Kissing Santa. Jessica Hart

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СКАЧАТЬ dear, I hope you weren’t saving it for a special occasion.’

      Blair drank reflectively from the bottle. ‘A whisky like this makes any occasion special,’ he said.

      ‘What, even stranded in the middle of a storm with a hysterical nanny?’ Amanda asked ironically, and he turned in his seat to look at her. Her hair stuck out in every direction where he had rubbed it dry, but her eyelashes were still spiky with rain. Without the suit and the sleek hairstyle she looked a lot less than her twenty-four years, and almost unrecognisable as the smart young woman who had got off the train at Fort William. Blair’s eyes rested on her face, still somehow vivid in the dim light, and the chin which was tilted at a characteristically challenging angle.

      ‘Even that,’ he said slowly, faint amusement bracketing his mouth.

      What was it about that damned elusive smile of his that made the blood tingle beneath her skin? Amanda turned away to rest her cheek against the window and let the cool glass drain the heat from her face. ‘I’m glad you’re finding it special,’ she muttered. ‘I can think of other ways to describe being stuck out in the middle of nowhere, trapped in a wet car by slavering monsters and only a bottle of whisky for comfort!’

      ‘Come on, stop complaining,’ said Blair without heat. ‘Things could be worse.’

      ‘How?’

      ‘You could be outside with your monsters, for a start. You ought to be grateful that we’ve the car for shelter. At least you’ll be able to sleep.’

      ‘Sleep? Sleep?’ Amanda’s voice rose to an outraged squeak as exhaustion caught up with her. ‘How can I possibly sleep when I’m tired and I’m cold and I’m hungry and I wish I’d never come near bloody Scotland in the first place?’

      Blair was unmoved by her outburst. ‘Have another drink,’ was all he said, and he handed her the bottle. Amanda was ready for the fiery impact of the whisky this time and took a more cautious slug. ‘I’ve even got some biscuits,’ he added, producing a packet out of the bag by his feet. ‘So that will cross hunger off your list of miseries.’ He npped open the packet and passed it over to Amanda.

      ‘A ginger-nut wasn’t quite what I had in mind,’ she sighed, taking three anyway. She bit into one glumly. ‘I was thinking of something warm and tasty, preferably smothered in cheese, accompanied by a bottle of wine and followed by a nice, fattening pudding. Sticky toffee pudding,’ she decided after a moment’s thought. Munching on the biscuit, she lapsed into silence and stared disconsolately out at the rain which was still being hurled out of the darkness by a frustrated gale.

      Blair regarded her with a sort of exasperated amusement for a moment and then reached up to click off the overhead light. ‘We may as well save the battery until we need it,’ he said as the darkness blotted out everything. Amanda couldn’t even see her ginger-nut.

      ‘You’re not a very typical nanny, are you?’ His voice came out of the blackness, deep and strong and infinitely reassuring.

      ‘What do you mean?’ said Amanda cautiously.

      ‘I always imagine nannies to be calm, practical people, used to coping when things go wrong.’

      ‘I’m coping!’ she ruffled up instantly.

      ‘Not without making a fuss,’ Blair pointed out astringently. ‘What would you be like if this was a crisis?’

      ‘What do you mean, if? This is a crisis!’

      ‘You’ve just proved my point for me,’ he said, sounding resigned. ‘You’ve got to spend a few uncomfortable hours in the car. It’s perfectly safe, you’ve got dry clothes, something to drink, something to eat and me to look after you in the unlikely event that anything did happen, but, for you, that’s a crisis! What would you do if something really bad happened to you?’

      ‘Right at this moment, I can’t think of anything worse than being stuck here with you,’ said Amanda sourly, and deliberately drank some more of his precious whisky.

      Blair ignored that. ‘I just hope that you’re a little less...extravagant when it comes to dealing with children,’ he said disapprovingly. ‘Judging by what the agency told me, I can only assume that you undergo some sort of personality change when actually faced with a child!’

      In the darkness, Amanda put up her chin defiantly. ‘Well, we’ll see, won’t we?’

      ‘Yes,’ said Blair. He was no more than a black blur against more blackness but Amanda could feel that uncomfortably acute gaze resting on her. She just hoped he couldn’t see in the dark, or her expression would surely give her away! ‘We’ll see.’

      CHAPTER THREE

      AMANDA’S head was aching. Opening one eye very cautiously, she found herself looking at something dark and curved only inches away from her face. She stared at it for a long time before her pounding brain registered that she was looking at the bottom of a steering wheel.

      It hurt too much to think about what it was doing there. Amanda closed her eye again, but the effort of recognising a steering wheel had set her mind working, albeit slowly, and as she lay and willed herself to sink back into comfortable oblivion memories of the night before came filtering back in a series of odd, unconnected pictures: huddling under the bonnet in the sluicing rain, spluttering as the whisky burned down her throat, sitting very still as Blair undid the buttons of her shirt and being passionately glad of the darkness.

      Blair... Until then, Amanda had been remembering in the peculiarly detached way of the half-asleep, but his image dissolved the last wisps of dream and brought her awake with a jolt. At the same moment, she became aware that fingers were twisting strands of her hair absently together and her eyes snapped open with the sudden realisation that she was sprawled across the front of the car with her head in Blair McAllister’s lap. His other hand was resting lightly at the curve of her hip, and his thighs were broad and firm and relaxed beneath her cheek.

      ‘At last!’ Blair must have felt her involuntary stiffening. ‘I thought you were going to sleep all morning.’

      ‘I didn’t realise...’ Horribly embarrassed, Amanda struggled upright, wincing at the stiffness of her limbs. Someone—presumably Blair—had stuffed a couple of jumpers from her suitcase around the handbrake, but it hadn’t stopped it digging into her. ‘Y-you should have woken me,’ she stammered.

      ‘I didn’t have the heart,’ said Blair. ‘You were sleeping like a baby.’

      She blinked at him, disconcerted to find him at once a stranger and oddly familiar. For the first time she registered that it was light. The darkness of the night before had blurred the strength of his features and now, in the brightness of morning, it was as if she had never seen his face before.

      It was his eyes she noticed first of all. They were an opaque blue-grey, the colour of slate, and beneath dark, sarcasticlooking eyebrows they held an unnervingly acute expression that gave focus to his face. For Amanda, it was as if the morning light had thrown everything about him into sharp relief: the angle of his jaw, the thick, dark hair, the prickle of stubble on his unshaven skin and, most of all, the way his mouth was set in a line that was already uncannily unfamiliar.

      Aware that she was staring, and afflicted by sudden shyness, Amanda looked away. ‘I don’t feel as if I slept СКАЧАТЬ