Christmas Ever After Read online

Nelson, it seemed, was totally into her.

  Alec rolled his eyes. “Nelson, show a little control.”

  Her gaze lifted to his, those incredible blue eyes faintly mocking. “Control can be overrated. Let’s go, Professor.” She turned up the collar of her jacket. “What time will your sister arrive?”

  “Midmorning. The routine is that we’ll open presents, then have lunch and go for a walk.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  He opened the door and they were engulfed by a rush of freezing air.

  He wondered if the bitter cold might make her change her mind, but she tugged on gloves and stepped out of the door.

  The countryside stretched in front of them, gentle undulating hills interspersed with hedges and areas of woodland covered in a thick layer of winter white. The air was still, the sounds muffled by snow, and they trudged up the lane through the soft snow and smothered silence, past frostbitten trees and the silvery shimmer of icy tracks. The dogs bounded ahead, tails wagging, excited to be outdoors.

  The sun shone brightly, as if to overcompensate for the icy chill of winter.

  Skylar strode out, sure-footed and confident, her boots leaving footprints in the untouched snow. “Where are we going?”

  “The footpath runs through the fields all the way to the beech wood at the bottom of the hill, but we don’t have to go that far.”

  She squinted against the sun. “It doesn’t look far.”

  “It’s a cold day. You might change your mind when you’ve been out in this for five minutes.”

  Whistling to the dogs, they walked along the road, past cottages with walls of warm honey stone.

  She paused in front of one of them. “Beautiful house. It looks like a Christmas card.”

  “It’s the original manor house, built at the same time as the parish church.”

  “I love the colors. Honey stone peeping through snowy creeper. Shades of white. I’ve been looking for a theme for my next collection. I wish I’d brought my camera.” She pulled out her phone and took a photo with that instead.

  “You always have a theme?”

  “Yes. My first one was called ‘Mediterranean Sky’ and my latest one is ‘Ocean Blue,’ but next time I want to get away from the beach and do something a little different. I’m thinking of winter.” She took a few more photographs and then gave him a smile of apology. “Sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For making you wait while I take photographs. It’s an irritating habit of mine. Don’t wait for me.”

  He wished he found it irritating.

  He wished he found anything about her irritating.

  They crossed the road and he paused by the gate. “This gate doesn’t open. Can you climb?”

  Giving him a disparaging look, she all but vaulted the gate. “Alec, you need to stop treating me as if I’ve never walked in snow before. My best friend lives in Maine. That’s the equivalent of an intensive course in managing winter weather. Maine winters are hard-core.” She stopped, her breath clouding the air as she studied the holly growing at the edge of the field. “Berries. Why didn’t I think of that before?”

  He climbed the gate and joined her. “Think of what?”

  “Holly. Mistletoe. Winter jewel colors, reds, greens and maybe pearls. The shimmer of pearl on silver.” She was talking to herself, lost in her own thoughts. “Lots of silver. Snowflakes, an elaborate set of jeweled mistletoe. Earrings and a necklace. Snow Queen. I love it.” She delved into her pocket, pulled out a notebook and drew a few quick sketches.

  Her pencil flew over the page, shaping and shading while he stood there. He knew she’d forgotten his existence.

  The cold had whipped a pink glow to her cheeks and her eyes were a splash of intense color in a world that was white.

  Alec was engulfed by a wave of lust so powerful and all-consuming that he actually lifted his hand toward her.

  He was moments from sliding his fingers into her hair when Church bounded up, barking madly and breaking the spell.

  Alec dropped his hand a second before Sky glanced up and smiled.

  “Someone is excited.”

  Yes, he thought. Someone is.

  The dogs bounded ahead, leaving footprints in the snow.

  “Why jewelry? What do you love about it?” He hadn’t intended to ask the question. Hadn’t intended to do anything that might deepen his knowledge of her, but he couldn’t help it.

  She slipped the notebook back in her pocket and snuggled deeper inside her coat. “I’m shallow and I love sparkly things.”

  He should have taken that flippant response and used it to reinforce the belief that she was exactly like Selina.

  But he knew she was nothing like Selina.

  And that was his problem.

  He was grateful to the dogs for constantly coming between them because otherwise he might have been tempted to push her up against the nearest snowy tree.

  “What was the first piece of jewelry you made?”

  “Apart from a pasta necklace for my mother?” She stooped to make a fuss of Nelson, who was circling round her legs. “A wedding ring. It was my first commission.”

  “How many commissions do you take on a year?”

  “It depends on how big they are. Some take longer than others. I try not to book myself too far ahead. It crowds my brain and stifles creativity. Some commissions are more complicated than others, depending on the purpose.” She saw his curious glance and smiled. “Jewelry can be a statement, like a wedding ring. It can have meaning, it can be a bribe, a thank-you, an expression of love, or it can simply be pretty. The use of jewelry as an adornment dates back to prehistoric times. Gold was a status symbol to the early Egyptians, and they buried it with the dead to go with them to the afterlife. In Bronze Age Greece they used it as a symbol of power, to celebrate the gods and to ward off evil. But of course you probably know all this.”

