Caroline Anderson - Snowed In For Christmas

And then there was nothing to do for an hour.

Well, he had two choices. He could spend his Christmas Day sitting alone in the kitchen, or he could go back into the sitting room with Georgie and Josh and try not to remember what he’d seen under her towel...

The sitting room won, hands down.

CHAPTER SEVEN

GEORGIE SAT BACK and sighed happily.

‘Sebastian, for someone who claims not to know how to cook a goose, that was an amazing lunch. Thank you so much.’

His shoulders twitched in that little shrug of his that she was getting so used to. ‘Good ingredients. I can’t take any credit.’

That was rubbish and they both knew it, but he’d always been modest about his achievements. For such a high achiever, it was a strange trait, and rather endearing. She smiled at him.

‘Nevertheless, it was delicious and I’m washing up.’

‘No. The dishwasher’s washing up. And the sun’s out and it’s warmer, so let’s not waste the day in here. Has Josh got anything he can wear outside?’

‘Yes. Wellies and overalls, in the car, and I brought my wellies, too—hey, we could make snow angels!’

He chuckled. ‘I think you’ll find if we put him down in the snow, he’ll vanish without trace, unless we can find a bit where it’s not so deep. Right, let’s go!’

So they abandoned the devastated kitchen, wrapped themselves up and headed out into the garden. Sebastian hoisted Josh up onto his shoulders and the little boy anchored his chubby fingers into Sebastian’s hair, his happy grin almost splitting his face in half.

‘Wait, let me take a photo,’ she said, and pulled out her phone. They posed dutifully, and she carried on, snapping off several shots of them as he turned and walked through the archway into the sunlit garden.

And it was glorious. He was right, it would have been criminal to miss it. The wind had died away completely and the sun shone with real warmth, sparkling on the snow and blinding them with its brilliance.

She scooped up a handful of snow and let Josh touch it, probing it with his finger. He was wary, but fascinated, and Sebastian lifted him down on the grass in the little orchard where the snow wasn’t so deep and lowered him carefully into it, and Josh watched his feet disappear and giggled.

Then Sebastian turned and looked at her, and she knew what was coming.

She saw it in his eyes, saw the way he carefully gathered up a great big handful of snow and showed Josh how to squash it into a snowball.

‘No. Sebastian, no! I mean it—!’

It got her right in the middle of the chest.

‘Oh, you rat!’ she squealed indignantly, and he just picked up her giggling son and laughed, his head tilted back, his mouth open, his face tipped up to the sun as Josh laughed with him, and if she could have bottled it, she would.

Instead she whipped out her phone and took a photo, the instant before he set Josh back in the snow.

Then she filed her phone safely in her pocket, because this was war and she wasn’t taking any prisoners.

Sebastian’s eyes were alight with mischief, and she scraped up a handful and hurled it back, missing him by miles. The next one got him, though, but not before his got her, and they ended up chasing each other through the snow, Sebastian carrying Josh in his arms, until he cornered her in one of the recesses of the crinkle-crankle wall and trapped her.

‘Got that snowball, Josh?’ he asked, advancing on her with a wicked smile that made her heart race for a whole lot of reasons, and he held her still, pinning her against the wall with his body while Josh put snow down her neck and made her shriek.

‘Oh, that was so mean! Just you wait, Corder!’

‘Oh, I’m so scared.’ He grinned cockily, turning away, and she took her chance and pelted him right on the back of his neck.

‘Like that, is it?’ he said softly, and she felt her heart flip against her ribs.

But he did nothing, because they found a clear bit of snow where it wasn’t too deep, and one by one they fell over backwards and made snow angels.

Josh’s angel was a bit crooked, but Sebastian’s was brilliant, huge and crisp and clean. How he stood up without damaging it she had no idea, but he did, and she looked down at it next to Josh’s little angel and then hers, and felt something huge swelling in her chest.

And then she got a handful of snow shoved down the back of her neck, which would teach her to turn her back on Sebastian, and it jerked her out of her sentimental daze.

‘Thought you’d got away with it, didn’t you?’ he teased, his mischievous grin taunting her, and she chased him through the orchard, dodging round the trees with Josh running after them and giggling hysterically.

Then he stopped, and she cannoned into him just as he turned so that she ended up plastered against him, his arms locking reflexively round her to steady her.

And then he glanced up. She followed his gaze and saw the mistletoe, but it was too late. Too late to move or object or do anything except stand there transfixed, her heart pounding, while he smiled slowly and cupped her chilly, glowing face in his frozen hands and kissed her.

His lips were warm, their touch gentle, and the years seemed to melt away until she was eighteen again, and he was just twenty, and they were in love.

She’d forgotten.

She, who remembered everything about everything, had forgotten that all those Christmases ago he’d brought her here, to the orchard where that summer they’d made love in the dappled shade under the gnarled old apple trees, and kissed her.

Under this very mistletoe?

Possibly. It seemed very familiar, although the kiss was completely different.

That kiss had been wonderfully romantic and passionate. This one was utterly spontaneous and playful; tender, filled with nostalgia, it rocked her composure as passion never would have done. Passion she could have dismissed. This...

She backed away, her hand over her mouth, and spun round in the snow to look for Josh.

He was busy squashing more snow up, pressing his hands into it and laughing, and she waded over to him and picked him up, holding him against her like a shield.

‘Oh, Josh, your hands are freezing! Come on, darling, time to go back inside.’ And without waiting to see what Sebastian was doing, she carried Josh back to the relative safety of the house.

As she pulled off their snowy clothes in the boot room, she noticed the little heap of mistletoe on the floor. It was still lying in the corner where he’d left it yesterday, and she’d forgotten all about it. Had he? Or had he taken her to the orchard deliberately, so he could kiss her right there underneath the tree where it had been growing for all these years? Where he’d kissed her all those Christmases ago?

If so, it had been a mistake. No kisses, she’d said, and he’d promised. They both had. And it had lasted a whole twenty-four hours.

Great. Fantastic. What a result...

* * *

Sebastian watched her go, kicking himself for that crazy, unnecessary lapse in common sense.

He hadn’t even put up the mistletoe in the house because in the end it had seemed like such a bad idea, and then he’d brought her out here and they’d played in the snow just as they had eleven years ago, right under that great hanging bunch of mistletoe.

And he’d kissed her under it.

In front of Josh.

Of all the stupid, stupid things...

‘Oh, you idiot.’

Shaking his head in disbelief, he made his way back inside and found she’d hung up their wet coats in front of the Aga to dry. Josh was playing on the floor with one of the cars out of his stocking, and she was pulling up her sleeves and getting stuck into the clearing up.

‘I’ve put the kettle on,’ she said. ‘I thought we could do with a hot drink.’