Besides, he was committed to Cherry. Besides, never had two people with such different views and philosophies been forced to spend so much time together. Perhaps it was only her growing respect for him that had triggered this illogical fantasy that she would like to know him better. Perhaps it was even less. Perhaps it was just that age-old need of wanting to be liked, approved of, even by those you didn't particularly like or approve of yourself.

  Charlie rose, on the morning she was to return to work, to find snow such as she had never seen falling in huge, heavy flakes outside her window. It was not weather for helicopters. She felt an acute ache of disappointment within her. It started like a ping-pong ball in the pit of her stomach. By the time she'd finished her first cup of coffee, the disappointment was beach-ball sized.

  Then the phone rang.

  'I've got twenty-nine Japanese tourists to look after. Know anything about horses?' There was no need for the caller to identify himself.

  'Horses?' she echoed stupidly.

  'Never mind. I'll be by to get you in half an hour.'

  She'd been talking to him for thirty seconds, and already she felt her antagonism towards him rising—which made her mental meandering of the past fourteen days even more baffling. But couldn't the man ever ask? Did he always have to come across as so commanding and controlling?

  'I'll drive myself, thanks,' she said stiffly.

  His silence sizzled, and she had the uncomfortable feeling that he was thinking the exact thought she had just had.

  'Have you looked out of your window?'

  'Yes,' she said stubbornly. If he could drive on a day like this, so could she.

  'Have you, perchance, looked at your car?' His tone dripped with pseudo-patience.

  'No, but --'

  'Fine. Go and look at your car, Lady Rambo. I'll be there in half an hour.'

  The phone clicked in her ear before she got a chance to say something extremely rude. If she was fighting mad when she hung up, she was even madder as she scrambled over the six-foot mountain of snow that had been ploughed into her driveway exit, and slid down the other side to Gallagher's waiting truck.

  'Would you look at that?' she fumed, climbing into the truck and slamming the door.

  'Good morning to you, too,' Gallagher interjected drily.

  She ignored him. 'Can you believe the nerve? They must have seen my car there, and they ploughed me in anyway. Somebody from the town hall is going to be getting an earful from me! I --'

  'I'm sure they took one look at your car, decided it belonged to a woman, and figured you wouldn't be going anywhere. That you'd be sitting around all day sipping tea --'

  'How dare you imply I have a chip on my shoulder?' She turned her fury quite readily on him.

  'I was teasing. For heaven's sake, would you say the Serenity Prayer, or something? Our clients will take one look at your face, and be so frightened they'll be trying to swim back to the land of the rising sun.'

  Despite herself, she burst out laughing. 'Do you find me that frightening, Mr Cole?'

  He nodded solemnly. 'You're definitely the most frightening woman I've ever met.'

  Despite his teasing tone, she sensed a kernel of truth there.

  'I wouldn't bother unleashing your temper on the town hall, either. Nothing except four-wheel drives will be moving today. This truck and both of the buses are equipped. I suspected that your car was not. Rob and Cherry have taken the buses and the clients out to my place. You and I are going to pick up the lunch and meet them out there.'

  The roads were very nearly impassable, and even with the four-wheel drive they got stuck three times as they inched their way out of town toward Gallagher's acreage. It was oddly fun, though. There was a spirit of adventure about tackling these roads together. She enjoyed watching Gallagher pit his sheer determination against the road conditions, and yet keep his good humour, as though he were in his element rising to challenges like these.

  Finally, they pulled off the main highway, and slithered down a steep track to the valley below. The road wound through thick cedar, and then suddenly they burst into a gently rolling, snow-covered meadow. At the top of a small knoll was a very contemporary log home.

  Charlie gasped her appreciation as they pulled up beside it. 'It's beautiful!'

  Gallagher looked at the house, and grinned with a surprising trace of humility. 'Thanks. I built it myself.'

  She studied the house, and then him. Somehow the thought of him pouring his sweat and love into this house altered her view of him. Which was what? That he was a fast-living, self-important skirt-chaser, she supposed.

