Читать книгу Modern Romance March 2015 Collection 2 - Кэтти Уильямс, Jane Porter, Cathy Williams - Страница 11

CHAPTER THREE

‘SOMETHING’S ONLY JUST occurred to me...’

The dishes had been done, mostly by Milly, while Lucas had relaxed and fiddled with the complicated coffee-making machine, eventually succeeding in producing two small cups of espresso that she was embarrassed to tell him would probably keep her up all night. It had taken him such a long time finally to get there that it would have seemed churlish to politely refuse. She had never met anyone more clueless when it came to knowing his way around a kitchen. Or less interested, for that matter.

Now they were back on the white sofa although, with permission granted to stay in the lodge, she felt a little less uncomfortable in her surroundings.

‘And I take it that this sudden thought is one you want to share with me.’ This was a brave, new world. She had already berated him for not helping enough in the kitchen and had then proceeded to give him a mini-lecture on the wonders of ‘the modern man’. Apparently those were men who shared all the domestic chores, cooked and cleaned with the best of them and gave foot massages to their loved ones. He had told her that, quite frankly, he could think of nothing worse.

‘I should have asked you this before but with everything going on my mind was all over the place...’

Lucas grunted. The emails that he had planned to spend the evening ploughing through had quickly taken a back seat to the girl now staring off into the distance with a thoughtful frown.

‘I should have asked you whether you’re...er...involved with someone or not.’

‘Involved with someone...’

‘Are you married?’ she asked bluntly. ‘Not that it makes any difference, because we’re both just employees who happen to be stranded in the same lodge.’ The same empty lodge. ‘But I wouldn’t want your wife to be worried. You know...’

‘You mean you wouldn’t want her to be jealous.’

‘Well, anxious...’ So he was married, despite the lack of a wedding ring. Lots of men didn’t wear wedding rings. She felt a stab of disappointment. Why wouldn’t he be married? she thought, restlessly pushing aside that awkward, uninvited emotion that had no place in her life. He was sinfully sexy and oozed just the sort of self-assurance and lazy arrogance that women went wild for.

‘Interesting concept. A jealous and anxious wife worried about her beloved husband sharing a ski lodge with a total stranger...’ He tried the thought on for size and tried not to burst out laughing.

When it came to women and commitment, he was the least likely candidate. Once bitten, twice shy and he had had his brush with his one and only near-escape. It had been a decade and a half ago but as learning curves went it had been a good one. He had been a nineteen-year-old kid, already with plenty of experience but still too green to recognise when he was being played. He’d been young, cocky and arrogant enough to think that gold-diggers all came wrapped up and packaged the same way: big hair, high heels, obvious charms.

But Betina Crew, at twenty-seven nearly eight years older than him, had been just the opposite. She had been a wild flower-child who went on protest marches and waxed lyrical about saving the world. He had fallen hook, line and sinker until she’d tried to reel him in with a phoney pregnancy scare, which he had so nearly bought, and had so nearly walked down the aisle. It was pure chance that he had discovered the packet of contraceptive pills tucked away at the back of one of her drawers and, when he’d confronted her, it had all ended up turning ugly.

Since then, he had never kidded himself that there was such a thing as disinterested true love. Not when the size of his bank balance was known. His parents might have had the perfect marriage, but they had both started off broke and had worked together to make their fortune. His mother still believed in all that clap trap about true love, and he hadn’t the heart to disillusion her, but he knew that when and if he ever decided to tie the knot it would be less Cupid’s bow and arrow than a decent arrangement overseen by a lawyer with a watertight pre-nup.

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘No anxious, jealous or whatever-you-want-to-call-it wife keeping the home fires warm.’

‘Girlfriend?’

‘Why the interest? Are you suggesting that there might be something for a woman to be jealous about?’

‘No!’ Milly nearly choked on her espresso. ‘In case you’d forgotten,’ she added, regaining her composure, ‘I came over here to try and escape. The last thing on my mind would be involvement with anyone! I just don’t want to think that there’s anyone out there who cares about you and who might be alarmed that we happen to be stuck here together through no fault of our own.’

‘In that case, I’ll set your mind at rest, shall I? No girlfriend and, even if there was a girlfriend, I’m not a jealous guy and I don’t encourage jealousy in women I date.’

