We'd barely gone five steps when the wind whipped up, blasting torrents of snow into our faces, and I had to hunch over, clutching my hood with both hands to keep it blowing off my head.

I followed Finn's footprints, stepping in each indent he left, but a strong gust of wind lashed into me and knocked me off balance. I stumbled, hands flailing, feet sliding on the frozen ground.

Finn grabbed my hand, steadying me. "Almost there," he shouted, pointing.

Through the howling curtain of snow, I glimpsed the ground flattening out up ahead, and then Finn's house, a refuge from the storm. I almost cried with relief. We struggled through the snow until we reached the door that led into Finn's living room. He pushed me inside, then followed, pulling the door shut behind him.

He still hadn't let go of my hand.

As snowflakes melted on my eyelashes and ran down my face, I felt a great surge of something in my chest, as if I were about to laugh or cry.

A choked giggle crept out before I could stop it.

Finn abruptly dropped my hand, and the giggle died in my throat.

"Fuck," he muttered, pulling off his beanie and running his hand through his hair.

I pushed back my hood and wiped my wet eyes. At least I'd worn waterproof mascara.

Finn unzipped his coat with a rough, jerky motion, and slung it onto the back of a nearby chair. I wanted to do the same, but I was a stranger in Finn's home, and he was looking at me with that scowl again, same as when we'd met.

"What the hell do I do with you now?" he said.

I wasn't sure if that was rhetorical, but I answered anyway. "I'll be on my way as soon as the blizzard stops."

"Do you have any idea how long that'll take?"

"I'm not a meteorologist."

We glared at each other, while the fire crackled in the background. Water ran down my forehead from the melting snow in my hair, and I irritably scrubbed it away with my sleeve.

"Look," I said, trying to soften my voice. "I get that this isn't ideal, but if you can put me up for a few hours, or even overnight –"

"Does that look like it'll be gone by tomorrow?" Finn interrupted, pointing at the huge windows.

I looked.

The sky was the colour of iron, making the world outside look like twilight rather than early afternoon, and wind and snowfall furiously buffeted the glass. My heart sank. The blizzard itself might stop, but how deep would the snow be when it did? Too deep to drive through, even if I could get my car working again and find a way around the fallen tree.

"How long do you think it'll last?" I said.

Finn's scowl turned pensive, but he didn't answer.

"It can't last forever," I said.

"No, but it might feel like it," Finn muttered.

"What do you mean?"

Finn kicked off his boots and shoved them into a corner. I kept mine on, dripping water over the rug on the floor, like a sad melting popsicle.

"You know anything about the Big Freeze of '63?" he said.

"Is that a movie or something?"

Finn sighed. "No, Tasha, it's not a fucking movie. It's the crazy winter conditions that Britain faced in 1963, the coldest winter this country had seen in over two hundred years."

"Okay, well, I'm twenty-one, so I wasn't alive then," I said, nettled.

"Neither was I, and I still know about it," he snapped.

I swallowed the knot in my throat. "Could you please stop yelling at me because I don't know everything that you do?"

Finn didn't respond.

"How long did it last?" I asked.

"Nearly three months."

My eyes bugged. "You're not saying I'm stuck here for nearly three months, are you?"

"How would I know? I'm not a meteorologist," he shot my own words back at me. "But I've sure as shite not seen a winter this bad in a while, so I want you to be prepared."

I turned back to the raging blizzard outside, and my stomach contracted into a hard ball.

"Why did you make me come out here?" I whispered.

There was no answer – not that I expected one.

Suddenly angry, I whirled to face Finn. "You never had any intention of taking that interview seriously, but you still made me travel all the way out here for fucking nothing. Why the fuck do you live out here anyway?"

"Because I like my privacy," Finn snapped.

"That's backfiring on you now, isn't it?" I snapped back.

"Apparently so, but you have no fucking clue what it's like to have your privacy invaded all the time!" Finn blinked and shut his mouth as if he hadn't meant to say that last part.

My temper cooled.

Okay, he had made me come out here, and it was really shitty of him not to have taken the interview seriously, but as soon as I lost control of the car, he'd rushed out to help. He was more of a dick than I'd realised, but he couldn't be all bad, and he did have a point – I had no idea what might have driven him to live out here by himself.

"Sorry," I said.

Finn looked taken aback. He mumbled something, but I couldn't tell if he was apologising too, or telling me to go fuck myself.

I sighed and peeled wet strands of hair from my cheeks. "I suppose there's no chance of me pushing for a redo of that interview while I'm here? Maybe you've remembered something exciting about that fourth album that you'd like to share?"

I got a stony look in response.

Finn had rushed out two albums in the year after leaving Momentum, and both had been widely regarded as failures, though I'd quite liked them. There was some truth to Andy Norton's comments – Finn had maintained his fame because of the crazy shit he'd pulled, and because he'd been invited to tour with Angels & Demons and fellow rockband Incarcerated, after becoming friends with Jude. People were more interested in the tabloid gossip about his drunken or drug-riddled exploits than they were in his music. All that had changed with the release of his third album a little over two years ago, which had been met with critical acclaim.

