It took a few seconds of crazy blinking before she realised that the immovable object was Gabriel. He stepped back, hoisted Rosa off her feet and carried her into the kitchen and, voice high, Izzy couldn’t help demanding what the heck he was doing there.
She was shivering with sudden cold, angry that he had surprised her, angry that she had been thinking about him non-stop, and angry that he clearly hadn’t been thinking about her because there was not the remotest hint ofanythingwhen he slowly turned round to look at her.
He looked cool, collected and inscrutable as he glanced at her while whipping a towel from one of the drawers and clumsily wrapping it around Rosa, who had curled up against him like an insect burrowing for safety.
‘Have you forgotten?’ he asked wryly. ‘This happens to be my house. I’m going to take Rosa up.’ He paused, expression veiled. ‘You should change, get out of those wet things. We can debrief later, once Rosa is settled.’
‘I think I’ll have an early night, if you don’t mind.’ Izzy knew that she was overreacting to the shock of seeing him when she hadn’t expected to and to her own stupid thoughts about what he had said, what they had done and how quickly he had moved past it all while she had continued mentally to chew it all over like a dog with a bone. She waspiqued.Pathetic.
‘Of course.’ He was already moving off, his pristine suit wet from Rosa dripping all over him. ‘In that case, I’ll see you in the morning.’
CHAPTER SIX
SHECOULDN’TSLEEP. What started as darkening skies, a rumble of thunder and a sudden downpour developed into a full-blown storm as the night wore on.
Izzy had closed all windows yet the force of the rain battering against them made her wonder whether the next sound she heard would be the shattering of glass.
Plus, she was starving.
She’d vanished up to her suite the evening before, head held high, smarting from the way she had allowed that man to climb into her head. That was all well and good but now, here she was, at a little after two in the morning, and the rumbling of her tummy was doing a great job of overpowering the sound of the rain pelting down.
Wide awake, she eased herself off her bed and wondered whether she should call Evelyn and find out if the older woman was okay. Was this sort of dramatic weathera thingin these parts of America? Would she be sleeping peacefully through the commotion because she was used to it? Would a phone call in the early hours of the morning to check she was okay have the opposite result, sending her into a state of blind panic?
In the end, she decided not to call. She would head down to the kitchen and get herself something to eat and something hot to drink. Why not? She was starving and she wasn’t going to get back to sleep any time soon.
Despite the storm raging outside, it wasn’t cold inside the house. She didn’t possess a dressing gown and, rather than go to the bother of putting on jeans and a T-shirt for a midnight raid on the fridge, she crept downstairs in her pyjamas. Although her ‘pyjamas’ actually consisted of a pair of tiny shorts festooned with cartoon characters and a sleeveless vest which she had bought years ago from the boy’s section of a department store in London.
She didn’t bother with bedroom slippers and tiptoed like a thief in the night. The vast house was in complete darkness, and it took a little while for her eyes to adjust, but she was familiar with the layout now and working her way down to the kitchen wasn’t a problem.
She imagined her mother doing this very thing when she’d been a kid but then she realised that the house would have been much smaller. The rush of nostalgia she had hoped to feel when she had embarked on this trip to Napa Valley hadn’t materialised to the degree she had hoped and now, against all odds, she had come to associate this place with Gabriel and Rosa. Their story had eclipsed her mother’s presence.
Their story ran the risk of eclipsingeverything, including the very reason she was here, under this roof. Saving the cottage had taken a back seat as she had become involved with Rosa. What was Gabriel going to do? He never mentioned it, aside from that one and only time when he had informed her that the man Evelyn had spotted on the grounds had been hired a while back to inspect the outlying property.
Was he still thinking about whether to buy or not? To chuck Evelyn out on her ears with a pat on her back and a guilt-salvaging cheque with which to find herself somewhere else? Was he just conveniently using her to help with Rosa? Was stringing her along with vague promises that were never going materialise simply his way of getting her on board while he was nanny-less? He was ruthless, but how ruthless was he?
And had he actually meant it when he’d said that he found her attractive? Beyond temptation? Or had she simply been giving off some weird pheromones at the time which had prompted him to kiss her because he was a red-blooded male? Men, as it was well known, weren’t fussy when it came to kissing women who wanted to be kissed.
All those thoughts were whirring round in her head as she peered into the fridge in search of food. She didn’t hear a thing and she would have been clueless if the lights hadn’t been slammed on, causing her to jerk back, utterly losing her balance which was unfortunate when she was holding a bottle of milk in one hand and a jar of jam in the other.
Both were catapulted into the air and crashed to the ground in a flurry of splintered glass, oozing red jam and a spreading white lake of milk.
In the middle of the chaos, Izzy did her best to struggle to her feet while holding on to the last vestige of her dignity.
Gabriel.
Bare-chested and in a pair of pale grey jogging bottoms.
‘What the hell?’
Izzy wanted to wail. Instead, she glared. She was marooned in the middle of splintered glass, wet from spilled milk and utterly mortified.
‘Don’t move, for God’s sake.’ He left the kitchen at speed to return seconds later in a pair of loafers.
Izzy hadn’t budged. She could scarcely breathe, far less get her leaden limbs to work.
When she thought it couldn’t get worse, it did, as he stepped onto the glass and scooped her up in an easy movement while she prayed for the ground to open up and swallow her.
She looped her arms around his neck and was instantly flooded with all those taboo thoughts that had plagued her during the night.
