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‘Wow, it’s busy out here,’ Flora said as they waited for a break in the flow so they could join the slow-moving crowd.
‘Warm inside the throng though,’ Alex said with a smile. ‘Free heat.’
He was right. Despite the biting cold of the day, it felt cosy and comforting being encased in the large mob of people. There was an excited, almost magical, feeling in the air too, no doubt an eagerness for the upcoming festivities.
Flora had spent many years in her youth loving the excitement of the run-up to Christmas, but she felt nothing but numbness about it now. It was all too tangled up with the fallout from her last serious relationship.
Pushing away the wave of gut-churning despondency she always felt whenever she thought about that, she looked round and focused on a stall selling silk scarves in every colour of the rainbow, taking comfort in the beauty of the sight.
‘So you live in Bath but work in London?’ Alex asked as they walked away from the scarf stall, stopping at the next one along to peruse a tantalising display of mince pies and Christmas cakes. Alongside them an assortment of delicious-looking pastries covered in snow-white icing gleamed in the soft winter sunshine.
She nodded. ‘Yes. I commute into Paddington and the office is only a ten-minute walk from there. I felt like taking a break from living in the middle of a big city,’ she said, telling herself she wasn’t exactly lying by saying that. Recently she’d started to think that living outside the city where she worked would be better for her health. She’d be less inclined to pop into work at the weekends and less likely to stay as late in the evenings if she had to catch a train home.
Looking round at Alex, she realised that he wasn’t even listening to her, but smiling at the pretty young stallholder instead. ‘Nice buns,’ he said to the woman, giving her a wink and making her blush and giggle coquettishly.
Flora rolled her eyes at the stallholder’s reaction to Alex’s cheesy pickup line. Okay, he was a good-looking man, she supposed—he had the same smile as Amy, which could light up a room—but the guy was a rumpled mess.
He turned and caught her staring at him.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘Nothing. It’s just—’
‘Yes?’
‘You don’t seem—’
He appeared frustrated with her lack of words. ‘What? Sad, bereft, miserable? Just because I’m not bawling my eyes out in public doesn’t mean I don’t miss my sister.’
Prickly heat washed over her. ‘I know that. I wasn’t criticising the way you’re mourning her.’
‘Weren’t you?’ He gave her a look that made guilt pool in her stomach. ‘I promised her I wouldn’t let grief get in the way of getting on with my life and I intend to keep that promise. She’d hate it if either of us was sitting around moping.’
‘Yes, okay.’ She held up her hands as a peace offering. ‘I understand that. I guess it’s just taking me longer to adjust to life without her, that’s all.’
His expression softened and he flashed her his beguiling smile, making something twist oddly in her stomach. ‘Fair enough. I know how close you two were. I don’t mean to criticise you either. Each to their own, I suppose. I’ve chosen to move on with my life. It doesn’t mean that I don’t think about her all the damn time.’
Flora gave him a sympathetic smile, her guilt dissipating a little.
‘Come on, let’s get to the pub,’ he said, gesturing to somewhere off in the distance. ‘I could really do with a hair of the dog.’
Nodding, she fell into step alongside him on strangely wobbly legs and they rejoined the crowd, moving slowly onwards.
* * *
Alex Trevelyan took a deep breath and willed his heartbeat to slow down as he and Flora pushed their way through the dense throng of Christmas shoppers.
He really didn’t want to be here right now. His head was pounding and he was having trouble keeping a smile on his face after Flora’s insinuation that he wasn’t mourning his sister properly.
From what he’d seen of her so far, he was surprised this rather uptight woman could have been such a good friend of his sister’s, until he remembered the look of near reverence on Amy’s face when she’d described Flora to him.
‘She’s really something,’ Amy had said with enthusiasm. ‘She comes across as a bit—’ She’d paused, searching for the right word, her nose wrinkling with the effort. ‘A bit spiky, I guess you’d say—especially if you don’t know her well. All the people where we worked were intimidated by her.’ She’d smiled as if remembering her friend’s tyranny fondly. ‘But underneath she’s got a heart of gold. You’d like her. Honestly.’
It was the ‘honestly’ that had spoken to him. Knowing his sister as he did, Alex knew that it meant she wanted him to like Flora, but wasn’t sure that he would.
Well, he could see now why Amy might have been sceptical. He wasn’t entirely sure that he did like Flora, with her side-eyeing and staid pragmatism. Though he’d be a liar to say he didn’t find her physically compelling. Who wouldn’t, with her long sweep of shiny caramel-blonde hair and big grey-green eyes. She was definitely an attractive woman—though more because she made the most of her assets rather than being a stop-you-in-your-tracks beauty and she had a magnetism that kept drawing his gaze back to her. She was dressed as if she was going to a business meeting rather than getting a bite to eat with a friendly acquaintance though. And she was just so polished. Everything about her shone, from the tips of her manicured nails to the toes of her high-heeled leather boots. Wealth and good taste seemed to exude from every pore of her being.
She was not his usual type at
all. He preferred women who weren’t afraid to get their hair wet in the rain or get covered in mud on a long walk through the woods. He liked natural and down-to-earth and simple. Like his ex-girlfriend, Tia. The woman he’d thought he’d spend the rest of his life with.
Pushing away the sinking feeling that thinking about his ex created, he stared blankly ahead of him. He’d moved on now. There was no point in looking back. He’d promised Amy he wouldn’t do that.
As they walked on, he noticed Flora turning her head from side to side, as if trying to take in as many of the Christmassy sights as possible. The magic of the season held no allure for him at all this year. In fact, it would be fair to say that he was looking forward to the month of December being over and done with. Christmas Day was only going to remind him of how alone he was now.
‘Take a left here,’ he said into Flora’s ear, attempting to cut through the noise of the crowd as they approached the side street leading towards the pub. The expensive scent of her perfume wafted into his nose, making him shiver in the strangest of ways. It had been months since he’d been in intimate contact with a woman and his body seemed to have gone a little haywire from the absence of it.
She nodded in acknowledgement and they moved slowly towards an opening in the crowd.
He watched her sashay ahead of him—elegant but entirely self-aware.
It made him think about something else Amy had said about Flora. ‘I worry she’s losing herself in her ridiculous quest for perfection.’ Well, that fitted with what little he’d seen of her so far.
He wondered what else he was going to discover about her before the end of the day.
