The Price of Scandal (3 page)

‘No, red
coat
.’ The heat embedded in the padded fabric was tempting, but as much as she appreciated the gesture she couldn’t let him. ‘That’s really kind of you, but I can’t allow you—’

‘Allow implies I asked permission.’

The irritation in his deep voice was echoed in the dark eyes that meshed briefly with her own.

‘I didn’t.’

‘But you’ll get cold…’

Ignoring her protest, he took her right wrist.

She was too surprised to resist as he threaded it into the sleeve as if she were a child and then took her left hand and did the same.

‘But—Ooh!’ He drew the two sides of the jacket together so forcibly he almost jerked her off her feet. Teeth chattering violently, she looked up at him. His dark eyes glittered back at her through the slits in the mask, projecting a level of anger that was bewildering.

‘I really don’t need your—’

Severo swore and grabbed her by the shoulders. This was no time for tact and diplomacy. He studied her upturned features with a baffled expression. She couldn’t take his jacket, but this was the same woman who had taken his car without a second thought?

What she
needed
, in his opinion, was therapy, and so did he for being out here.

He pulled the zip all the way up until just her small tip-tilted nose peeped out over the top.

‘I’d love to chat with you, but we have no time for a debate. Also, for the record, I am not being chivalrous, this is purely practical. I’m wearing layers.’ And even through them the bite of the cold went bone deep.

The chill went deeper still when he thought of what sort of condition she would have been in if he had not found her when he had. How long would she have lasted—another hour…less?

He felt his anger surge. She seemed utterly oblivious to the danger she was in.

‘You are dressed for a stroll along a beach.’ The harsh condemnation in his voice made Neve take an involuntary step backwards. ‘It is people like you,’ he continued, warming to the theme, ‘people who have no respect for nature and the elements, who wander into the mountains ill equipped and expect other people to risk their lives to save them for their foolishness.’ He shook his head and searched the pale face tilted up to him; it felt like yelling at a kitten. ‘You’ve no idea what I’m talking about, have you?’

‘I’ve never tried to climb a mountain.’

He released a hissing sound of irritation and said, ‘The subject is closed. We are wasting time.’

‘You’re right.’ Neve was relieved he understood the urgency of the situation. ‘I was thinking if we found some high ground—’

What school of survival had she attended? ‘We need shelter, not high ground.’

‘No, that won’t work, we need to see—’

Sounding annoyed at the interruption, he cut across her. ‘See what exactly?’

‘Hannah,’ she said, finally placing the accent that had intrigued her since he began to speak: Italian.

There had been several Italian waiters in the restaurant they had stopped at for lunch. It would be a coincidence if he had been one of them. Though now that she thought about it, she did not remember any of them being this tall.

He shook his head.
‘Hannah?’

‘I was heading towards…’ she made a vague gesture behind her with her hand ‘…That way and she was just in front of me in a blue—’ Neve shook head crazily; she couldn’t recall the make of her own car ‘—car. Which way did you come? Did you see her?’ He shook his head and turned away, scanning the horizon, sizing up the most direct route back to the road.

Neve caught his sleeve and tugged hard. He turned his head, his glance drifting from the fingers curled into the fabric of his sweater to the tumble of wild copper-gold curls around the heart-shaped face turned up to his.

‘But you
must
have. Were you on the road?’

‘I saw no one.’ Severo struggled to contain his escalating impatience. ‘We are not equipped to undertake a rescue operation.’ Bit late in the day to realise this, and for all he knew this Hannah might be a figment of this woman’s imagination. If not he hoped she had already found safety, but the brutal truth was if she hadn’t adding to the casualty list with their own lives was not going to help. ‘This woman, if she exists, will have to take care of herself.’

‘She’s not a woman, she’s a child! What do you mean
if
? We have to—’

‘We?’

Neve grimaced as she realised she had been presuming he would be willing to help her. Clearly she had been wrong; she didn’t usually judge, but it was hard not to feel contemptuous of someone who looked after number one.

She began to unzip the jacket.

‘Fine, I’ll find her myself. But when you’re able, could you inform the authorities that a fourteen-year-old is missing? If that’s not too much bother?’

As it was nobody even knew Hannah was out there somewhere. ‘And that’s my fault too, for not thinking,’ she mumbled as she tried to shrug off his jacket.

Severo swore under his breath and, leaning down, pulled the two sides of the jacket together. ‘You can tell them yourself when we get back to civilization,’ he said as he pulled the zip all the way up to her chin again.

