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She glanced down, and saw it was gaping. Dear God, could it get any worse?
Blushing furiously and clutching it together, she went back into her room and closed the door, leant back against it and shut her eyes, humiliation washing over her. How could she have gone out there with her towel flapping open and revealing—well, everything, pretty much!
Not that he’d been exactly covered. Had he always looked that good naked?
Yes. Always. He was more solid now, but he’d always looked good. Tall, broad, muscular, without an ounce of spare flesh on him.
And she really, really didn’t need to be thinking about that now! She pushed away from the door, dried herself quickly and wrestled her still-damp body into jeans and a jumper.
Her hair needed careful combing and drying, but it wasn’t going to get it.
Or was it? There was a knock on the door and it opened a crack.
‘There’s a hairdryer in the top drawer of the bedside table. I’m taking Josh downstairs. There’s no rush. We’re going to play with the train set.’
She sat down on the edge of the bed and sighed. Well, it would give her time to dry her hair properly and put on some make-up. And gather herself together a little. Her composure was scattered in all directions, and she was ready to die of humiliation.
Too right she’d take her time. She was in no hurry to face him again!
* * *
Her towel had slipped.
Not far enough. Just enough to taunt him, not enough to see anything. He’d gone back into his room, found Josh under the bed giggling and got dressed before Georgie had time to come looking for him again and caused another incident.
And Josh was more than happy to come downstairs and play with his trains. So was Sebastian. Only too happy, because it reminded him of all the reasons why getting involved with Georgie again would be such a mistake.
She’d walked out on him once, but they’d been the only ones who could get hurt in that situation, and he knew he’d been at least partly responsible. OK, maybe largely responsible, but not solely. He wasn’t taking all the blame for her lack of sticking power.
But this time, Josh would be involved. And he was so open, so trusting, so vulnerable. Two was a bad time for your world to fall apart. He knew that, in some deep, inaccessible but intrinsic part of him that still ached with loss.
Wounds that deep never really healed. And that was another reason to keep his distance.
So he played with Josh until she came down, and then he went into the kitchen and started putting the lunch together.
She followed him, Josh in tow. ‘You said I could hook up with my parents,’ she reminded him, and he nodded, put the timer on for the potatoes and took her to the study, connected her up and left them to it. Five minutes later they were back.
‘I thought I was supposed to be cooking?’ she said, but he shook his head.
‘Don’t worry about it. It actually looks pretty straightforward and the instructions are idiot-proof.’
‘Are you sure? I thought that was the deal?’
‘There’s no deal,’ he said shortly. ‘Go and play with your son. It’s Christmas. He needs you, not me. I’ll do this.’
In fact there wasn’t that much to do, to his regret. He parboiled the potatoes and parsnips, put them in a roasting pan with some of the goose fat and put them in the oven, moving the goose to the bottom oven to continue cooking slowly.
And then there was nothing to do for an hour.
Well, he had two choices. He could spend his Christmas Day sitting alone in the kitchen, or he could go back into the sitting room with Georgie and Josh and try not to remember what he’d seen under her towel...
The sitting room won, hands down.
CHAPTER SEVEN (#udaadd2fe-d1f2-5493-b3f5-7368ff97c9ab)
GEORGIE SAT BACK and sighed happily.
‘Sebastian, for someone who claims not to know how to cook a goose, that was an amazing lunch. Thank you so much.’
His shoulders twitched in that little shrug of his that she was getting so used to. ‘Good ingredients. I can’t take any credit.’
That was rubbish and they both knew it, but he’d always been modest about his achievements. For such a high achiever, it was a strange trait, and rather endearing. She smiled at him.
‘Nevertheless, it was delicious and I’m washing up.’
‘No. The dishwasher’s washing up. And the sun’s out and it’s warmer, so let’s not waste the day in here. Has Josh got anything he can wear outside?’
‘Yes. Wellies and overalls, in the car, and I brought my wellies, too—hey, we could make snow angels!’
He chuckled. ‘I think you’ll find if we put him down in the snow, he’ll vanish without trace, unless we can find a bit where it’s not so deep. Right, let’s go!’
So they abandoned the devastated kitchen, wrapped themselves up and headed out into the garden. Sebastian hoisted Josh up onto his shoulders and the little boy anchored his chubby fingers into Sebastian’s hair, his happy grin almost splitting his face in half.
‘Wait, let me take a photo,’ she said, and pulled out her phone. They posed dutifully, and she carried on, snapping off several shots of them as he turned and walked through the archway into the sunlit garden.
And it was glorious. He was right, it would have been criminal to miss it. The wind had died away completely and the sun shone with real warmth, sparkling on the snow and blinding them with its brilliance.
She scooped up a handful of snow and let Josh touch it, probing it with his finger. He was wary, but fascinated, and Sebastian lifted him down on the grass in the little orchard where the snow wasn’t so deep and lowered him carefully into it, and Josh watched his feet disappear and giggled.
Then Sebastian turned and looked at her, and she knew what was coming.
She saw it in his eyes, saw the way he carefully gathered up a great big handful of snow and showed Josh how to squash it into a snowball.
‘No. Sebastian, no! I mean it—!’
It got her right in the middle of the chest.
‘Oh, you rat!’ she squealed indignantly, and he just picked up her giggling son and laughed, his head tilted back, his mouth open, his face tipped up to the sun as Josh laughed with him, and if she could have bottled it, she would.
Instead she whipped out her phone and took a photo, the instant before he set Josh back in the snow.
Then she filed her phone safely in her pocket, because this was war and she wasn’t taking any prisoners.
Sebastian’s eyes were alight with mischief, and she scraped up a handful and hurled it back, missing him by miles. The next one got him, though, but not before his got her, and they ended up chasing each other through the snow, Sebastian carrying Josh in his arms, until he cornered her in one of the recesses of the crinkle-crankle wall and trapped her.
