Cold Feet at Christmas

Right, Leah thought, nodding and smiling as best she could. Thanks a million, mate. That comment definitely slowed the pulse rate down a beat or two: nothing like being called a heifer by an attractive man to kill the mood. She knew she was more voluptuous than was fashionable these days, but she’d never had hang-ups. Men seemed to like it, too. Doug certainly had, until he’d decided he preferred the bridesmaid. But after those marvellously chosen words from Rob, she felt about as feminine as a prop forward for the England rugby team. Too big for women’s clothes. Wear something of his. Surely the fool realised that his clothes would swamp her, D-cups notwithstanding? Stupid idiot man.

This particular stupid idiot man seemed to realise he’d said something wrong, as he frowned, glowered, and stood up abruptly. He marched out of the room, absently running his hands through his hair and murmuring something about needing to chop down some trees. He was still muttering as the door slammed shut behind him.

Okay, thought Leah, scampering out of bed and darting through the chilly air to the wardrobe. Weird situation, but deal with it. So he’s moody. Probably some eccentric artist type, holed up here in a stone cottage on his own for Christmas. Without his wife…What kind of a wife would let a man like that out of her sight for any length of time anyway?

None of your business, she reminded herself firmly, holding up a pair of jeans that would never in a million years fit her. Surely they were made for a child, not a full-grown woman? No way her hips and bottom would shoehorn themselves into that thimble-full of denim. He must be married to a midget. Okay, that wasn’t fair. Speaking as a woman who only topped five foot on a big hair day, Leah knew there was nothing wrong with being vertically challenged.

But this midget must also be really skinny. The kind who made a single pomegranate seed last all day, with one low-fat raisin for pudding. The bitch.

She had better luck with a pair of stretchy leggings, and a plain long-sleeved white T-shirt. Admittedly it looked like it was sprayed on, and there was no bra anywhere near her size. The wedding dress had some kind of industrial strength cantilever device built in, robust enough to support the Forth Bridge, never mind her boobs.

Now she had nothing, unless she wanted to wander round like Miss Haversham all day, in a dirty, torn bridal gown. Yet another genius move on her part. If only she’d known she’d be doing a runner from her own wedding, she’d have packed an overnight bag. She’d kill for her own knickers right now.

She turned and stared into the mirror, examining her ensemble. Oh well, she thought, I am most definitely a beggar, and therefore can’t afford to be a chooser. And anyway, you can’t really see my nipples. Not unless you look really hard. Or they start to misbehave in the cold. She tugged and pulled at her hair, trying to dislodge some of the dried-on product that had moulded it around her tiara, and decided that was as good as it was going to get.

“Hey, Rob?” she shouted as she emerged back into the living area. “Are you still in here? Are you chopping down trees, and if not, can I use your phone? Mine’s out of juice and I really need to organise getting out of here.”

Getting out of here and getting home as quickly as possible, she decided, was today’s mission impossible. Yesterday’s had been escape, and later survival. Now she had to move on. To London. To their flat. To get whatever she needed and leave, before she had to face Doug again. To disappear to Timbuktu. Take a midnight train to Georgia. Join a commune in Marrakesh. Become a nun – if they took nuns in when they were 25. Whatever it took to save her dignity and spare them both the useless recriminations. Some relationships simply weren’t fixable. Funny how she’d not even admitted to herself it was broken until yesterday. Years of limping along, so used to the problems that they’d become normal. That would hurt at some point, she knew, but not now. Now she needed to be practical.

“There’s no signal here,” Rob said, emerging from the kitchen, holding a tea towel. He’d obviously decided to dry the dishes before he went logging. He stopped dead in front of her, and stared like she’d grown a third eye.

“What?” she said, feeling alarmed. “What’s wrong?”

“That…that top.”

“Oh! That. I know. You were right about the clothes. It doesn’t really fit, does it?”

“No,” he replied, still staring. “You’re more…” he trailed off, making vague body-shape gestures in the air with his hands.

“More what?” she asked. Voice quiet. Hands on hips. Eyes narrowed. Oh-oh, Rob thought, recognising that tone. Danger, danger. Tread carefully, lost soul, or you may never pee straight again.