  'Sometimes, I don't think you're what you appear to be,' she commented quietly.

  'Are any of us?' he asked, and they stood there, looking deeply at each other, feeling a whisper of appreciation, a tiny breeze that tempted discovery.

  'We should put this stuff in the house, get the snow-mobile and catch the others,' he suggested. But he didn't move.

  'Yes,' she agreed. But she didn't move either.

  'Or,' he said after a long time, 'we could just go into the house.'

  The yes whispered through her brain, but never left her lips. She felt confusion well up inside her and heat her cheeks. She didn't know what he was suggesting, but she felt suddenly very cautious. It could well be that he was exactly what he always appeared to be, and that would mean he wouldn't be above taking advantage of her softened mood.

  'We'd better catch the others,' she said.

  He shrugged, his expression unreadable, making his intentions even less clear and her confusion even greater. But she almost wished she'd chosen the house once they were mounted on the snow-mobile and gliding powerfully through a fairy-tale of white.

  Because, surely, whatever they could have done or said there wouldn't have been as breathtaking as this wordless ride? Charlie had to wrap her arms tightly around his midsection, and she could feel the movement of his muscle beneath his jacket, the lean hardness of him, the heat of his body. The wind tangled her hair and splashed colour into her cheeks as she looked over the breadth of his shoulder. Again, they were plunged into a shared intimacy, sailing through a snowbound world so glorious that her heart ached from its beauty.

  She didn't know if she was relieved or regretful when they arrived at the top of a hill to find a huge, hay-laden sleigh, two giant horses, and twenty-nine Japanese people cavorting with toboggans.

  Gallagher went to the horses immediately, and Charlie's confusion about him increased. Who would have guessed that such a gentle side existed in him? The horses were bunting him fondly with giant heads. He talked to them in a low, affectionate tone while he checked their harnesses. He had an apple for each of them in his pockets. Who was this man?

  'Good job, Cherry, Rob,' he said approvingly. 'Really good job.'

  Gallagher did not give praise lightly, and Rob and Cherry beamed. He turned back to Charlie.

  'Well, let's not set a bad example,' he said. 'Get on one of those things, and get going.'

  'I was looking for the controls,' she protested, eyeing a toboggan warily.

  'No excuses.'

  'I will, if you will,' she challenged.

  Without another word, Gallagher grabbed her and set her down firmly on a toboggan. He climbed on behind her, and wrapped one steely arm around her waist. He used the other to give the toboggan a push, and then wrapped that one around her as well.

  She would have been hard-pressed to tell what brought the roses blooming in her cheeks, her heart hammering at the walls of her chest. Was it the wind in her face? The thrill of the wild ride? Or was it Gallagher's strong arms wrapped so solidly around her, his frosty breath stirring the hair at the back of her neck?

  Whatever it was, it felt good. She threw her contemplations of Gallagher's true character, her confusions, her caution, to the wind. Feelings like this were not intended to be analysed. They were meant to be embraced. She grabbed the elusive feeling with both hands, and hugged it to her breast as though she would never have to face the moment when she would have to let it go.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Gallagher and Charlie shot down the hill on the racing toboggan. She didn't know when she had last laughed so hard, felt so wonderfully carefree. Maybe it was back in those days of summer camp.

  Their sled suddenly hit a bump of snow, careened into the shelter of some trees, and flipped. Charlie found herself tumbling through the air. She landed on her back with a painless thump, and Gallagher landed right on top of her. She was choking on snow and laughter. So was he. If joy had a sound, this was it. His deep, unchecked laughter delightfully disturbing the silence of the snowbound forest.

  Their eyes locked together, the laughter faded and then died. They were back in a moment she had tried to escape once already today. Perhaps it was inescapable, after all.

  As if in a trance, Gallagher's hand moved to her face, tucked a loose tress of hair back under her toque, brushed the snow from her cheeks, and then lingered, his fingers and his eyes conveying a message that made her begin to quake with something quite different from laughter.

  She freed her own hand from where it was crushed between them, reached out and traced the lines of his face, not thinking, just instinctively rising to what the moment offered.