‘How can you discourage someone from being jealous?’ She hadn’t been at all jealous when it came to Robbie. Why was that? she wondered. Was it because she had known him off and on for a long time, and one was never that jealous when it came to people they were familiar with? She hadn’t even thought twice about Robbie and Emily being alone together. And yet there was something deep inside telling her that surely jealousy was something that attacked at random and couldn’t be debated or ordered out of existence?

‘I’ve never found a problem with that. The women I date know my parameters and they tend to respect them.’

‘You’re the most arrogant guy I’ve ever met in my entire life,’ Milly said with genuine wonderment.

‘I think you’ve already told me that.’ He drained his cup and dumped it on one of the coffee tables, then he stood up and flexed his muscles, watching as she uncurled herself from the sofa and automatically reached to gather his cup along with hers.

His automatic instinct was irritably to tell her to leave it, that someone would tidy it away in the morning, then he remembered that there would be no cleaner trooping along to make sure she tidied in his wake.

‘I’ll show you to your room.’

‘Feels odd to be here without the owner in residence.’

Lucas had the grace to flush but he refrained from saying anything, instead scooping up her holdall, which had seen better days, and heading out towards a spiral staircase that led up to a huge galleried landing that overlooked the ground floor.

There, as on the ground floor, soaring windows gave out to the same spectacular views of the open, snow-covered mountains. It was dark outside and the snow was a peculiar dull-blue white against the velvety darkness.

For a few seconds, Milly paused to admire the vista, which was truly breathtakingly beautiful. When she looked away it was to find his dark eyes speculatively pinned to her face.

She was here with a guy she didn’t know and yet, far from feeling threatened in any way, she felt safe. There was something silent and inherently strong about him that was deeply reassuring. She felt that if the place were to be invaded by a clutch of knife wielding bandits he would be able to dispatch them single-handedly.

‘I have no idea where Ramos was going to put you,’ Lucas told her truthfully. ‘But I expect this room will do as good as any of the others.’

He flung wide the door and she gasped. It was, simply put, the most splendid bedroom she had ever seen. She almost didn’t want to disturb its perfection by going inside. He breezed in and tossed her bag on the elegant chaise longue by the window, yet another of those massive windows designed to remind you of the still, white, glorious silence that lay outside.

‘Well?’ Lucas rarely noticed his surroundings but he did now because the expression on her face was so tellingly awestruck.

Playground for the seriously rich—this was what the lodge was. He had had zero input into its decor. He had left that to a world famous interior designer. When the job had been done, he had dispatched three of his trusted employees to give it the once over and make sure that everything had been done to the highest possible standard, no corners cut. Thereafter he had used it a handful of times when the season was at its height and only if the skiing conditions were perfect.

It was a beautiful place. He looked at the cool, white furnishings, breathed in the air of calm, noted the quality of the wood and the subtlety of the faded Persian rug on the ground. Nothing jarred. In the bowels of the lodge, there was a comprehensive spa and sauna area. He’d used that once.

Now, he had an intense urge to take her down there and show it to her just so that he could see that expression of awe again, even though, regrettably, the lodge was not his as far as she was concerned. For the first time in living memory, he had an insane desire to brag. Hell, where had that come from?

‘It’s amazing.’ Milly hovered by the door. ‘Isn’t it amazing? Well, I guess you’re used to this, but I’m not. My entire flat could fit into this bedroom. Is that an en suite bathroom?’

Amused, Lucas pushed the adjoining door and, sure enough, it opened out to a bathroom that was almost as big as the bedroom and contained its own little sitting area. He wondered what the interior designer had had in mind when she’d decided on sticking furniture in the bathroom.

‘Wow.’ Milly tiptoed her way to the bathroom and peered in. It was absolutely enormous. ‘You could have a party in here,’ she breathed in a hushed voice.

‘I doubt anyone would choose to do that.’

‘How can you be so blasé about all of this?’ She was too busy inspecting her glorious surroundings to look at him but she was acutely aware of his masculine presence next to her. ‘I mean, do you teach lots of rich people? Is that it? You’re accustomed to places like this because you’re in them all the time?’

‘I’ve been to a number of places along these lines...’

Milly laughed that infectious laugh that made him want to smile. ‘Must be a terrific anti-climax when the season’s over and you have to return to your digs.’

‘I cope.’

Suddenly exhausted after a day of travelling and the stress of finding herself out of a job, then back in one, Milly yawned behind her hand and wandered over to her holdall, which was not the quality of bag that should have adorned the chaise longue.

