Christmas Ever After

CHAPTER THREE

SKYLAR WOKE TO find her head still pounding. This time it felt as if someone was having a fireworks display inside her skull.

It was still dark in the room and it took her a moment to remember what had happened.

Her relationship with Richard was over.

Over, over, over.

She relived the evening in fast-forward, from the moment he’d taken the microphone to the moment she’d had to sprint to the bathroom.

She’d been ill, and in front of Alec Hunter of all people.

Why, oh why, couldn’t she have lost her memory?

She rolled over and buried her face in the pillow to muffle the groan, and then a horrible thought occurred to her and she lifted her head and checked the bed next to her.

It was empty.

Well, that was something to be grateful for. She might have crashed in the wrong bed, but at least she hadn’t slept with the enemy.

Feeling wobbly and thoroughly irritated with herself, she slid out of bed and saw Alec asleep on the sofa. He was too tall and broad for it and she suspected he’d had a very uncomfortable night. Strands of dark hair flopped over his handsome face, signposting a bone structure that made the artist in her want to reach for a pencil.

Sleep softened his hard features and made him seem more approachable.

And of course last night she’d seen a different side of him.

He’d been cool, competent and … kind.

Alec being kind was the last thing she would have expected.

Unlike the man she’d been dating, who had behaved like an unprincipled rat, Alec had refused to abandon her. He’d brought her back here, mopped up the blood and held her head while she’d been sick.

That, in her mind, had earned him enough points that he could pretty much do anything and she’d never be able to criticize him again.

Later, she knew that would irritate her, but for now she was grateful.

Grabbing her bag, she dragged herself to the bathroom and recoiled from her reflection.

No wonder he’d wanted to take her to hospital.

She could have starred in A Christmas Carol as one of the ghosts.

Lifting her hair, she studied her face. The corner of the table had caught her above the eye, lacerating the skin, but not badly enough for her to require stitches. Worse, was the bruising. She pulled her hair forward, experimenting as she tried to cover the damage.

Another wave of dizziness hit her and she closed her eyes.

When she opened them again she saw her silver dress rinsed and folded on a towel along with his white shirt.

Only one person could have done that.

Alec.

Rinsing would have ruined the dress, but it was ruined anyway and she was touched that he’d bothered.

Maybe she did have a serious head injury. She was getting soft thoughts about a man who thought she was a waste of space.

She’d go back to her hotel and lie down for a while. That should cure her.

Would Richard be there or had he already flown home?

She stared at herself in the mirror, the question she’d been ignoring looming in her mind.

If she hadn’t stepped back, would he have hit her?

The question went round and round in her mind as she splashed cold water on her face.

Then she tiptoed back into the bedroom intending to find her shoes. Instead, she walked straight into the solid wall of muscle that was Alec Hunter.

His hands gripped her arms and there was a fierce frown on his handsome face. “Where are you going?”

“Back to my hotel. Thank you for your hospitality.”

His grip on her didn’t ease. “You can’t be on your own.”

“I’m fine. I haven’t been sick again and I’ll take those instructions your doctor friend left. If I feel worse, I’ll take a cab to the hospital.”

“It’s December and it’s snowing. Not easy to get a cab.”

“I’ll find one.” Last night she’d been too ill to feel anything other than annoyance and embarrassment but now, in daylight, the whole incident felt sordid. “Look, I’m really grateful for everything you’ve done. I owe you, and part of my repayment is getting out of your way. You have a life to live, Alec. I heard you telling your friend that you were going home to your family.” She paused, distracted by the stack of gifts by the door. “Is there anything in those parcels?”

“Of course. You think I wrapped up empty boxes?” His gaze was curious and she felt the slow burn of embarrassment stain her cheeks.

He was probably wondering if her strange question was a symptom of her head injury.

“Ignore me. Looks like you’re in for a few days of fun.”

A normal Christmas.

The sort she’d never experienced.

“It’s an early family Christmas. We do this every year.” He dismissed it. “You can’t stay on your own, Sky.”

“You’re forgetting I have a bottle of champagne waiting for me at the hotel. I’m going to take a ride on the London Eye at night and go skating at Somerset House. Or maybe I’ll try the rink at the Natural History Museum. What do you think?”

“I think,” he said slowly, “that you’ve damaged yourself enough for one weekend.”

“I’ll have you know I’m a very competent skater. You don’t need to worry about me.”

“So you’re going to go skating by yourself and then drink all the champagne by yourself. That sounds like a lonely way to spend a weekend.”

“I might also order up a ton of cookies and comfort eat while watching holiday movies back-to-back. I’ll be fine, Alec. Go do whatever it is you were planning on doing today before you peeled me off the floor.”

“Will he be there?” He was blunt and direct and she sighed.

“At my hotel? I doubt it, but if he is then I’m sure we’ll have a few things to say to each other.”