Now fans – myself included – were waiting with bated breath for the next album, the date of which had already been pushed back twice. Some critics speculated that Finn's one successful album had been a fluke, and that he didn't have anything good left in him.

I believed he still did, but he'd been too much of a douchebag for me to tell him that.

"Fine. Do you have a TV in here?" I looked around. "Maybe the news is talking about the storm."

Finn picked up a slim black remote from the arm of the sofa, and pointed it at the brick wall behind the stove. A large section of the wall flickered to life, and I realised that a TV was mounted there. The background image of bricks had camouflaged it.

As he found the right channel, Finn slung himself onto the sofa with a sigh. I stayed where I was, still dripping. It took Finn a couple of moments to notice.

"You can sit down," he said.

"I'm all wet," I said mournfully.

"Stick your boots in the corner and give me your coat."

I peeled off my wet coat and handed it to him, and Finn disappeared through a door next to the kitchen area. While he was gone, I toed off my boots and, after a moment's indecision, put them in the corner with Finn's. The navy sweater that I'd hoped would make me look professional was damp, so I took that off too, and spread it on the floor in front of the stove. My jeans were damp too, but no way in hell was I stripping out of those.

Finn returned, and resumed his place on the sofa, facing the TV. I hovered awkwardly, before sitting in one of the padded chairs, clasping my hands in my lap.

Silently, we watched the news.

The blizzard was sweeping across parts of England and Wales, blocking roads and railways, leaving people stranded at bus and train stations, or their various workplaces, and as I watched photos and videos of snow-choked roads and abandoned vehicles, a shiver rolled through me. That could have been me.

Much as I didn't want to be stuck here with Finn, I was grateful too, because the alternative might have been my car getting snowed in on a rural road somewhere. I couldn't walk over fifty miles home even in good weather.

The Big Freeze was referenced several times, though temperatures hadn't dropped as low as in that year, but my already sinking stomach felt even more hollow.

"I really could be here for weeks, then," I realised, slumping in my seat.

"Most women would kill to be alone in a house with me," Finn said.

"That's because most women haven't realised what an asshole you can be," I said before I could think better of it. I bit my lip. "Sorry, that was uncalled for."

Rather than the sharp retort I expected, the corners of Finn's mouth tipped up in what was almost a smile.

"Are we safe here?" I asked, looking around the room.

"What do you think is going to happen?" Finn sounded amused.

"If we get snowed in, I'm worried about surviving. We're really cut off from anything up here."

"Don't worry about it," Finn said.

I wished I had his confidence.

We watched the TV a little longer, then Finn abruptly switched it off. The sudden quiet in the room felt deafening, broken only by the crackle of logs from the stove.

"I'd better show you to your room then," he said. His voice was carefully neutral, all the amusement gone.

"My room?" I repeated.

"You didn't think you'd sleep on the sofa, did you?"

"I honestly hadn't thought about it. This is a lot to take in."

"I've got several spare rooms. You might as well use one," Finn said.

Tears stung my eyes again, and I looked away, not wanting him to see them.

"Follow me," Finn said, and maybe it was my imagination, but I thought this voice had softened.

He led me through the door next to the kitchen, and into a wide hallway, half-panelled with white wood. After the rustic warmth of the living room, the bare walls looked cold, sterile. We passed several more doors and an entryway, through which I glimpsed a tiled foyer – that must be where the front door led into.

From there, the hallway veered left, and the walls on the left gave way to more floor-to-ceiling windows that offered a view onto the grounds. I couldn't see much through the blizzard, but not far from the windows were blocky shapes that could have been chairs, so I assumed I was looking at an outdoor seating area.

Just past the windows were several doors on the right side of the hall; Finn stopped in front of the first.

"Here you go," he said, and opened it.

I sidled past him, and as soon as I was inside, Finn shut the door. I stared at it, anger sparking in my chest. Yeah, I was grateful to him for putting me up, even though it was his fault I was here, but shutting me in the room like that made me feel like an unwanted object he was shoving in the back of a cupboard.

I turned in a circle, examining my new surroundings. The floor was wooden, like the living room, but there were no rugs in here, and the walls were half-panelled with wood, like the hallway. Instead of that sterile whiteness though, these walls were done in soft shades of grey and cream, with vast windows on one side, loosely covered with pale drapes.

The bed was a simple double, with covers a shade of grey darker than the walls, and a metalwork bedside table. Opposite the door, a square archway led into a bathroom with a wooden floor more polished-looking than the bedroom, and white tiled walls. Wrought-iron lights hung from the ceiling. Everything was so clean and crisp that I wondered if either bedroom or bathroom had ever even been used.

I cast my mind back to what I knew about Finn, trying to remember how long he'd lived here, but my brain was firmly tangled in what was happening now.

I approached the windows and pushed back the drapes. A great patch of what was probably lawn under that snow separated my rooms from the ones opposite, which seemed an odd design choice to me, as if someone had cut a huge wedge out of the back of the house. But if this place was divided into separate wings, maybe that was why people referred to it as a mansion.

