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Samantha
She waited in her room, jumpy and on edge, keeping her phone on long after everyone else in the house had fallen asleep. She kept glancing at it, but the screen didn’t light up.
Would he come? Should she have said something to indicate she wanted him to? But when? They’d been surrounded by people all day, cooking, planning, playing games.
Once or twice she’d caught his eye and he’d smiled, but she, who was so bad at relationships, didn’t know what the smile meant. She didn’t know what any of it meant.
And it wasn’t as if she was completely without experience. She’d dated other men. She’d dated Kyle for a whole year and hadn’t once felt like this. Not even at the beginning when it was supposed to be exciting. Not once had she felt a fraction of the things she felt when she was with Brodie.
She flopped back on the bed, carefully reliving every exciting moment because it seemed she might never get to experience it again. For the first time in her life she’d let herself go, held nothing back. She’d given him access to all that she felt, and all that she was. Inner Samantha. At the time she’d thought he’d done the same, but maybe she’d been wrong about that?
The questions fought each other in her head until eventually, exhausted, she fell asleep.
When she woke it was Christmas Eve and she was still alone in the bed. There had been no tap on the door in the darkness. No reprise of what had happened in the cottage by the loch.
She rubbed her eyes and looked out the window.
The storm had cleared, leaving fresh snow and blue skies, and she had to get up and get on with her life. And she had to do it without showing any of the emotions swirling around inside her.
Which she would, because this was what she did.
The day passed in a noisy, busy, joyful flash of snowman building, sleigh rides and present wrapping.
Tab’s excitement levels shot through the stratosphere, thanks partly to the impending prospect of Santa’s visit, and also to the steady volume of sugary treats that Mary kept producing in the kitchen. Ella, Michael and Gayle kept Tab busy, with Kirstie doing her bit with the reindeer.
There had been no sign of Brodie all day.
Kirstie had mentioned that he’d driven into the village for something and was now working in the cottage by the loch. She imagined him, coffee cooling in mugs as he focused, and considered hiking through the snow to surprise him. Common sense stopped her.
Imagine how awkward that could be. He’d be too polite to rebuff her, and she had too much pride and dignity to put them both in that position. She didn’t want to spend Christmas Day hiding behind the Christmas tree, trying to avoid an embarrassing encounter. She didn’t want it to feel awkward whenever they had to call each other in the future about a client.
The fact that he hadn’t joined her the night before was presumably his way of saying that for him it had just been a one-night thing.
He’d only taken her to his cabin because she’d been upset.
He was a kind, decent guy. He’d been helping.
She’d told him she wanted to see stars, and he’d given her stars. She’d never forget it. Not the clarity of the night sky, or the skill of his kiss. At some point the whole experience had merged and she wasn’t sure which of the stars were celestial and which were conjured by her thoroughly oversensitized body.
Rather than feeling sad, she should feel grateful that they’d had that one night. It was something to remember. Something to measure other relationships by, because she knew now that what she wanted wasn’t a dream, or a fantasy, or something that only happened between the pages of a book.
If you were lucky enough to find the right person, it could happen in real life too, as it had for her sister.
Exhausted with smiling, she hid herself away in the library under the pretext of wrapping gifts. While she was there, she also caught up with emails, the whole time trying to listen to the voice of reason in her head.
That one night they’d spent together had been just that. One night.
She tucked a gift into the paper, wrapped it neatly and measured a length of ribbon.
Two consenting adults. That was a perfectly legitimate type of relationship.
She wrote neatly on the label, pushed the gift to one side and started on the next one until finally she had a neat pile, ready to be transferred to the tree in the living room, where it had been agreed they’d be opening their gifts the following morning.
Tab had already hung up her stocking, and Samantha had filled a stocking for her sister, as she’d done every year since Ella was born.
With no more gifts to wrap, she was tempted to stand in the window and see if she could catch sight of the cottage from here, but she forced herself to stay seated and instead reached for her laptop.
She sent messages to all her staff and clients, dealt with a few issues, made a note to deal with others once the holiday season had passed. Through the closed door she could hear Tab’s excited shrieks and Bear’s barks as her niece and the dog chased each other round the house.