“I’m not leaving you on your own with him.”

She was caught in a swirling tide of emotion. Exasperation, frustration that this had happened and something else. Something softer and more dangerous. She was touched. Really touched that he’d helped her and was still helping her.

“You don’t have to be all caveman around me.” Standing this close, she could see the masculine lines of his face and the stubble that shadowed his jaw. He was strikingly handsome and she now knew he was also strong and decent. For some reason she’d found it easier when she hadn’t known that about him. “I can handle Richard.”

“The way you handled him last night?”

“I handled him just fine until I fell.”

“And if you hadn’t fallen?” He spoke softly. “What then?”

She knew what he was asking because she’d been asking herself the same thing. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “And it doesn’t matter now. I appreciate your concern, but this is my problem and I’ll deal with it.”

“You’re not in a fit state to deal with anything. If he walked into the room now, what would you do? You don’t have the strength to defend yourself from anyone. You’re vulnerable.”

And yet hadn’t she been a thousand times more vulnerable the night before, with Alec?

He’d seen her stripped down, bare, both literally and figuratively.

And she’d seen him.

Her brief glimpse of his powerful frame was welded into her brain.

Heat poured over her and she tried to make a joke.

“I could vomit on him. That would send him running, believe me.”

He didn’t smile. Instead he crossed the room, picked up her purse and found her phone. “Check your messages. I want to know if he called.”

“I forgot to switch it on. It’s an annoying habit of mine.” Hands shaking, she took the phone. “He won’t have called. I don’t think you know Richard very well. I damaged his ego.” But that was the least of her problems. She switched her phone on and saw four missed calls. “Two calls from Brittany, one from Emily and one message from my mother.” Even though she could guess what it would be about, a faint thread of hope made her press the button to listen. Because her fingers were shaky and she wasn’t concentrating she played it back on speaker.

“Skylar? Richard landed at JFK a few hours ago and called to update us, which was good of him under the circumstances. I had hoped that the time had come when I could stop having to make excuses for you. That this once you’d make the right decision. But it seems not. I confess that of all the difficult conversations I’ve had in my life, that was one of the most awkward and embarrassing. You’d better call him back fast and hope he’ll reconsider.”

Awkward and embarrassing was having played that back on speaker.

Without looking at Alec she ended the call, digesting the fact that while she’d been bleeding and throwing up in Alec’s bathroom, Richard had been flying first-class across the Atlantic.

Feeling as energetic as roadkill, she sank onto the sofa Alec had recently vacated.

“Well, I guess you have the answer to your question. No one is looking for me, so you can safely leave me unprotected.”

And alone.

Totally alone.

London no longer felt exciting and full of possibilities. It felt big and impersonal.

“That was your mother?”

Hearing the undercurrent of shock in his voice, Sky kept her head down and sent a quick text to Brittany. “Yeah, she’s always pretty formal on the phone. Of course it doesn’t help that she’s probably gone nuclear over this thing with Richard.” Without elaborating, she dropped the phone in her bag. “I have one more favor to ask. Could I borrow a shirt? I’ll return it next time I see you.”

“I’m not leaving you alone in an impersonal hotel room when you’re vulnerable. You’re coming home with me.”

It was the last thing she’d expected him to say and she glanced up at him, shocked. “You’re kidding. Alec, we’re not even friends.”

“You need to stop being a drama queen. It’s too early in the morning.” A smile touched the corners of his mouth, distracting her.

She was usually too busy being irritated to notice the detail of his features but this close she could see that his eyelashes were thick and dark. He hadn’t shaved and the line of his lower cheek and jaw was dark with stubble.

In that single moment she could understand why he had an army of female fans.

Alec Hunter might be insanely irritating, but he was also insanely hot.

And now she knew what he was hiding away under the smart suits and rugged outdoor wear.

Unsettled, she looked away. Maybe she was vulnerable. Something had to explain the way her brain was working.

“Usually you accuse me of being a fairy princess.” She tried to lighten the atmosphere. “I’m trying to work out if drama queen is a promotion or not.”

“It’s a sideways move. Where are you staying? We need to collect your things and settle your bill.”

“Alec, you can’t just—”

“Either you disappoint my family by making me stay here with you, or you come with me. Your choice.”

She gave a choked laugh. “You heard my mom—I don’t make good choices.”

“You mean you don’t make the choices other people want you to make,” he said drily. “If you really want to stuff yourself with cookies you can do it at my house. My mother loves to bake. She’ll be delighted to have someone with your appetite to feed. There will be enough carbohydrate and sugar on offer to comfort an entire sorority.”

“You’re British. What do you know about sororities?”

“My father is American.”

“I didn’t know that about you.” She was starting to realize there was plenty she didn’t know about him, including the fact that caring for a sick woman didn’t put the smallest dent in his calm demeanor.