“More…womanly?” he said, looking at her cautiously, one eyebrow raised in a question. She nodded, seemed happy enough with that, thank God. He came here every year for peace and quiet, and he could do without a cat fight with someone he barely knew to bring in the festive season.

Although, he thought, taking another look at that T-shirt and what jiggled beneath, there were some parts of her he was getting to know quite well already. Maybe he’d become immune with repeated exposure, like with flu or chicken pox. Or maybe, a faint stirring in his nether regions told him, not.

“I can see your nipples through that material,” he said, dragging his eyes away. “I think that’s probably illegal. And if not, it should be.”

“Oh,” she replied, looking down at her own chest, realising that even his glance had made the nipples in question do some quite embarrassing things. She looked back up, blushing. “I didn’t think you could see unless you looked really really hard.”

“In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m a man,” he said. “And it’s in our nature to always look at these things really really hard.”

Leah laughed out loud, throwing her head back so the creamy skin of her throat was exposed.

Rob, being still male, couldn’t help but notice the way the movement made her breasts jut out just a fraction more as she filled her lungs with air and giggled. He wanted to pull that skin-tight T-shirt up, and bury his face in them. Lord, how was he expected to resist her? Should he even try? Where had this sudden attack of morality come from anyway? Must be a Christmas thing. He’d been infected with goodness. Hopefully it was only temporary. He was only flesh and blood, after all.

“I had actually noticed you’re a man,” she said, liquid amber eyes running over his body, taking a lazy inventory of what she saw. Slowly she looked him up and down: legs that seemed as long as her whole body; Levis clinging low to his hips; the curved ridge of pectoral muscles evident through the jersey top. Powerful shoulders, biceps that flexed even as she looked…Gosh, he was an absolute treat. She stared, licked her lips, and filed the image away in her brain. Under S for Sexbomb.

He might be married, but that hadn’t made her blind. She couldn’t be the only woman who noticed how handsome he was, and anyway, there was no harm in window shopping. Look, but don’t touch: the same theory she had for the Stella McCartney shop in Selfridges. Except, in this case, it was harder to resist. She couldn’t help wondering if those biceps were as firm as they looked, if that chest was as hard and sculpted as it seemed under the long-sleeved T; how that backside would feel snuggled into the grip of her hands. Whether the tell-tale bulge she could see in his jeans was as promising as the ever-tightening denim suggested. Her eyes lingered low, and she had the suspicion the answer to that one was a resounding ‘yes’.

Stop it, Leah Harvey, she told herself. Look at his ring finger instead. Left hand. He’s married. To an anorexic dwarf. And anyway, this is not the time for new romance. Or even hot, dirty sex. Your life’s in tatters. The man you were about to spend the rest of your years with is a philandering pig. You have no job. No home. No money. And you’re supposed to have a broken heart.

Except it wasn’t exactly her heart she could feel beating right now. It was something lower, and altogether more primal. She gazed into those dark brown eyes, and had the sense they could stand like that forever, both of them feeling that same beat, both of them frozen in time. They’d be discovered in hundreds of years’ time by archaeologist; sexually frustrated mannequins, looking but never touching.

Rob broke eye contact first. He shook his head like a wet dog shedding rain, and murmured something so indistinct it sounded to her like ‘Aunt Mimi’. He looked instead out of the window, into the distance. The fields for miles around were white with virgin snow, with more still falling, drifting to the ground like cotton wool buds made of crystal.

“No mobile signal,” he repeated. “No landline. No internet. Roads unpassable. And the front door’s barely opening, there’s been so much snowfall overnight.”

“Just you and me then?” she asked.

“Yes. You and me and the snow.”

“Right. Have you got a shovel?”

Chapter 3 (#u7e03b646-da9f-5296-b152-199789aa6292)

An hour later she gave up. Each time she shovelled a path clear enough to walk along, more caved in from the sides, covering it in new piles of snow. She was freezing. And wet. And tired. And wondering if Doug had bothered sending out a search party by now. Or whether the guests had eaten the wedding cake and guzzled the bubbly and danced to the mock Motown act without her.

