Snowbound Seduction

She frowned. ‘I don’t have to explain what I’m doing to you.’

He bent his head and kissed her. Nothing touched but their mouths, but at the end of it Rachel’s shaky composure had crumbled, her breathing disjointed and a warm sweet ache spread through her body. Her eyes had shut of their own volition and when she dazedly opened them after his mouth had lifted she was almost surprised to find herself in the real world, the lights flashing by outside the window of the cab making her blink.

‘I’m only here for a while,’ Zac said throatily, ‘and it would be nice to spend my spare time with you. Say you’ll come.’

It was crazy, madness, and there were a million reasons to say no, to cut this ridiculous liaison right now, but breathing in the scented warmth of him and looking into the glittering tawny eyes, her mind stubbornly refused to come up with one. Her cheeks were burning and she knew she was trembling. She just hoped he didn’t know too. ‘I—I’ll think about it,’ she heard herself say as another part of her mind protested, No, no, no; wrong answer.

‘That’ll do for now.’ His gaze unlocked from hers and as he settled back in his seat, his arm once again loosely round her shoulders, Rachel tried to regulate her breathing.

The nightclub was plush and the meal and wine were excellent, the small parquet dance floor full of couples dancing to the live music most of the time. After that one blistering kiss in the taxi, Zac had metamorphosed into a genial and amusing dinner companion and more than once he had made her laugh until she had cried. As the level in the bottle of wine had diminished, Rachel had found it easier to relax. Zac had put himself out to be non-threatening and it was comfortable to go with the flow. Her fragile aplomb faltered a little when he asked her to dance between the second and third courses, but the band was playing a lively number and apart from his hand on her arm to and from the dance floor, they barely touched.

When she made a visit to the ladies cloakroom—a vision in chrome and satin with wall-to-wall full-length mirrors in the outer section—she had to acknowledge she was enjoying herself. Very much. Definitely too much, if she thought about it. But she wasn’t going to think about it, she determined, fiddling with her hair before applying more lipstick. As Zac had said, he was here for a short time and then gone. End of story. And as she had no intention of sleeping with him and had made that very clear, she had nothing to worry about.

She returned to the table to find her pudding—a seriously delicious red wine syllabub with blueberries—waiting for her, along with a glass of honey-sweet dessert wine. Reflecting that it was so nice to be wined and dined and cosseted, she downed the wine with reckless abandon and ate every scrap of the syllabub. It was then that Zac leant forward, his golden eyes soft and glowing in the muted lighting and his firm, faintly stern mouth smiling. ‘So,’ he murmured. ‘Made a decision on the weekend yet?’

CHAPTER FIVE

‘YOU’RE doing what?’ Jennie squealed, she and Susan staring at Rachel, their breakfast forgotten. ‘Did I hear right?’

‘I’m going to a house party in the country with Zac for the weekend,’ Rachel repeated, knowing she’d gone as red as a beetroot. ‘It’s nothing heavy. A business colleague took pity on him, being away from home and all that, and Zac invited me along as a friend. He’s picking me up here after work and we’re driving down to somewhere near Guildford.’

‘Right.’ Susan recovered first. ‘Sounds great. It’s just that things seem to be moving fast and it’s not like you.’

None of this was like her, Rachel reflected miserably. In the cold light of day she was having second thoughts, but the deed was done. She’d agreed to spend the weekend with him and that was that. ‘Things aren’t moving in the way you mean,’ she insisted quietly. ‘I told you, I’m going as a friend, that’s all.’

‘Right,’ Susan said again, but Jennie was less diplomatic.

‘A friend?’ she hooted. ‘Cinders, a girl’s friends with geek types or gay men or happily married guys, none of which Zac is. What are the sleeping arrangements?’ she added. ‘Are you sharing a room? I bet you are, aren’t you?’

Rachel shook her head. ‘Absolutely not. I checked.’

‘Sure?’ Jennie surveyed her disbelievingly.

‘I told you.’

‘All right, all right.’ Jennie held up her hands before reaching for her toast. ‘But take your chastity belt just in case, that’s all I’m saying.’ She rolled her eyes expressively.

Rachel laughed, she couldn’t help it. ‘No need for that, you know me.’

‘Ah, but do you know Zac? Or more to the point, do you know yourself around Zac? One thing’s for sure, Cinders, he’s not your normal run-of-the-mill male. I’ve met a few guys with that extra wow factor but Zac’s in a league of his own. Funny to think I tagged after him and my brothers as a child, isn’t it? He can remember I was a bit of a tomboy and never wanted to play with the girls.’

Susan snorted. ‘I find nothing surprising ab

out that. I bet you flirted with the doctor who delivered you.’

Jennie smiled happily. ‘Probably. I just like men.’

And men liked Jennie, in spite of the way she treated them. Or was it because of it? Rachel thought with a little sigh. Whatever, she wished just a smidgen of Jennie’s disposition could brush off on her. It would make life so much easier.

She thought the same thing at various intervals throughout the day, her stress level ratcheting up minute by minute as she considered the next forty-eight hours. How could you view something as daunting and thrilling at the same time? Be wildly excited with anticipation one moment and thinking up ways to get out of it the next?

When she realised she’d read an item of correspondence three times and still not taken it in, she pulled herself together. Glancing at her watch, she saw she had a couple of hours left before leaving work and she needed to put her full mind to what she was doing. She’d virtually wasted the day as it was.

When she left the brightly lit, centrally heated confines of the office building, the air was so cold it made her gasp. The weather forecast had predicted a particularly icy spell but after a poor damp summer and even damper autumn Rachel didn’t mind the cold. She breathed in long and deeply, relishing the bite of the frosty air and the way it cancelled out the smell of traffic fumes and other city odours. Everyone was bemoaning the fact that the experts were saying it was going to be a hard winter this year, but after several mild ones she felt some icy weather would kill off all the bugs and cleanse the struggling environment. And Christmas was better when it was cold somehow.

Rachel wrinkled her nose at herself as she began to walk. How she’d feel if the worse happened and she had to trudge to work through inches of snow for weeks on end she didn’t know, but snow was so pretty, magical in its way.

She endeavoured to keep her mind off the imminent weekend by striding out and concentrating on a brisk walk home, but her stomach was host to a legion of butterflies. Jennie’s nonchalant words that morning had struck a nerve that had bothered her more than a little. Did she know herself around Zac? She didn’t have to think about the answer. Until a few days ago she would have sworn on oath that primal, uncontrollable sexual desire was something she would never have to worry about. But she hadn’t met Zac then. And if he’d been a fairly normal, nine-to-five guy who had returned her feelings and with whom she could have envisaged some sort of future, she’d be over the moon right now. But he wasn’t, and she wasn’t.