Читать книгу Boardrooms of Power - Heidi Betts - Страница 11

WHAT woke Rose was the stillness. The night sounds, she realised after a few unsettling seconds, had disappeared. Living in London had acclimatised her to a certain amount of noise at night and its absence was eerie.

She stood up. She felt remarkably okay, considering bed had been a mattress on the floor. No aches and pains anywhere.

She drew back the shutters and opened the window. Now the silence was deafening. As was the lack of movement. No breeze. Nothing. Rose shivered and wondered uncertainly what she should do. Wake Gabriel? She knew nothing about hurricanes. She might be spooked but what if this was just a feature of the tropics? Lots of noise between six-thirty and midnight and then at—she picked up her watch which she had adjusted on the plane and stuck it on—it was a little after three in the morning—at a little after three in the morning the comforting noises gave way to complete silence.

Without bothering to think about it, Rose stuck on a pair of jeans, one of two pairs she had packed, leaving on the baggy T-shirt she had brought to sleep in. Somehow it seemed urgent that she get to Gabriel, wake him up, even if his response might just be to laugh at her and tell her to go back to sleep.

His door wasn’t locked. In fact, it was ajar and Rose pushed it open to see him sprawled in slumber on the mattress on the ground. This would be the only time she would ever get to catch him off guard and she couldn’t resist the opportunity. She forgot the elemental fear that had propelled her into his room and tiptoed to stand over him. Awake, he was compulsively fascinating, with his high octane energy and sinful good looks, and asleep he was no less so. The sheet covered most of him but he had obviously felt the heat during the night and worked his way free of some of the covering so that part of one leg was exposed and most of his upper body.

Rose licked her lips nervously, unable to break the spell as she stared down at his, quite frankly, perfect body. He looked very brown against the white sheets. His chest was broad and muscular and the dark hair was almost a little too masculine for her curious eyes. She gulped and looked away, but all that did was bring her gaze into contact with one leg, also muscular, also with that disturbingly masculine dark hair. She decided right there and then that waking him up was out of the question. She would sidle off quietly and her fear would gradually ease off. She was about to turn away when he spoke. Just like that. His voice ever so slightly amused.

‘Are you finished staring or would you like a bit longer?’

Rose nearly teetered backwards in shock.

‘I…I thought you were asleep!’ She managed to make it sound as though he had purposefully tricked her into staring at him.

‘I was. Until you came in. What’s the matter?’ He began sitting up, which was a bit of a disaster because more of his body was exposed to her carefully averted, yet still fully aware, gaze.

‘I…I know this is going to sound stupid, but I…I couldn’t hear anything and I got a little nervous.’

‘What do you mean, you couldn’t hear anything?’

‘Outside. No noise. It’s spooky.’ Rose laughed nervously. ‘I know you’re just going to tell me to get back to sleep…’

‘What I am going to tell you is that you need to look away right about now if you don’t want to see more of me than you might have bargained for…’ He yanked back the sheet a fraction of a second before Rose could avert her startled eyes. It was long enough for her to realise that he wasn’t wearing the pair of polite boxer shorts she had expected. He wasn’t wearing a stitch. She gave a little yelp and stepped back just as he levered himself up.

She knew that he was saying something to her, something about hurricanes and their behaviour patterns, but all her mind could focus on was the fact that less than five feet away her very sexy boss was dragging on some trousers while she stood with her back to him and tried hard not to imagine what she would see if she turned around.

‘…so we need to go outside and check everything,’ she heard him finish up. ‘Of course, you can stay put in here but two pairs of hands and eyes would be a damn sight more helpful than one…’

Slowly her fuzzy brain clunked back into gear and she looked at him worriedly. ‘What are you saying?’

‘I thought I’d just made it clear.’ Gabriel paused to look at her as he pulled on a T-shirt. He was still getting over the pleasant sensation of knowing that she was staring at him. It had been crazily sexy. And now she was looking at him, all wide-eyed and feminine, after his quip the night before when she had told him in no uncertain terms that she didn’t enjoy playing the damsel in distress. He was very tempted to remind her of her statement but he thought that that might have been pushing his luck too far.

Uppermost in his mind was the fact that they had to go and do the checks which he had anticipated doing during daylight hours. Nevertheless he couldn’t stop his eyes from straying just that little bit, noticing that her T-shirt, baggy though it was, still revealed the glaring fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra.

