‘Xanthos,’ she said, her thin whisper hopeful on the frozen air.
‘Yes,’ he said simply.
She reached out to clutch his arm for support—as if without it she might slip to the snowy ground. Was that why he clamped his fingers over hers, to anchor her—or was it simply because he wanted the opportunity to touch her again? Her hand felt tiny beneath his palm and the touch of her gloved fingers pressing against his jacket made it seem like a double dose of sensuality.
They watched in silence as the vehicle slowly made its way towards them, not wanting to jinx it. As if words might reveal the Jeep to be nothing but an apparition—a wintry mirage which would merge into the bleached landscape and disappear. But the sounds grew louder. The hefty chains on the thick tyres were making easy work of the frozen road. Eventually it bumped its way down onto the airfield and the craziest thing was that all Xanthos wanted was to pull Bianca into his arms and kiss the breath out of her. To ask if they could have a few minutes alone, so that he could take her back inside that hut and do what he should have done last night.
But he gently disengaged her fingers and stepped forward as a man about his age jumped out of the passenger seat. Framed by a fur-trimmed hood, his face creased in a wide smile as he spoke in accented English.
‘Bianca Forrester and Xanthos Antoniou, I presume?’ He grinned. ‘We’ve been looking for you.’
CHAPTER FIVE
‘IAMNOTdoing this,’ Xanthos stated, with grim emphasis. ‘I am not sharing a room with you again, Bianca.’
Silently, Bianca counted to ten because Xanthos was being about as insulting as only he could be, but since she had already decided to rise above it, she adopted her most diplomatic tone. They had managed to survive almost twenty-four hours in a deserted mountain hut without killing each another—surely they could manage a few more? At least here there were other people around, so there would be something else to focus on other than the sexy Greek. ‘I can assure you it isn’t my idea of fun either, but—’
‘But what?’ he demanded, the sweeping movement of his arm drawing her attention to the snowy village square outside the window, where a giant conifer was decked with coloured lights. For a moment her imagination drifted away from her. She thought how pretty it looked in the moonlight and how sweet the little children seemed, who were gazing up in wonder at its sparkling branches.
‘Why are we having to spend Christmas Eve in some godforsaken hotel in the middle of nowhere?’ he continued, in that same harsh voice which completely broke the spell.
All her best conciliatory intentions forgotten, Bianca scowled. ‘Will you please keep your voice down?’ she hissed. ‘I don’t know how you can be so ungrateful. Especially as you treated me to a lecture on that very subject before you gave me a lift on your plane.’
‘That’s different.’
‘How is it different? The most important thing is that we’re safe, Xanthos. We were rescued, weren’t we? By the village doctor, no less! We’ve been examined and given a clean bill of health and told that we can leave—’
‘When?’
Bianca sucked in an unsteady breath. ‘Dr Druri explained all that, too. You know he did. The road to the main airport is still partially blocked and it’s not safe to attempt to get there tonight—but they’ve said it’ll be okay tomorrow once the snow ploughs have been out. Plus, it’s Christmas Eve and apparently that’s a big deal in Vargmali. We were lucky to get the last room in the hotelandthey’ve invited us to their big festive feast downstairs tonight.’
‘I’m not interested in attending a festive feast,’ he growled.
‘Surely you’re not so much of a Scrooge that you want to spoil everyone’s fun?’ she demanded. ‘What else are we going to do—sit and stare at each other all evening and demand that an already overworked kitchen prepares something especially for us? That would be a big slap in the face for their hospitality, wouldn’t it? At least up here we’ve got...’ She let her words trail off, terrified that her forced her air of bravado would slip and she would give away the precarious state of her emotions. She wished she could wave a magic wand to transport her back to England—and yet the thought of having to say goodbye to this enigmatic man with whom she’d spent a night in a snowy mountain hut was bothering her far more than it should have done. ‘Here we’ve got more than one place to sleep, so we won’t have to share a bed,’ she continued gamely. ‘That fold-up divan over there looks comfortable enough.’
‘You think so?’ he questioned repressively. ‘It looks more like a bed of nails to me.’
‘Well, I don’t mind sleeping on it, so that’s settled.’ She breathed out an unsteady sigh. ‘I don’t know why you can’t just accept the situation we’re in, Xanthos. You were the one who came out with all that stuff about accepting the things you can’t control, which is exactly what I’m trying to do. What’s the matter—is it really so awful, the thought of having to endure another night with me?’
Xanthos didn’t reply immediately, mostly because he was still having difficulty getting his head around the fact that he remained trapped. With her. And there didn’t seem to be a thing he could do about it. After a bumpy ride up the mountain road, to the accompanying chatter of the village doctor who had examined them both in his small surgery, they had arrived at this gothic monstrosity of a hotel, where he and Bianca had been shown into a large and rather draughty room.
After their snowy hut, the accommodation seemed almost luxurious—but continued proximity to a woman who was strictly off-limits was something he wanted to avoid at all costs. She was unsettling him, big-time, and he still couldn’t work out why. The situation wasn’t helped by the fact that everyone thought they were a couple and any attempts to dissuade them of this notion seemed to get lost in translation. Was that because when the search party had arrived, Bianca had been clinging to his arm, with him holding onto her as if she were a fragile piece of porcelain which might shatter if he let her go?
At least the hotel had a phone signal—of sorts—and on arrival he’d received a blitz of messages, most of which he’d ignored. His first priority had been to text Bianca’s sister to reassure her she was safe, resisting the urge to comment that if she hadn’t insisted on him giving her a ride in his plane, her anxious night of worrying could have been avoided.
And wouldn’t you have found the experience much harder on your own?taunted a voice inside his head.Didn’t having Bianca Forrester there give you something to fight for?
He had also received several texts from Kiki—her initial understanding about his emergency landing having morphed into a flurry of inappropriate questions about the nature of his relationship with his female passenger, because it seemed that the press had got hold of the story of their rescue and speculation was running rife. It struck him that the supermodel was behaving like some wounded lover when he barely knew her. But that, he reminded himself grimly, was women for you. You gave them the glimmer of an opening and, inevitably, they attempted to prise it apart.
And wasn’t the truth that hewasslightly obsessed by Bianca? He found himself plagued by a flurry of unwanted memories, which kept hitting him at the most inconvenient times. The shampoo scent of her hair and the sleepy brush of her lips against his jaw. The way her petite body had moulded so naturally into his. How easy it would have been to...
To...
But he mustn’t think about that.
Why was he even thinking about her at all?
‘Do you think there’s any danger of getting a drink round here?’ he growled.