And he was decent.

Moody, irritating, insanely hot, but decent.

He could have made an excuse and left her alone. Instead, he’d stayed with her.

“What’s it to be, Sky? Are we spending the next few days in a hotel room or with my family?”

“I can’t just show up at your family’s home and join in a private gathering.” But the alternative was spending a week alone in a hotel room steaming mad about Richard and that was about as appealing as pulling her hair out at the roots. “Your mother won’t want me. I’ll ruin her numbers for the catering and mess up her seating plan.”

“Seating plan?” His brows rose. “People sit wherever there is room. If we run out of chairs, we use the piano stool. My family is very easygoing and my mother never quite knows who is coming until the day. And as for catering, she always cooks enough to feed half the village.”

Skylar tried not to compare that with her own experience of family occasions. Guests were expected to confirm. Last-minute extras were strongly discouraged. “This is your special time with your family and you and I aren’t exactly intimate.”

His eyes gleamed. “You’ve seen me naked and I’ve seen you naked. We’re a lot more intimate than we were this time yesterday. Do you need to go back to the gallery?” He moved around the room with stark efficiency, packing things into one small suitcase.

“No. I can call Judy.” She chose to ignore his comment about having seen her naked. She really didn’t want to think about how she’d ended up naked in a shower with a man who, until yesterday, she’d actively disliked. “Last night was the important bit. Fortunately it was almost over when this happened. She must be wondering what happened to me.”

“She isn’t. I talked to her before we left. She was the one who gave me your bag and coat.”

“What did you say to her?”

“That you weren’t feeling well. She obviously isn’t a fan of public proposals, so you had her sympathy. She told me to tell you that the exhibition was a huge success and to call her when you’re ready.” He gave her a long, searching look. “You’re pale. Still feeling ill?”

“No.” She was careful not to move her head. “But I could use some more of those pills you gave me.”

He walked into the bathroom and returned with the packet and a glass of water. “Take two.”

She swallowed them and drank the water. “About last night—”

“Forget it.”

“I won’t forget it Alec. I’m sorry you had to sleep on the sofa. It looks horribly uncomfortable. Are you aching all over?”

“No, and you need to stop apologizing. It’s starting to irritate me. I’m used to you arguing with me.”

Struck by another wave of dizziness, she closed her eyes. “I’ll start arguing with you as soon as those pills work.”

“You’re not going to look your best in the Christmas photos this year.”

He lifted his hand and smoothed her hair back, taking a closer look at her head. The brush of his fingers sent a rush of tingly heat across her skin.

“My family doesn’t do photos. Christmas is a very formal affair. Everything is scripted and planned.” The thought of Christmas made her want to curl up under the bedcovers and never come out.

He took the glass from her hand. “I need to call my mother and warn her that we’ll be one extra so she can make up the spare room. Then I’m going to find you some clothes. I have a pair of track pants that might do until we can fetch your things. You can roll up the legs and belt the waist.”

She was grateful to him for not pursuing the topic of Christmas.

“Great. If my unique seduction tricks of bleeding on you and throwing up on you haven’t worked, hopefully wearing baggy clothes will nail the deal.”

There was a brief pause and she saw a faint flicker of a smile touch his mouth.

“You’d look good in anything.” With that surprising comment, he walked to the phone by the bed. “I need breakfast before we hit the road.”

She stared at him, the air trapped in her lungs and her tummy doing acrobatics.

He didn’t pay her compliments. Ever. If anything, he went out of his way to make sure she knew she wasn’t his type.

True, there had been the moment in the bathroom, but he was a guy, wasn’t he? It hadn’t meant anything. Healthy, virile, sexually active hot guy meets half-naked girl in the bathroom. It was a moment she’d already forgotten—well, maybe not forgotten exactly, but she certainly wasn’t reading anything into it.

Half an hour later a tray arrived, heaped with fresh fruit, organic yogurt, pastries and scalding-hot coffee.

They ate while watching the sun rise over a frozen winter morning.

She noticed a stack of notes and his laptop on the desk. “Did you work last night?”

“For a while. I wanted to keep an eye on you.”

He’d stayed awake for her? She pulled the corner off a croissant. It flaked in her fingers, buttery and warm. “This is only my second trip to London. I was hoping to see some of the sights before I left.”

“When is your flight? You might still have time for that.”

“A week on Sunday. Then I’ll be back in New York for a couple of weeks before Christmas.”

The croissant was too rich for her stomach so she left the rest and picked at a few berries.

Alec, she noticed, drank lots of coffee.

It felt strange having breakfast with him in his hotel suite, wearing his shirt under a hotel robe. It felt—intimate. If housekeeping had walked in, they would have assumed they were lovers.

“How are we getting to your parents’ house? You have a car here?”