‘The calm before the storm…’He headed for the door and she followed, even more spooked by the fact that he actually looked concerned. Gabriel was not a man to be easily rattled. But he was moving quickly now, switching on the lights in the house, warning her that the luxury of electricity might not be with them for too long.

‘We’ll circle the place together,’ he told her, pausing only once when they were outside so that he could look around him, as though judging the gravity of the situation from tell-tale signs she was not aware of. ‘There should be nothing to retrieve, but you can never tell.’

Rose shivered at the tone of his voice and edged a little closer to him.

With no cooling effect from the sea breeze, it was muggy outside and very dark. The lights inside the sprawling house illuminated a small patch just outside the double-fronted doors which led out to the gardens overlooking the sea, but beyond that was inky-black, scarily black. Rose had never seen anything quite like it. She was accustomed to a certain amount of light pollution that came from living in London. Just as she was accustomed to the constant low level noise.

‘It’s going to happen, isn’t it?’

‘You don’t have to whisper.’ He had brought two torches. She had no idea when he had grabbed those, but they were invaluable now as they fanned them along the walls of the villa, both of them moving quickly and finding, to Gabriel’s satisfaction, that everything was as it should be.

‘Right. Now, inside.’ They had covered the outside in a little under forty minutes. ‘There’s no phone link here yet so I won’t be able to check on the Internet for any updates with the weather patterns, but we’ll fill some buckets with water and cover them. Come in handy for having a wash in the morning. We’ll also start lighting some oil lamps and candles, but no candles where they can be a fire hazard. Think you can manage?’

Rose wondered what he would do if she said no. He hadn’t brought her over here to look after her. First and foremost, she was his practical secretary, after all!

‘Think so!’ she assured him briskly.

‘Good girl.’

They hadn’t made it back to the front doors when the eerie stillness was broken dramatically by a flash of lightning that forked across the sky and was accompanied almost immediately by a clap of thunder that was loud enough to make her ears ring. And then an ominous sound that grew louder as they ran towards the house, hampered by the fact that they had to dodge the usual building debris that was neatly stacked but still an impediment to a clear path.

‘Rain!’ Gabriel shouted just as it came, in one gusty, raging downpour that was accompanied by the howl of winds gathering speed.

Rose had never experienced anything like it. In under thirty seconds she was drenched. When she looked to her left, she could see the palm trees bending as though some powerful force was trying hard to suck them out of the ground. She had to battle not to be blown backwards.

They slammed shut the door behind them as soon as they were in the safety of the house, and then Gabriel was moving quickly and purposefully, knowing exactly where to go to find the oil lamps. He had obviously given very detailed instructions to the foreman before they’d travelled over and that didn’t surprise Rose. He would have considered everything.

‘I know you’re probably uncomfortable in those wet things, but let’s sort out the lamps here and then we can both go and change.’

Even though his attention was elsewhere, Rose was still horribly aware of the T-shirt clinging to her body, outlining her breasts and leaving nothing to the imagination. She surreptitiously tried to flap it into good behaviour but no chance and she couldn’t possibly skulk off to change, not when they were clearly facing an emergency situation that needed all hands on deck.

So she did as she was instructed and tried not to stare down at her soaked body and the way her breasts were visible and bouncing under the fine cotton.

From outside came the terrifying sound of strong winds battering at the walls and the distant noises of objects being hurled around outside, obviously things they had missed in their inspection of the grounds.

She was beginning to feel cold in the wet clothes and she had to make a big effort not to let her teeth chatter. Visions of the sea rising up the incline in one ferocious tidal wave did nothing to calm her jittery nerves.

In a God-given stroke of luck, they had finished lighting the last of four oil lamps when the electricity went, leaving them in total darkness save for the watery light from the lamps.

‘Right.’ Gabriel handed her two of the oil lamps. ‘At least these are lit and there are candles in the bedrooms, although these should do for the moment. You okay?’

No. ‘Fine. I’m a dab hand at crisis situations like this!’

In the darkness, she was aware of Gabriel grinning at her. ‘When all else fails, a sense of humour is all a person needs to keep going. Keep it up!’

‘I’ll try but I was never good at being a mascot.’

They had found themselves back in the bedroom. Hers.

