I'm Not in Love (Once Upon a Winter Book 2) by Tilly Tennant Page B

back.’
    ‘Yes, and I can see that you’ve found her so can we please all get in the car and take her to wherever it is she needs to be so desperately?’
    ‘Swap seats,’ Mitchell said curtly, ‘I’ll drive.’ He started walking towards the car.
    ‘I don’t need to be taken home,’ Hannah said, suddenly feeling belligerent about the whole thing. She didn’t particularly want to walk home but she certainly didn’t want to be stuck in a car with them like this. ‘I’m perfectly capable of making my own way.’
    Martine raised her eyebrows as she got out of the car. ‘There you go,’ she said to Mitchell, ‘I told you as much.’
    ‘Just because she says it, doesn’t make it true. I’m sure in normal circumstances it’s alright but I can’t allow it tonight.’ He looked at Hannah, who was now standing at the roadside with her arms folded tight across her chest. ‘Get in the car, Hannah.’
    ‘Er… excuse me but you can’t talk to me like that – I’m not married to you.’
    ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Martine cried. ‘He doesn’t get to talk to me like that either!’
    ‘She doesn’t mean anything,’ Mitchell sighed. ‘Give the suffragette bit a rest, will you? The pair of you are drunk.’
    ‘Yes, but you’re sober so you think everything through before you say it,’ Hannah fired back, giving him a meaningful look. It seemed to stop him in his tracks for a moment, before he recovered, and for the first time, Hannah wondered if she was seeing something of the real Mitchell Bond as he issued his command again.
    ‘Get in the car.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Hannah… please get in the car. I can’t leave you out here, so if you don’t it means we’ll all stay out on this road arguing about it until the sun comes up.’
    ‘Or we’ll all get hypothermia and die,’ Martine added, in a voice that suggested she rather hoped Hannah would.
    Hannah folded her arms tighter. She didn’t want to get in the car. Right now she’d rather climb into a vat of Ross’s sheeps’ poo, but she could see by the look on Mitchell’s face that he meant what he said and she didn’t fancy a standoff either.
    ‘For God’s sake, please get in,’ Mitchell sighed.
    ‘Fine,’ Hannah muttered. ‘But for the record I’m not happy about it.’
    ‘You’re not happy about us saving you a long and freezing walk home?’ Martine scoffed. ‘Who on earth would rather do that than get into our nice warm car and be chauffeured the rest of the way? You must be properly crazy…’
    ‘Enough, Martine, please…’ Mitchell replied as he held the door open for Hannah. She slid onto the back seat and could feel her hackles rising. If what he had said to her only moments before was true… and that incredible kiss meant something… then what was happening now? Why not tell Martine right this moment how he felt? If he wanted Hannah that badly, why not end it with Martine? She knew it probably wasn’t fair, and the timing was hardly right, but his silence felt incriminating somehow – as though he was trying to have his cake and eat it. It wasn’t as though Hannah would immediately fall into his arms but at least there would be a chance in the future for them. As things were now there was no chance at all. The fact that he did nothing only strengthened Hannah’s conviction that he may have believed he meant what he said, but even he couldn’t be certain of the truth. Perhaps he was suffering from some kind of guardian angel/Florence Nightingale effect, some psychological syndrome that led him to believe he was in love with the woman who had happened to be there during his hour of need. But this was not a situation to build true love on, and Hannah had been in enough flawed relationships to know that getting involved was a bad idea… if only her heart would listen to her head’s very sound advice.
    *
    The journey home was almost silent. Any pleasant tipsiness that Hannah had enjoyed earlier had now been