SNOWED IN WITH THE BILLIONAIRE Read Free Page A

and a tow rope from the coach-house and threw them into the back of the Range Rover he’d bought for just this sort of eventuality. Not that he’d ever expected to be digging Georgia out of a hole.
    He headed down the drive, his wipers going flat out to clear the screen, but when he got to the gates and opened them with the remote control, there was no sign of her. Just footprints in the deep snow, heading to the left and vanishing fast in the blizzard.
    It was far worse than he’d realised. There were no huge, fat flakes that drifted softly down and stayed where they fell, but tiny crystals of snow driven horizontally by the biting wind, the drifts piling up and making the lane impassable. He wondered where the hell she was. It would have been handy to know just how far along—
    And then he saw it, literally yards from the end of his drive, the red tail lights dim through the coating of snow over the lenses. He left the car in the gateway and got out, his boots sinking deep into the powdery drifts as he crunched towards her. No wonder she was stuck, going out in weather like this in that ridiculous little car, but there was no way she’d be going anywhere else in it tonight, he realised. Which meant he would be stuck with her.
    Damn.
    He felt anger moving in, taking the place of shock. Good. Healthy. Better than the sentimental wallowing he’d been doing last night in that damn four-poster bed—
    Bracing himself against the wind, he turned his collar up against the needles of ice and strode over to it, opening the passenger door and stooping down. A blast of warmth and Christmas music swamped him, and carried on the warmth was a lingering scent that he remembered so painfully, excruciatingly well.
    It hit him like a kick in the gut, and he slammed the lid on his memories and peered inside.
    She was kneeling on the seat looking at something in the back, and as she turned towards him she gave him a tentative smile.
    ‘Hi. That was quick. I’m really sorry—’
    ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said crisply, trying not to scan her face for changes. ‘Right, let’s get you out of here.’
    ‘See, Josh?’ she said cheerfully. ‘I told you he was going to help us.’
    Josh? She had a Josh who could dig her out?
    ‘Josh?’ he said coldly, and her smile softened, stabbing him in the gut.
    ‘My son.’
    She had a son?
    His heart pounding, he ducked his head in so he could look over the back of the seat—and met wide eyes so familiar they seemed to cut right to his soul.
    ‘Josh, this is Sebastian. He’s going to get us unstuck.’
    He was? Well, of course he was! How could he refuse those liquid green eyes so filled with uncertainty? Poor little kid.
    ‘Hi, Josh,’ he said softly, because after all it wasn’t the child’s fault they were stuck, and then he finally let himself look at Georgie.
    She hadn’t changed at all. She had the same wide, ingenuous eyes as her son, the same soft bow lips, high cheekbones and sweeping brows that had first enchanted him all those years ago. Her wild curls were dark and glossy and beaded with melted snow, and there was a tiny pleat of worry between her brows. And her face was just inches from his, her scent swirling around him in the shelter of the car and making mincemeat of his carefully erected defences.
    He hauled his head out of the car and straightened up, sucking in a lungful of freezing air. Better. Slightly. Now if he could just nail those defences back in place again—
    ‘I’m really sorry,’ she began again, peering up at him, but he shook his head.
    ‘Don’t. Let’s just get your car out of here and get you inside.’
    ‘No! I need to get to my parents!’
    He let his breath out on a disbelieving huff. ‘Georgie, look at it!’ he said, gesturing at the weather. ‘You’re going nowhere. I don’t even know if I can get your car out, and you’re certainly not taking it anywhere else in the dark.’
    ‘It’s not dark—’
    ‘Almost. And we