Read Online Simply Unforgettable by Mary Balogh - Free Book Online Page A

you will be devising some other hair-raising scheme for putting a period to my existence. Or are you going to insist upon declaring me the winner?”
    â€œBy no means,” she said. “Mine is definitely sturdier than yours. It will withstand the forces of nature for much longer.”
    â€œNow that is a provocative statement when I have been magnanimous enough to suggest a draw,” he said, and he stooped and turned and without warning hurled a snowball at her. It caught her in the chest and spattered up into her face.
    â€œOh!” she cried, outraged. “Unfair!”
    And she scooped up a gloveful of snow and tossed it back at him. It hit the side of his hat, knocking it askew.
    The battle was on.
    It raged for several minutes until to a casual observer it might have looked as if four snowmen had been erected beside the inn. Except that two of them were moving and were helpless with laughter. And except that one of them, the taller and broader of the two, suddenly lunged for the other and bore her backward until she was lying on her back in a soft snowdrift with his weight pressing her deeper and his hands clamped to her wrists and holding them imprisoned on either side of her head.
    â€œEnough!” he declared, still laughing. “That last one caught me in the eye.”
    He blinked flakes of snow off his eyelashes.
    â€œYou admit defeat, then?” She laughed up at him.
    â€œAdmit defeat?” His eyebrows rose. “Pardon me, but who is holding whom vanquished in the snow?”
    â€œBut who just declared that he had had enough?” She waggled her eyebrows at him.
    â€œThe same one who then ended the battle with a decisive annihilation of the enemy.” He laughed back at her.
    She suddenly became aware that he was actually on top of her. She could feel his weight bearing her down. She could feel his breath warm on her face. She looked into his hazel eyes, only inches away, and found them smoldering back into her own. She looked down at his mouth and was aware at the same moment that his eyes dropped to hers.
    Her strange adventure moved perilously close to danger—and perhaps to something rather splendid.
    His lips brushed across hers and she felt as if she were lying beneath a hot August sun rather than December snow clouds.
    She had never known a man so very male—a thought that did not bear either pursuing or interpreting.
    â€œI have just remembered the bread,” she said in a voice that sounded shockingly normal to her ears. “I will be fortunate indeed if it has not risen to fill the kitchen to the ceiling. I will be fortunate if I can get through the door to rescue it.”
    His eyes smoldered into hers for perhaps a second longer, and then one corner of his mouth lifted in what might have been a smile or perhaps was simple mockery. He pushed himself to his feet, brushed himself off, and reached down a hand to help her up. She banged her gloved hands together and then shook her cloak, but there was as much snow down inside the collar of it as there was on the outside, she was sure.
    â€œOh, this was
such
fun,” she said, not looking at him.
    â€œIt was indeed,” he agreed. “But if I ever meet fortune face-to- face, I will demand to know why I had to be stranded here with a prudish schoolteacher. Go, Miss Allard.
Run.
If I can have no fresh bread with my soup after all, I shall be quite out of humor.”
    For the merest moment Frances thought of staying in order to protest his use of the word
prudish
. But if she were foolish enough to do that, she might find herself having to prove that it did not apply to her.
    She fled, though for very pride’s sake she did not run.
    Part of her was feeling decidedly annoyed with herself. Why had she broken the tension of that moment? What harm would one full kiss have done? It was so long since she had been kissed, and the chance might never come again—she was all of twenty-three.
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