‘I’ve talked about myself all night,’ she said sleepily. ‘Tomorrow you can tell me all about yourself and your exciting life working for the rich and famous.’

A minute later she closed, and after a few seconds’ thought locked, the bedroom door behind him and began running the bath. The ridiculously luxurious bath that was so big and so deep that it was almost the size of a plunge pool.

She wouldn’t have believed it but she was having an impossible adventure and—okay, admit it—was so transfixed by Lucas that there had been no room in her head to feel sorry for herself.

She wondered what he did when he wasn’t playing ski instructor to rich adults and their kids. Did he while away his summers in the company of wealthy socialites? He was good-looking enough to be a gigolo but she dismissed that idea as fast as it entered her head because she couldn’t imagine that he could be that sleazy.

He’d said didn’t sleep with married women and she believed him. There had been a shadow of repugnance when that suggestion had been mooted.

But he was a man of experience, from the way he had talked about the women he dated, in the casual voice of someone who was accustomed to getting a lot of attention and to dating a lot of women.

She thought about her own circumstances. When it came to experience with the opposite sex, she was wet behind the ears. She had never really been the kind of teenager who had become swept up in boys, in make-up, in short skirts and mini bottles of vodka at house parties. Maybe if she had had a mum; maybe if she hadn’t been raised by her grandmother. She adored her grandmother, but she could reflect back and see that the generation gap had not been conducive to giggly conversations and experiments with make-up.

Nana Mayfield was a brisk, no-nonsense woman with a great love of the outdoors. Widowed at the age of forty-five, she had had to survive the harsh Scottish winters in unforgiving terrain and she had thrived. That love of the great outdoors was what she had brought to the relationship with her granddaughter and Milly had grown up loving all things to do with sport. She had followed sport on TV and had played as many sports as she could possibly fit into her school timetable.

Of course, she had been to parties, but hockey, tennis, rounders, even football, and later as much skiing as she could possibly do, had always come first.

And so the stages of infatuation, the teenage angst and disappointment, the adolescent broken hearts and the comparing of notes about boys with her friends, had largely passed her by.

Was that why she had fallen for Robbie in the first place? Because her lack of experience had allowed flattery and compliments to blind her to the reality of a relationship that was built on sand? Had a crush at fourteen predisposed her to become the vulnerable idiot she had been when he had swanned back into her life ten years later? And then, had she held on to him because she had wanted someone to call her own?

He hadn’t even shown much interest in getting physical with her. How did that fit into the equation of two love birds on the brink of a happy-ever-after life? And she hadn’t pushed him. That should have sounded the alarm bells, but nope, she had merrily continued sleep walking her way to the inevitable.

She had made sure to keep that to herself. She knew, from listening to her friends, that they would all have read the writing on the wall and would have known that his only half-hearted attempts at touching her, and her cheerful acceptance of that situation, did not augur a healthy relationship. They had all been born and raised in London and they were streetwise in ways she couldn’t hope to be.

She fell asleep to images of a dark, swarthy, sexy face. He wasn’t replacement therapy, but he was a distraction, and maybe that was exactly what she needed right now: a harmless distraction.

The following morning it was snowing when she awoke. She hadn’t drawn the curtains and from the bed she could look straight across to ceiling panes of glass to the winter wonderland outside. She itched to put on her skis and get out there.

Before she did anything, she telephoned her grandmother to tell her that she arrived safe and sound but that the family in question had had a slight change of plan, after which she managed to avoid directly lying about her new circumstances, about sharing the lodge with a stranger. Then she texted her friends, brief texts telling them that she’d arrived. No more.

Once changed, she went downstairs and after prowling through the lodge finally located Lucas in a big, airy room behind a desk. She came to a halt outside the door and looked at him. There were papers spread around him and he was peering at a thin laptop computer, frowning.

‘You’re going to express concern that I’m sitting here without due respect for the owner, aren’t you?’ he said, without looking away from the computer.

He had had time to question his motives in offering her the use of his ski lodge. She was a young girl recovering from a broken relationship. In short, she was vulnerable and vulnerable, along with married, was something he didn’t do.

Was he so jaded that he was prepared to try and take something simply because it made a change? And was a change as good as a rest? Yes, she was refreshing, as was the fact that she had no idea who he was or what he was worth, but was that any reason for him to amuse himself with her?

