Blowing on her fingers to warm them, Louisa gazed up at the upstairs windows but they were all firmly shut.
Worry started to gnaw at her brain again and she gave a shiver and mentally listed the options. She could stand still and wait for someone to turn up, but that could take for ever and would be of no help at all if he was really in trouble. Or she could give up on the whole idea and drive back to London, but that would mean being unemployed. And being on her own at Christmas. Not to mention letting Josh down when she’d promised she’d step in and help.
And, anyway, she couldn’t possibly leave before she knew that Mac was all right.
Which meant finding another way into the house so that she could check that he wasn’t lying in a heap somewhere.
Deciding that living in rural Cornwall meant being resourceful, she picked her way through the snow to the back of the house and immediately saw the open window.
Her eyes narrowed as she measured the space. Just large enough for her to wriggle through.
It had been a while since she’d used a window to gain access to a building but in this case it seemed like the only option. And she was expected so it could hardly be classed as breaking and entering, could it?
* * *
Mac heard the muffled thud the moment he switched off the shower. Someone was in the house.
He was being burgled.
Questioning the sense of tackling a burglar half-naked, he grabbed a towel from the heated rail and looped it round his hips before padding barefoot onto the landing to investigate.
There was another clatter and he winced. Whoever it was didn’t have a great future as a burglar.
Probably someone who knew he was a doctor and thought he might keep drugs on the premises. Some crazed addict looking for a fix?
His dark hair was wet from the shower and he raked it out of his eyes with an impatient hand before reaching for a hammer that he’d used a few days before to put up a shelf.
His dark eyes gleamed with anticipation and he walked softly downstairs, his feet leaving damp marks on the carpet. As he reached the bottom, he wondered whether it was better to take the man by surprise or make a din and warn him of his presence.
In the end he went for the surprise option. Growing up with a brother, he’d never been afraid of the physical. He was six feet two and he had a black belt in judo. He was pretty confident that he could take most people, even dressed only in a towel.
The noise came from the visitors’ toilet and Mac’s mouth tightened as he recalled the number of occasions he’d asked Nicola, the last and most determined of his housekeepers, to sort out a lock for that window. It hadn’t closed for months but it was one of the many things that she hadn’t managed to fix before she’d walked out on him. Once he’d made it clear that he wasn’t interested in a relationship it had appeared that she was no longer interested in working for him.
And his house was falling apart. He spent too long at the hospital to do more than the most basic maintenance and this house needed far more than basic.
And now he was paying the price.
Shifting his weight to prepare for a fight, Mac pushed open the door to the toilet and pounced, his weight taking the other person down hard. ‘Don’t move!’
r /> There was a shocked gasp from beneath him. ‘How can I possibly move? You weigh a ton! And you’re soaking wet!’
Registering a distinctly feminine voice, Mac gave a grunt and shifted his weight slightly, his hands grasping hers firmly and holding them above her head. He didn’t intend to drop his guard just because his intruder was a woman.
He stared down into the widest, brownest eyes he’d ever seen and felt something stir inside him. She was soft and yielding under him and she smelt like a dream. Clouds of dark hair dusted with snow framed a perfect heart-shaped face and her soft cheeks were pink from the cold. And she was laughing.
‘OK, muscle man—are you going to lie on top of me all day?’ She sounded slightly breathless as she gazed up at him, her smile almost as wide as her face, ‘because I ought to warn you that you’re making it jolly hard for me to breathe.’
He rolled away from her, thinking that she looked nothing like a burglar.
She looked like something straight out of a bad boy’s dream.
Reminding himself that he wasn’t interested in becoming involved with a woman, especially one who had just wriggled through his toilet window, he frowned down at her.
‘What the hell are you doing, climbing through my window? You were looking for a doctor?’
‘Well, in a manner of speaking, I was looking for a doctor, yes.’ She struggled to sit upright, her long legs going in different directions like a foal who still hadn’t quite got the hang of standing. ‘But I’m not a patient. Or at least I wasn’t until you landed on top of me. Now I’m not so sure. I think there’s a distinct possibility that I’m injured. Possibly seriously. Were you planning to use that hammer on me?’
‘Only if you proved to be especially violent,’ Mac said dryly, placing the hammer on the window-seat and holding out a hand to help her up. Her skirt had ridden up almost to her bottom and he found his attention snagged by her legs. She had fabulous legs. ‘Do you always climb through windows when you’re looking for a doctor?’