‘You’ll need to change and then we should bunk down in one room. Just in case.’

‘Just in case what?’

‘Just in case this bad weather really kicks in. A strong hurricane can take the roof off a building, although we shouldn’t be in too much danger here. But better safe than sorry. If the situation deteriorates, I don’t want to have to come looking for you.’

Rose acquiesced quickly. She certainly didn’t want to be on her own just now.

‘I’ll be in with you in a minute. As soon as I’ve changed.’

She did. Quickly. Into her other remaining pair of jeans and a cotton T-shirt, with her bra safely underneath. Her wet clothes she laid carefully out on the floor although she didn’t rate the chances of them drying in a hurry.

The wind was managing to find all sorts of cracks and crevices and the noise was incredible. She almost expected it to sweep through the walls and lift her off her feet, but of course she was safe from that. Even so, it was a relief when she was standing outside Gabriel’s room, banging on the door to warn him that she was coming in, relieved to find that he, too, had changed, although into boxer shorts and a T-shirt.

‘You’re going to be comfortable trying to sleep in that getup?’

‘I’ll be fine! Shall we get my mattress in?’

‘Give me a minute.’

Literally a minute and back he was, having hauled her single mattress into his room and plopped it alongside his.

Now, suddenly, the comforting presence of another body next to hers when the whole world outside seemed to be going mad, didn’t seem like quite such a brilliant idea.

‘You look green,’ Gabriel said. ‘Don’t worry. The building won’t collapse around our ears. You forget that I’ve overseen everything from the foundations to where the walls go, and that I know quite a bit about the structure of buildings and what makes them solid.’

Rose was quietly relieved that he had misinterpreted her sick look. She was also heartily relieved that the only lighting in the room was from two oil lamps, the other two having been dimmed to their lowest level and placed in the bathroom.

‘Do you want anything to eat?’ he asked, interrupting the disastrous train of her thoughts and she shook her head.

‘Okay. In that case, you definitely need something to drink. Wait here.’

He didn’t give her time to argue, not that she was going to. She could feel exhaustion creeping over her, but the sickening anticipation of lying down next to him was a more powerful force and promised to keep her eyes wide open for what remained of the night. She didn’t make a habit of drinking but she sure as hell figured that there couldn’t be a better time for a glass or two of whatever he managed to rustle up.

It was dark rum. And soda water, both of which were in plentiful supply. The workmen weren’t allowed to drink on the premises, he told her, but he doubted that held true when they slept there most nights. He had brought the bottle in along with six plastic bottles of soda water and two glasses.

It tasted great. She drank the first one quickly and the effects were pleasantly immediate. Her nerves were beginning to do a disappearing act. In fact, after her second drink, it felt fine to be sitting cross-legged on the mattress, facing him, chatting about their experiences of being caught up in bad weather. Since Rose had precious little, most of the chat came from him and she was more than happy to listen to him as he talked to her. The deluge clattering down against the walls and on the roof and the angry roar of the wind as it gusted along the coastline were a lot easier to bear after some alcohol.

Eventually, Rose yawned.

‘Sleepy?’

‘Suddenly.’

‘You’ll never get to sleep in those jeans, you know, and as soon as you do, you’ll wake up because you’ll be too hot.’ He fiddled with the base of the oil lamp and dimmed it so that the room was plunged into near darkness. He had slipped under the sheet, his own sheet, and Rose felt safely tucked away from him.

‘And as soon as you realise you’re hot, you’ll also realise that they’re not quite loose enough to allow you to breathe easily and then you’ll spend tomorrow feeling like hell because you’ve had a sleepless night.’ He yawned widely and rolled over on to his side with his back to her, leaving her to ponder, in a very unfocused manner, his words of advice.

She waited a while, thinking that, yes, the jeans did feel very tight, now that he had mentioned it. It also felt ridiculous to be trying to sleep fully clothed. It was a psychological thing, of course, but once she got it into her head that she was uncomfortable, she couldn’t rid herself of the notion that she wouldn’t get a wink of sleep unless she took the damned trousers off.

So she did, as unobtrusively as she could. And, while she was at it, she also removed her bra and breathed a little sigh of relief. Both items she placed very carefully next to the mattress, within easy reach for when she got up to stick them back on.

Gabriel, she could tell, was already asleep. She could see it in the rhythmic rise and fall of his shoulders, and her own eyelids were beginning to droop.

