was just as rude and dictatorial as his two-syllable answers.

‘Look, fella, it’s clear you want me here even less than I want to be here.’ She began again, holding on to her temper with an effort. From the rigid line of his jaw and the fierce suspicion in his gaze, she suspected losing her cool would only fuel his bad opinion of her. ‘But that doesn’t give you the right to insult me. Or imply that I tricked my way into your home when I was about to die of exposure last night.’

He leaned back against the worktable, crossed his arms over that wide chest—pumping up those magnificent biceps, annoyingly—and glared.

‘You wish to play games?’ he said, making even less sense now than he had before.

‘What games?’ she asked. Was that a trick question? Surely it had to be. As she had no fecking clue what games he was talking about.

‘I know why you are really here.’

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