Stranded With Her Rescuer. Nikki Logan

       “Careful what you wish for, Will. You might find you don’t like what you find, at all.”

      Hadn’t he already said she’d changed?

      He pushed to his feet, into shadows, so that she couldn’t quite find his gaze, but his earnest expression stole every bit of breath she’d managed to suck in as he stepped forward into the fire’s circle of light.

      “I doubt that,” he murmured.

      She wanted to answer—some terrifically witty response—but, nope, there wasn’t enough air left in her cells, let alone her lungs. All she could do was stare into the sparkling depths of his eyes and wonder what it would be like to swim strokes in the icy blue there.

      As she watched, they flicked down to her parted lips and back again. “You’re an enigma to me, Kitty Callaghan. And I’ve always enjoyed puzzles.”

      She wanted to warn him that she was more puzzle than he knew. She was one of those boxes with hidden mechanisms, cryptic clues and booby traps if you pressed the wrong place. She wanted to but she didn’t, because the moment he stared at her lips, all she could think about was what it would be like to kiss him. To taste him and breathe him in.

      After all this time.

      And in that moment, she knew that she’d been wanting that since the very first moment she met him. More than just about anything else in her life.

      Stranded with Her Rescuer

      Nikki Logan

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      NIKKI LOGAN lives on the edge of a string of wetlands in Western Australia with her partner and a menagerie of animals. She writes captivating nature-based stories full of romance in descriptive natural environments. She believes the danger and richness of wild places perfectly mirror the passion and risk of falling in love.

      Nikki loves to hear from readers via www.nikkilogan.com.au or through social media. Find her on Twitter, @readnikkilogan and Facebook, nikkiloganauthor.

      For my beautiful boy, Gus.

      The sonorous metronome to which I wrote my books. How you would have loved all this snow.

      “Dogs are wise. They crawl into a quiet corner and lick their wounds and do not rejoin the world until they are whole once more.”

      —Agatha Christie

      Contents

       Cover

       Introduction

       Title Page

       About the Author

       Dedication

      PROLOGUE

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

       CHAPTER FOUR

       CHAPTER FIVE

       CHAPTER SIX

       CHAPTER SEVEN

       CHAPTER EIGHT

       CHAPTER NINE

       CHAPTER TEN

       CHAPTER ELEVEN

       CHAPTER TWELVE

       CHAPTER THIRTEEN

       EPILOGUE

       Extract

       Copyright

       PROLOGUE

      Five years ago, Pokhara, Nepal.

      WILL MARGRAVE LEANED a shoulder against the rounded earthen interior wall of his villa overlooking Pokhara and peered through the window down to the terrace flats below. The topmost flat was furred with the gentle, swaying grasses native to this part of Nepal, peppered with small clusters of shrubs and fully fenced all the way around to the kennels out back of the house. The yard had to be large, to do its job housing his sixteen rescue dogs.

      Maybe it was the richness of the light, or the majesty of the mountains or the mirrored reflection of Phewa Lake but everything in this environment just sat so...comfortably in it.

      Including him.

      Will leaned forward into the window’s curve to watch the solitary woman below mingling with his dogs. Kitty Callaghan liked to start her day early and she liked to start it outside. On her second day here, he’d spotted her halfway down the terraces, meditating under the watchful protection of the Annapurnas as the sun rose behind the mountain range, doing her best impersonation of a normal, still person. Usually she was anything but, and today she was clearly in a more active mood, jogging back and forth in the fenced-in yard, tapping the noses of one dog then the next and darting back out of reach as they joined the game, drawing a canine cluster back and forth with her as she ran, not minding how silly she might look or how much dirt they kicked up.

      Dogs and dirt didn’t bother Kitty any more than the looming mountains and composting toilets did. It was one of the things he liked about her best.

      Not everybody loved the silent granite sentinels that marked Nepal’s border. Mountains were dominant, powerful forces—for better or worse. Some people found them oppressive and ominous, almost claustrophobic. People like his wife. Though how Marcella could stand anywhere on this hillside under these vast, wild skies and feel closed in was a mystery to him.

      Like so much about her.

      That mystery had once intrigued him—back when he’d assumed her secrets would unfurl like a lotus as the months and years passed—but intrigue had a way of losing its appeal when your marriage eroded as steadily as the rock beneath your feet.

      Down below, Kitty laughed as one dog got the better of her. She arched back when Quest reared up and placed his paws on her slight shoulders, her face turned up to the gentle morning light—twisted away from Quest’s errant tongue—and the magic of her laughter cascaded like water down the terraced hillside.

      And like warm breath down his spine.

      Ugh... Moments like this one didn’t help his resolve. Looking at those wide grey eyes in perfect pale skin and not wanting to just...dive right in to see what curiosities lay behind them. Sitting up late at night by the fire, hovering on the precipice of the kind of conversations he missed so desperately, lying to himself that he could get a handle on the feelings that had been escalating ever since she arrived ten short days ago to film her series of freelance pieces in Nepal.

      Ten long days knowing that Marcella