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‘You think this situation is funny?’
‘No.’ Alice had no idea what had come over her, because it wasn’t like her to be sarcastic, and it certainly wasn’t like her to be rude. ‘And... I suppose I ought to thank you for letting me in to your house.’
‘I had no choice.’
‘Are you here...er...on your own?’
She blushed as his eyebrows winged upwards and he shot her a slow smile of cool amusement that transformed the sharp, arrogant edges of his face so that he went from drop-dead gorgeous to stupidly sexy.
‘I’m afraid so,’ he drawled. ‘Absolutely no handy chaperones in the form of wife and kids but, before you have a fainting fit, I can assure you that you’re one hundred percent safe with me. I couldn’t be less interested in some fool who’s ventured out in a blizzard thinking that it might be a bit of a challenge. Follow me.’
‘Follow you?’
‘You’ll have to borrow some of my clothes.’
Alice laughed incredulously. She couldn’t help it. ‘You really think I’m going to fit into anything you have here?’
‘You’ll have to use your ingenuity,’ he said, pausing right in front of her, close enough for her pick up the clean, woody masculine scent of whatever aftershave he was wearing. ‘Spending more time in wet clothes isn’t an option.’
‘No,’ Alice replied, hackles rising again. ‘I suppose getting a bout of flu and ending up bedridden is only slightly less troublesome for you than me getting lost in a blizzard in search of a small town somewhere further down the slopes.’
‘You said it.’
‘That’s not very nice!’
‘I do “honest” over “nice”.’
‘I’d never have guessed.’ She met his impassive stare and then sighed. ‘I’m sorry. I’m being very rude, and that’s not like me. Of course I’ll borrow some of your clothes. I don’t want to get ill because I’m too proud to accept your help.’
She smiled with genuine, tentative warmth. Why was she reacting to him like this—as though he had reached deep into part of her she hadn’t known existed and turned on a switch that had sent her emotions into some weird, puzzling place? He was a perfect stranger, for heaven’s sake!
Even when she had broken up with Simon, she had done so in a calm, measured way. They had talked. She had been upset, but she hadn’t felt out of control; feeling out of control just wasn’t in her DNA. She wasn’t cutting or sarcastic by nature. She had grown up in a vicarage and had learnt from a young age to be thoughtful of other people.
Over the years there had been many, many broken people who had dropped in to see her father, who was the kindest man on the planet. She had learnt to be patient and to listen to whatever they wanted to say if her father happened to be busy at the time and hadn’t been able to see them straightaway. She had sat serenely though more gossip about who was doing what to the flower arrangements than she could shake a stick at.
She was equable by nature. Escaping from the chalet to think had been impulsive for her, but maybe the conversation about engagements had tapped into a depth of regret she really hadn’t known was there.
At any rate, the way she was reacting to this guy was a completely alien to her. Was it because he was so good-looking, so arrogant? So unlike any guy she had ever met in her life before? Had she surrounded herself so much withordinarythat this guy, so far away from ordinary, unsettled her in ways she couldn’t deal with?
‘I think it’s time for introductions,’ Mateo said gruffly. He shoved his hands in the pockets of the joggers, dragging them down just a bit so that now they rode low on his hips, and tilted his head to the side.
A woman, banging on his front door, criticising his attitude even though he’drescuedher from a blizzard by letting her in in the first place? Not at all what he had been expecting. He was so accustomed to obedience, and so tuned in to women who were always eager to please, that he had been lost for words at the sheer nerve of this unexpected intruder blown in on the wind.
Even more annoying for Mateo was the fact that there was an appeal to her that bypassed his justifiable displeasure at her presence in his chalet, in hissanctuary. She’d followed him into the kitchen and he turned around to a curvy little sex kitten who had stripped down to her thermal layers, none of which could quite conceal the fullness of her breasts or the narrow hand-span of her waist. She’d also dragged off the woolly hat to reveal a spill of long copper curls that tangled over her shoulders and made the breath catch in his throat.
He was in danger of staring, and that was a reaction that was both foreign and unacceptable to him. Mateo’s life was highly controlled. As far as he was concerned, surprises were rarely welcome, particularly when it came to the opposite sex. No surprises at all really worked for him. He went for women who fitted a mould: leggy blondes who enjoyed all the things that money could buy and, even more, all the doors that a powerful guy like him could open: doors to a social scene that tended to bore him but usually thrilled them to death. They demanded no more than he was willing to provide: fun without commitment.
Right now, Mateo was taking a breather from relationships of any kind, so it was intensely irritating to find his eyes being drawn to a woman who wasn’t even anything like the ones he usually invited into his life. Said woman was currently looking at him with guarded eyes, waiting for him to introduce himself, as opposed to standing and staring like an idiot.
‘I’m Mateo. And you are...?’
‘Alice. Alice Reynolds.’
‘Right. Now that we’ve covered that, I’ll get some clothes for you and show you to the bathroom...’ He paused and raked his fingers through his hair as she continued to look at him with huge, almond-shaped hazel eyes that somehow managed to dredge up something inside him that had no place in his tough, aggressive personality.
‘Look, I get that you might be a little alarmed at being in a strange place with a guy you don’t know, and I don’t want to be flippant about that—you’re perfectly safe here. There’s not much I can add to that; you’ll just have to trust me on that front. You haven’t told me what you’re doing in this part of the world, or who you’ve come with, but I have excellent connectivity here, and if you let me have your phone I can connect you so you can get in touch with whoever’s out there rustling up a search party to hunt you down.’
‘Oh! Would you believe that hadn’t even crossed my mind? Yes, please, that would be great.’