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Dear Santa, please scoop me up and get me out of here. I’m trying to be nice, even though I badly want to be naughty. Give me a break.

“I’m exhausted.” She injected an exaggerated degree of weariness into her voice. “I can barely string a thought together let alone words. It’s never good to talk when you’re tired. Let’s wait until a better moment when we’re rested.”

He sighed. “You’re good at avoidance, aren’t you?”

“When I do something, I like to do it well.” She was trying to keep it light, to skim along the surface.

“I prefer to deal with things. Talk about them. It saves misunderstandings I find.”

It was her turn to sigh. Might as well get it over with.

“Okay!” She sat up and flipped the light back on. “Let’s talk about it, if you insist, although it’s really not that big a deal. It was just a silly message, that’s all. I was being playful. It wasn’t serious. And yes, it’s mortifying that I sent it to everyone instead of just Chloe, and that some people saw it before I deleted it, but can we forget it?”

“Message?” He was frowning at her. “What message?”

She gulped. He hadn’t read the message? If that was the case then it meant she’d managed to delete it before he’d seen it. Of course, there was always a chance someone else would mention it to him, but they’d be back at work by then and not trapped together. It wouldn’t be anywhere near as embarrassing.

“It— I—”

“What message, Izzy?”

And now she was in a difficult position. If he hadn’t seen it then she definitely didn’t want to confess.

“It was nothing. So if you didn’t see the message,” she said carefully, “what is it that you want to talk about?”

“Seriously?” His gaze held hers for a long time. “You’re seriously asking me that?”

She swallowed and pulled the covers more tightly around her. “You’re talking about—”

“What happened in the summer. Yes. Of course.”

“But we—”

“Never talked about it. I know. And I think it’s time we did. I tried to raise it in the car, and then you crashed.”

“I’m sorry about the bad timing.”

She didn’t want to talk about that night. She was trying to wipe it from her mind. She didn’t know why he kept persisting. Why not let it go?

She felt as if someone had set fire to her cheeks. She wanted to open the window, reach for some of the snow that was still falling and slap it on her face to cool it down. “It was one night, Jason.”

“That’s right.” His voice was soft. “One night.”

One night that had rocked her whole world. One night that had shaken her up and tempted her to go in directions she’d been determined not to go.

“And it was four months ago.”

“Three months, three weeks, four days.”

Three months, three weeks, four days and about two hours.

Had he been counting, too?

She gulped. “We were both a bit—”

“What?”

She sneaked a glance at him. “You’d had a drink.”