Stranded, Seduced...Pregnant

Severo sighed. There had been many loans and he had no doubt there would be many more.

‘I’ll pay you back—with interest. I know it’s what your father would have wanted. Your father would have—’ Her voice was drowned out by loud static before the line went dead.

He slid the phone back into his pocket, not feeling unhappy that the signal had been lost.

He was approaching the entrance to the inn when a small figure exploded from the double doors, barrelling straight into him. Coatless and hatless and seemingly oblivious to the arctic blast of air howling down from the surrounding hills, the slim jean-clad female wearing a bright pink sweater covered with yellow daisies righted herself before running past him, then stopped and turned.

‘Did you see her?’

Her eyes were wide, anxious and blue—very blue. So blue, in fact, that for a split second he registered nothing but the colour and then the moment and the opportunity to respond was gone. She was belting on and past him out into the snowy car park.

Her figure stood out, a dark blur in the swirl of white, still managing to emanate high-voltage anxiety across the space that separated them. Through the howl of the wind he heard her dismayed exclamation at the sight of a car pulling out onto the road.

‘Oh, God, no!’

Severo was not a man who felt impelled to ride to the rescue of maidens in distress—such actions were open to misinterpretation and it was his experience that distress could be easily and often artistically feigned. Yet he found himself responding, albeit with reluctance, to some dormant protective instinct.

He was still a few feet from the flame-haired figure when her slumped shoulders straightened and she jumped into one of the parked vehicles and pulled away at a reckless speed. There was a time lag of several seconds before Severo realised that the lights receding into the distance belonged to his own car.

He had not only left the keys in the ignition and a laptop containing extremely sensitive information on the passenger seat, he had stood there and watched while someone stole his car, oblivious to everything except the brilliance of a pair of electric-blue eyes and a desire to offer his assistance.

He closed his eyes, called himself several rude names, not having any cathartic effect, then took a deep breath and strode into the inn.

Chapter Two

THERE was a lull in the buzz of conversation and laughter inside the crowded bar as the door was flung open. The lull lengthened into a silence as people absorbed the details of the new arrival’s appearance.

Tall enough to be obliged to duck his head to avoid collision with the top of the doorjamb, the dark-haired figure who stood framed in the doorway appeared utterly oblivious to the stares directed his way.

Most of his fellow stranded travellers had arrived at this sanctuary feeling to varying degrees stressed and dishevelled. This man did not look stressed, he looked irritated, and, as for dishevelled, he looked like a walking advertisement for what a glossy magazine might suggest a well-heeled, fashion-conscious business executive—always supposing he had a profile like a Greek god and a body like an Olympic rower—should aspire to achieve.

The only clue to the blizzard conditions he had just driven through was the sprinkling of rapidly melting snow on his dark mohair overcoat, open at the neck to reveal the white collar of a pristine shirt and a perfectly knotted silk tie, and the slightly wind-ruffled quality to his well-cut hair that was jet black, had outgrown a crop and was beginning to curl into his neck.

His deep-set dark eyes, fringed by long curling lashes set beneath dark well-defined brows, swept the room before they narrowed as he headed for the bar and the man who stood behind it.

The hum of conversation began once more as people melted away automatically to clear his path.

Severo got straight to the point. ‘My four-wheel drive has been stolen from your car park by a woman—a redhead.’

‘Well, she won’t get far, will she?’

A man who sat nursing a pint piped up with a cheery, ‘As far as the nearest ditch, I would think.’

Severo shook his head to dispel the unbidden slow-motion image complete with sound effects of the redhead hitting his windscreen—had she belted herself in?—and flashed a cold look at the wit sitting at the bar. The man quickly lowered his gaze into his pint glass.

‘Not a lot we can do, I’m afraid,’ the landlord said, still projecting what in the circumstances seemed to Severo a quite inappropriate level of optimistic cheer. ‘Was there anything valuable in the car?’

Severo shook his head in a negative motion even as he listed his possessions still sitting on the passenger seat: passport, credit cards and all that information on the proposed takeover that several rivals would consider, if not priceless, certainly of extreme value.

‘That’s good, then.’

Severo, the strong, sculpted lines of his angular face taut with annoyance, ran a hand across the fresh stubble on his jaw before pressing a finger to the small permanent groove above his aquiline nose. He refused the drink offered by the man behind the bar and rotated his head to alleviate the knots of tension in his neck.

‘You say she’s a redhead?’

Severo nodded, an image of the snow-dappled copper tresses flashing into his head.

‘Someone might know her but, as you can see, we’ve had a lot of people in…’ He banged a tankard on the bar and raised his voice above the loud hum of conversation in the crowded room. ‘Did anyone notice a redhead?’

It was no surprise to Severo that a number of men indicated they had—the car thief had not been the sort of woman to pass unnoticed by men—but no one, it seemed, knew who she was.

The landlord continued to be sympathetic but philosophical. ‘We can’t offer you a bed, but there’s a fire and blankets and a well-stocked larder and bar.’

Severo, who did not share the landlord’s laid-back attitude, shook his head when his host produced a bottle of malt and added, ‘Like Jack here said, she can’t have got far.’

Severo was seeing an image of a still body hunched lifeless over a steering wheel, snow drifting in through a smashed windscreen.

It was not his responsibility if the crazy woman had already written off his car and probably herself. He had not asked her to steal his car!

‘Tomorrow when the roads clear you can—’

That might be too late. ‘We should inform the authorities.’

The landlord watched as Severo fished out his phone, only to grimace at the lack of reception.

‘Before you ask, the landlines are down too, have been all morning, and all the mobile signals have crashed. Have a drink. There’s nothing you can do now,’ he advised comfortably.

Severo accepted a coffee and considered his options. There were always options.

‘Those skis I saw in the porch—who do they belong to?’

The landlord pointed out a group of young men at the far end of the room. ‘Students on their way up to Aviemore,’ he added by way of explanation.

Some bright spark suggested putting together a ski posse. The suggestion was made jokingly but it fed the embryo of an idea in Severo’s head.

Fifteen minutes later, having resisted the well-meaning attempts to dissuade him from his course of action, Severo was strapping on a pair of borrowed skis. The borrowed ski gear was a slightly snugger fit than he would have liked, but more than adequate.

The snow still fell from rapidly darkening skies, but the wind had dropped and he made quite good time down the road, following it in the direction he had seen his car vanish.

He might have missed the abandoned vehicle had he not paused at the top of the incline to scan the horizon; if he had not he would undoubtedly have missed the light.

Changing direction, he followed the eerie beam to its source: the headlights, or at least the one not buried in the snowdrift, of his own off-roader, which was well and truly off road now!

It was the scene lifted direct from his imagination minus, thankfully, the lifeless body slumped over the wheel. The door was open but the thief had already gone, proving that she was as criminally stupid and suicidal as she had appeared; anyone with half an ounce of sense would have stayed with the vehicle and the shelter it afforded.

His belongings were still where he had left them. The sensible thing would be to gather them and make his way back to the inn. An insane woman was not his responsibility. It would serve her right if she did end up a statistic of the freak weather conditions—and he’d end up beating himself up because he could have saved her, or killed himself trying.

After a brief internal struggle he sighed. It would do his reputation no good at all if people suspected he had a conscience.