The alcohol was working on her like an anaesthetic. She could almost physically feel it drugging her into slumber and then she was gone.

Peace lasted all of an hour and a half. Then came her need to go to the bathroom, something she had failed to take into consideration when she had been happily allowing the rum and sodas to relax her.

The wind was still howling. Rose was tempted to grope her way to the window and peep outside, just to see what was going on, but that would risk waking Gabriel, which was something she intended to avoid.

So she made do with going to the toilet then, with just the flickering light from the oil lamp, her wandering eyes fastened on the one thing she didn’t want to see. Right there above the door was something the size of a small saucer, and it was alive. Motionless but alive. And hairy. The sound of the storm outside was nothing compared to the pounding of her heart. Could spiders smell fear? she wondered. Like sharks?

She washed her hands. Then, and she didn’t know how she managed to achieve this, she tiptoed across to the door, one eye on the spider, the other on her flight path, yanked it open and literally leapt on to the mattress, colliding with Gabriel, who awoke with the sudden alertness of a cat.

‘What the hell is going on?’

‘There’s a tarantula in the bathroom!’ They both spoke at the same time but her shriek was definitely a few hundred decibels above his.

‘Get up!’ Rose demanded frantically. ‘You have to go and kill it! Now!’

‘You mean before it kills us?’

‘It’s not funny, Gabriel!’ Rose felt close to tears. ‘I have a…real fear of spiders.’ She imagined it crawling out of the bathroom and scurrying across the wooden floor to her mattress and she broke out in nervous perspiration.

‘Okay. You wait here.’ He levered himself up, glanced around for something, finally settling for one of the glasses, and disappeared into the bathroom, taking care to close the door behind him.

In his absence, Rose huddled as tightly as she could in her sheet and tried not to think of small, furry creatures finding their way underneath it.

Where was the calm, practical secretary now? She groaned to herself. She could barely look at him as he exited the bathroom with a grin on his face. Not that she could actually see the grin, but she knew it was there from the lope of his walk.

‘Where is it?’ Rose asked in a small voice. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not being much help so far, am I?’

Gabriel lay down and turned to face her. ‘I put it through the window. It was more scared of me than I was of it.’ He lightly stroked her hair away from her face and Rose didn’t tense up as she normally would have. ‘I know you don’t like being the damsel in distress, but there’s no need to apologise for being afraid of a spider. You’re not the exception. Most people are afraid of spiders.’

‘Except you.’

‘I fear nothing.’

That drew a smile from her, but only for a second, then she sobered up and said quietly, ‘But that’s not why I’m here. To be a burden that needs looking after—scared of spiders, scared of thunder and lightning. I’m not functioning properly at the moment, I’m afraid.’

‘Why is that, I wonder? Maybe you’re homesick.’ Gabriel had never been so intensely aware of a woman in his life before. If he edged one inch closer to her, he would explode. ‘Maybe you’re missing what’s-his-name…’ He realised, with some surprise, that what’s-his-name had actually been on his mind. ‘What is his name? Did you ever say? Oh, yes. You did. Joe. Maybe you’re missing Joe. Being in love can do strange things to a woman.’

Rose, lulled into a cocoon of security, with the gale force winds gusting outside and the rain as clamorous as hailstones clattering down on a tin roof, was yanked back to reality by the mention of Joe. Joe, whom she had completely forgotten. Joe, perfectly nice and suitable Joe, who was supposed to be her passport to overcoming her feelings for the very inappropriate Gabriel Gessi.

She pulled away, suddenly horrified by her compromising position.

‘Can it? Yes, I suppose it can.’

Not the answer Gabriel was hoping for. Not when he was in the process of freely admitting to himself that he wanted this woman, for reasons beyond his comprehension.

‘What does that mean?’ he found himself asking.

‘It means that this conversation is inappropriate.’

‘Nothing that’s going on here at the moment is appropriate, or hadn’t you noticed? We’re halfway across the world. We’re being buffeted by a hurricane outside. We’re sharing a mattress on a floor. I’m all but naked and so are you.’

‘I…I…’

‘Yes?’ Gabriel prompted silkily. ‘You…what? Want to disagree with something I’ve said?’

‘I don’t think we should be having this conversation!’ Rose heard the panic in her voice and wondered whether he had detected it as well.

