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“You are going to make it hard for me to fatten you up, I see,” Marta grinned. “But I like a challenge.”
The housekeeper moved from the room, and they were alone once more, the tension crackling between them as ferociously as the fire in the grate and the wind beyond the walls.
“Why are you spending Christmas here?” Claudia asked, nervousness making her speak quickly. Or was that the martini she’d downed in record time, followed by a glass of pinot gris?
His eyes glinted when they met hers. “As opposed to?”
“At home, with your family.”
He leaned forward, and beneath the table his legs extended, brushing against her socked feet. She didn’t move away, though. She let herself enjoy the proximity, knowing how wrong it was. How stupid and foolish.
“I am thirty-five years old. You think I have to be at my mother’s side, even now?”
“I think Christmas is a time people generally get together, yes.”
“Ah,” he nodded sagely. “And so we are. I
am your guardian, and I will spend this holiday with you.”
She rolled her eyes. “I meant family.”
“You have no family,” he pointed out and the truth of that sentence filled her with a gulfing ache. Strange that she still wasn’t used to that.
“No. But I have good friends.”
“Like Artie?” He prompted scathingly.
“Yes, Artie, and Marianne. And Jasmine and Roger. Lots of friends I would choose to spend the holidays with over you.”
“Yet you do not have that choice this year,” he said with a nonchalant shrug, as though the taking away of her decision-making didn’t matter.
He’d shifted the conversation onto her with stunning ease, but Claudia was already beginning to realise that this was something he did often. When he wanted to deflect her interest away from himself.
“Has something happened?” She prompted.
“What do you mean?”
“I just think it’s weird that you’d choose to be alone in England rather than with your parents and bazillion brothers and sisters.”
“I have five siblings,” he corrected, the hint of a smile ghosting over his face. It made her stomach churn. He was gorgeous when he was sarcastic and brooding, but he was more so when he smiled.
“Whatever,” she waved a hand through the air, the charm bracelet she always wore jingling prettily with the simple gesture. “Isn’t your mother annoyed?”
“Why would she be?”
“Well, my mother died when I was six so I guess I have no personal experience here, but I imagine mothers generally like their children to be around for Christmas.”
He was quiet, and Claudia had no idea what he was thinking, only that he was thinking something. “Not this year,” he said finally.
She was sure there was a reason for it. That he was hiding something from her. And why shouldn’t he? They weren’t friends. They weren’t family. They were two people who barely knew one another, who had been thrown together by the death of her father and his mistaken belief that Stavros Aresteides would be a suitable guardian.
“Are you anti-Christmas, or something?” She pushed, frowning. “Is that why there’s no decorations?”
“Decorations?” He said the word as though he’d never heard it. “Where?”
“Here! In Barnwell. Where’s the tree? The garlands? The visual clue that Christmas is approaching?”
Marta entered the room at that moment, a tray in her hands. She placed it on the edge of the table, removing two fine bone china coffee cups and a plate of shortbread.