In any equation where ‘vulnerable’ appeared, hurt was always its companion.

He was immune but she wouldn’t be. He knew what it was like to have complete control over the outcome of his emotional life, whilst she clearly didn’t.

And yet...he couldn’t escape the tempting notion that it would be utterly relaxing to spend a couple of days in her company. He could look without touching. It was called restraint and, whilst it was something he had never had any need to practise, it should be something that he could manage.

He needed to take time out from the combined stresses of his mother, who would not let up on reminding him that he needed to settle down, and an ex-girlfriend who was still texting him in a way that was heading dangerously into stalker land. The fact that she knew his mother, albeit remotely, had foolishly led her to believe that their fling was more significant than what he’d had in mind.

He needed to take time out from being Lucas Romero. It was an elevated position he had occupied for his entire life. He had been born and bred to manage the family fortune and to add to it. He had never known what it felt like to be a normal person, with normal concerns. Wariness, suspicion, caution: those were the bywords in a life that was as wealthy and as powerful as his was.

‘How did you know?’ Overnight, Milly had wondered whether exhaustion and a build-up of stress were responsible for her exaggerating Lucas’s overwhelming physical impact.

Not a bit of it. He was sprawled in front of his computer in all his devastatingly good-looking glory.

His near-black hair was swept back, accentuating the hard, chiselled lines of his face, and he was wearing a pale blue short-sleeved polo shirt that exposed the rippling, muscled strength of his arms and a glimpse of bronzed collarbone that made her mouth suddenly go dry.

‘Because I’m getting the impression that you have a highly developed sense of guilt.’ He stood up, dark eyes fixed on her face.

She was in a pair of jogging bottoms and a black base-layer long-sleeved T-shirt that clung to every curve of her small, sexy little body. It was just as well Ramos was not around. His wife would have spent the entire time trying to peel his eyes back into their sockets. The man was a notorious womaniser.

‘What are you doing?’

Lucas logged off and leaned back, hands folded behind his head. ‘Work.’

‘Oh.’ Milly looked at him, confused.

‘A man has to get by.’

‘What work?’ Then her face cleared and she smiled. ‘Oh, I remember. This and that. You didn’t specify. How long have you been up?’ It wasn’t yet nine and he looked bright eyed and bushy tailed.

‘I’m usually up by six.’

‘Wow. Are you? Why?’ Fascinated, she watched as he strolled towards her, pausing to stand directly in front of her so that she had to look up to him.

‘What do you mean why?’ Lucas asked, amused and puzzled.

‘Why would you get up so early if you don’t have to?’ She felt breathless and exposed. ‘I stay in bed as long as I can,’ she confessed. ‘Admittedly, my hours at the Rainbow Hotel are pretty long. Were pretty long. I’m out of a job now.’

She followed him towards the kitchen, chewing her lip, thinking about having to apply for more jobs as soon as she returned to London. How was she going to afford the rent on the flat? Emily would have disappeared off to her shiny new life that left her without a flatmate and with a disgruntled landlord. He might give her a little bit of leeway, if she explained the circumstances to him, but he wasn’t a Good Samaritan and unless she found the rent money fast she would be out on her ear with nowhere to live.

‘I like to be awake for as much of the day as possible,’ Lucas murmured. Lie-ins were unheard of. Even if there was a woman in bed with him, he found it impossible to waste his time next to her, unless they were making love.

Sex got him into bed and kept him there. Sleep was something essential he had to grab. But, for him, those were the two main functions of a bed.

The kitchen was as they had left it. Milly stared around her, dismayed.

‘You were up at six, made yourself a cup of coffee and yet you couldn’t be bothered to tidy up?’

Lucas surveyed the kitchen as though seeing it for the first time. ‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘Everything. The dishes need putting away...the counters need wiping...the milk’s been left out...’

Lucas shrugged and looked at her with his head tilted to one side. ‘I fail to see the point of tidying away anything that’s going to make an appearance later on in the day. Same goes for the kitchen counters. Why wipe them? Unless you’re planning on having a food-free day?’

‘How can you be so blasé about someone else’s property? You should respect the things that don’t belong to you.’

‘You’re cute when you’re being self-righteous,’ he murmured and Milly stood stock still and folded her arms.

‘You might think you’re the hottest guy on the planet,’ she said on an indrawn breath, ‘and you might be bored because your job here with the Ramos family fell through, but that doesn’t give you the right to flirt with me just because I happen to be around.’

