Free The Girl He'd Overlooked by Cathy Williams

father’s days when he had decided to join the local gym, which he had tried once only to declare that gyms were for idiots who should be out and about.
    ‘Clothes,’ she announced, back in the sitting room, where the open fire kept the room beautifully warm. ‘And first, painkillers.’ She handed him two tablets with a glass of water and watched as he reluctantly swallowed them.
    ‘You make a very good matron.’ He handed her the glass of water and sighed as he began to defrost.
    He grinned but she didn’t find it very amusing. He had been a complete fool. He had, as was his nature, been so supremely confident of his strength that it would never have occurred to him that sorting out a tree in driving snow might have been an impossible mission. He had worried her sick. And beyond both those things, she was stupidly annoyed to be compared to a
matron.
She privately and illogically rebelled against being the friend upon whom he could rely in a situation like this, the girl who wouldn’t baulk in a crisis and was used to the harsh easterly conditions, the tall, well-built girl who could tackle any physical situation with the best of them. She wanted to be seen as delicate and fragile and in need of manly protection, and then she was annoyed with herself for being pathetic. Old feelings that she thought she had left behind seemed to be waiting round every corner, eager to ambush the person she had become.
    ‘I’ll leave you to get into some fresh clothes,’ she said shortly. ‘And I’ll go and prepare us something to eat.’
    She turned to walk away and he reached out to catch her hand and tug her to face him.
    ‘In case you think I’m not grateful for your help, I am,’ he said softly.
    Jennifer didn’t say anything because he was absent-mindedlyrubbing his thumb on the underside of her wrist, and for the first time since she had been flung into his company she had no resources with which to fight the stirrings of desire she had been trying so hard to subdue. She could barely breathe.
    ‘I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been here.’
    ‘That’s all right,’ Jennifer croaked, then cleared her throat, while she wondered whether to snatch her hand out of his gently, delicately, caressing grasp.
    ‘I know you weren’t expecting to find me here when you arrived but I’m glad I was. I’ve missed you.’
    She wanted to shout at him that he shouldn’t use words like that, which made her fevered irrational brain start thinking all sorts of inappropriate things.
    ‘Have you missed
me
or was I replaced by your hectic life and new-found independence?’
    ‘I… I don’t know what you expect me to say to that, James…’ But she wondered whether this was his way of reasserting the balance between them, putting it back to that place where he could be certain that he knew where she stood, a place where the power balance was restored.
    ‘Of course—’ she pulled her hand away from him and took a step back ‘—I thought about you now and again and hoped that you were doing well. I meant to email you lots more than I actually did and I’m sorry about that…’
    He looked at her in unreadable silence, which she was the first to break.
    ‘I’ll leave you to change.’
    ‘I think it would probably be a good idea if I were to dry off a bit. It won’t take long, but it’ll be easier to get these clothes off if they aren’t damp.’
    ‘Makes sense.’ Her nerves were still all over the placeand those fabulous midnight-blue eyes roving over her flushed face felt as intimate as his thumb had on her wrist.
    ‘You’ve just come from outside. Sit for a while and get dry before you think of cooking.’
    ‘Well… maybe just for a few minutes…’ She sat on the chair closest to the fire and nervously looked at him. She had thought he hadn’t changed at all in the past four years but he had. There was a tough maturity about him that hadn’t yet crystallised when she had last seen him. His