  “It isn’t my area of expertise.” But it was obviously hers. And the more time he spent with her, the more he realized how grossly he’d misjudged her. It frustrated him not to have a clear picture of who she was. It was like looking through a camera lens and constantly having to adjust the focus.

  “Speaking of expertise, it’s your turn. Tell me about you, Shipwreck Hunter.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  She pushed her hands into her pockets, her breath clouding the freezing air. “Was Selina the love of your life?”

  He tensed.

  Most people skirted around the topic, treated it cautiously, but he was fast discovering that Skylar was nothing like other people.

  “Why are you asking me that?”

  She gave a faint smile. “I guess having seen each other naked, I figured we might as well go all the way. This is the psychological equivalent of second base. So was she the love of your life?”

  “Is there any such thing?”

  “Oh, yes.” A tiny smile touched her mouth. “I think so. I hope so.”

  “That’s your romantic side playing tricks on your rational brain.”

  “We’re making progress—a couple of days ago you didn’t think I had a brain at all.”

  “You still believe in true love and all that even after Richard?”

  “What I had with Richard wasn’t love. I wanted it to be love and for a while I wondered if it might be, but it wasn’t.”

  “How do you know?” He wondered why he was having this conversation with her when all his instincts were screaming at him to kill it dead.

  “Because love is honest and unselfish. And it isn’t demanding.” She spoke softly, her words the only sound in the stillness of the winter day. “It’s a cup of tea in bed on a cold day, it’s a foot rub when you’ve walked for hours, it’s a listening ear and an encouraging word. It’s encouraging, accepting, tolerating, not trying to change. It’s give, not take. Action, not words.”

  Tension rippled across his shoulders.

  You don’t love me, Alec. I know you don’t lov
e me. Tell me. Say the words.

  “Are you saying you don’t want to hear those words?”

  “Of course, every woman does, but I’d rather have a man show me he loves me than tell me because words mean nothing by themselves.”

  They’d reached the beech wood, and the trees clustered together, snowy sentinels guarding the inner sanctum.

  “How do you know?” He paused at the edge of the wood. “How do you ever know if it’s love?”

  There was a long silence. “I asked Lily that question the other night. She said her heart felt too big for her chest.”

  “She should see a cardiologist.”

  She laughed. “Maybe, but I guess if you don’t know if it’s love, then it isn’t.”

  The dogs circled happily, excited to be outdoors.

  “So why did you stick it out with Richard if it wasn’t love?”

  “I persuaded myself that it might be.” There was a long silence. “Dating Richard was the first thing I’d ever done that pleased my parents. Finally I had their approval and it felt good. I know it’s crazy for an independent woman to need, or ever want, the approval of their parents, but I did. I do.”

  “It sounds like a human response to me. And it might have worked between you.”

  “We would have been miserable.’ She frowned. ‘I should have realized that before but relationships aren’t that clear, are they? It’s not like buying a food item that comes with a list of ingredients you can check in case there’s something that you’re allergic to. People are complicated. And Richard had a tendency to present only the ingredients he knew people wanted.”

  “You’re saying he turned himself into organic red velvet cake to appeal to your palate?”

  She laughed. “In my case it would be chocolate brownie.” Her smile faded. “Honestly? It wasn’t just about pleasing my parents. I wanted to be in love. Really in love. I tell everyone I believe in it, but the truth is I’ve never actually felt it. I’ve never been in love. Not the sort of love I want.” He could walk away now. He could make some comment about how they needed to get back. But something, some invisible thread, kept his feet welded to the snowy ground.

  “What sort of love do you want?”

  “I want to feel like Lily, as if my heart is too big for my chest. My feelings for Richard—and his for me—were like being on a low-carb diet. I was permanently starving and craving something more substantial. When it comes to love I want a feast. How about you? Do you think you’ll fall in love again?”

  “I hope not. I intend to do everything in my power to avoid it.”

  Her eyes widened. “You don’t want love in the future?”

  “No. I enjoy the life I lead too much to give it up for love.”

  “Why would you have to give it up?” She sounded puzzled. “You make it sound as if you have to choose between them.”

  He thought back to the prison of his marriage. “My lifestyle isn’t compatible with a relationship.”

  “Surely that depends on the relationship.”

  “No. Relationships require compromise. Two people with different goals, struggling to find some areas of common ground. In practice, that means giving up the things you love or only doing them some of the time.” Accounting for every minute of his time. Falling short of expectations. Failing.

  “Wow, Professor, you make it sound as much fun as root-canal treatment. Carry on talking like that and you could even put me off romance. It sounds selfish and like a whole lot of hard work. Why would anyone want that?” He didn’t. He didn’t want that. “You probably see a lot of different versions of love. Men probably come to you for Christmas, birthdays and Valentine’s Day to buy shiny jewelry that will save their relationships.”

  “All the shiny jewelry in the world can’t save a relationship that isn’t working. The best I can do is design something that is a permanent expression of the emotion one of the partners feels.”

  “What would you design to evoke exasperation?”

  She laughed. “I’m going to have to get back to you on that. Generally jewelry is positive. So far I haven’t made the ‘root canal’ collection. I’m not sure it would be a big seller.”

