A Christmas Night to Remember

Zeke was very real when she opened the door to the sitting room. Too real. Melody’s senses went into hyperdrive as she registered the very male body clad only in black silk pyjama bottoms. Not that Zeke had ever worn pyjamas to her knowledge.

It was clear he’d just had a shower before answering the door. His thickly muscled torso gleamed like oiled silk where he hadn’t dried himself before pulling on the pyjama bottoms, and the black hair on his chest glistened with drops of water. He was magnificent. Melody had forgotten just how magnificent, but now she was reminded—in full, glorious Technicolor.

She swallowed hard, telling herself to say something. Anything. But her thought process was shattered.

‘Hi.’ His smile was ridiculously normal in the circumstances. ‘Did the knock at the door wake you? It’s our tea and cake.’

She tried, she really tried to rise to the occasion, as one of the sophisticated beauties he’d dated before he’d met her would have done, but she knew she’d failed miserably when her voice held the shrillness of a police car siren. ‘What are you doing here?’ she yelled. ‘You’re supposed to have left.’

His expression changed to one of wounded innocence, which was all the more unbelievable in view of his attire—or lack of it. Before he could voice the reasonable and utterly false explanation she just knew was hovering on his lips, she continued, ‘And why is the tea and cake for two, considering you ordered it hours ago?’

‘Ah…’ He smiled, a smile of singularly sweet ingenuousness. ‘I can explain.’

‘Please do,’ she said with biting sarcasm.

‘I never intended for you to be alone on Christmas Eve, so I thought I’d stick around for a while, that’s all.’

He raked back his hair, which had fallen quiff-like across his brow, and she was reminded how much it suited him that bit longer than he normally wore it before she hastily pushed the thought aside. ‘I didn’t invite you to stay,’ she glinted angrily. ‘And why are you dressed—’ perhaps undressed would have been a more appropriate description ‘—like this?’

He glanced down at the pyjama bottoms, as though he was surprised at the obviousness of the question, and then met her furious gaze with a serenity that sent Melody’s stress level up a few more notches. ‘I was having a shower when Room Service came with the tea and cake,’ he said patiently.

Melody hung on to her patience by a thread. ‘Why were you taking a shower in my hotel room?’ she said tersely. ‘And how come your pyjamas are here?’

‘I was taking a shower in my room—you notice this suite has two bedrooms?’ His tone was such he could have been talking to a total dimwit. ‘And I went out and bought the pyjamas and a couple of other bits while you were asleep. I assumed you’d prefer me to wear something to answer the door in the sort of situation that just occurred,’ he added, his tone so reasonable she wanted to hit him.

Glaring at him, she wondered how she had lost control of things. It had all been so straightforward earlier that morning. Leave the hospital. Book into the hotel. Go to bed and hibernate Christmas away. And now look at what a ridiculous position she was in—her estranged husband sharing a hotel suite with her and standing practically naked a few feet away.

And looking hot. The little voice in the back of her mind was ruthlessly honest. In fact he was fairly smoking. Zeke had always been very much at ease with his body, and it enhanced his flagrant masculinity tenfold. Wretched man.

Pulling herself together, Melody hardened her heart as well as her expression. ‘You said you were leaving earlier,’ she said stonily. ‘And I expected you to do just that.’

He gave her a crooked smile as he sat down on one of the sofas in front of the glass coffee table where their tea and cake were waiting. ‘No,’ he corrected softly. ‘I never did. I know that because wild horses couldn’t have dragged me away. I would have preferred us to go home and discuss what needs to be discussed there, but that clearly wasn’t going to happen. So—’ he shrugged broad muscled shoulders and Melody’s mouth went dry ‘—I adapted to the circumstances as I saw fit.’

‘Hence changing the room to a suite?’ she said stiffly.

‘Quite. We may as well be comfortable for as long as this charade continues.’ He grinned happily. ‘These cakes look fantastic. I’ve always been a sucker for chocolate cupcakes and fondant fancies—and that’s a lemon drizzle cake, if I’m not mistaken. We missed dessert, so come and tuck in.’ He was pouring two cups of tea as he spoke.

Melody hesitated for a moment. She wasn’t going to give in, and there was no way Zeke was sharing this suite tonight, but the assortment of cakes did look tempting, and surprisingly—for the second time that day—she found she was actually quite hungry. She would have preferred Zeke to be fully dressed, but as he seemed more inte

rested in the food than in her…

She sat down on the opposite sofa, accepting the cup of tea he handed her with a nod of thanks and selecting one of the little pink-and-white Genoese sponge fondant fancies hand-decorated with sugar daisies. It melted in her mouth, and when Zeke offered her the cakestand again she took a piece of lemon drizzle cake, filled with rich buttercream and lemon curd, refusing to acknowledge how cosy this was.

Outside the snow was coming down thicker than ever, and as she glanced at the window Melody’s stomach did a pancake flip. It was too late to send Zeke away. He’d never make it to Reading now, she acknowledged silently. Okay, so maybe he would have to stay after all, but strictly on her terms—and that included his and hers bedrooms first and foremost.

She glanced at him from under her eyelashes. He was sitting eating with every appearance of relaxed enjoyment, and after she had declined more cake had made short work of what was left on the cake stand. The man was impossible—utterly impossible.

He glanced up and caught her looking at him, and as always when he smiled at her in a certain way her blood fizzed. ‘Remember when you made that clementine, saffron and polenta cake in Madeira?’ he murmured softly. ‘I haven’t tasted anything so good as that before or since. You promised you’d make it again back in England, but you never did.’

The memory of that day at the villa in Madeira swept over her. It had been their last holiday before her accident and they’d had a magical time: horse-riding along the beach, scuba-diving, sunbathing in the shade of the trees around their private pool and spending each soft, scented night wrapped in each other’s arms. They had bought the small juicy clementines at the little local market close to the villa, and she had followed a recipe which Aida—Zeke’s daily from the village—had written down for her. Melody was the first to admit she wasn’t much of a cook—Zeke was actually much better than her, and had a natural flair with food that made most dishes he served up truly sensational—but the cake had turned out surprisingly well and Zeke had been lavish with his praise.

They had eaten the moist, wonderfully tangy cake after dinner with their coffee, sitting on the villa’s balcony in the richly perfumed air as a glorious sunset had filled the sky with rivulets of scarlet, gold and deep violet, and afterwards, content and sated, had made love for hours in their big, billowy bed. He’d told her she was exquisite, a goddess…

Enough. The warning was loud in her head. That was then and this was now, and the girl who had lived in a bikini practically the whole holiday was gone. She had never considered herself particularly beautiful, but had always had confidence in her firm, graceful dancer’s body, able to hold her own in that regard with the jet-set who congregated around Zeke like moths to a flame. What would they say now?

People. Melody’s green eyes darkened. Always people. When she thought about it now, she had never felt she had Zeke completely. There had always been people in the background making claims on him. Even in Madeira there were friends who came by for dinner or barbecues—beautiful people, rich, funny, intelligent, fascinating. She had told herself she had to expect that; he was nearly forty years old, for goodness’ sake, and he had built a life for himself that had to continue when she had come along. It would have been totally unreasonable to expect anything else. And she hadn’t minded then—not much, anyway. Only sometimes she’d felt on the outside looking in.

‘What’s the matter?’ He was staring at her. ‘What is it?’