She heard a pounding on the door—as if someone were kicking it—and she pulled it open to find Xanthos standing there, his hair covered in snow and his arms full of various paraphernalia. A blast of icy air followed him inside and she closed the door behind him as he unloaded most of the stuff onto the desk. He threw her overcoat across the room towards her, along with a dark scarf she recognised as his.
‘Put those on,’ he instructed tersely.
Although he was back in command mode, she was pleased enough to obey, doing up the buttons on the thick coat with unsteady fingers which felt like sticks of ice and then winding his soft scarf around her neck. Had the emergency fine-tuned her senses? Was that why she breathed in deeply, wanting to inhale the woody, masculine scent which seemed to have permeated the fine wool?
‘Have you got gloves?’ he demanded.
She nodded.
‘Put those on too.’
She did as he asked while he slid on his own jacket and she couldn’t seem to tear her eyes away from the powerful set of his shoulders and that broad chest.
‘Stop staring and start unpacking,’ he said abruptly, sliding his gaze towards her. ‘I’m going back to the plane.’
‘But why? You’ve only just got back!’
‘Because, contrary to popular opinion, I’m not Superman. I couldn’t carry everything in one trip. Just shut the door behind me, Bianca. I won’t be long.’
This time she didn’t beg him to stay, in fact she was pleased to see the back of him.Stop staring, indeed. But she had been, hadn’t she? She’d been no better than all those women who’d been fawning over him at the wedding party last night. No wonder he was so arrogant.
She began to sort out the stuff he’d retrieved from the stricken aircraft, putting it into neat piles on the desk. Blankets, travel socks, a big container of water and, bizarrely, broken-off bits of rubber. When he reappeared, he was carrying her suitcase, and what looked like the entire contents of the minibar. ‘I don’t suppose you brought my hand luggage?’ she questioned hopefully as he shut the door on the howling wind.
Xanthos felt a flicker of irritation flare up inside him. ‘No, I did not bring your damned hand luggage,’ he answered carefully. Was she expecting him to take a risk negotiating the treacherously icy airfield, just so she could get her manicured fingers on her no-doubt highly expensive face creams? Didn’t she realise that from now on theirs was a new reality, where the pampered sister of the new Queen might be expected to rough it more than she was used to? Maybe he needed to spell it out for her.
They were going to be in close confinement for...how long? A pulse began to hammer at his temple. Who knew? But it was going to be difficult enough as it was. There was no point in falling out. He needed to forget her ingratitude and their mutual dislike, which had been simmering beneath the surface from the get-go. More importantly, he needed to ignore those wide-lashed eyes, which looked like green stars, and lose the memory of the red bridesmaid’s dress which had outlined her tiny frame to perfection.
But wasn’t it strange how sometimes your mind did exactly the opposite to what you wanted it to do? An image of creamy breasts constrained by blood-red satin swam into his head and, silently, he cursed. His libido might have chosen the most inconvenient of times to rear its head, but this was only going to work if he stopped thinking about her as a desirable woman. All he needed to focus on was the fact that she was the King’s sister-in-law and that, somehow, he needed to keep her safe.
‘I’ve just brought the essentials,’ he elaborated. ‘Why don’t you start unpacking—while I go and investigate the bathroom?’
‘Perhaps you’d like me to salute every time you shout out an order?’ she demanded.
‘Now that,’ he said softly, ‘would be something to see.’
Her sudden blush surprised him but he turned away from the arresting pinkness of her cheeks, shutting the bathroom door behind him with perhaps more force than was necessary. Inside the dingy washroom he located the stopcock, grateful he’d taught himself the practicalities of life, despite the immense wealth which had surrounded him until his ignominious fall from grace at the age of sixteen. But still it gave him pleasure knowing that he never paid anyone to do a job he wouldn’t be able to do as well himself.
He checked everything was working and walked back into the hut, but although everything had been unpacked and was laid out with commendable neatness on the old desk, Bianca’s face was set and tense, as if she’d been rehearsing what she was about to say.
‘I need you to tell me what’s happening,’ she said, in a low voice.
‘I’ve just made sure you have running water and a flushing toilet. Which must be some cause for celebration.’
‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘No?’ He raised his eyebrows.
Bianca felt the slow build of frustration. This wasexasperating. And also confusing. She was a lawyer. She dealt with facts every day of her life. She asked incisive questions and had the ability to view a situation objectively. Yet now it felt as if her mind were composed of cotton wool and her normal powers of reasoning were slipping away from her. And you wouldn’t need to be a genius to work out why.
It was him.
Without actually doing anything, he was unsettling her. Big time.
He was making her feel things which were disturbingly unfamiliar. Softly clawing, erotic things which were way out of her comfort zone. And she didn’t want to feel this way. She didn’t want to be aware of suddenly stinging breasts or the low curl of hunger deep inside her. Her focus should be on the gravity of their situation, not the curve of his sensual lips or the loud thundering of her heart.
She cleared her throat. ‘My phone doesn’t have a signal.’
‘That’s because there isn’t one. I wouldn’t expect there to be in a deserted mountainous region like this.’