‘Not really.’
‘Is that the best you can do?’
She laughed huskily. ‘No regrets.’ Not yet, anyway, she amended silently to herself.
‘Where do we go from here?’ he asked, and she said lightly,
‘To the logs? So that we can get a fire going? It’ll be daytime soon.’ She didn’t want to discuss where they were going because she knew where they were going, and that was precisely nowhere. They might have slept together, they might have shared the ultimate bond between a man and a woman, but their paths were not parallel, and they still stood on opposite sides of a huge divide. Ross didn’t want the things that she wanted out of life: he was a wanderer, a predator who never cared to stay too long in one place, while she wanted stability, needed it.
Their worlds were also light-years apart, and there was no point in kidding herself that their making love had altered that in any way. He moved in circles which she had only ever glimpsed from the outside, and when and if he did decide to settle down he would never settle down with her. That was the way it was. She had had many lessons on the nature of it from her mother over the years and Ellis had simply driven the point home.
But she hadn’t been lying. There were no regrets. Later would come the time for those.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT WAS light when Abigail next opened her eyes. The fire was roaring, and she had kicked off the blankets in her sleep. She sat up, rubbing her eyes, blearily noticing that it was still snowing. It took a minute or two before she remembered where she was and what she was doing here, downstairs in front of the fire, when she should have been upstairs in her own bed.
‘Up at last, I see.’ Ross’s drawl from the direction of the kitchen was lazily amused, and she turned round, as memories of their lovemaking flooded back into her head.
He walked across to her in his jeans and T-shirt and handed her a cup of coffee, which she took warily, not meeting his eyes.
‘I see it’s still snowing,’ she said neutrally, and he laughed, a low, sexy laugh that made her blood run hot.
‘Is that the best you can do for conversation after last night?’
He twirled a few strands of hair around one long finger, then cupped her face with his hand.
Abigail raised worried eyes to his.
‘I’m not sure…’ she began.
‘Yes, you are.’
‘You don’t know what I’m going to say.’
‘Of course I do. You’re going to tell me that you’re not sure about last night, that things look different in the morning, that our lovemaking was another one of those errors of judgement which seem to be your favourite excuse for anything you do that you might possibly regret.’
She smiled shyly at him. ‘I’m not sure if I like what you’re saying about my personality. One minute I’m an enigma, the next I’m a predictable old bore.’
‘I simply know you better than you think,’ Ross murmured, stroking her cheek with his thumb.
She sighed and drank some more of the coffee. In fact, she didn’t know what to think or what to feel. She had given herself to him the night before, without reservations, and she didn’t regret having done so, but she was too sensible to see it as anything other than a fling for him.
‘You analyse things too much,’ he said huskily, his eyes warm. ‘You should just sit back and enjoy life.’
‘Don’t you mean lie back and enjoy it?’ Abigail asked, and he grinned, bending his head to kiss her, a slow, lingering kiss that made her think that he had a point. Why ask uncomfortable questions when she could just keep silent and go with the flow?
‘I should get up,’ she murmured against his mouth, not moving, and he drew back to look at her.
‘Why? It’s still snowing, there’s still no electricity, and there’s no point trying to be industrious and work out some plan for leaving this place because we won’t be able to. At least not yet.’ He sat down on the floor beside her.
‘I have to get changed,’ she protested.
‘You will. In due course.’ He kissed her again and traced a feathery line along her lips with his tongue. While he kissed her, he began to undo the buttons of her pyjama top and she groaned in heady anticipation.
‘I never thought,’ he muttered a little unsteadily, ‘that I could find old-fashioned, striped pyjamas so damned sexy.’
‘They’re not meant to be sexy,’ Abigail breathed, laughing a little, ‘they’re meant to be sensible.’
‘You don’t have a very sensible body.’
He held her breast in his hand and began massaging it gently, and she tilted her head back, balancing her body on her outstretched hands behind her.
