“Isn’t that what you think I am?”
She reached the counter and ordered her drink and paid for the biscuit then moved to the side to wait.
“It is what you were,” he said, so quietly that she almost didn’t hear. She looked at him automatically, her eyes showing her confusion. “Now, you are a woman, and the innocence I wanted to honour is long gone.” He pressed a finger to her chin, lifting her face to his. “You are no child.”
And she wasn’t, but her maturity had nothing to do with what he was thinking. She rolled her eyes and stepped away from him, pretending interest in a special edition Starbucks bauble.
“Were you always like this?”
She didn’t look at him. Her heart was racing, her stomach flopping. “Like what?”
“Christmas obsessed.”
“Pretty much,” she said with a quiet nod and a shifting of her features that Stavros now knew spoke of secrecy. Of inhibitions he wished to shake loose.
“Since when?”
Her eyes flew to his face and there was a reserve in her manner. “Oh, since I was a child. I’ve always loved it.”
“Why?”
She frowned slightly. “What’s not to love?”
“But you seem particularly… taken.”
“Well,” she shrugged. “I suppose it’s just such a time of togetherness. For family and friends…”
“Irresponsible spending and getting hammered each night?” He interrupted, and then regretted it instantly when she immediately shut herself away again, visibly withdrawing from him.
“Whatever.” She replaced the bauble and turned her back on him, ostensibly to study the coffee machine. The baristas worked fast and her name was called only moments later. She stepped forward and collected her coffee, placing the lid on with care and then moving towards the door without once looking in Stavros’s direction.
But the second they stepped out onto the sidewalk, Claudia’s face shifted. She put a hand out, catching a single snowflake and she beamed from ear to ear.
“Oh! I didn’t know snow was forecast.”
“It wasn’t,” Stavros frowned, looking up at the bleak sky. “It will pass.”
“I hope not.” She moved further down the footpath, her face tilted upwards, her smile unlike anything he’d ever seen, for it was so genuine and happy.
“It’s just snow.”
“Mmm, but at Christmas? It’s a white Christmas.”
“Christmas is a week and a half away.”
“Okay, Ebenezer Scrooge. Whatever you say.” But her smile remained. Even Stavros’s grumpy demeanor wasn’t enough to suck the magic out of the sudden emergence of swirling white snow.
His car was parked in the middle of the city. They walked back to it in silence – his contemplative and hers joyous, so completely absorbed by the weather event that she barely noticed the man by her side.
He unlocked the car and surprised her by moving to the front passenger door and opening it for her. Claudia’s gaze jerked to Stavros’s.
“Chivalry,” he muttered, and she tilted a brow.
“Somehow, I doubt that.” She slid into the seat, her breathing labored as she waited for him to join her, knowing that it would be harder to ignore him in the confines of this car – the car in which they’d kissed.
She pressed her head back against the leather headrest and closed her eyes. And she could see it before her, the kiss, the way he’d held her head still, taking what he wanted from her.
He sat beside her and throttled the engine to life but didn’t drive off. Instead, he turned to face her.