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When he reached the turning for the bookshop he threw himself into the shelter of the narrow passageway between the cottages and the wind sharply dropped away. For a moment he leaned against the wall, panting hard and wiping the rain from his face. Would she want him? Well, that was the big ridiculous hopeful question, wasn’t it? So far today, all evidence had pointed towards the obvious answer: Duh! She’d already left, hadn’t she? And yet, the light Alex had ignited within him again after so long spent in the shade, still burned for her.
Turning his head towards the shop, all closed up and dark now, he had to blink and peer through wet lashes to be sure his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him.
There, on the doorstep of the Borrow-A-Bookshop, was a woman with white hair hanging in sodden ropes down her back, slumped on the top step, her face hidden, sobbing over the note he’d left for Jowan only moments ago saying he was on his way to the airport.
‘Alex!’ he cried.
Magnús, unable to prevent the tender swelling in his heart at the sight of her, understood in that instant that he was in grave danger of falling very much in love this Christmas if she should only smile at him again.
He bounded through the passageway and across the square, the rain hitting him hard once more, and just as she lifted her head, exclaiming in bewildered amazement and relief that he was still here, Magnús pulled her to her feet.
She clawed strands of her wet hair from her face and tried to make herself presentable, impossible now she looked like she’d been dredged from the bottom of the sea, but Magnús was looking at her like she was a mermaid upon a starlit rock on a summer’s night.
The only thing that occurred to him to say at that moment was to enquire if she wanted him to kiss her.
Her laugh warmed him right to his core. ‘Of course I do,’ she said. ‘I ran all the way back here in a storm, ruining a perfectly good pair of slippers in the hope you’d kiss me again.’
Trying hard to hold back tears through his laughter as he glanced down at the muddy fur of her pink boots, Magnús’s relief hit him hard and without thinking about anything other than the impulse building inside him, he kissed her against the bookshop door, not minding the storm at all, and she pulled him close against her as though telling him she’d never let go again.
The pair kissed on, utterly unaware that, as their lips met, all across Clove Lore the fairy lights on every Christmas tree, and every bulb lighting the mid-winter early-afternoon streets, flickered and buzzed before the power supply for the entire village cut out, plunging every home into darkness.
