Chistmas In Manhattan Collection. Alison Roberts
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her heart again.
And that had to be a good thing, too.
Even if it didn’t feel like it right now.
She had almost reached the street now where the lamps were casting a circle of light amidst a swirl of snowflakes but she turned back, hesitating.
She hadn’t even looked in the direction of Charles’s office when she’d left. Maybe he was still there?
Maybe the kind of person she was now would actually go back and talk about this. Take the risk of making herself even more vulnerable?
And that was when she heard it.
Someone calling her name.
No. It was a jingle of bells. She had just imagined hearing her name.
She turned back to the road and any need to make a decision on what direction she was about to take evaporated.
There was a sleigh just outside the ambulance entrance to Manhattan Mercy.
A bright red sleigh, with swirling gold patterns on its sides and a canopy that was rimmed with fairy lights. A single white horse was in front, its red harness covered with small bells and, on its head—instead of the usual feathery plume—it had a set of reindeer antlers.
A driver sat in the front, a dark shape in a heavy black coat and scarf and top hat. But, in the back, there was someone else.
Charles...
‘Grace...?’
Her legs were taking her forward without any instruction from her brain.
She was too stunned to be thinking of anything, in fact. Other than that Charles was here.
In a sleigh?
Maybe she’d got that image behind the plate-glass window a little wrong earlier.
Maybe this was the magic place she hadn’t been able to reach.
Just Charles. In a sleigh. In the snow.
And he was holding out his hand now, to invite her to join him under the canopy at the back. Waiting to help her reach that place.
Grace was still too stunned to be aware of any coherent thoughts but her body seemed to know what to do and she found herself reaching up to take that hand.
She had been on the point of summoning the courage to go and find Charles even if it meant stepping into the most vulnerable space she could imagine.
Here she was, literally stepping into that space.
And it hadn’t taken as much courage as she’d expected.
Because it felt...right...
Because it was Charles who was reaching out to her and there was no way on earth she could have turned away.
HEART-WRENCHING...
That look on Grace’s face when she’d seen him waiting for her in the sleigh.
He’d expected her to be surprised, of course. The sleigh might not be genuine but the sides had been cleverly designed to cover most of the wheels so it not only looked the part but was a pretty unusual sight on a New York street. Along with the bells and fairy lights and the reindeer antlers on the horse, he had already been a target for every phone or camera that people had been able to produce.
For once, he didn’t mind the attention. Bundled up in his thick coat and scarf, with a hat pulled well down over his head, Charles Davenport was unrecognisable but the worry about publicity was a million miles from his mind, anyway. The sight of this spectacle—that had taken him most of the day to organise—didn’t just make people want to capture the image. It was delighting them, making them point and wave. To smile and laugh.
But Grace hadn’t smiled when she saw him.
She’d looked shocked.
Scared, almost?
So, so vulnerable that Charles knew in that instant just how much damage his silence had caused.
And how vital it was to fix it.
The sheer relief when Grace had accepted his hand to climb up into the carriage had been so overwhelming that perhaps he couldn’t blame the biting cold for making his eyes water. Or for making it too hard to say anything just yet. How much courage had it taken for her to accept his hand?
He loved her for that courage. And for everything else he knew to be true about her.
And nothing needed to be said just yet. For now, it was too important to make sure that Grace was going to be warm enough. To pull one faux fur blanket after another from the pile at his feet, to wrap them both in a soft cocoon. A single cocoon, so that as soon as he was satisfied there was no danger of hypothermia, he could wrap his arms around Grace beneath these blankets and simply hold her close.
Extra protection from the cold?
No. This was about protecting what he knew was the most important thing in his life at this moment. Grace. So important in his boys’ lives as well. The only thing he wasn’t sure of yet was how important it might be in her life.
The steady, rocking motion of the carriage was like a slow heartbeat that made him acutely aware of every curve in the body of the woman he was holding and, as the driver finished negotiating traffic and turned into the lamplit, almost deserted paths of Central Park, he could feel the tension in Grace’s body begin to lessen. It was under the halo of one of those antique streetlamps that Grace finally raised her head to meet his gaze and he could see that the shock had worn off.
There was something else in her gaze now.
Hope?
That wouldn’t be there, would it? Unless this was just as important to her as it was to him?
Again, the rush of emotion made it impossible to find any words.
Instead, Charles bent his head and touched Grace’s lips gently with his own. Her lips parted beneath his and he felt the astonishing warmth of her mouth. Of her breath.
A breath of life...
Maybe he still didn’t need to say anything yet. Or maybe he could say it another way...
* * *
For the longest time, Grace’s brain had been stunned into immobility. She was aware of what was around her but couldn’t begin to understand what any of it meant.
Her senses were oddly heightened. The softness of the furry blankets felt like she was being wrapped inside a cloud. The motion of the carriage was like being rocked in someone’s arms. And then she was in someone’s arms. Charles’s. Grace didn’t want to think about what this meant. She just wanted to feel it. This sense of being in the one place in the world she most wanted to be. This feeling of being protected.
Precious...
Finally, she had to raise her head. To check whether this was real. Had she slipped in the snow and knocked herself out cold, perhaps? Was this dream-come-to-life no more than an elaborate creation of her subconscious?
If it was, it couldn’t have conjured up a more compelling expression in the eyes of the man she loved.
It was a gaze that told her she was the only thing in the world that mattered right now.
That she was loved...
And then his lips touched her own and Grace could feel how cold they were, which only intensified the heat that was coming from inside his body. From his breath. From the touch of his tongue.
She wasn’t unconscious.
Grace had never felt more alive in her life.
It was the longest, most tender kiss she had ever experienced. A whole conversation