Christmas Ever After (Puffin Island 3)

They painted a picture of a boy who was bold and adventurous. He wasn’t remote, she thought, he was self-contained. He’d learned to care for himself.

A survivor down to the bone.

He’d been raised in a family who had encouraged him to explore and push himself to his limits.

She thought about her own childhood, regimented and tightly scheduled. She’d gone from piano lessons, to French classes, to dance classes, every moment of her day planned out. Her parents believed in expanding the mind and keeping busy. Sometimes all she’d longed to do was lie on her back in a field and look at the sky but inactivity was actively discouraged in her family.

There had been no time to relax and let her imagination run free.

She sat, nestled on the large sofa in front of the fire, wishing she could freeze time. Here, in this cottage, the outside world had ceased to exist. Here, for a while, she could forget about Richard, her parents and all the difficult decisions that needed to be made.

She delayed the moment when she went to bed, but in the end they agreed that with two energetic four-year-olds arriving the following morning they all needed their rest.

Sky didn’t look at Alec. She didn’t need to. The tension was flowing from him in waves and it was obvious that sharing a room with her for another night was yet another intimacy he would rather have been spared.

She went up to the room first and stood watching snowflakes fall onto frozen fields. The landscape glowed ghostly pale in the moonlight. Instinctively she reached for her pad and drew several swift sketches. Moon, stars, snowflakes—she played with different shapes and ideas knowing that most of them would never leave her sketch pad.

Bu

t some of them—

She stared at the sketches. Some of them could turn into something.

Maybe … maybe …

An idea floated just out of reach and before she could grasp it the door opened behind her.

She closed the pad quickly as Alec walked in.

“You can sleep in the bed. I’ll take the couch.” His tone was brusque as he closed the door firmly between them and the rest of the house.

Even though his family was on the other side of the door, here they were alone.

The contrast between the rigid set of his shoulders and the intimacy of the room didn’t escape her.

“This is awkward, and you’re mad at me.”

“I’m not mad at you.” He undid a couple of buttons on his shirt and then paused, as if trying to reconcile the reality of their relationship with their current situation.

“Do you think your mom kept me in here on purpose?”

“Probably. She’s hoping we’re going to succumb to temptation.” He rolled back the sleeves of his shirt and dropped to his haunches in front of the fire.

“We know each other better than either of us ever thought we would, that’s for sure.”

And the really complicated thing was that the more she knew, the more she liked.

Alec added another log to the flames. Then he stood up, his powerful frame almost blocking the flickering light. He seemed about to say something else but at that moment her phone rang and she picked it up and froze.

It was her father.

It didn’t matter how many years passed, she felt the same way she had at the age of eight when she’d been told that he wanted to see her in his study.

“I—I need to take this.”

Alec gave a curt nod and walked toward the door as Sky gritted her teeth and turned her back to answer the call.

“Hi—”