“I hire a car when I’m in London.”

“How long will it take us to get to your home?”

“Around two hours, depending on the weather.”

“You British are obsessed with your weather.”

“When you’ve seen the roads around Honeysuckle Cottage, you’ll understand why.”

He packed up his laptop while she dressed, then picked up the bags of gifts and the rest of his luggage and opened the door to their room.

“Honeysuckle Cottage? Such a cute name.” She walked past him, careful not to brush against him. “By the way, I’m not a drama queen.”

His eyes gleamed. “Fairy princess crossed with drama queen.”

“So what does that make me? A fairy queen or a drama princess?”

“I don’t know. I’ll let you know after we’ve spent a few days together.”

A few days.

Yesterday she’d been getting ready for her exhibition and now here she was with a bruised head and a bruised heart, going home with a man with whom she’d always had a difficult relationship.

Which all went to prove that whenever you were anticipating a happy ending, life was guaranteed to mess it up.

CHAPTER FOUR

THEY CRAWLED OUT of London and gradually the congestion eased and the roads opened up. It was still snowing heavily and Alec knew the country lanes around his parents’ house would be difficult to navigate.

In the seat next to him Skylar slept, her hair a halo of silver-gold around a face almost as pale as the snow.

Concerned by the long silences from someone who usually talked enough for six people, Alec glanced at her from time to time. In daylight the bruising looked worse and her sleepiness worried him. He contemplated calling Michael again, but reassured himself with the knowledge that she’d had a disrupted sleep the night before and was probably just tired.

Maybe her pallor was the result of stress.

He didn’t know what had shocked him most, the absence of any evidence of concern on the part of Richard Everson or the cold, unemotional message from her mother.

He couldn’t help comparing it to those months after the breakdown of his own marriage when his family had been in constant contact. At the time he’d been exasperated by their refusal to leave him alone, but now he felt grateful that they’d cared enough to bother.

Skylar had close friends, but they were far away on Puffin Island.

Here, she was alone.

Alone, except for him, and he knew without her having pointed it out that he was the last person with whom she would have chosen to spend her lowest moment.

He turned off the main road, driving through untouched countryside, past woodland and fields coated in a thick layer of snow.

The closer he got to home, the more uneasy he felt.

What the hell had he done?

The only woman he’d ever brought home was his ex-wife and the memory of how that had played out was permanently embedded in his brain.

Sweat cooled his skin.

He didn’t want to be trapped with Sky. He didn’t want to be trapped with any woman who was emotionally vulnerable.

He wasn’t fooled by her constant quips and cheery humor.

She was hurting and he didn’t want to be within a million miles of a woman who was hurting.

He drove in silence, brooding on the weekend ahead.

Somehow he had to find a way of keeping his distance.

Finally, as he approached the market town near his parents’ house, she woke.

She stirred and turned her head, absorbing her surroundings.

Tiny lights glowed in shop windows, illuminating honey-colored stone. Glossy green wreaths studded with plump red berries decorated the doors and a large Christmas tree dominated the village square.

“It’s the prettiest place I’ve ever seen.” She stifled a yawn. “Where are we?”

“The Cotswolds. We’re about two hours from London. This is the village of Brockburn-on-the-Water. My parents live about five minutes from here, although it might as well be a million miles if they haven’t cleared the road.”

He waited for Skylar to flip down the mirror and start applying makeup but instead she shifted in her seat and gave him her full attention.

“Tell me about your family. What does your father do?”

“He’s a GP. A family doctor. He came over to England straight after medical school, met my mother and never went back. He’s senior partner in the village practice. My mother works in the renal unit in the hospital.”

“Are you an only child?”

“Two sisters. One older, married with twins, the other younger. Olivia is sixteen.”

“Sixteen? That’s a big age gap. I bet you freaked out when you discovered your mom was pregnant.”

“Why would you think that?”

He’d been completely freaked out.

Her insight was unnerving.

“Because when she was born you would have been—what? Sixteen? Seventeen? No teenager wants to be faced with tangible evidence that their parents still have sex. So you’re an uncle and a big brother. I have older brothers, too. They spend the whole time telling me what I should be doing. Are you like that?”

“There would be no point because Liv wouldn’t listen.” He drove down the lane toward his parents’ house, past trees laden with soft snow and fields dotted with animal footprints. The winter sun was low in the sky, sending light shimmering over fields of white.

“So both your parents are in medicine, but you didn’t want to be a doctor?”

“No. When I was five I wanted to be an Arctic explorer. My uncle gave me an explorer’s kit for Christmas and I remember taking it down the garden and camping out in the shed. Took them two hours to find me and by then I’d almost frozen to death.” Mindful of the icy surface, he eased the car round the last bend and turned into his parents’ drive. “We’re here. This is it.”