* * *
‘Are you going to the centre tonight?’ she asked quietly as they strode along the corridors behind the patient.
‘Yes, why?’
‘I was thinking of going.’
‘Do you need a lift?’ He frowned, not liking her caginess.
It felt like a huge step backwards, but he couldn’t pinpoint why.
‘No, I just thought that...maybe you’d prefer it if we weren’t there together.’
‘Why not?’
It shouldn’t gnaw at him the way it did. He understood why she might think it should bother him.
‘If that was going to be an issue then I wouldn’t have invited you to visit in the first instance,’ he told her.
Except he still didn’t know what had motivated him to ask her. He refused to accept that it was some uncharacteristic need to have her see a different side to him. That didn’t make sense.
Although it seemed the most logical conclusion.
‘I just wasn’t sure.’ She lowered her voice even further as the team reached the CT department and people began to congregate. ‘After our...one-night stand.’
Her sudden whisper almost made him laugh. Any other time it probably would have done. But Sol was too busy thinking how dismal the term sounded on Anouk’s lips. It felt inadequate to describe either of their encounters that way.
One-night stand—admittedly lasting longer than just the one ‘night’ sounded, frankly, a little pitiful.
What was happening to him? Why was he reading so much into everything? They’d had a good time together. Twice. Surely he should be more than happy to accept it for what it was?
‘I’m heading down there after work,’ he informed her. ‘I’ll drive you, too.’
‘Oh, it’s okay, I can walk.’
‘I’ll come down to the department when I’m done. If I’m caught up with a case, wait for me, we’ll go together.’
It wasn’t a request and they both knew it.
Still, when she flashed him a shy smile it twisted inside him, like a ribbon on a maypole. Delicate and pretty.
Sol snorted to himself as he stepped into the room. He was going to have to watch himself. If he wasn’t careful then he risked Anouk wrapping herself around him in more ways than either of them could ever have anticipated.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE CENTRE MIGHT as well have been Santa’s grotto itself, Sol thought, surveying the scene in front of him—a hive of excitement and activity, it felt like the very epicentre of Christmas for the whole of Moorlands Wood.
And there, sitting on the floor, with Libby firmly wedged on one side of her and Katie on the other, pressing against her as though each claiming her as their own, was Anouk. It struck him that the girls’ easy acceptance of her said more about Anouk than anything a person could say. These kids dealt with so much at such a young age that they often seemed to develop sixth senses about people.
This had to explain why he had let her slip under his skin without realising it. As he’d told Malachi, it wasn’t anything as nonsensical as love.
Nevertheless, there was a draw there, a magnetism that pulled him in despite his vows to keep his distance. Which meant that, even now, he couldn’t tear his gaze away.
Anouk looked totally engrossed in what she was doing. And what she was doing, he realised after a few moments’ scrutiny, was measuring chocolate balls into a jar, before gluing reindeer antlers, funny eyes, and a big red nose onto the glass.
By the look of the full box in front of them, the trio had been working together for some time and were so focussed on the task in hand that none of them noticed him. And so he was free to stand and admire this fascinating woman who appeared, bizarrely, to have so captured his attention.
Without warning, Anouk looked up and her eyes—wide with surprise—locked with his. He didn’t think, he didn’t consider, he just reacted, flashing her a wide grin; something bursting inside him as she responded instinctively with a hint of a smile, her cheeks taking on a delicately pink hue.