Neve zipped it down far enough to speak. ‘No you don’t understand. I can’t go back. I have to find Hannah. She was—’

‘No,
you
don’t understand.’ The woman had the survival instincts of a lemming.

‘Hannah—’

Severo gritted his teeth and tightened his grip on her shoulder as she struggled desperately to pull free. ‘What we have to do is find shelter.’ It would not be as easy as it sounded; in the last few minutes the snow had begun to fall heavier than ever.

Severo lifted his narrowed eyes to the leaden sky. Another half-hour and the light would be gone. Their best bet, he reasoned, was to head back to the abandoned off-roader. That would provide at least some shelter from the elements. Even retracing his footsteps in this near white-out was not, he recognized, going to be easy in the unfamiliar terrain. He had a good sense of direction, but in these conditions it would be all too easy to become fatally disorientated.

‘No…no!’ Neve panted, struggling wildly but with little effect against the steely restraint of his grasp. ‘You don’t understand, I have to—’

Severo, his voice harsh with impatience, cut across her shrill impassioned plea. ‘You may have a death wish, but I do not.’

Neve regarded him with contempt and set her jaw. ‘Fine, you go back or wherever, but I’m going on.’

Severo watched her lips, seeing them move, tuning out the hysterical babble, but unable, even at a moment when all his attention needed to be concentrated on the crucial matter of survival, not to appreciate the lushness of the pink outline.

Under the ski mask a fleeting grimace twisted his wide sensual mouth. As he acknowledged the male weakness a moment later it was replaced by an expression of steely resolve. Time was of the essence; to be out here when darkness fell was not a good idea.

‘What are you—?’ Neve let out a startled yelp as she found herself heaved casually off the ground a moment later and slung over a male shoulder. ‘Put me down!’ she shrieked.

He grunted in response to the kick she landed, but did not reply to her demand. He just carried on walking, head bent against the driving snow.

Chapter Three

S
EVERO
placed his burden down on her feet.

He shot out a steadying hand when her knees sagged. ‘You are all right?’

He sounded more irritated than concerned, and Neve weakly batted his gloved hand away.
All right?
Just her luck to get rescued—or was it kidnapped?—by a man of few words and all of them stupid!

‘No, I’m
not
all right!’ she panted.

She had been hauled cross country against her will with all the dignity of a sack of coal, she was exhausted, she was cold, she was paralysed with fear and guilt every time she thought of Hannah!

All right?

She bit her quivering lip, resisting the strong temptation to lie face down in the snow and cry. She took a deep sustaining breath and reminded herself she was not a wimp—she just had wimpish tendencies.

Severo took her reply at face value and chose not to notice the quivering resentment in her voice. He flexed his shoulders, aware that she was struggling not to fall apart; nine out of ten people already would have. The redhead might be stupid but she was also gutsy.

‘Well, you’re alive.’ Alive was something she might not be if he had not found her. Severo felt his anger mount as he considered her criminal stupidity. ‘So stop moaning.’

The terse direction made her blink.

‘I don’t know who you think you are—’ She stopped, realising that she didn’t have the faintest idea who he was or what he was except selfish, insensitive and extremely fit. The latter was a given—after the fifteen-minute slog through the snow carrying her he had to be exhausted, but there was nothing to suggest even slight fatigue in his manner. Her glance slid to his broad chest; he was not even breathing hard under the black fleece.

‘Just who are you anyway?’

‘I’m the man who saved your life. You can,’ he added sardonically, ‘thank me later, when I will happily give you my life history.’

‘A name would be quite sufficient, and I didn’t ask to be saved.’ Neve knew that she sounded quite unbelievably childish and ungrateful, but her frustration at being forcibly brought here when she ought to be searching for Hannah made it hard for her to be gracious. ‘I didn’t
need
saving.’

His lips twisted into an ironic smile as he fished out his mobile and tried for a signal: nothing. ‘Yeah, I could see that you had the situation under control.’

Neve, who had held her breath while he tried his phone, watched him slide it back into his pocket, barely registering his sarcasm.

‘No signal?’

He shook his head.

Neve pulled her spirits out of the depressing downward spiral they had taken since Hannah had run out of the inn, and straightened her shoulders. This was not the time to get negative. Looking around, she finally took in the lit building behind her. Lights meant people, and this place was lit up like a Christmas tree.

‘What is this place?’ Other than the answer to her prayers. The people inside would be able to raise the alarm, finally. Of course, the search parties would already be out if she had thought before acting, and Hannah might already be safe, not out there somewhere, lost, cold…Neve shook her head, refusing to follow the thought to its horrid conclusion.