  For a long moment he let her explore his face, his hungry, half-lidded eyes burning with unbearable sensuality. She became aware of his weight, of the hard wall of his chest crushing her breasts, of those iron-sheathed legs locked around hers. The aroma of a spicy cologne, and another smell—entirely male, and utterly pleasant—wafted into her nostrils.

  His eyes were darkening, light flickering in them like the sparks of a fire against the deep midnight-blue of a night sky.

  She had seen it coming, had been forewarned by his eyes, but she was still startled when his mouth touched hers. His lips ran, teasing and taunting, over her own. Sparks against a night sky. Sizzling. Exploding upwards. Dying even as the next had already begun.

  The kiss intensified, sparks turning to fire, melting to white-hot flame. She, like a moth, driven by instinct into the heart of the flame, though it felt as if it would turn her to ash, this feeling that came from him and yet also leapt, molten, within her.

  'Charlie? Gallagher? Are you two all right?' Rob's voice broke in from a long way away, and Charlie heard it but didn't react, unwilling to turn away from the fire, back to the real world of snow and ice.

  But Gallagher rolled off her abruptly, lay on his back in the snow, regarding the sky with a scowl, his breathing heavy.

  'Fine,' he shouted at Rob, and then got to his feet with lazy, liquid grace.

  The scowl was still on his face, and she scrambled to her feet, colour flooding her cheeks. What on earth was she doing? She was not the loose and lusty type—not that you would know it from the way she had just behaved. She had just blithely and blissfully broken her cardinal rule—that she did not ever get involved like this with people she worked with.

  Good lord. What was he doing? Cherry could have come through those trees in search of him at any time. A Mrs Cole, she remembered bitterly. How many Mrs Coles? How many affairs? Don't be like that, Gallagher, she pleaded inwardly. But hadn't she always wondered if he was like that? That strong body oozed such easy sensuality. She had watched the women on trips flutter around him like clucking hens. Watched him accept their attentions as if they were his due, watched him make them blush and coo. OK, she had never personally witnessed him step over the line of his professionalism, but then again, she never saw him socially. Was he a different man then? As he was a different man today?

  She busied herself brushing the snow from her clothes, the kiss from her lips.

  'I don't know what came over me,' she said tightly. Or you, she added to herself.

  His scowl deepened. 'I always had my doubts about a man and a woman being able to work together without something like that happening.'

  Was there faint accusation in his voice? Did he believe that she had invited that—that attack?

  Without warning his scowl faded and his voice softened. 'I don't like complications that affect my business. On the other hand,' his eyes, intensely blue, caught on her lips, 'it would be very tempting to let nature take its course.'

  After that heart-stopping kiss, there was no avoiding his meaning. Charlie knew precisely what course nature would take.

  'You know, Gallagher,' her tone was stinging, 'I would have thought you loyal, if nothing else. I was wrong.'

  He looked puzzled, and then his gaze clouded, and a look of pain danced briefly across his features before he looked away from her.

  But he had remembered Cherry too late for her to feel sympathy for him. 'Remembering your fiancée?' she asked with cold cruelty, punishing him for her own multi-faceted disappointment.

  He jerked his head back towards her, and she saw that her barb had hit. Too hard. For a moment she shrank back, wondering if, in his fury, he was capable of hitting her. But those powerful fists remained clenched at his sides, and then the anger drained from his eyes. Life itself seemed to drain from his eyes. His gaze was hard and cold and bleakly empty.

  Wordlessly he stooped, picked up the toboggan, stuffed it under his arm and strode away. His back was stiff and unyielding. He did not turn to see if she followed him.

  The snow-mobile was gone by the time Charlie trudged up the hill. She was still fuming that he had looked at her as if she had wronged him, when he was the one who was the traitor!

  Cherry came and sat beside her in the hay, ignoring the signals her hunched shoulders and cold expression should have given.

  'What happened in those bushes, anyway?' she asked eagerly.

  'Nothing.'