  “But you believe in the fairy tale. That’s what you want.” It was a relief to discover he’d been right about something where she was concerned. “A huge diamond, a white wedding, two children, a dog and a house in the Hamptons.”

  “I don’t think love is a fairy tale. And I don’t believe love is a diamond, a white wedding, two children, a dog and a house in the Hamptons. That’s a lifestyle, not love. You can have those things without love and you can love without those things. I don’t have any ambition to get married.” She glanced at him, amused. “You don’t believe me, do you? You think I’m one of those women who says ‘I don’t want to get married’ while secretly choosing dresses on the internet. Honestly, that isn’t me. If marriage happens, great. But it isn’t marriage I want, it’s love. I grew up in a stable home with parents who were legally committed to each other. But I didn’t see love. I wanted love.”

  “Of course. You’re an artist. You probably lay on your back in a field of sunflowers dreaming of it.”

  Her laugh was infectious and he found himself smiling, too. There was something about her that lifted the mood of every room she entered.

  “The dream was to find someone who loves me. The real me. Not a different improved version, but the one standing in front of him, flaws and all. Someone I never have to pretend with, never have to put on an act with.” Her voice was serious, and all traces of laughter had gone. “Someone who thinks my dreams are brilliant and possible, not ridiculous and impossible. Honest and simple love.”

  It didn’t sound simple to him. It sounded as statistically likely as winning the lottery.

  “What if someone thinks they know who you are and you know they’re wrong?” His mouth was dry. “What if you spend your time trying to live up to something when you know you can only fail?”

  “Then it isn’t love.” A frown creased her forehead. “And you can’t fail at love, Alec. It isn’t an exam, it’s a feeling. You either have it or you don’t and if you don’t that might be sad, but it isn’t failure.”

  It felt like failure to him.

  The constant simmering knowledge that he was falling short of every expectation.

  Nelson darted into the trees then turned and barked.

  Sky tucked her chin inside her scarf and they followed him into the woods. Snow clung to the trees and carpeted the ground and the dogs bounded ahead, kicking up a shower of white as they paused to dig and explore. “Being with Richard always made me feel bad about myself. It was nothing major, just small criticisms, but the result is a slow erosion of who you are, like filing the edges of someone to try to change their shape. Be more of this and less of that. With him, I tried to be less me.”

  He gave a humorless laugh. “Whereas I refused to be anything but me. And both of us ended up in the same place. How did you meet him?”

  “My parents introduced us and we bonded instantly. He was fun, handsome—we liked the same things. Or I thought we did.” She brushed snow from her sleeve. “We talked all night. It was a meeting of souls. Like me, he wanted to travel. We both loved the Impressionists and he told me that flying to Paris to see Monet’s collection was high on his wish list. He wanted to visit Florence and eat gelato. He wanted to tour the Greek islands. I couldn’t believe I’d met someone so like me. It was the most romantic evening I’d ever had and I thought that was it. I saw a fabulous future for us.”

  “This is like reading a book where I already know the ending.”

  She was silent for a moment. “I still haven’t got my head round the ending. I can’t accept that he didn’t really want to do any of those things, even though the evidence was right there in front of me. In the year we were together, we never went to Paris to see Monet and we never took a trip to Florence. I bought tickets to concerts he was too busy to attend and went to galle
ries on my own. I did go to Greece, but that was to visit Brittany and Lily. I made excuses, the way people so often do when you know instinctively that things aren’t right but you don’t want to give up on them. I told myself we were both busy, that coordinating our schedules was a nightmare, that it would get better. It didn’t.”

  “So everything he said to you—”

  “Lies.” She picked up a pinecone and slipped it into her pocket. “Richard is the consummate politician. He knows exactly what to say to get the result he wants. He studied me, in the same way my parents made me study all those people who came in and out of our house.”

  “But how would he have even known those things about you in advance?”

  She stooped to pick up the end of a branch that had snapped under the weight of snow, her hair sliding forward in a shiny curtain. “Because my parents briefed him.”

  “They—” He was shocked. His parents meddled a little and worried, but … “You’re saying they orchestrated the whole thing?”

  “Right down to the finale. Richard talked to them about proposing to me.”

  Alec ran his hand over his jaw. “I’m starting to understand why you threatened to stab a certain part of me that night.”

  “I was angry. Mostly with myself. I should have seen it. It was a campaign. A campaign to win me because he thought, and my family thought, I’d make a good wife. Another business contract. I was his goal, except that I had my own goals and they didn’t match his. I worked it out the other night, when he revealed a few things he probably didn’t intend to.” She turned the branch in her hands. “I like the shape of this. It would make a wonderful table decoration.”

  Alec looked at the gnarled, misshapen piece of wood and decided it was one of those situations where it was best not to comment. “You must be furious with your parents for interfering.”

  “I am. It’s manipulative, isn’t it? Controlling. And insulting, to think that I’m not capable of making those decisions for myself. It’s proof that they still don’t accept who I really am, and keep trying to mold me into the daughter they would like to have.” She tugged a hat out of her pocket and slid it onto her head. “I hate that I was so deluded. I feel foolish.”