Snowed In For Christmas. Caroline Anderson
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You can lay the table. I’ll let you.’
‘Big of you.’
‘It is. Do it properly. The cutlery’s in this drawer.’
She threw the tea towel back, catching him squarely in the middle of his chest, and he grabbed it and chuckled, and for a second the years seemed to melt away.
And then he turned, picking up a knife, and the moment was gone.
* * *
It was no hardship to watch him while he cooked.
She studied every nuance of his body, tracking the changes brought about in nine years. He’d only been twenty-one then, nearly twenty-two. Now, he was thirty-one, and a man in his prime.
Not that he’d been anything other than a man then, there’d been no doubt about that, but now his shoulders under the soft cotton shirt seemed broader, more solidly muscled, and he seemed a little taller. The skilfully cut trousers hugged the same neat hips, though, and hinted at the taut muscles of his legs. She’d always loved his legs, and every time he shifted, her body tightened in response.
And while she watched, greedily drinking in every movement of the frame she’d once known so well, he peeled and chopped and sliced, mashed and seasoned, deglazed the frying pan with a sizzle of the lovely red, stirred in a hefty dollop of port and redcurrant sauce and then arranged it all with mathematical precision on perfectly warmed plates.
‘Voilà!’
He set the plates down on the places she’d laid, and she smiled. ‘Very pretty.’
‘We aim to please. Dig in.’
She dug, her mouth watering, and it was every bit as good as it looked and smelled.
‘Oh, wow,’ she mumbled, and he gave a wry huff of laughter.
‘See? No faith in me. You never have had.’
Georgie shook her head. ‘I’ve always had faith in you. I always knew you’d be a success, and you are.’
Even if she hadn’t been able to live with him any more.
He shrugged. There was success, and then there was happiness. That still eluded him, chased out by a restless, fretful search for his identity, his fundamental self, and it had cost him Georgia and everything that went with her. Everything she’d then had with another man—and he really didn’t want to think about that. He changed the subject. Sort of.
‘Josh seems a nice little kid. I didn’t know you’d had a child.’
She met his eyes, her fork suspended in mid-air. ‘Why would you unless you were keeping tabs on me?’
A smile touched his eyes. ‘Touché,’ he murmured softly, and the smile faded. ‘I was sorry to hear about your husband. That must have been tough for you.’
Tough? He didn’t know the half of it. ‘It was,’ she said quietly.
‘What happened?’
She put her fork down. ‘He had a heart attack. He was at work and I had a call to say he’d collapsed and died at his desk.’
He winced. ‘Ouch. Wasn’t he a bit young for that?’
‘Thirty-nine. And we’d just moved and extended the mortgage, so things are a bit tight.’
‘What about the life insurance? Surely that covered the mortgage?’
Her mouth twisted slightly. ‘He’d cancelled it three months before.’
That shocked him. ‘Cancelled it? Why would he cancel it?’
‘Cash flow, I presume. Property wasn’t selling, and because he’d cancelled the insurance of course they won’t pay out, so I’m having to work full-time to pay the mortgage. And it’s still not selling, so I can’t shift the house, and I’m stuck.’
He rammed a hand through his hair. ‘Oh, George. That’s tough. I’m sorry.’
‘Yeah, me, too, but there’s nothing I can do. I just have to get on with it.’
He frowned, slowly turning his wine glass round and round by the stem with his thumb and forefinger. ‘So what do you do with Josh while you’re at work?’
‘I have him with me. I work at home—mostly at night. He goes to nursery three mornings a week to give me a straight stretch of time, and it just about works.’
He topped up her glass and leaned back against the chair, his eyes searching her face. ‘So what do you do?’
She smiled. ‘I’m a virtual PA. My boss is very understanding, and we get by, but I won’t pretend it’s easy.’
‘No, I’m sure it’s not.’ For either of them. He thought of how he’d manage if he and Tash weren’t in the same office, and then realised that they weren’t for a lot of the time, but that was because he was the one out of the office, not her, and she was there in the thick of it and able to get him answers at the touch of a button.
The other way round—well, the mind boggled.
‘How old was Josh when it happened?’
‘Two months.’
Sebastian felt sick. ‘He won’t remember him at all,’ he said, his voice sounding hollow to his ears. ‘That’s such a shame.’
‘It is, it’s a real shame. David was so proud of him. He would have adored him.’
‘You will tell Josh all about him, won’t you?’
‘Of course I will. And he’s got grandparents, too. David’s parents live in Cambridge. Don’t worry. He’ll know all about his father, Sebastian. I won’t let him grow up in a vacuum.’
He felt the tension leave him, but a wave of grief followed it. He hadn’t grown up in a vacuum, but he’d been living a lie and he hadn’t known it until he was eighteen. And then this void had opened up, a yawning hole where once had been certainty, and nothing had been the same since. Especially not since he’d been privy to the finer details. Not that there was anything fine about them, by any stretch of the imagination.
Had his father been proud of him? Had his mother? Had her voice softened when she talked about her little son, the way Georgie’s did?
Who was he?
Endless questions, but no proper answers, even after all this time, and realistically he knew now that there never would be. He sucked in a breath and turned his attention back to the food, but it tasted like sawdust.
‘Hey—it’s OK,’ she said, frowning at him, her face concerned. ‘We’re doing all right. Life goes on.’
‘Were you happy together, you and David?’ he asked, wondering why he was beating himself up like this, but she didn’t answer, and after a moment he looked up and met her eyes.
‘He was a good man,’ she said eventually. ‘We lived in a nice house with good neighbours, we had some lovely friends—it was good.’
Good? What did that mean? Such an ineffectual word—or maybe not. Good was more than he had. ‘And did you love him?’
Her eyes went blank. ‘I don’t think that’s any of your business,’ she said softly, and put her cutlery down, the food unfinished.
‘I’ll take that as a no, then,’ he said, pushing it because he was angry about Josh, angry that she’d been playing happy families with someone else while he’d been alone—
‘Take it as whatever you like, Sebastian. As I said, it’s none of your business. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll go to bed now.’
‘And if I mind?’
She stood up and looked at him expressionlessly. ‘Then I’m still going to bed. Thank you for my meal and