‘Got that snowball, Josh?’ he asked, advancing on her with a wicked smile that made her heart race for a whole lot of reasons, and he held her still, pinning her against the wall with his body while Josh put snow down her neck and made her shriek.
‘Oh, that was so mean! Just you wait, Corder!’
‘Oh, I’m so scared.’ He grinned cockily, turning away, and she took her chance and pelted him right on the back of his neck.
‘Like that, is it?’ he said softly, and she felt her heart flip against her ribs.
But he did nothing, because they found a clear bit of snow where it wasn’t too deep, and one by one they fell over backwards and made snow angels.
Josh’s angel was a bit crooked, but Sebastian’s was brilliant, huge and crisp and clean. How he stood up without damaging it she had no idea, but he did, and she looked down at it next to Josh’s little angel and then hers, and felt something huge swelling in her chest.
And then she got a handful of snow shoved down the back of her neck, which would teach her to turn her back on Sebastian, and it jerked her out of her sentimental daze.
‘Thought you’d got away with it, didn’t you?’ he teased, his mischievous grin taunting her, and she chased him through the orchard, dodging round the trees with Josh running after them and giggling hysterically.
Then he stopped, and she cannoned into him just as he turned so that she ended up plastered against him, his arms locking reflexively round her to steady her.
And then he glanced up. She followed his gaze and saw the mistletoe, but it was too late. Too late to move or object or do anything except stand there transfixed, her heart pounding, while he smiled slowly and cupped her chilly, glowing face in his frozen hands and kissed her.
His lips were warm, their touch gentle, and the years seemed to melt away until she was eighteen again, and he was just twenty, and they were in love.
She’d forgotten.
She, who remembered everything about everything, had forgotten that all those Christmases ago he’d brought her here, to the orchard where that summer they’d made love in the dappled shade under the gnarled old apple trees, and kissed her.
Under this very mistletoe?
Possibly. It seemed very familiar, although the kiss was completely different.
That kiss had been wonderfully romantic and passionate. This one was utterly spontaneous and playful; tender, filled with nostalgia, it rocked her composure as passion never would have done. Passion she could have dismissed. This...
She backed away, her hand over her mouth, and spun round in the snow to look for Josh.
He was busy squashing more snow up, pressing his hands into it and laughing, and she waded over to him and picked him up, holding him against her like a shield.
‘Oh, Josh, your hands are freezing! Come on, darling, time to go back inside.’ And without waiting to see what Sebastian was doing, she carried Josh back to the relative safety of the house.
As she pulled off their snowy clothes in the boot room, she noticed the little heap of mistletoe on the floor. It was still lying in the corner where he’d left it yesterday, and she’d forgotten all about it. Had he? Or had he taken her to the orchard deliberately, so he could kiss her right there underneath the tree where it had been growing for all these years? Where he’d kissed her all those Christmases ago?
If so, it had been a mistake. No kisses, she’d said, and he’d promised. They both had. And it had lasted a whole twenty-four hours.
Great. Fantastic. What a result...
* * *
Sebastian watched her go, kicking himself for that crazy, unnecessary lapse in common sense.
He hadn’t even put up the mistletoe in the house because in the end it had seemed like such a bad idea, and then he’d brought her out here and they’d played in the snow just as they had eleven years ago, right under that great hanging bunch of mistletoe.
And he’d kissed her under it.
In front of Josh.
Of all the stupid, stupid things...
‘Oh, you idiot.’
Shaking his head in disbelief, he made his way back inside and found she’d hung up their wet coats in front of the Aga to dry. Josh was playing on the floor with one of the cars out of his stocking, and she was pulling up her sleeves and getting stuck into the clearing up.
‘I’ve put the kettle on,’ she said. ‘I thought we could do with a hot drink.’
‘Good idea,’ he said, but he noticed that she didn’t look at him, and he only noticed that out of the corner of his eye because he was so busy not looking at her.
No repeats.
That had been the deal. He’d give Josh Christmas, and there’d be no recriminations, no harking back to their breakup, and no repeats of that kiss.
So far, it seemed, they were failing on all fronts.
Idiot! he repeated in his head, and pushing up his own sleeves, he tackled what was left.
* * *
‘I’m sorry.’
The words were weary, and Georgie searched his eyes.
She’d put Josh to bed, waited until he was asleep and then forced herself to come downstairs. She’d hoped he’d be in the study, but he wasn’t, he was in the kitchen making sandwiches with the left-over goose and cranberry sauce, and now she was here, too. Having walked in, there was no way of walking out without appearing appallingly rude, and then he’d turned to her and apologised.
And it had really only been a lighthearted, playful little kiss, she told herself, but she knew that she was lying.
‘It’s OK,’ she said, although it wasn’t, because it had affected her much more than she was letting on. She gave a little shrug. ‘It was nothing really.’
‘Well, I’ll have to do better next time, then,’ he said softly, and her eyes flew back to his.
‘There won’t be a next time. You promised.’
‘I know. It was a joke.’
‘Well, it wasn’t funny.’
He sighed and rammed his hand through his hair, the smile leaving his eyes. ‘We’re not doing well, are we?’
‘You’re not. It was you that raised the walking out issue, you that kissed me. So far I think I’ve pretty much stuck to my side of the bargain.’
‘Apart from running around in a scanty little towel that didn’t quite meet.’
She felt hot colour run up her cheeks, and turned away. ‘That was an accident. I was worried about Josh. And you didn’t have a lot on, either.’
‘No.’ He sighed again. ‘I have to say, as apologies go, this isn’t going very well, is it?’
She gave a soft, exasperated laugh and turned back to him, meeting the wry smile in his eyes and relenting.