He kissed her again, and she wrapped her arm around his neck, pulling him down beside her and slipping her hand underneath the T-shirt to stroke his chest. He moaned as her hand travelled downwards and toyed across his stomach, playing teasingly against the waistband of his trousers, and she laughed under her breath.
‘Enjoying yourself, are you?’ he asked, breathing quickly, and she smiled.
‘Wasn’t that your advice?’
‘You witch.’ He began kissing her urgently, his mouth hard and demanding on hers. She squirmed out of her clothes and moved his hand from her breast to her stomach, opening her legs slightly so that he could explore further.
He was an extraordinary lover. She had little experience, but he made her feel as though every sigh, every little act, was giving him immense pleasure. When he guided her hand to his arousal, she could feel it throb between her fingers, against the palm of her hand, and was amazed to find that that gave her a heady sense of power.
How could she even begin to think rationally when her body was on fire and her mind was floating somewhere far above in the heavens?
He licked the full swell of her breast, then thrust deep into her, filling every pore of her being.
With a little cry of pleasure, she wrapped her legs around his body and felt his mouth crush against hers in a fierce, hungry caress.
It was an amazing way to wake up, she thought afterwards, and she looked at him through her lashes.
‘What are you thinking?’ he asked lazily, and she half smiled.
‘What happens next.’ Her voice was light and careless, but her body had tensed as she waited for his reply.
‘What normahy happens next between lovers,’ he murmured.
‘What about your girlfriend?’ Abigail asked bluntly, and he frowned.
‘Fiona?’ There was a hint of impatience in his voice, but she wasn’t going to let that send her skittering back into silence with the question unanswered.
‘You have more than one?’ she asked, keeping her voice light and even, and her expression as carefully uninterested as she could make it.
‘There was never anything serious between us. I’ve already told you that.’ He shrugged and ran his fingers through his hair.
‘She’s under the impression that you two are destined for wedded bliss,’ Abigail informed him bluntly, and he burst out laughing.
‘She said that to you?’
‘Yes, she did.’
‘Odd. Why would she say something like that to you? Well, she’s wildly off course,’ he said, standing up, then turning towards the fire to warm his hands. Abigail looked at the long, straight line of his back, the muscular length of his legs, the powerful forearms, and shivered with a mixture of dread and desire. Had it been stupid to have taken what she had so desperately wanted? she asked herself.
He turned to face her and she looked away, sitting up and slipping on her clothes.
‘Is she?’ Her voice was casual, and he couldn’t see her face because she was looking down while she buttoned up the pyjama top.
‘Fiona thinks I’m a good catch. I told her from the start that I’m not about to commit myself to any woman. She knew the rules of the game.’ He shoved on his trousers, but didn’t bother with the T-shirt, and moved to inspect the weather outside from one of the windows. ‘What kind of car did you get to drive up here? Four-wheel-drive? Not that there’s much chance of us going anywhere just at the moment.’
Abigail looked at him and stood up, stretching, and his eyes wandered the length of her body in open appraisal.
‘Why don’t you believe in marriage?’ she asked conversationally, stooping to pick up the blankets and then folding them neatly, concentrating very hard on the task.
He didn’t answer and when she looked up at him it was to find his eyes narrowed speculatively on her.
‘It doesn’t figure in my plans at the moment,’ he drawled. ‘Why the interest?’
‘No reason.’
‘You’re not looking for a replacement for your boyfriend, are you?’ he asked silkily, his dark face unsmiling.
‘Of course not.’ She felt sure that that was true, even though she had a second of doubt.
‘Good.’ He smiled, his lips curving, and moved across to her. ‘You needn’t be jealous of Fiona,’ he murmured into her ear, putting both his arms around her waist.
‘I’m not,’ Abigail lied. ‘I feel sorry for her, but I’m not jealous of her.’ The accusation might be true but it made her bristle to think that he suspected her of being jealous on his account.
Ross looked down at her, taken aback. ‘Why on earth do you feel sorry for her?’ he asked with a puzzled frown.