Her Guardian's Christmas Seduction

Everything about it brought memories back, including the glow from within the door that had seemed so welcoming as a grieving fifteen-year-old. Now, it seemed to be like the fires of the devil’s belly. She swallowed and pushed the door inwards.

Stavros was on the other side, apparently waiting for her.

“Do you remember how to get to your room?”

The question did something odd to her. Just the reference of ‘her room’ made her long for all the things she’d never had. A normal home. A bedroom of her own. The familiarity that came of being wanted by someone.

She nodded, sure she could find her way.

“Good.” His eyes glittered when they met hers. “Then go and freshen up. We’ll eat in half an hour.”

“Yes, s

ir,” she snapped, unable to resist the temptation of lifting her fingers to her brow and mock-military saluting him.

He reached out and grabbed her hand, surprising them both. He held her fingers between his, and her body reacted instantly. Every fibre of her being began to vibrate with desire and need. Her eyes latched to his and she jerked her fingers away, terrified of what she’d felt, of what had happened the instant they’d touched.

“Do not mock this,” he said seriously. “You are here because you need to be. I hope you will see that, in time.” She was too full of jingling emotions to respond. She couldn’t trust herself to speak and so she didn’t.

She shouldered past him angrily and moved out of the small boots room into the wide corridor.

It was like being back in time. Everything – every thing – was exactly as it had been then, six years ago. Her eyes flicked over the paintings she’d walked past and taken note of with a sense of wonderment, back then, and then onwards to the enormous staircase that ran like the ribcage to the house’s body. The stairs were at least two metres wide, and they moved in a sort of square spiral, grandly allowing one to travel around the house solo or with an entourage of fifty, if the occasion required.

She took them two at a time, as she had as a child, enjoying the feeling of making air push through her lungs. She paused on the first floor, and looked left then right.

His room, she knew, was the first door on the left.

She’d had nightmares, back when she’d first come to Barnwell, and he’d comforted her the first night, waking at the sound of her crying and making her a hot chocolate. She swallowed and turned right, forcing the memory down deep inside of her.

The first door on the right was the room she’d used on that occasion.

Not ‘her’ room or anything so cozy and normal. She lingered on the threshold a moment and then pushed the door inwards, holding her breath without realizing it.

It was more than a room. It was enormous, with a four-poster bed recessed into a cavity down one end, a lounge suite set in the middle of the room, and a pair of arm chairs set in front of the fire. There was a bathroom and a walk-in robe, and the windows overlooking the river that flowed to the west of the house were bayed, so that she could sit there and watch the progress of the water. As she had done so often as a teenager.

On the wall beside the bed, she knew what she’d see without even looking. She turned slowly, her heart thumping in anticipation.

Books.

All the books. She moved towards the shelves with that same sense of angry frustration she’d felt as a teenager and stared at the inanimate objects that could so easily bring her to tears.

Absentmindedly, she reached for one, turning it to a random page and staring at the black marks on white paper.

She could make out some of the words, the very small ones, but not many. She tried to remember the lessons her headmistress had taught her, the tricks that had been supposed to help her improve her literacy. But Claudia’s dyslexia was unusually severe – ironic given that her father had been a world-renowned novelist of horror stories.

She pushed the book back in the shelf angrily.

What did it matter?

She had other skills. Reading wasn’t everything.

Only it had been to Christopher. He’d never understood how his own daughter hadn’t wanted to sit with him and pore through books, laughing at the jokes contained within their pages, experiencing emotional hardships in line with the characters.

She’d pretended for a while, but then it had been easier to feign disinterest than to admit the truth to her dad.

That she was stupid.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.