  'Come clean! I can read faces. He stole a kiss, and you slugged him, right? You must have hit him pretty hard. He looked like he'd been through the wars when he roared out of here.'

  Charlie was appalled. What kind of world was this? How could Cherry be so free and easy about the man she was going to marry?

  'If you want an explanation,' her voice squeaked with disgust, 'I suggest you go and ask Gallagher for it. I'm sure it will be the first of many explanations you'll have to ask him for in your married life.' She was instantly regretful of both her words and her tone. But Cherry was not looking insulted. She looked stunned.

  'Married life? With Gallagher?' She hooted with unexpected delight. 'Me? Marry Gallagher? For heaven's sake, Charlie, he's old!'

  'But. . . but, I thought he introduced you as the future Mrs Cole.' Charlie could feel a mortified blush creeping up her cheeks.

  Cherry laughed. 'That's me, all right. I think we all kind of forget you're new to this community where everybody knows everything about everyone. Gallagher's younger brother, Bob, and I have been dating for years. We've decided to get married in the spring.'

  Cherry took in Charlie's fire-red cheeks, and clapped with mirth. 'This is wonderful! Oh, I kept hoping something would happen between the two of you. Will it now? Now that,' she giggled, 'the other woman is out of the way?'

  'I doubt it,' Charlie said tersely. It occurred to her that the answer should have been an emphatic 'no!'

  Cherry grew suddenly serious. 'That's too bad. It's been such a long time for him. He needs something in his life besides his darned business, but he's too stubborn to admit it. Men! Caring hurts them once, and they're determined never to care again.'

  'Humph! I find it hard to believe that the invincible Mr Cole was ever that badly hurt. I had him pegged as the "love 'em and leave 'em" type.'

  'He is—now. He wasn't always. And he's not as much that way as he'd like the world to believe. I think he works at scaring people away so he never really has to find out if he's over it, if he's strong enough to love again. He thinks he isn't, you know. I think he's wrong.'

  'What happened to him?' Charlie asked, curious despite her intense desire not to be.

  'His fiancé died. In a skiing accident several years ago.'

  'An avalanche,' Charlie guessed dully, remembering, sickly, that day she'd accused him of holding philosophies that couldn't stand up to reality.

  She felt the blood draining from her face. And she had just accused him again—of being disloyal to his fiancé. What must he think of her? What fresh pain had she unwittingly cost him? What fresh distrust of caring would her words have inspired?

  Gallagher took charge of the horses when they arrived back and, while the others trooped towards the house, Charlie held back. She slipped into the barn behind him.

  'Hi.' He didn't answer, and she studied his profile, resisting an absurd impulse to reach up with her fingertips and touch him, as if a gesture of softness could melt the fierce hardness from those remote features.

  'Gallagher, I came to apologise. I thought—have always thought—that you were engaged to Cherry. I'm sorry if I inadvertently opened some old wounds. I'm even more sorry for accusing you of a disloyalty that didn't exist.'

  The eyes rested briefly on her face, and then he shrugged and turned back to his horses.

  'Forget it.' His voice was controlled, uncaring. Then, just in case she had missed his meaning, he added with soft killing, 'Forget all of it.'

  Her mission of mercy was over! Forget all of it? As if she had come in here begging for a second kiss!

  But her anger died as quickly as it had flared. Because she saw something more than the cool invulnerability he was showing her, saw something more than the cold, hard strength in his face and his stature. She nodded wordlessly, and left the barn.

  The house also reflected that 'something more' about Gallagher. He had unconsciously exposed his soul when he had built and decorated this house. Inside was golden wood, coupled with stone, and accented with a jungle of glorious green plants. Light poured in from everywhere—through large windows, and the skylights in the sloping ceiling. Even on this grey day, there was an atmosphere of brightness, of cosiness. A large, soft grey sectional sofa added a dimension of sensuality to the living-room. It was dotted with bright cushions, the colours picked up again in several large prints of native art that adorned the walls. But it was not a bachelor pad—did not even remotely suggest a swinging life-style. It was a haven of tranquillity that radiated solidness, warmth and character.