Kiss Me on This Cold December Night:. Charlotte Phillips
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had absolutely no intention of grabbing it while she could.
It was perfectly simple. This was the UK after all, not Lapland. How long could the snow possibly last before he would be winging his way to Barbados as planned? One day? Surely two at most. All she needed to do was keep her head down and stay out of his way until Liz got here, avoiding any further encounters. Unfortunately, her ready-made excuse of a travel companion still hadn’t shown up. A harried phone call later and she understood the reason why.
Turned out Tom Henley had a point. Liz’s train was delayed by at least three hours due to snow on the bloody tracks. Plans to simply hang out in the room for a bit until her friend showed up suddenly morphed into the most boring waste of time imaginable.
Half an hour later and she’d drunk two coffees and eaten all the complimentary biscuits in the room. She bounced on the bed and glanced through the hotel information brochure for the second time, thinking it over. She could stare at four walls while she waited for Liz or she could while away some time in the award-winning Spa.
No contest. She stood up and tugged her swimsuit from her case.
***
A gorgeously relaxing ambience, muted lighting, fluffy towels and complimentary robes. The Spa was virtually empty, it being that lull just around lunchtime, between check-in and check-out. With all the snowy London sights to take in swimming wasn’t a big daytime attraction. Ella swam a few laps of the pool, then climbed out and settled herself on a wicker lounger, magazine at the ready. Soothing background music filled the air. Bliss. Not a sign of Tom Henley anywhere. And of course there wasn’t. With a flight on standby at any moment, Tom Henley was hardly likely to change into swimwear and be parted from his mobile phone, right?
Wrong.
Ten minutes later and she glanced up from her magazine to see him stroll casually into the pool, a towel slung around his neck, dark blue swim shorts topped with perfect tight abs, broad muscular shoulders and damply tousled dark hair. It seemed that for all his grouching about missing eggnog parties, Tom Henley was in no rush whatsoever to get back to the airport. Her heartbeat immediately picked up as if she’d done a couple of circuits in the beautifully equipped gym. She saw him clock her from the opposite side of the pool and he sauntered over leisurely.
‘What, no friend?’ he said, when he was a few feet away as if he thought she was some billy-no-mates with a fictional travelling companion. He sat down next to her, although the room was full of empty loungers and her stomach knotted into a ball of tension.
‘Liz is delayed in the snow,’ she said. ‘A bit like you.’
She saw his eyes sharpen.
‘So you’re at a loose end, then? Time to kill.’
The look on his face was open and friendly. His smile was as melting as she remembered, the way it started slowly and then moved upwards to crinkle the corners of his eyes. And she’d forgotten he had a way of holding her gaze with his that made her limbs feel like they might turn to jelly. She forced herself to sound detached.
‘Not for long. Just until her train makes it through, then it’ll be on with the Christmas shopping weekend.’
‘I thought you didn’t do Christmas,’ he said.
He was referring to the fact that back in Devon she’d turned the festive season into nothing more than a work opportunity, waiting table or bartending all the hours she could muster, all geared towards glossing over the fact that there was actually anything to celebrate. She was surprised he remembered that kind of detail about her and had assumed his recollections would be all about the bedroom.
‘I don’t.’ She shrugged. ‘Liz won a competition. A weekend for two Christmas shopping in London. She asked me along.’ She glanced around the beautifully-finished opulence of the Spa. ‘It seemed a shame to turn her down for a principle. Shame she’s running late.’
He settled himself back on the wicker lounger next to hers, propped up on one elbow to face her, clearly intent on a proper conversation. And what the hell, maybe if she got it over with, did the whole small talk catch-up chat, he would leave her be.
‘So how’ve you been?’ he asked. She thought she saw genuine interest in his eyes now. ‘You had another waitressing job lined up didn’t you? Back in Devon. Did you finish college?’
A smile rose on her lips as she remembered her former self. Big dreams. Not on his scale of course with his medical training and his father’s footsteps, but big for her who’d dropped out of school and drifted from one temp job to the next.
‘I did,’ she said. ‘I did the jewellery course. I’m surprised you remember.’
A brief hesitation and then she held her small hand out towards him, a swirl of beaten silver on her forefinger. Without thinking he took it in his; the resulting flip in his chest at the touch of her soft skin took his breath away. When had he last been this on edge with a woman? His love life had been a bit of an afterthought these last months as his family piled on the work pressure. Without realising what he was doing he automatically checked beside the silver ring for a wedding band. There was none. She withdrew her hand and he let it go.
‘I sell some of it online now,’ she said. ‘I’ve been trying to build up a business but it takes time. I do craft fairs, that kind of thing. And in between I still give good waitress.’ She smiled. ‘What about you?’
He shrugged.
‘After you left Christmas went pretty much as planned. Then I went back and got on with my medical training.’
Again, pretty much as planned. As planned played a big part in his life.
She smiled. Her light brown hair was pinned up on her head and she wore a blue and white striped bikini which was far from skimpy but which still did nothing to hide her slender frame and long legs. Just looking at her like that made heat begin to course through him.
‘We’re from different worlds, you and me,’ she said. ‘You had your rugby playing, your future medical career, your public school background, your family, your life plans. I waited tables at a hotel in Ilfracombe that Christmas and I was sofa surfing my way around my friends. It’s amazing we ever hooked up at all really.’
He remembered that. How she’d had no real base, no family ties, and most of all how she made that seem liberating instead of lonely.
She looked away, and he followed her gaze back across the glassy surface of the swimming pool.
‘For a while I stayed with my Gran at this time of year but now I just go wherever the mood takes me,’ she said. ‘Last year I waitressed in a hotel in the Lakes – the Christmas lights were just the prettiest thing ever, but it was freezing cold. Even more than this. The year before that I did charity work in a soup kitchen and the year before THAT I was working my way round France.’
She counted off the Christmases on her fingers. He only needed one finger for his last four Christmases. Every single one had been the same.
‘And this year?’
‘I’m doing this weekend with my friend Liz. She entered some competition on the back of a breakfast cereal packet. It’s supposedly for Christmas shopping, all expenses paid and some spending money thrown in. But I’m going to try and drag her round the sights a bit. Shopping’s not really my thing.’
‘What about after this weekend?’
‘Well then I’m working again. I’ve got a waitressing gig back in Cornwall. In Looe. I lived there for a while with my Gran. Brilliant time for earning, Christmas, if you’ve got nowhere else you need to be. My speciality is unsociable hours. When this weekend is over I’m booked up right through Christmas and New Year, I’ll barely have a minute to think. Whereas you’ll probably be having cocktails at sundown and a leisurely break – right?’ She sat back in her lounger and looked at him with interest. ‘Come on then, give me a rundown of your last four Christmases.’
‘Well