All my reasons for coming here suddenly felt incredibly stupid. Like, my thesis still held value, but why did I have to come now? What was the rush? A broken heart was such a bad reason to run away from everything I knew and everyone I loved. Scottish islands weren’t a miracle cure for everyone’s need to trample all over every romantic bone in my body. I couldn’t believe it had taken a snowstorm and sitting at death’s icy door for me to realise that.
I’d never see my dad again. Or Lucas. I even kind of missed Jamie, even though he’d been an arsehole. Before that,he’d been my friend. Now I’d never get to tell him what a dickhead he was ever again.
I scrubbed at my face, the frozen tears unbearably itchy. I blinked, and the perfect white nothingness was broken by a line of black. Ducking my head, I swiped at my eyes to clear the lash away before it could sneak onto my cornea and plague me.
When I raised my head, the line of black was still there. But it wasn’t just a line any more. It was a solid column made up of blues and reds, topped with black. With moving parts and everything.
‘I’m here,’ I shouted. ‘I’m here, I’m here.’
My heart burst from my chest as the column moved closer and all its details resolved from a snow-blurred mess into a man.
My mouth fell open. Becausefucking hell.Whoever rescued me from this snowy hell was always going to be my favourite person until the end of time, but this guy was perfection. I’d thought Captain Errol and Bonnie the Abandoner were hotties, but this man made them look like trolls.
He had to be related to Bonnie. They had the same jet-black hair—his in an untidy tangle that swung down over his forehead—and intimidatingly thick eyebrows. Half of his face was covered by a close-trimmed beard that did nothing to hide his sharp jawline and clear, golden skin. He was musclier than his sister, broader and manlier. He looked like he could throw me over his shoulder and carry me to his hidden cabin without breaking a sweat.
I wouldn’t mind it if he did. He would look good sweaty.
I groaned as he came closer. I might have admitted my plan to learn to be alone here might have been a teensy bit stupid and a terrible reason to impulsively push forwards mytrip, but it was my plan. The only one I had. The single defence between my heart and the endless queue of people ready to stomp on it.
‘Not another one,’ I moaned, as Hottie McHotterson crouched in front of me. Bonnie’s brother’s name might have slipped my mind during the whole terrified-I-would-die escapade.
His eyebrows drew together. ‘Sorry?’
‘I wasn’t talking to you,’ I snapped. I could be grateful for him saving my life and mad he would look so damn good while doing it. I contained multitudes.
‘Right.’ He looked around, like there might be someone else on this remote mountainside I was conversing with.
‘Can you help me up?’ I asked, since this guy was here to rescue me but apparently wasn’t so good at the actual rescuing part. I was reasonably sure it involved helping me to shelter long before any of my limbs turned to ice.
McHotterson stood, then bent over me. I would have enjoyed the rough treatment as his hands slotted around my torso more if standing up didn’t cause a riot of agony down my legs.
Barely vertical, I slumped into my rescuer, saved from becoming a heap on the ground by his strong arms.
‘Shit,’ I mumbled into his chest. His warm chest. The nuzzling that ensued as he adjusted his hold was involuntary. Nothing had ever felt as good as rubbing my frozen face on this stranger’s skin-warmed shirt.
It must have been pretty obvious I couldn’t stand or be helpful as we made our way to safety, since McHotterson huffed—the action pressing my nose further into the glorious warmth of his chest—and swung me into a bridal hold.
My face fell naturally into the dip between his neck andshoulder as my claw-hands scrabbled at his shirt. It was a sign of how much the cold had affected my brain—and I refused to think too deeply about how close I might have actually been to freezing to death before my unfairly attractive rescuer arrived—that I didn’t question how he planned to carry both me and my stuff. I didn’t say anything. Instead I breathed heavily into his blessedly warm skin, reassured by the tang of sweat that he was real and here and had saved me.
A crash, and the snow stopped. Blearily, I raised my head. Correction: the snow continued pelting its annoying way down outside, but my rescuer and I were now in a cabin. The most wondrous cabin I had ever seen. From a brief glimpse of the main room, I spotted a comfy-looking sofa and a pile of blankets and a glowing fire.
I groaned as McHotterson carried me past all that and into a smaller room. More blankets and a bed that looked like it would win all the awards for being the softest place ever, but it wasn’t my destiny to burrow into them either. My saviour hauled me into a bathroom, complete with a gleaming white separate bath and shower, and lowered me onto a wooden chair.
I honestly didn’t whimper as he pulled back. No one would have described the sound that left me as anything other than entirely manly and self-sufficient.
‘You need to get warm,’ McHotterson explained, clocking my evident concern at him taking his delicious body heat away like the worst cartoon villain. ‘Can you strip?’
My dick made a valiant effort to involve itself in proceedings, before shrugging its shoulders and admitting blood was needed far more in other areas of my body right now. Who could hear those three words from such a perfect human specimen and not react?
Blood had no trouble flooding my cheeks when it quickly became apparent that in addition to my inability to follow roads and recognise houses, I also couldn’t de-clothe myself. My abused hands had given up, my fingers reduced to weak twigs that were good for nothing.
McHotterson turned from where he’d been testing the temperature of water as it streamed into the tub. His eyebrows—the most expressive part of his face—developed a pinched line between them.
‘Let me.’ He crossed the room and dropped to his knees between my legs.
My dick didn’t even try this time. Traitor. Or saviour, since this guy was going to help me take off my clothes like a toddler and a boner would make the whole situation a hundred times more uncomfortable.
He paused before making contact with the zipper of my fleece, his eyes flicking up to mine. It was impossible to pick my favourite of his features but if someone had a gun to my head and was screaming that I had to choose, his eyes would probably edge out the rest. They were light brown, hazel or something, but also kind of green with flares of orangey yellow.