‘Why? We could talk about work but somehow…I don’t think the circumstances are quite right for that.’

‘We should go to sleep. Tomorrow will be a long day. Lots to do.’

‘I was sleeping until you jumped on me.’

‘For a reason!’

‘But now I’m fully awake and so are you. So let’s discuss this sudden love you think you’ve discovered. I’m curious how it can all happen so quickly.’

‘And I’m curious as to why you’re curious in the first place!’ Desperation was beginning to lace itself in between the panic but the option of returning to her room was now non existent after the tarantula episode.

‘Because it’s out of character,’ Gabriel told her. ‘And anything that out of character can’t be right.’

‘You think you know me, but you don’t,’ Rose muttered, half truthfully because he sure as heck didn’t know how she felt about him.

‘You mean you’ve always hopped into bed with men you’ve only known for a couple of hours?’

‘I haven’t hopped into bed with anybody!’ Rose objected and immediately regretted her talent for telling the truth when she saw him smile smugly.

‘Now, that’s more like my Rose.’ Some men knew women and Gabriel was one of them. Women loathed being stereotyped. Rose might be sharper, cleverer, funnier and a damn sight more on the ball than the women he had always dated in the past, but she was still a woman. And a woman he wanted. Increasingly. Everything about her had been getting to him recently and lying on a mattress next to her, admittedly under some pretty weird conditions, was not conducive to his attraction abating.

Every primitive instinct in him reared into ferocious life. He had never felt anything like it before. His need to have her, right here and right now, was overwhelming. Accustomed as he was to being in control, the sensation of suddenly being swept along on a roller coaster ride of desire was strangely erotic.

‘Because I’m dull?’ Rose snapped.

‘Anything but.’

‘I haven’t slept with Joe because we’re still in the process of getting to know one another.’ She wondered how this situation fitted in with her getting to know another man. And, never mind the situation, how her feelings of suppressed excitement at lying next to Gabriel fitted in with her plans for moving forward with her life, trying on a bit of healthy dating for size. How was she ever going to progress any relationship with a man if her body was still so stubbornly and frantically aware of her boss? How? ‘I don’t believe in rushing into things. Not if they’re to last.’

‘And you think what you and some man you’ve spoken to a couple of times have is going to last?’

‘Why not?’ Rose said defensively. She was finding it impossible to tear her eyes away from him and the soft, lazy drawl of his voice seemed to drown out the chaos of the weather outside. How was that possible? she wondered. And how was it fair?

‘All relationships have to start somewhere,’ she whispered. She turned away abruptly and lay on her back, staring upwards at the ceiling. He hadn’t laid a finger on her but he might as well have, because her body was responding to his proximity with a mind of its own. Her breasts ached and the moistness between her legs was a shameful reminder of how insanely attracted she was to him. She knew that she was breathing heavily and quickly but she didn’t care because it was a feat in itself to have broken the mesmerising spell of his gaze.

‘No truer word was ever spoken,’ Gabriel murmured.

The soft, feathery touch of his finger on her arm made her swivel to face him.

‘What…are you doing?’ she croaked.

‘Touching you. Do you like it?’

‘No.’ Rose felt faint.

‘Yes, you do.’ Gabriel’s voice was as soft as silk. ‘Every relationship has to start somewhere. You’re absolutely right.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Gabriel.’ Her words were punctuated by the sound of the shutters being blown back as the gale force winds ferociously tried to attack the inside of the villa. Gabriel jumped up and even for him it was a struggle to secure them back into place. When he was finished he turned to her, arms folded, and walked towards where she was now half sitting up on the mattress.

‘I’m going to check on the rest of the place,’ he told her, ‘make sure that everything’s as secure as it’s possible to be.’

‘I’ll come.’

‘No.’

‘But…’

‘If anything needs securing, you won’t be able to help with it. I’m no chauvinist, but even I have to acknowledge that I’m probably going to be better at doing something that requires brute strength.’ And besides, he thought to himself, he didn’t want her putting on her secretarial hat. He didn’t want her sticking on her jeans and gathering herself together. He wanted her warm and wide-eyed and lying next to him. He wanted…

He could feel his body responding to the thought of what he really wanted.

‘I’ll be half an hour. You stay here.’

