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‘I’ve never met anyone that talks as much as you. I’m wondering when you breathe.’
‘I can breathe and talk,’ she assured him. ‘As I was saying, she was stuck, and I’ve tried rescuing sheep with bare hands before and it’s always been a disaster, but luckily I had a towel in my car and so I used that and it was brilliant. I always carry one now. You should too.’
He stared at her for a long time and then finally stirred and cleared his throat. ‘I’ll remember that. In the meantime, I do have a blanket on the back seat. Please feel free to use it.’
‘Oh, thanks.’ Completely unselfconscious, Ellie reached into the back, grabbed the blanket and then shook herself like a drenched kitten. Droplets of water flew from her dark hair and landed on the driver. ‘Gosh, I’m soaked and freezing. Can we turn your heating up?’
‘Be my guest.’
She glanced at him warily as she fiddled with the controls of his fancy car.
‘You’re looking at me in a funny way. I suppose you think I’m very forward, but I’m sure you wouldn’t want me to get hypothermia. I remember once when I got really wet—’
‘Do you always talk this much?’
‘Are you always this tense?’ She peered at him, trying to read his expression in the semi-darkness. ‘Have I made you late or something? It was very kind of you to stop.’
‘You were standing in the middle of the road,’ he reminded her with exaggerated patience. ‘I had no choice but to stop. It was that or run you over.’
‘If you’re trying to convince me that given the choice you would have driven past me and left me there, you won’t succeed,’ she said cheerfully. ‘No one would be that heartless.’
There was a long pause and when he finally spoke his tone was chilly. ‘You have a worrying faith in human nature.’
She frowned. ‘No, I haven’t. Most people are very kind-hearted. Like you. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come along when you did. You’re my knight in shining armour and I’ll love you forever.’ She snuggled under the blanket and gave him a wide smile which faltered when she saw the look on his face. ‘What? Why are you looking at me like that? What have I done now?’
In the gloom his expression was hard to read but she sensed his exasperation.
‘Are you always this reckless?’
‘Reckless?’ She subdued a yawn and snuggled deeper under the blanket. ‘When was I reckless?’
‘When?’ He lifted one dark eyebrow and his expression was ironic. ‘Well, let’s see—was it when you drove the ford in a car no bigger than a sewing machine, or flagged down a total stranger, climbed into his car, stripped off your clothes and declared undying love—’
‘Not undying love exactly,’ Ellie corrected him with a quick frown. ‘More eternal thanks.’
He gritted his teeth. ‘You’re not safe to be let out alone. Didn’t your father teach you never to accept lifts from strange men?’
For a brief moment Ellie’s smile faltered. ‘Yes,’ she said in a small voice, ‘I suppose he did.’
‘So what were you doing, flagging down a total stranger?’
‘Well, it was that or die of exposure,’ Ellie said logically, pushing away thoughts of her beloved father. ‘Dad may have taught me not to accept lifts from strange men, but he also taught me to use my head in a crisis. And tonight is definitely a crisis.’
‘I could be anyone.’ His voice had a hard edge, but Ellie just smiled trustingly and snuggled further under the blanket.
‘I’m sure you’re a lovely person. In my experience, most people are.’
‘Then you obviously haven’t had much experience,’ he said roughly. ‘How old are you?’
He flicked on the internal light and she blinked.
‘You shouldn’t ask a woman her age. It isn’t polite. And you shouldn’t be influenced by appearances.’ Ellie’s voice tailed off as she saw him properly for the first time.
As their eyes met her breath jammed in her throat and her mouth fell open.
Wow.
The man was stunning. Seriously, breathtakingly good-looking.
She knew she was staring but she couldn’t help it. What woman wouldn’t stare when confronted by a man like this one?
His hair was too long and there was at least two days’ growth of stubble around his jaw, but never in her life had she been faced with a vision of such raw, untamed masculinity. Her eyes feasted slowly on the lean perfection of his face, the bold, dark eyebrows and firm, unsmiling mouth.
A long silence stretched between them and finally he spoke. ‘What’s the matter?’ His tone was rough. ‘Now that you’ve seen me properly, are you finally thinking that you might have been foolish to climb into my car?’
