Four Christmas Treats. Jessica Hart

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СКАЧАТЬ the insurance on this place is dependent on certain conditions—one of which is keeping all the rooms equally heated. I doubt that even Art, with all his billions, would be too happy if he were landed with a bill for the renovation work on one damaged castle.’

      ‘Art’s daughters aren’t going to be very pleased.’

      ‘Probably not, but they are free to take up their argument with the PA if they wish to.’ He paused, and then asked dryly, ‘I know it’s none of my business, but does your mother have any idea of what she’s taking on?’

      ‘My mother prefers to only see what she wants to see, and right now what she wants to see is that Art is a wonderful man and his daughters are going to be loving stepdaughters to her. She’s so unworldly. I can’t help worrying about her,’ Tilly admitted.

      ‘So who does the worrying about you?’

      ‘No one,’ Tilly answered promptly. ‘No one needs to worry about me. I’m not like my mother. The way she falls in love and then falls out of it again would leave me too disillusioned to keep on looking for Mr Right, but she seems to be able to pick herself up and start all over again.’

      Silas could hear the underlying troubled note in Tilly’s voice. It was his opinion that her mother was rather shallow, but the more he saw of Annabelle the less inclined he was to think of her as being avaricious or manipulative. ‘How old were you when your mother fell out of love with your father?’

      The unexpectedness of his own abrupt question startled Silas as much as it did Tilly.

      ‘I was six when they divorced, and from what they’ve both told me the marriage had been in trouble for some time. I think Dad tried to stay the course because of me, but Ma had had enough.’Tilly opened the wardrobe and removed her coat and boots.

      ‘You’re going to need something a bit sturdier than those,’ Silas warned her. ‘Martin told me that they’re expecting a fresh fall of snow later today.’

      ‘I don’t have anything else,’ Tilly admitted ruefully. ‘I shall have to see what I can buy while we’re out. It didn’t register properly with me that the weather was going to be like this.’

      ‘If we had really come here as a newly engaged couple I daresay we’d have been only too happy to use the snow as an excuse to stay up here in bed. And no doubt we would have come prepared,’ Silas said.

      Tilly could feel her face turning pink, and the surge of longing that gripped her body was so intense that it made her give a small, low gasp of protest. She placed her hand flat to her lower body, in an attempt to quell the pulse of raw need that had kicked into life.

      She could see from Silas’s expression that he knew exactly what she was feeling. When he stepped towards her, she protested shakily, ‘No.’ But she didn’t make any attempt to step back or to avoid him when he cupped her shoulder with one hand and slid the other into the small hollow of lower back, determinedly propelling her towards him.

      ‘That look says you ache for me in the same way I do for you.’ Even the warmth of his breath as he murmured the words against her ear was a form of caress and arousal, making her quiver with pleasure and exhale on a small, shuddering breath, desperate to turn her face to his so that his mouth would be closer to her own.

      What was it about this particular woman that made him behave in ways that ran counter to all his plans? Silas wondered grimly. This agonisingly sharp and relentlessly demanding stab of need burning through him wasn’t what he had intended at all. It had to be something in the small quiver within her body that alerted him to her physical susceptibility to him that was responsible for this fierce, male, driven urge within him, pushing him to cover her mouth with his own, rather than any independent desire of his own. It had to be. Otherwise…Otherwise, what? Otherwise he would be getting himself into a situation that he couldn’t control?

      ‘We’d better go downstairs before Martin thinks we’ve changed our minds and we don’t want the car any more.’

      She was glad that he wasn’t taking things any further, Tilly told herself firmly, when Silas released her and started to step back.

      ‘Don’t do that!’ Silas groaned, almost dragging her back into his arms.

      ‘Don’t do what?’ Tilly protested.

      ‘Don’t look at me as though all you want is the feel of my mouth on yours,’ Silas told her harshly.

      ‘I wasn’t—’ Tilly began to object, but it was too late. Silas had imprisoned her face between his hands and he was bending towards her, his kiss silencing her.

      Long after she should have been asleep the night before she had lain awake, desperately trying to tell herself that Silas’s kisses couldn’t possibly have been as wonderful as she was now thinking. She had derided herself for being bewitched by a potent combination of her own physical desire, the moonlight outside on the snow and the proximity of Christmas. She had told herself sternly that if Silas had kissed her, say, in her own flat in London, she probably wouldn’t have been affected by him at all. But here she was, being swept up under last night’s magical spell all over again—and if anything this time his effect on her was even more intense. If he chose to pick her up and carry her over to the waiting bed now, she knew that she wouldn’t want to stop him.

      An intense ache pulsed deep in the core of her sexuality. She wanted him so badly she felt shocked, almost drugged, by the overwhelming strength of her need. Panic flared inside her, causing her to push Silas away. She didn’t want to feel like this about any man, and especially his kind of man.

      The minute he released her she headed for the door. When he reached it ahead of her she held her breath, half fearful and half hopeful that he would lean against it, barring her exit, but instead he opened it for her, simply saying, ‘Don’t forget your coat.’

      ‘Right, kids, you get in the back with Matilda. You won’t mind if I sit in front with you, Silas, will you? Only I get so carsick if I sit in the back.’

      Not a word of apology to her, Tilly seethed, as Cissie-Rose appropriated the passenger seat of the large four-wheel drive. Unlike her, Cissie-Rose seemed to have arrived in Spain well equipped for the snow, Tilly realised, as she looked a little enviously at her expensive winter sports-style outfit.

      ‘I want a window seat.’

      ‘So do I.’ Cissie-Rose’s children were already clambering into the back seat.

      ‘You’ll have to sit in the middle, Tilly,’ Cissie-Rose instructed—for all the world as though she were some kind of servant, Tilly thought crossly.

      ‘One of the children will have to sit in the middle. Not Tilly,’ Silas intervened, in the kind of voice that said there would be no argument. ‘They can take turns to have the window seat—one when we drive out and the other when we drive back.’

      ‘Maria always sits in the middle,’ the elder of Cissie-Rose’s sons piped up.

      ‘Maybe she does. But Tilly is not Maria.’

      ‘Goodness, what a fuss you’re making, Tilly,’ Cissie-Rose said spitefully, and so blatantly untruthfully that Tilly was too taken aback to retaliate.

      ‘Call this an SUV?’ the older boy commented derogatively. ‘You should see our SUVs back home.’

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