Her hair had been rumpled by the beanie and she hadn't brushed it, so it fell in ebony disarray over the pale silky sweater she wore. Her pale cheeks were tinged with roses, a combination of heat from the fire and the exertion of her walk through the snow. Yet she looked far more touchable and desirable than the ice princess in the diamonds and silver gown, who had pouted and swirled for the camera earlier.
'If you must know, you look a little … wild,' he said softly. 'Like a wood nymph who has just been woken out of a long sleep.'
Keri had never in her life been called 'wild', neither had she been compared to a wood nymph, and the poetic imagery of his words was so seductively powerful that for a moment she felt a slow, pulsing glow of pleasure. Until she reminded herself that this was madness.
Complete and utter madness.
Models had notoriously fragile egos-inevitable in a job in which you were judged so critically on physical attributes alone-but surely hers wasn't so bad that she needed praise from a house-breaking driver with a dark and dangerous air about him?
Suddenly she felt like a baby fish, swimming around in uncharted waters. 'Didn't you say something about food?'
'Sure.' He rose to his feet and wondered if she knew how cute she looked when she lost the frost princess look and let her lips soften like that. 'How about a fair division of labour? I'll go and see if I can find more fuel for the fire, and you can fix us a meal.'
'You'll be lucky!'
'Oh?'
'It's just that I don't cook. Can't cook,' she amended hurriedly as she saw him frown.
'I'm not expecting you to spit-roast a pig to impress me,' he bit back. 'Just rustle up any old thing.'
Impress him? In your dreams. 'There wasn't,' said Keri deliberately, 'anything much in the way of food, save for a few old tins.'
'Then get opening,' said Jay, and threw another log on the fire.
But Keri quickly discovered that this was easier said than done, because the tin-opener looked as though it should have been in a museum.
Jay walked out into the kitchen to find her slamming a tin frustratedly onto the table. Great, he thought! Have a tantrum, why don't you?
'Having problems?' he questioned laconically.
'You try using it!'
He picked up the tin and read the label. His voice was cool. 'Tinned peaches?'
'Well, obviously there's no fresh fruit-'
'That wasn't,' he exploded, 'what I meant!'
'Well, there was nothing much else to choose from.'
'If you think I'm existing on tinned peaches, then you are very much mistaken!'
'Well, would you mind opening them for me?'
He dealt with the can quickly, and thrust it away as if it had been contaminated, then bent to examine the contents of the cupboard, rummaging around until he produced a sealed pack of dried spaghetti and a solitary tin of meat sauce, which he slammed down onto the worktop. 'What's wrong with these?'
She suspected that it was going to be a mistake to try to explain her dietary requirements, but she forged ahead anyway. 'I don't eat wheat,' she said.
Jay shuddered. Bloody women and their food fads! Well, I do,' he said coolly. 'So would you mind heating these up?' He saw her open her mouth to protest. 'Unless you'd rather tend to the fire?'
She could see the mocking look of challenge in his eyes, as if he knew perfectly well that she had never 'tended' a fire in her life. Lots of people she knew hadn't-so why was he trying to make her feel as though she was in some way inadequate? Just because he was the original cave-dweller, that didn't mean the rest of the world had to follow suit. Very well, she would heat his revolting food for him. 'I'll cook.'
'Good.' And he turned and walked out of the kitchen without another word, thinking that she was undeniably beautiful but about as much use as an igloo in a heatwave. He cast an assessing eye over the fuel. There were a couple of cupboards he'd noticed upstairs; they might yield an armful of blankets which they would need to see the night through. The strain of spending a night closeted with her made a tiny muscle work at the side of his temple, and then he remembered the only room they hadn't explored. Maybe the cellar might come up trumps. Something to ease the tension.
When he returned to the kitchen it was with a look of triumph on his face and a bottle of dusty wine in his hand. He put it carefully on the table.
'Look at that! Would you believe it?'
Fractiously, Keri looked up from the steaming pot. Half the spaghetti had snapped on the way into it, and she had scalded her finger into the bargain. 'It's a bottle of wine-so what?'
'It is not any old bottle of wine,' he contradicted, running his thumb reverentially over the label, as if he was carressing a woman's skin. 'It just happens to be a bottle of St Julien du Beau Caillou.'
His voice had deepened with appreciation and his French accent was close to perfect. Keri couldn't have been more amazed if he had suddenly leapt up onto the table and started tap dancing.
'You know about wine, do you?'
Jay's eyes glittered. The tone of her question said it all. 'Surprising for a common-or-garden driver, is that what you mean?' he drawled. 'Thought I'd be a beer man, did you?'
'I hadn't given it much thought, actually.'
Liar, he thought. You'd placed me in the little box of your sterotypical expectations. Though, when he stopped to think about it, hadn't he done exactly the same to her? Except that she seemed to be living up to hers-with her faddy eating habits and general inability to cope with the practicalities which misfortune sometimes threw up at you. In fact, she seemed pretty good at looking beautiful and not a lot else, as far as he could make out.
He found a corkscrew and raised his dark eyebrows at her in question.
'So, will you be joining me, Keri?' he queried. 'Or holding out for a glass of water?'
She would normally have had water, yes-damn him-but tonight Keri had never felt more in need of a drink in her life. And at least it might make the time go a little faster. Might even calm her frayed nerves and help her to sleep. She gave the pot another stir. She didn't even want to think about the sleeping arrangements.
'Yes, I'll join you in a glass,' she said repressively.
'How very gracious of you,' he murmured. He eased the cork from the bottle with a satisfying pop and, as always, the sensual significance of that didn't escape him.
Keri looked down at the saucepan and grimaced. She had seen more appetising things served up in a dogbowl. 'Shall I dish this out?'
Hunting through a cupboard for glasses, Jay glanced over his shoulder. 'Can't wait,' he murmured.
He poured two glasses of wine and watched while she picked up the heavy saucepan with two hands and carried it over to the sink. Hell, her wrists were so thin they looked as if they might snap.
'I can't find a colander anywhere.'
'Give it to me,' he said tersely. He rolled the sleeves of his sweater up and took it from her before she could drop it, using the lid to drain it, shaking his dark head a little as he did so. 'I can't believe that you've got to … what age are you?'
She supposed it would be pointless to tell him that it was none of his business. 'Twenty-six.'
'Twenty-six!' He carried back the pot. 'And you can't even cope with spaghetti!'
'This is the twenty-first century!' she retorted. 'And it isn't written into the female contract that she needs to cook!'
'Then pity the poor man you marry,' he offered.
'Well, there's no need to worry on that score,' she answered, more testily than she had intended, because her attention had been caught by the sight of his arms-all tanned and muscular and sprinkled with hair as dark as his head. At his wrist was a slim plait of leather.
A stir of interest quickened his blood. 'You mean there's no likely candidate on the horizon?'
She heard the sultry change in his voice and her eyes met his in a long, unspoken moment across the table. Its impact was such that she felt as if he had turned her to stone. Or clay. Yes, clay-far more malleable than stone, and that was exactly what she felt like at that moment. Clay-all damp and squidgy. Malleable.
Keri was used to a man looking at her with interest-she had encountered it often enough in the past-but never, never with such devastating effect. The slanting eyes glittered only momentarily, and the hard smile was so brief it might almost have been an illusion, but it was enough.
Enough to what? To set her pulses racing with the knowledge that this was a man quite unlike any other she had ever come into contact with. Steely-edged and strong and capable-and yet, inexplicably, one who could read a wine label in the most perfect accent.