Stay positive.

She would find Hannah, and her stepdaughter would be all right.

She had to be all right!

Severo watched with growing fascination as the flicker of expressions moved across her pale face. In a matter of seconds he registered a gamut of emotions, all extreme, from deep despair to steely-eyed determination.

Born in another age she would have made a great silent-screen actress—that face could convey more than several pages of dialogue.

When he didn’t respond Neve brushed a wet strand of hair from her cheek and angled a questioning look up at him.

‘A barn conversion, I’d say, and a safe haven.’ He was beginning to wonder if this woman had at any point had the faintest idea of how much danger she had been in. Her attitude certainly made it seem unlikely.

Lucky for her she led a charmed life and he had developed a fascination for red hair and electric-blue eyes.

Neve took a deep breath. She didn’t want a safe haven while Hannah was still out there. ‘Hopefully the people here will not be too worried about their own skins, unlike some, and—’

Without turning, he cut her off. He did not need to be hailed a hero—in fact he would have run a mile to avoid such a scenario—but a simple thank-you might be nice.

‘Can you save the reading of my character until we get out of this? We
cowards
do not have conversations in the middle of a blizzard—and don’t try to run because I will find the necessity to catch you irritating.’

In the act of turning, Neve froze. ‘Is that a threat?’ she demanded through teeth that were now chattering from a combination of cold and shock.

‘It is an understatement,’ he corrected, throwing the comment over his shoulder as he negotiated the snow-covered flight of steps.

Light streamed from the glass panel that led down to the big entrance door, and the slits cut deep into the blocks of stone, but it was the apex wall that appeared to be formed totally of glass panels that had made the place visible from the other side of the valley.

Severo banged on the door. When there was no reply he alternated banging and then ringing the bell. He made enough noise to rouse the dead but nobody inside stirred—were they deaf, or possibly just cautious of strangers appearing from nowhere?

The question was academic. If he was terrifying someone he would make his apologies. He did not need a thermometer to tell him that the temperature was dropping. Right now his main priority was getting inside before things got serious.

How much more serious do you want, asked the voice in his head, stuck in the middle of a blizzard with some felonious madwoman?

To look at her standing there in the jacket that reached her knees she looked cute and fragile, the sort of woman that aroused protective instincts in men—the ones who had not been kicked by her, at any rate.

He was not one of them. She had landed a couple of hefty kicks before she had quietened down, which would have caused a lot more damage had her footwear not been woefully inadequate for the conditions.

‘Stay there!’ He flung the terse instruction over his shoulder before working his way around the side of the building. He almost missed the side entrance, a glass-panelled door that was half obscured by a drift that had formed up against the side of the building.

A quick survey revealed it did not look nearly as substantial as the oak-panelled main door. His luck was turning, and not before time. All he had to do now was get to it, which required shifting the several feet of snow that blocked it.

Using his gloved hands, Severo began to clear a path to the door, building up a steady rhythm as he made a narrow slippery corridor through the snow.

‘I said not to move.’

It was spooky. He had not even turned around. The man clearly had eyes in the back of his head.

His manner suggested he was not accustomed to people ignoring his instructions. ‘Yes, you did,’ she agreed, unable to repress a sharp intake of breath as she plunged her hands into the snow.

He stopped shovelling and turned his head. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Other than shaking so hard he could hear her teeth rattle from feet away.

Neve exhaled a gusty breath that froze white in the air between them. Through the fog she could see the glittering slits of his eyes and ice crystals on the lashes that fringed them.

The man had the most ludicrously long eyelashes. Irritated she was storing such irrelevant information, she brushed the snow from her own eyes and retorted, ‘Helping.’ Aware this claim was something of an exaggeration—this wasn’t nearly as easy as he had made it look—she was unable to keep the defensive note from her voice.

Severo expelled an irritated sigh through clenched teeth. At least she had followed him and not run in the opposite direction. He bent across to where she knelt and pulled her small hands from the snow. Her fine-boned wrists were incredibly narrow and her slender fingers were not just tinged with blue, they
were
blue.

Their glances locked, and he thought, Not as blue as her incredible eyes—but then nothing he had ever seen was.

Clicking his tongue with exasperation that was partly reserved for his continued fascination with her cornflower-blue stare, he hauled her to her feet and pulled the sleeves of his borrowed jacket over her freezing extremities before returning to his task with renewed energy. A frozen felon on his hands would be bound to mean a lot of questions.

‘I am perfectly capable of—’ A sudden lull in the wind meant that her words emerged as a forceful yell.