‘Who’s flirting?’ He surveyed her lazily. ‘Simple statement of fact.’

‘And I won’t be running around cleaning up behind you like a maid either. I realise I’m being paid by Mr Ramos, who’s been more than generous, all things considered—and I know that that’s thanks to you—but I’m going to use my time here to really relax and try and forget about what I’ve been through. I don’t want to feel as though I’ve got to be on full alert every time you’re around.’

‘I’m at a loss. What do you imagine I’m going to do?’

‘Well, I just think we should lay down some boundary lines.’

‘Agreed.’ He held up both hands with a wicked grin that seem to utterly contradict what he had just said. ‘Shall we have a spot of breakfast and then put our skiing skills to the test? The weather looks perfect. We could save the boundary line conversation for a little later.’ He watched her hesitate, wondering whether to carry on the argument, maybe add to the ‘boundary line’ suggestion, but in the end the thought of taking to the slopes proved too much of a temptation and she smiled, her good humour restored.

Inexperienced.

Vulnerable.

He should be laying down more than just a few boundaries himself. He should be the one warning her off. He had the instincts of a born predator when it came to women and, however much she amused him, the last thing he wanted was for her somehow to get it into her head that he might be a worthwhile replacement for the vanishing ex-fiancé. The guy was obviously a complete loser, and she was well rid of him, but transference was a dangerous possibility and a complication he could do without.

As are women who have romantic notions of love and marriage, a little voice added. A complication he could do without...

* * *

Milly’s face was flushed with happiness when, several hours later, they returned to the lodge.

The day’s skiing had been exhausting, exhilarating, wonderful. It had been over a year since she had last taken to the slopes. The real slopes. She had managed to keep her hand in by going as often as she could to the nearest dry slopes, but nothing could come close to the feeling of euphoria when, poised at the very top of the mountain, you looked down to the naked, white beauty of snow-covered slopes. It was the closest you could get to your mind being empty, with just you and the infinite snowy space around you, your whole body yearning for the thrill of speed.

They had raced. She was good but he’d made her look like an amateur. He knew where to go to avoid all crowds. He would, she supposed. He would know these ranges like the back of his hand.

Dressed completely in black, including a black woolly hat and dark sunglasses, he was unbearably sexy, and she’d found her gaze drifting back to him repeatedly.

He moved as though he had been born to ski. He was skilled, fast, at times disappearing to reappear like a speeding bullet far ahead of her on the slopes.

They’d broken off for lunch at a tiny café nowhere near the hubbub of the town centre. This café was in the opposite direction, and there wasn’t a single designer shop in sight—unlike the town centre, which heaved with rich and famous people spending money in the expensive shops that had sprung up to cater for their exclusive clientele.

Milly had loved it. She had never felt more relaxed as she’d sipped hot coffee and told him all about her childhood, her love of sports, the football team she supported. She’d told him about being brought up by her grandmother, the way it made you feel vulnerable to being left by the people you love.

It was weird but she knew that if she had met him under more normal circumstances there was no way she would ever have approached him. But here, things were different. She was recuperating from the humiliation of a broken heart, and he was the objective listening ear who didn’t know her and so was not interested in tea and sympathy. In fact, he made no mention of Robbie except, when he could sense her drifting off, to tell her that the guy was a loser and she was better off without losers in her life.

‘Tough times make you stronger,’ had been his bracing observation when she had mentioned the uphill struggle of having to return to London to find work so that she could pay the rent on a house she couldn’t really afford unless she found another lodger pronto.

Everything about him was as sexy as hell and by the end of the day she had stopped trying to pretend that she didn’t want to just keep looking at him. She had stopped trying to figure out how it was that she could be broken-hearted and yet still open to his incredible, mind-blowing, raw animal magnetism...

Their joint love of skiing had banished her nerves. When she was moving on the snow, she was no longer the small, round red-haired girl who couldn’t hold a candle to the tall glamorous models men found attractive. No, when she was skiing, she was at the top of her game and bursting with self-confidence.

* * *

Lucas had planned to stay no more than two nights at the ski lodge.

It was all the time he could spare. His high-octane life did not leave room for impromptu holidays. The impulse to go to the ski lodge where the isolation and privacy would recharge his batteries had been a good one.

The unexpected presence of Milly, her freshness and openness, had turned out to be even better for recharging his batteries.