‘No.’ She shook herself and smiled at him, incurably honest. ‘Actually, I was thinking that when women kiss you, they probably keep their eyes open.’
He seemed to have lost his powers of speech and she tilted her head to one side and looked at him curiously.
‘What’s the matter? I’m just saying that you’re so good-looking it would be a terrible waste to close your eyes.’ She gave an impish smile and he shot her a look of pure, undiluted disbelief.
‘Do you always say exactly what’s in your head without any thought for the consequences?’
‘Always,’ she confessed. ‘I can’t stand people who say one thing and mean another. And don’t tell me no one’s ever told you you’re good-looking before. You must have heard it a million times.’
He studied her, not a flicker of expression on his handsome face. ‘Not in these circumstances.’
‘You’re shocked, aren’t you? But I don’t see why. You must know you’re good-looking.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s no big deal. Just a statement of fact. Like saying it’s raining.’
‘Raining...’ He gave her an odd look. ‘Right.’
‘Well, at the end of the day looks aren’t important, are they?’ she said simply. ‘Being with a person is about loving them for what’s inside, not for what’s outside.’
His dark eyes gleamed strangely in the darkness. ‘Absolutely.’
Ellie wriggled down in the seat and placed her feet on the heater to warm them. ‘I mean, someone can be rich and good-looking but what use is that if they’re no fun to be with?’
‘What use indeed?’ His eyes narrowed slightly as he watched her antics from his side of the car. ‘Are you sure you’re quite comfortable?’
‘Perfectly, thank you.’ She beamed at him happily, ignoring the sarcasm in his tone. ‘I’m still pretty cold but this is a great car. Your heater is very efficient.’
‘I’m glad you approve.’ His tone was dry. ‘And now are you going to tell me what you were doing, risking your neck driving around on a night like this?’
Ellie gasped and slapped her hand over her mouth. For a brief few moments she’d totally forgotten about Lindsay. ‘Oh, heavens. Lindsay! You have to drive me to the top of the lane, quickly. We can’t spend any more time chatting.’
‘We?’
‘All right.’ She blushed prettily. ‘So I’m the one that did the chatting, but now can we make a move? Please! We’ve wasted so much time already. It’s an emergency.’
He didn’t shift in his seat. ‘What sort of an emergency? Don’t tell me—another sheep?’
‘Not a sheep. It’s my cousin. She thinks she’s in labour,’ Ellie explained quickly, and he lifted a dark brow.
‘She thinks she’s in labour?’
Ellie shrugged helplessly. ‘Well, it’s her first baby and it’s four weeks early so we’re hoping she’s wrong.’
‘And you’re a midwife?’
‘Sadly, no. I’m a nurse.’ She swallowed and secured the blanket more firmly around her shoulders. ‘The midwife is trapped on the other side of the valley—the wrong side of the floods. I don’t think she’s had much experience of driving through fords.’
‘Clearly a sensible woman,’ he observed, and Ellie pulled a face.
‘A bit pathetic, actually, but there we are. She’s coming the long way round, which is going to take her ages. Fortunately she didn’t sound that worried on the phone. It’s Lindsay’s first baby, and she doesn’t think it will come for a while yet, but I’m not so sure...’ She broke off and he lifted an eyebrow.
‘And why is that?’
‘Because I’ve got one of my feelings.’ She wrinkled her nose anxiously. ‘Which is a problem because I didn’t even get a chance to consult my textbook before I came out.’
‘And are your—er—feelings usually reliable?’
‘Always,’ Ellie said firmly, cuddling the blanket more tightly around her. Her teeth were starting to chatter and she’d never felt so cold in her life. ‘And on top of that her husband is away so, you see, I absolutely have to get to her.’
‘Right.’ His long fingers tapped the steering-wheel. ‘But it wouldn’t exactly have improved the situation if you’d drowned yourself and all the rescue services had been forced to come out to extricate you from the river.’
‘They wouldn’t have been able to. There’s been a pile-up on the motorway, which is why they weren’t any use to Lindsay.’ She twisted in her seat and looked at him with concern. ‘Are you hungry?’
‘Hungry?’ He was clearly taken aback by the question. ‘What on earth makes you ask that?’
