The Yuletide Child

She shook her head. ‘Ross is going to take me when...’

‘When he has time,’ Michael drily concluded for her, and she flushed.

‘Well, he is very busy.’ She resented his constant sniping, but she didn’t want to have a row with him so she walked away, into the kitchen. ‘I’ll make some coffee—can I get you something to eat?’

‘I had some fruit for breakfast, thanks, at the hotel I stayed at en route. You know I never eat anything more than that for breakfast. I thought we’d stop for a salad lunch at a pub somewhere on the road to Carlisle.’ He looked her up and down, his mouth curling. ‘Run up and wash and change—you can’t go anywhere in those muddy jeans! I’ll make the coffee while you do that. I’ll soon find out where everything is, and I always did make better coffee than you.’

She laughed, suddenly light-hearted at the memory. ‘Okay, you did. Right. I won’t be long.’

In fact, she was relieved to get away for a few minutes. It would give her a ch

ance to recover her balance after the shock of seeing him on her doorstep out of the blue, and her strange, unexpected reactions to being alone with him.

After stripping off her clothes, she stepped under the shower, hoping that cool water would bring her temperature down. Was the heat of her body due to the hard work she had done in the garden, or the way being close to Michael had made her feel?

But how had he made her feel? she asked herself uneasily. She had never fancied Michael; she didn’t fancy him now. Ross was the man she loved. Wasn’t she simply seeing Michael in this new, disturbing fashion because she and her whole world had changed, because she was not the same woman who had known him, worked with him every day for years?

During that time she had never really noticed Michael changing. He was her partner. Her friend. A familiar, accustomed face, an image imposed by long habit and time.

His body had been her other self, sexless, moving in perfect harmony with her, constantly touching, always to be relied upon. Michael could lift her as if she was weightless, swirl her round in the air with one hand like a doll, carry her effortlessly across a stage on his shoulder.

Of course she saw him differently now because she was looking at him from a new angle, from outside, like everyone else. Michael was still the same man she had worked with all those years, but she was not a dancer any more. She was a member of the audience now—a woman looking in at his world and dazzled by the glamour, the bright lights, by Michael Carossi’s potent image, the charismatic mask of the persona he had developed over the years they’d worked together, the incredible beauty of his body.

Drawing a startled, shaken breath, Dylan stood still under the jets of water, transfixed. How had she been blind to that beauty until now? When they’d been working on that last ballet together, where all they each wore was a body-stocking covering but not concealing them from head to toe, how had she been unaffected? When they’d sensuously twined, body to body, every inch of them in contact, like snakes in a sexual knot?

Eyes tightly shut, she turned the temperature control back to cold and gasped as icy water hit her skin. It was a drastic way to break up those images, but she had to do something to cool down her overheated imagination.

When they were dancing like that, night after night, she had only been aware of the necessity to give the performance every ounce of energy she possessed. Michael had just been her partner. Not a man. Never a man.

She put on a towelling robe and went back to the bedroom to dress again. Michael was wearing jeans; she might as well wear the same.

His were designer jeans; she had recognised the style immediately; a famous name whose clothes were all beautifully cut. Somewhere she had an identical pair; they had bought them on the same day, from the same shop, at a reduced price in a sale.

Pale and slender in her panties and bra, she rummaged through the clothes in her wardrobe and finally found them, lay down on her bed and pulled them on, wriggling until she could zip them up.

My God! She had already put on weight—not much, a few pounds, but enough to expand her waistline and make her jeans fit too tightly there. She must start exercising and dieting at once.

Pulling on a white shirt, she buttoned it up, slid her feet into white moccasins, brushed her damp brown hair into the usual light curls, sat down and put on some make-up, then hurried down the stairs, smelling the coffee as she descended.

Michael poured it as she went into the kitchen and turned to give her one of his cool, assessing stares.

‘Snap!’

She blinked. ‘What?’

‘We look like twins.’ He caught her hand and pulled her over to the mirror in the hall. ‘Did you do it deliberately? ’

She surveyed their double reflection, finding it curiously satisfying to see them both again, shoulder to shoulder, two bodies which moved as one.

‘I didn’t stop to think about it. I suppose I put on my jeans because you were wearing your pair,’ she admitted. ‘I always liked them. They suit us.’

‘Yes,’ he said, his eyes veiled by half-lowered lids, a slumberous warmth in his voice. ‘They suit us.’ Did he feel that strange satisfaction in seeing them together? His eyes wandered down over her, then he frowned, staring at her waistline. ‘You’re putting on weight!’

‘I’m not!’ she lied, having hoped he wouldn’t notice. She might have known he would! Michael was nothing if not observant; he never missed the tiniest detail in production, not just the dancing, but the costumes and sets.

His hands reached for her waist, squeezed hard, making her gasp. ‘Oh, yes, you are,’ he told her sternly. ‘About an inch on your waist, I reckon! That’s what happens when you marry out of the ballet. You’ve been eating and not exercising!’

Guiltily she said, ‘It’s not a sin to enjoy yourself now and then!’