By the second day, he had already made up his mind to take a couple more days off.

What was the point in having highly paid executives in place if you needed to hold their hand every time a decision had to be made? They could all do without him for a few days. Some of them could definitely do with an injection of backbone.

The truth was that he was enjoying himself. He was even enjoying his self-imposed rule of looking but not touching. He liked the way she coloured when he occasionally flirted with her. He liked the challenge of restraint when, the more he saw of her, the more he wanted to see. He liked her openness and he liked the way she confided, her pretty face pink and open and earnest.

The joy of restraint, however, was the certain knowledge that it could be broken at any given moment in time.

She fancied him. He had picked that up with finely tuned antennae: the way she sneaked sultry, stolen glances at him; the way she stilled whenever he got within a certain radius, as though ordering her body not to betray what she was feeling.

Her attempts to keep her distance were like constant gauntlets being thrown down. His libido, jaded after a diet of the same type of woman, was being tested to its absolute limit.

It was invigorating.

It made him think that he had not faced up to any sort of challenge for a very long time. He had flatlined. He made money, more than he could ever hope to spend in a lifetime. He owned things and occasionally even enjoyed some of his possessions. And he had women. However many he wanted and whatever variety he chose.

He was keeping his hands to himself but his determination to keep in mind that she didn’t play by his rules, that she had been hurt once and he didn’t want to be responsible for adding to the tally, was beginning to fray round the edges.

Right now, she was downstairs cooking something. It would be good. She would be moving around the kitchen in clothes that showed off a body she seemed to have downgraded to the lowest possible rating, despite the fact there wasn’t a red-blooded man on this earth who wouldn’t have appreciated those generous breasts, that tiny waist and those womanly hips.

Wouldn’t it do her good to have a man—a real man, not a wimp like the vanishing ex—tell her how sexy she was?

Wouldn’t it do her self-confidence a power of good for her to know what it felt like to be desired? From what he had read between the lines, the ex had been a waste of space from day one. They had met, gone to the movies, gone on walks, enjoyed meals out. From where he was standing, it had been a courtship that had shrieked ‘boring’—and most women with a little more about them would have picked that up and moved on after deadly date number four.

But Milly hadn’t and, now that fate had seen fit to bring them together for a few days, wouldn’t he be doing her a favour if he showed her that she was a desirable woman? If he conclusively proved to her that she was well rid of the man, that she could have any guy she wanted...?

With the logical, clear-minded and concise brain any lawyer would kill for, Lucas made a mental list of all the many reasons why he could be justified in sleeping with her.

At the very end, he tacked on no more restless nights for me wondering...

He got downstairs to find the kitchen empty, with a note on the counter propped up against the salt shaker.

She had popped down to the town to get some stuff.

It had been snowing sporadically for the past twenty-four hours but the snow had gathered pace overnight. Optimum skiing conditions were bright-blue skies and good accumulation of snow. Too much falling snow could end up being inconvenient and, in some cases, downright dangerous to safe skiing.

He looked outside at what appeared to be a gathering snow storm. The lifts would be running at half-empty, if that. The line between safe and treacherous was slim. But she was a damned good skier. The best skiing companion he had ever had—courageous without taking unnecessary chances. He would wait for her to return and give himself a chance to catch up on work.

But there was no internet connection. Nor, when he tried his mobile phone, could he get a signal.

He waited a further twenty minutes and then realised that he had no choice but to hunt her down.

Chances were she was fine and on her way back but there was the very slender possibility that the sudden heavy snowfall had disorientated her, as it was wont to do with skiers unaccustomed to these slopes.

A disorientated skier very quickly became a skier at high risk. There had also been three avalanches in the past eighteen months. No casualties, but it only took one...

One disorientated skier, unfamiliar with the terrain, reacting without thinking, panicking...

When that happened, experience on a pair of sticks counted for nothing.

He dropped everything: the coffee he had just made; the historic files he had been about to review on his computer; the report waiting to be concluded.

He hit the slopes at a run, strapped himself into his skis and took off.

This was more than just a bit of fun for a couple of days. This was a serious case of wanting a woman and he was sick of playing mind games with himself. Hell, when he thought of her disappearing without him having bedded her...

He killed every single scruple that had been holding him back, because he was a man who was accustomed to taking what he wanted, and why bother trying to break the habits of a lifetime?