He smiled broadly at her show of enthusiasm—how could she ever have thought him cold and unapproachable?—and nodded toward an oak entertainment center. “Do you want to watch the weather on the news?”
She recalled how she’d asked for a radio to hear the weather and traffic report earlier, anxious to start planning her escape.
“What?” he asked when he saw her hesitancy. She glanced down as she shuffled the cards.
“Maybe later. I was thinking…I’m better at poker than hearts. Do you know how to play?”
His upraised eyebrows told her loud and clear—what do you think?
Angeline laughed and dealt the cards while he turned on a lamp, the light seeming like a priceless luxury since they’d been deprived of it for so long.
An hour later she tossed down her cards.
“All right. I give up. You’re even better at poker than you are at hearts.” She squinted at him as he raked in the cards. “Do you memorize the cards?”
There was no other way to account for his uncanny skill.
He grabbed a handful of the popcorn he’d made for them earlier and popped it into his mouth. “If I say yes, are you going to send the gaming commission after me?”
She whipped the blanket off her shoulders in a huffy gesture. When she realized that his lighthearted expression had faded and that he was staring at the front of her sweater, she felt her nipples tighten.
“You have a photographic memory,” she accused.
“There are worse crimes. More fun ones too.”
She didn’t know what to say to those volatile words uttered with that knowing, hot look in his blue eyes and that small, sexy smile of his.
She redirected her gaze to the frosted patio doors. “The snow doesn’t seem to have let up in the slightest.”
r />
“Are you going to tell Mitchell?”
Her gaze flew to his face at the unexpected question. She felt her pulse begin to throb in her neck in the tense seconds that followed.
“I…yes. I’m not the kind of person to lie about something like that. That doesn’t mean…it doesn’t necessarily mean there’s anything between us,” she fumbled.
“Who says? You?”
She gave a disgusted sound and stood. “I am half the equation, aren’t I? I just meant…well, you know. I’m not a child. It was just an impulsive, crazy thing. It was just the…the heat of the moment.” She sighed as she looked outside again, her irritability ebbing as quickly as it had come.
“Last night wasn’t a fluke, Angel.”
She met his stare. His anger hadn’t been piqued by hers. This time he watched her with a calm certitude that was nearly as unsettling as his irritation.
“How can you be sure?” she demanded.
“I just know.”
In order to avoid the temptation of Alex, she walked toward the patio doors. The chill in the room had been chased off by the furnace. She watched the snowflakes being whipped around by the fierce, howling wind.
“I wish I could take a walk.”
“It’ll be dark soon,” he replied. “If you need to stretch your muscles, why don’t you use my workout room? It’s in the basement. I already worked out this morning, so it’s all yours.”
“You must have been freezing down there, without the heat,” she mused as she watched the buffeted snowflakes.
“Only for the first five minutes or so. You won’t have to worry, though. It’ll have warmed up by now.”