Were those rooms the other spares Finn had mentioned, or was one of them his bedroom? Not that I cared, of course.

The view on the right was a blank wall at the back of the house, but when I craned my neck to the left, I could see a long section of the house that appeared to jut out from the main body, and though it was hard to be sure through the blizzard, I thought I glimpsed a flash of blue. An indoor pool, maybe?

A shudder rolled down my spine. I didn't know how much exploring Finn would allow me to do, but that was one luxury I'd definitely avoid. Camden could swim just fine, but anything deeper than a hot tub was a no go for me.

I placed my snow-damp bag on the floor next to the bed, and wrapped my arms around myself. This was real then. I staying in Finn Donovan's spare bedroom, and I had no idea when I could leave. A few hours ago, I'd have fainted at the prospect of my guilty pleasure fanfiction reads coming true - alone in a remote house with one of the sexiest rockstars in the world?

Yes please!

Too bad the rockstar in question was an asshole.

The stupid tears were back, and this time I let them fall, though I felt like an idiot for doing so.

What had I expected?

That because I was caught up in something that sounded like the plot of a cheesy romcom, with a guy I'd fantasised about for years, he'd turn out to be the Prince Charming man of my dreams?

Life didn't work like that.

I climbed onto the bed and wiped away my tears. Maybe there'd been some fearmongering involved in what Finn and I had seen on the news, and things weren't as bad as they seemed. It was worth checking other sources.

An hour later, I let my phone thump onto my chest with a defeated sigh. Nope, things really were that bad. Classes of kids stuck at school until the blizzard died down, multiple accidents on major roads, with several fatalities already reported, along with other reports of people getting lost in the snow.

Fuck, I really had been lucky that my accident had happened so close to Finn's house. Even luckier that he'd watched me leave and come to help.

Only a couple of hours had passed since I'd first driven through that gate and onto Finn's property, but it seemed like four times as long. My whole body felt heavy and my eyelids ached, like I'd been awake for days, and my mind was a confused mess.

Camden had once told me that waking up married to Jude had been the strangest day of her life, but I couldn't help wondering if my day with a rockstar wasn't even stranger.

Maybe some sleep would put everything in perspective.

***

The next time I opened my eyes, I felt a rush of disorientation at the sight of the unfamiliar ceiling above me. It was too clean, too white, there were no cracks, and where was the spider who lived in the corner?

Then everything rushed back.

I wasn't at my shabby little flat.

I was in Finn Donovan's hilltop home.

The fangirl in me couldn't help a rush of excitement because, really, this was the stuff that wet dreams were made of, but I deflated just as quickly when I remembered how surly Finn was.

The time on my phone read midnight – I'd slept for longer than I meant to.

My stomach made a deep, unhappy growl. I'd grabbed an early lunch before travelling here, but that was twelve hours ago, and I'd anticipated treating myself to a big fat pizza to celebrate my interview with Finn, but that obviously wasn't happening now.

It would feel weird as hell to raid his kitchen in the middle of the night, but I needed food.

I slunk across the room, opened the door, and peeked out.

All the lights were off, casting the house in darkness, but through the windows opposite, I could see the snow still coming down, like thousands of feathers fluttering in the air. It looked less heavy than before, which gave me hope.

I took a step forward, and my foot knocked into something, making a clinking noise on the wooden floor. I gasped and jumped back, clutching the door-frame. A second or two later, my eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and I swallowed a laugh.

A sandwich sat on a plate outside my room, and once I'd got over the shock of almost tripping over something I hadn't seen, my heart gave a funny skip.

Finn must have made it for me. Why hadn't he knocked to let me know it was out here? Unless he had and I'd been too deeply asleep to hear it.

I picked up the plate and backed into my room, relieved that I didn't have to scour the kitchen for a snack. At the first bite, my stomach growled again, but this time in appreciation. It was a damn good sandwich, thick slices of turkey layered with creamy cheese, crisp lettuce, and juicy tomatoes, and I was surprised that Finn had put in so much effort.

Munching my sandwich, I wandered over to the window, so I could look at that patch of lawn separating my bedroom from what I assumed were others, and I wondered again if Finn was sleeping in one of them.

An image of him in bed, sheets twisted around his legs, hair mussed on the pillow, flashed into my head, and my nipples promptly reacted, pushing against the thin cotton of my bra. I almost choked on a tomato. No, no, no, I was not thinking about Finn like that, not anymore.

My nipples didn't get the memo, and I couldn't entirely blame them. Finn was sex on legs, and despite how much he'd snapped at me, he'd been thoughtful enough to make me a sandwich. I had no idea where I stood with him.

I finished my sandwich and set the plate on the bedside table, before brushing the crumbs off my fingers and climbing back into bed.

There was still a chance that the weather forecasts were all wrong, and the snow would be gone by tomorrow – or at least melted enough that I'd be able to leave. Then I wouldn't have to see or think about Finn Donovan again.