When she first ran out on the wedding party, she’d planned to call him when she got back to the flat. Let him and her friends know she was safe. Family, luckily she supposed, wasn’t an issue. She’d hoped to grab the few clothes and belongings she needed and then do a dramatic disappearing act, exit stage left from her old life, and into her vaguely formed new one.

Huh, she thought, that had worked out well. Not. She looked around at the endless, eye-searingly white snow. A woman could go blind out here. And not for any fun reasons.

All things considered, it was depressing. She couldn’t even run away properly.

She trudged back into the cottage, kicking off green wellies that were six shoe sizes too big and came up over her knee caps. She could practically feel her nose glowing, and her hair was damp from snow and wasted manual labour. Face it, Leah, she thought – you’re just a useless urban gnome trapped in the wilds of the North Pole. Apparently determined to lose your fingers to frostbite one way or another.

Still, she told herself, pausing to look at Rob sprawled over the sofa in front of the fire. It could have been worse. At least she was a useless urban gnome trapped in the North Pole with God. What her situation lacked in snow ploughs it did make up for in eye candy. Better to focus on the positives than wallow in self-pity, after all. He was reading a book, one arm propping his head up, body stretched so long the T-shirt had crept up over his belly. A few inches of taut, olive-toned skin peeked out. Leah felt her cold nose twitch, like Sabrina the witch, and wondered if she could cast some kind of X-ray-vision spell so she could see the rest of it.

Rob glanced up, gave her a nod of acknowledgement, barely managing to hide the smirk playing around his lips. The bastard. He’d given her the shovel. Told her to knock herself out; that if she managed to dig her way back to civilisation it’d be the greatest escape since Colditz.

Obviously, she’d failed. Maybe she could try faking her papers and digging a tunnel next. She’d probably need to grow a moustache and start wearing an RAF jacket first though.

“Drink?” Rob asked, gesturing to the end of the sofa, where a tumbler of warm whiskey was waiting on a side table. It was practically glowing with deliciousness, and he’d timed it perfectly – just warm enough, as though he’d known exactly when she’d throw in the towel. He was one of those people, she realised – the ones who were good at sport and clever and witty and always in charge of the room. Not to mention sexually irresistible to any creature with a pulse. Leah had no doubt that if he’d tried to dig a bloody path, it would be so good it would win the Scottish Path of the Year award.

Rob remained silent, watching as she chewed on her full lower lip, knowing she was weighing up the pleasures of the drink vs telling him to go screw himself. Her hair was scooped into a messy pony tail with an elastic band she’d found in the kitchen. She was wearing his coat, the sleeves rolled over so many times her arms were as big as Popeye’s. Peaches and cream skin gone all rosy from the cold, jacket hanging down over her knees, eyes glimmering with chill-sprung tears. Frosty and snowy and perfect; if he could find a way to shrink her, he could hang her from the vast pine tree in the corner of the room as a bauble.

“Okay,” she said, hanging up the coat and walking over to the fire. “Move up then. I don’t want to have to sit on you.”

That, she admitted to herself as he shuffled his legs over slightly, was a big fat lie. She was trying to ignore how big he was, but it was impossible. He was so long, filling the sofa, filling the room. Filling her vision. His hair was messy. The paperback was open, splayed on his broad chest. The truth was she’d very much like to sit on him. Or lie on him. Or curl up in his arms and go to sleep…Those would be mighty fine arms for a woman to curl up in. The fire crackling in the background; the enormous Christmas tree was filling the room with the scent of pine, and there he was. Lying like Adonis on the sofa, asking for trouble. How would he react if she curled up around him like a snoozy kitten?

She raised her glass, and said: “Happy Christmas!”, before sipping the whisky.

“Mmmm. This is good,” she said. “Glenfiddich?”

“Yeah,” he replied, surprised. “How’d you know?”

“I – we – me and Doug. You know, hide-the-sausage Doug. We have a bistro, in London. One of our specialities is fine liquor, as you Yanks might call it. And this is a favourite of mine.”

It was also, she knew, bloody expensive. If he was an artist, he was doing well. Definitely not the starving type. Or maybe he’d married money. As soon as the thought pinged into her brain, it came out of her mouth.