He placed a gloved hand to her lips. ‘I have witnessed your capabilities.’ Unlike her, he had adjusted the volume. This did not make his delivery any less forceful, but it did reveal an attractive gravelly rasp in his deep accented voice.

‘I was only trying to help.’ Most people would have been grateful, but this man was clearly not a team player.

‘It will not be
helpful
if you get frostbite.’

Her rescuer had a point, Neve conceded, aware that she had lost all feeling in her fingers. Had Hannah been wearing her gloves? A mental image of her stepdaughter, a small figure at the mercy of the elements, flashed before her eyes, and the fear rose like bile in her throat.

She took a deep breath and fought down the panic. ‘What shall I do?’ If he wanted to be in charge, fine, she could live with that, but she couldn’t stand there and do nothing now.

He flashed her a look over his shoulder. ‘I think nothing would be safest.’

Nasty sarcastic rat, Neve thought, watching as he rapidly completed his task. She did not have to wait for long—it took him another two minutes to access the door.

He gave a satisfied grunt and looked around for a suitable blunt object; unlike the large panelled areas in the front of the building, this glass panel was not of the same impregnable quality.

Severo quickly found a suitable smooth stone. ‘Turn around and cover your face.’

Her eyes widened as she realised his intentions. ‘You’re going to break in?’

His hand lowered. ‘A nice touch of moral outrage, but a tad, shall we say, hypocritical?’

The cryptic comment sailed over Neve’s head; the thought of being party to breaking and entering made her deeply uneasy.

‘Couldn’t you try knocking again?’ she suggested, forcing the words past her chattering teeth.

‘Or we could go away and come back tomorrow?’ he said sardonically.

Neve loosed a cry of alarm as he raised his arm again. She covered her face with her hands, watching through parted fingers as his hand moved in a smooth arc towards the glass panel in the door.

She had tensed in anticipation of the sound of smashing glass when he stopped just short of impact and, as she watched, tried the door handle.

The door swung inwards and she heard him laugh; it was not an unattractive sound.

Grinning to himself behind his mask, Severo dropped the stone and stepped inside, trying not to bring in any more of the small avalanche of snow that had fallen inwards when he’d opened the door—it was already beginning to melt on the surface of the black and white chequered floor tiles.

Unlike the rest of the house, this room was in darkness, though not
really
dark—the light from the snow reflected off the pale shiny surfaces. It appeared to be a laundry room of sorts, with stainless-steel work surfaces above white storage units; a power switch glowed red on the panel on a washing machine but it stood silent.

Stamping his feet on the tiled floor to knock the snow from his boots, he reached for the light switch, blinking when the room was flooded with harsh light. The small figure swamped in the borrowed ski jacket stood framed in the doorway.

‘Are you coming in or what?’

The choice being to freeze to death or accept the invitation, Neve stepped inside wishing she could be as totally at ease with the entire breaking and entering situation as this man appeared to be.

Maybe he’d had experience with similar situations, she speculated uneasily, but on the plus side he did seem like a person who might be useful in hazardous situations. Though she couldn’t imagine, given his initial reaction, that he’d think it a good idea to go back out there and search for Hannah, it was possible he’d warm to the idea more if she offered to pay him.

Well, with or without his help she was going back out. Once I’ve thawed out a little, she thought, rubbing her numb fingers together. She didn’t need him.

You carry on telling yourself that, Neve.

Ignoring the voice in her head, she glanced towards the sinister figure of her rescuer.

Outside in the harsh and unforgiving landscape, although she had been unwilling to admit it, his undeniable physical presence and strength had been comforting. Inside the confines of the room they were almost oppressive. Even if the face that was hidden behind the mask was pleasant or plain, with a body like his he was never going to fade into the background.

Long of limb and broad of shoulder, he looked all hard bone and lean muscle. It was as her slightly unfocused gaze drifted upwards from his feet that she became aware of his questioning posture.

‘What?’ she said, embarrassment making her voice accusing. Well, it was extremely embarrassing to be caught ogling a man’s body even if the scrutiny was totally objective.

‘I said would you close the…?’ Emitting an irritated sound, he clicked his tongue and leaned in towards her.

Neve instinctively shrank back, a strangled cry escaping her lips before she realised that he was just closing the door.

His hand still resting on the wall beside the doorjamb, he swept a concerned downward glance at her upturned features.

Neve looked at her feet and heard him say, ‘What’s wrong?’

She shook her head, still avoiding the dark gleam of his eyes through the slits of the mask. She felt deeply embarrassed by her stupid instinctive reaction.