She felt a hundred things but not upset; shocked, bemused and exhilarated by the sheer strength of her response to him. For too many years she had lived in a world empty of any form of excitement. Andreas was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her and so great was her fascination that it hurt to deny herself the pleasure of looking at him.

'I planned to leave you here alone,' Andreas drawled flatly, still struggling to get a handle on his own inexplicable behaviour and somewhat stunned by his loss of control.

Startled, Hope whirled round. 'Why? Where were you planning to go?'

'I intended to try and find a house but it's too dark now.'

'And I have your coat. Much better to wait until daylight.' Hope snatched in a stark breath of the icy air while she gazed out at the fast-swirling snow being blown about by the wind. It was no longer possible to see even the hedges bounding the road.

She drew nearer to the fire and then knelt down beside it to take advantage of the heat the flames were beginning to generate.

'Tell me about your interview,' Andreas invited, having noted that she would no longer meet his gaze and determined to eradicate her unease. 'What was the job?'

'The position of live-in companion to an elderly woman but the interview never happened,' Hope confided ruefully. 'When I got to the house I found out that a relative had moved in with the lady instead and there was no longer a job available.'

'So these people didn't bother to cancel your interview and left you stranded?' Andreas queried with disapproval.

'I asked why I hadn't been contacted but the woman who spoke to me said it was nothing to do with her because she hadn't placed the ad in the first place.' Hope just shrugged and smiled wryly. 'That's life.'

'You are far too forgiving,' Andreas told her. 'Why did you want work of that nature?'

'I'm not qualified for anything else…at least, not at present.' Hope wanted a stable roof over her head and a period of steady employment before she checked out what she considered to be the much more remote and ambitious possibility of winning a place on a design course. 'I also need somewhere to live and it would've suited me very well. Where were you travelling?'