‘Because you’re very cross,’ Ellie pointed out gently, her tone sympathetic. ‘You needn’t worry. I get cross when I’m hungry, too. You should eat something straight away to get your blood sugar up.’
There was a long pause and when he spoke his voice wasn’t quite steady. ‘I’m not hungry.’
‘Tired, then?’
‘Not tired.’ He looked at her and shook his head slowly, exasperation glittering in his dark eyes. ‘I’ve just never met anyone quite like you before.’
‘Well, I haven’t met anyone like you before either,’ Ellie confessed, frowning slightly as she looked at him. ‘You may be gorgeous to look at but you’re very tense and you don’t show your feelings. It’s impossible to know what you’re thinking by looking at you, which is always a bit worrying in a person. Now, do you think you could just stop lecturing me and give me a lift to the top of the road? While we’re sitting here, getting to know each other, she could be in the final stages of labour.’
She could have been mistaken but she thought she detected a glimmer of laughter in his eyes as he flicked off the internal light. ‘Come on, then, I’ll take you. If I don’t, there’s no knowing what you’ll get up to. You need a bodyguard.’
He released the handbrake and drove up the road, handling the car skilfully as he negotiated the fierce storm and the lethal driving conditions.
‘Directions?’
‘Further up on the right.’ She paused, her teeth chattering, looking for landmarks. ‘Stop here!’
The man pulled up and squinted down the dark track. ‘I don’t see anything.’
‘Well, the farmhouse is in a dip.’ Ellie released the blanket and he frowned at her.
‘What are you doing now?’
‘I’ll walk from here.’
‘Like hell you will.’ He muttered something under his breath and swung the vehicle into the lane.
She gasped and grabbed the seat to steady herself as it jolted viciously into the first pothole. ‘You can’t drive down here. You’ll lose your suspension.’
‘This is a four-wheel-drive,’ he reminded her, his expression grim as he adjusted the headlights, his eyes fixed on the track. ‘Just hang on.’
In no position to argue, she did just that, bracing herself as the vehicle lurched from the left to the right.
Finally he reached the end of the lane and they could see that every light in Lindsay’s farmhouse was blazing.
He pulled to a halt and unlocked the doors.
In an impulsive gesture, she leaned across, briefly kissed his rough cheek and then shrugged the blanket off her shoulders and grabbed her sodden clothes.
‘Thank you, thank you, thank you. You saved my life. Now, go and get yourself something to eat.’ She grimaced as she slid her feet into her soaking wet boots and, without giving him a chance to speak, slid out of the car and sprinted to the front door, knowing that it would be open. It was always open. Lindsay refused to lock it.
‘Linny?’ She paused in the hallway and shouted for her cousin. ‘Lin? It’s me. Where are you?’
She heard a muffled sob and took the stairs two at a time. ‘Lindsay?’
Throwing open doors, she charged around the upstairs of the farmhouse until she finally found her cousin crouching in a ball in the bathroom, her face streaked with tears.
‘Oh, Lin...’ Ellie dropped to her knees and scooped her cousin into her arms. ‘It’s OK. I’m here now. Everything’s going to be fine.’
‘I thought no one was ever going to get here—’ Lindsay broke off with a gasp of pain and clutched at Ellie’s hand. ‘Paul’s away and it’s going to take him hours to get home, the midwife is stranded, I thought I was going to be on my own...’
Ellie hugged her tightly. ‘You’re not on your own. And you should have known I’d get here.’
Lindsay gave a sob. ‘If the midwife couldn’t manage it, how come you could?’
‘I had a stroke of luck,’ Ellie said evasively, not wanting to mention the ford. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Scared. It’s not meant to come this early, and I’m not meant to be at home. Oh, Ellie, what’s going to happen?’
‘You’re going to have a baby, and it’s going to be fine.’
‘Ugh!’ Lindsay shrank away from her. ‘You’re soaked!’
‘Well, in case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a storm raging outside,’ Ellie reminded her. ‘It’s raining.’
Lindsay gave a soft gasp of pain and rubbed her bump gently. ‘This is the Lake District. It always rains. It has to or we wouldn’t have lakes. You’d better help yourself to some dry clothes.’
‘In a minute.’ Ellie looked at her closely. ‘Are you OK?’