Right, Rose thought, as soon as he had left the room. Time for a think. Time to get the brain processes into gear. Put some clothes on. Maybe even drag the mattress back into her room. She might be scared of errant tarantulas but how much scarier was the thought of Gabriel returning, touching her, talking in that low, husky voice that made minced meat of all her good intentions?

She groaned softly and her hand strayed to where her cotton underwear was mortifyingly damp. Just talking to her—that was all he had done—had left her body throbbing and on fire. One touch there and she knew she would fall helplessly off the edge into mindless orgasm.

No!

Before she could dwell on the heat coursing through her body and on her own craving to have him quench it with his touch, she sprang to her feet and began dragging the mattress towards the door. It was pretty heavy and cumbersome. He had made it seem lightweight when he had dragged it through, but then, as he had said, he was equipped for the heavy duty stuff.

She had her back to the door and was busily trying to get some sort of grip that would turn the unwieldy object into something more manageable, when he spoke and Rose jumped in shock.

‘What are you doing?’

Rose blinked in confusion. ‘I thought you were going to be gone for at least half an hour? Checking that everything was nailed down?’ She was still clutching one tip of the mattress and noticing that he was damp, probably caught out by the rain in one of the rooms. His black hair glistened.

‘Everything’s nailed down. What are you doing?’

‘I’m going back to my room,’ Rose mumbled. ‘I think it’s for the best.’

‘Mind if I ask why?’

Rose dropped the mattress and it thudded against the back of her legs, making her stumble. Unless she suddenly developed the secret of body displacement, there was no way she was going to leave the room, not while Gabriel was standing in front of the door, arms folded, as immovable an object as she had ever set eyes on.

‘Because the situation seems to be getting a little out of hand.’ Rose aimed for her usual crisp voice but it had deserted her. In its place, was something nervous and unsteady and her eyes skittered away from his face.

‘I didn’t come over here…to…for…’ Her words faltered and she cleared her throat. ‘The weather’s making us both behave out of character and…’

‘The weather has nothing to do with it,’ Gabriel said dismissively. ‘And we’re behaving perfectly in character…’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Rose said faintly.

‘You can scuttle back to your room, Rose. I’m not going to stand in your way, but make no mistake—we want one another. There’s no use you pretending that you’ve got the perfect man in the background. He might be perfect but he’s not perfect for you or else your whole body wouldn’t quiver when I touch you.’

‘How dare you?’ Rose said weakly. ‘That’s simply not true…’

‘No? Then you wouldn’t mind if I put it to the test…’

Rose’s mind shrieked a frantic, Yes, yes I would mind! But when she opened her mouth, nothing came out. Worse, her eyelids fluttered and, as his mouth touched hers, every bone in her body seemed to turn to water. That probably explained why she found herself leaning against him and why her hands curved upwards around his neck, drawing him down to her as she hungrily, greedily, returned his kiss.

Nothing had prepared her for this. That first kiss had been a taster but this was the real thing. He had told her that he wanted her and, just in case she was in any doubt, his kiss was putting paid to that.

His tongue invaded her eager mouth and his hand was on her waist, making sure that she was pressed against him so that she could feel the hardness of his arousal.

Rose whimpered and, when he drew back slightly, she moaned, wanting him back.

‘Do you still want to go back to your room?’ Gabriel murmured. ‘Because, if you do, then tell me now, right now. And I’ll take the mattress in for you. But if you stay, then…’ He left his sentence unfinished but Rose knew exactly what he meant. If she stayed, then there would be no turning back. They would make love and to hell with what came afterwards, to hell with reality waiting just around the corner. He was giving her the opportunity to change her mind.

‘What about…tomorrow…?’ She had to ask the question and she didn’t mean tomorrow in the literal sense. He understood immediately.

‘For me, tomorrow is a bridge to cross. But not now. Too much planning for tomorrow dilutes the chance of enjoying today. But that’s me. For you…decide now, Rose.’

Rose realised that she knew him too well to escape his meaning. Strip away all the waffle about bridges and enjoying todays…he was telling her to either give in to lust and enjoy the moment because there would be nothing else forthcoming, or else abandon the exercise while he was affording her the chance.

Rose met his eyes steadily and then smiled ruefully. ‘But I’ll always blame it on the weather,’ she murmured before reaching up to touch his face against the palm of her hand.