Free A Tempestuous Temptation by Cathy Williams

people.
    ‘Well … thank you for that. I … I’d like to get changed now.’ She addressed the wall and the dressing table in front of her, and heard him slap his thighs with his hands and stand up. ‘Did you manage to get any sleep at all?’
    ‘None to speak of,’ Luiz admitted.
    ‘You must be exhausted.’
    ‘I don’t need much sleep.’
    ‘Well, perhaps you should go and grab a few hours before we start on the last leg of this journey.’ It would be nice if the ground could do her a favour and open up and swallow her whole.
    ‘No point.’
    Aggie looked at him in consternation. ‘What do youmean that there’s no point? It would be downright foolhardy for you to drive without sleep, and I can’t share any of the driving with you.’
    ‘We’ve covered that. There’s no point because it’s gone two-thirty in the afternoon, it’s already dark and the snow’s heavier.’ Luiz strode towards the window and pulled back the curtains to reveal never-ending skies the colour of lead, barely visible behind dense, relentlessly falling snow. ‘It would be madness to try and get anywhere further in weather like this. I’ve already booked the rooms for at least another night. Might be more.’
    ‘You can’t!’ Aggie sat up, dismayed. ‘I thought I’d be back at work on Monday! I can’t just
disappear
. This is the busiest time of the school year!’
    ‘Too bad,’ Luiz told her flatly. ‘You’re stuck. There’s no way I intend to turn around and try and get back to London. And, while you’re busy worrying about missing a few classes and the Nativity play, spare a thought for me. I didn’t think that I’d be covering half the country in driving snow in an attempt to rescue my niece before she does something stupid.’
    ‘Meaning that your job’s more important than mine?’ Aggie was more comfortable with this: an argument. Much more comfortable than she was with feverishly thinking about him undressing her, taking care of her, putting her to bed and playing the good guy. ‘Typical! Why is it that rich people always think that what they do is more important than what everyone else does?’ She glared at him as he stood by the door, impassively watching her.
    For one blinding moment, it occurred to her that she was in danger of seeing beyond the obvious differences between them to the man underneath. If she could list all the things she disliked about him on paper, it would be easy to keep her distance and to fill the spaces betweenthem with hostility and resentment. But to do that would be to fall into the trap of being as black-and-white in her opinions as she had accused him of being.
    She paled and her heartbeat picked up in nervous confusion. Had he been working his charm on her from the very beginning? When he had drawn grudging laughs from her and held her reluctantly spellbound with stories of his experiences in foreign countries; when he had engaged her interest in politics and world affairs, while Maria and Mark had been loved up and whispering to each other, distracted by some shared joke they couldn’t possibly resist. Had she already begun to see beyond the cardboard cut-out she wanted him to be?
    And, stuck together in a car with him, here in this bed and breakfast. Would an arrogant, pompous, single-minded creep really have helped her the way he had the night before, not laughing once at her inappropriate behaviour? Keeping watch over her even though it meant that he hadn’t got a wink of sleep? She had to drag out the recollection that he had offered her money in return for his niece; that he was going to offer her brother money to clear off; that liking or not liking someone was not something that mattered to him because he was like a juggernaut when it came to getting exactly what he wanted. He had loads of charm when it suited him, but underneath the charm he was ruthless, heartless and emotionless.
    She felt a lot calmer once that message had got to her wayward, rebellious brain