Free Snowbound Seduction by Helen Brooks Page A

find nothing surprising about that. I bet you flirted with the doctor who delivered you.’
    Jennie smiled happily. ‘Probably. I just like men.’
    And men liked Jennie, in spite of the way she treated them. Or was it because of it? Rachel thought with a little sigh. Whatever, she wished just a smidgen of Jennie’s disposition could brush off on her. It would make life so much easier.
    She thought the same thing at various intervals throughout the day, her stress level ratcheting up minute by minute as she considered the next forty-eight hours. How could you view something as daunting and thrilling at the same time? Be wildly excited with anticipation one moment and thinking up ways to get out of it the next?
    When she realised she’d read an item of correspondence three times and still not taken it in, she pulled herself together. Glancing at her watch, she saw she had a couple of hours left before leaving work and she needed to put her full mind to what she was doing. She’d virtually wasted the day as it was.
    When she left the brightly lit, centrally heated confines of the office building, the air was so cold it made her gasp. The weather forecast had predicted a particularly icy spell but after a poor damp summer and even damper autumn Rachel didn’t mind the cold. She breathed in long and deeply, relishing the bite of the frosty air and the way it cancelled out the smell of traffic fumes and other city odours. Everyone was bemoaning the fact that the experts were saying it was going to be a hard winter this year, but after several mild ones she felt some icy weather would kill off all the bugs and cleanse the struggling environment. And Christmas was better when it was cold somehow.
    Rachel wrinkled her nose at herself as she began to walk. How she’d feel if the worse happened and she had to trudge to work through inches of snow for weeks on end she didn’t know, but snow was so pretty, magical in its way.
    She endeavoured to keep her mind off the imminent weekend by striding out and concentrating on a brisk walk home, but her stomach was host to a legion of butterflies. Jennie’s nonchalant words that morning had struck a nerve that had bothered her more than a little. Did she know herself around Zac? She didn’t have to think about the answer. Until a few days ago she would have sworn on oath that primal, uncontrollable sexual desire was something she would never have to worry about. But she hadn’t met Zac then. And if he’d beena fairly normal, nine-to-five guy who had returned her feelings and with whom she could have envisaged some sort of future, she’d be over the moon right now. But he wasn’t, and she wasn’t.
    And she wanted her first time to mean more than just a notch on a Giles-type bedpost.
    She stopped dead as the thought hit. She wasn’t seriously thinking about sleeping with Zac, was she? Of course she wasn’t. That would be emotional suicide and she didn’t have a death wish. She’d make sure her bedroom door was locked each night.
    A desultory flake of snow drifted in the wind as she began walking again, the cold nipping at her ears and nose. She sighed deeply. Nature was conspiring against her to make this a Christmas-card-perfect weekend. She didn’t doubt that by morning every tree and bush would have a fairy-tale coating of snow, the sky would be a clear cerulean blue and the air would be crisp and perfumed with winter. Zac’s colleague’s weekend place was absolutely bound to have huge log fires, oak beams and twinkly leaded windows and be set in its own magnificent grounds. It was written in the stars, she just knew it.
    Was she destined to meet men around Christmastime who would break her heart? Again she stopped, only to continue walking on in the next moment but now giving herself a good talking-to. Giles had not broken her heart, although she’d thought he had for a week or two until reason had