LITMIR.BIZ

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***

      “This is good,” he said, dipping freshly baked bread into home-made French onion soup. “Really good. How did you manage it?”

      In just a few hours Leah had filled the cottage with the scents of a home; raiding cupboards, plugging in appliances, and even figuring out how to use the Aga range he’d been using as a butt-warmer for several years now. It had been a great butt-warmer, but he’d never used it to cook.

      Leah grinned at him. Few things pleased her more than people enjoying her food, and this particular man enjoying it gave her a bad case of the warm and fuzzies. Even watching him eat was sensual, she thought, the way his face reacted to the flavours, the pure pleasure of the taste.

      “It was easy. So easy even you could do it. There are all sorts of great things in your kitchen. Don’t you ever use it?”

      “Not really,” Rob admitted. “I only come here for these two weeks. Morag, who lives here the rest of the time, always leaves stuff for me – but I have to be honest, I tend to exist on tuna pasta and grilled cheese sandwiches for the whole fortnight.”

      “Grilled cheese! That’s so cute!” she said, stifling a laugh as he stared at her. “You mean cheese on toast, Rob. Come on, get it right. You may be an artist, but that’s no excuse for not learning the native tongue.”

      “Artist?” he said, blankly. That was quite a gear shift, and he had no idea what she was talking about. “Who said I was an artist?” he asked, confused, wine glass halfway to his lips. Did he have paint on his sweater, he wondered? Smell of turps? Nothing could be farther from the truth – he was the kind of kid who was still drawing stick figures at 12.

      “Erm, nobody did, now you mention it,” she said, “that was just my wild brain conjuring things up, I suppose – and once I’d thought it, it became true in my own mind, you know?”

      She’d tied her hair back with a piece of tinsel she’d lifted from the pine tree, and it was draping metallic red glitter over her shoulders, merging with the blonde of her messy plait. Very festive, he thought. Morag decorated the tree for him every year, even though he’d told her he didn’t care. It was nice that someone was finally appreciating her efforts.

      “I think,” she continued, narrowing her amber eyes as she tried to reconstruct her thought processes, “it was because I couldn’t imagine why else somebody would be holed up here on their own over Christmas, unless they were, I don’t know, seeking inspiration or communing with the spirit world. Maybe an artist, or priest on some kind of retreat. Clearly not in your case – at least I hope not, bearing in mind our adventure on the sofa earlier…so I decided artist. I was wrong, obviously. So what do you do – and why are you here? You don’t have the excuse of it being an accident like I do.”

      “I’m a white slaver,” he answered, his teeth shining savagely in the flickering light cast by the fire. For a second she could believe that, with his olive skin and dark eyes. And he’d look amazing in a pirate costume.

      “I wait here for passing virgins,” he said, “then I sell them on for unimaginable profit.”

      “Oh dear. Sorry to let you down on the virgin front. You must have thought your luck was in when a woman in a white dress turned up on your doorstep?” she replied, shaking off the image of Rob and his swinging cutlass. Leah had been nipping at the wine all the time she cooked, and accidentally seemed to have polished off most of a bottle of red on her own. Oops, she thought. This was turning out to be an unexpectedly boozy Christmas Day after all.

      “Nah, it happens all the time. I’m forever fighting women off,” he said. “Gets quite exhausting after a while.”

      That, thought Leah, she could definitely believe. This was not a man who would ever go short of offers. From man, woman or beast. He was impossibly good-looking. Italian family, she’d managed to learn. Lived in Chicago. White slaver. That was the sum total of her knowledge about him. Assuming you didn’t include the way his lips tasted or having a fair estimate of his penis size, that is.

      “No. Really. Go on. Tell me something about yourself. I mean, I’ve already poured my heart out to you, and you’ve seen me starkers. It’s only fair.”

      He had seen her ‘starkers’, he acknowledged. At least when he hadn’t been squinting to try and avoid it. And now, thanks to that casual comment, he was imagining her starkers again, wearing just the tinsel in her hair.

      “Sorry to disappoint you,” he said, shaking away the image, “but I’m not an artist. Or even a white slaver. I’m just a businessman. Family firm. Corporate suits. Meetings all day. Boring to the max.”

      “I bet it’s not boring at all. I can’t imagine you doing something boring,” she said. “I bet you buy and sell something really interesting, like, reindeers. Right?”

      “You guessed it,” he said, smiling. “I’m a reindeer wholesaler. And by this time of year, I’ve had enough, so I run away to the wilds of Scotland to escape it all. And do a bit of stock-taking while I’m here.”

      Something about the way he said it rang true to Leah. Not the reindeer bit, obviously, she thought, but the escape. The running away. Even the stock-taking. She’d known this man for less than 48 hours and she already realised he was strong; dependable; in charge. Of himself and probably of others. At certain moments already, of her and her newly emerging nymphomaniac. But despite all of that, he also needed to escape. To hide.

      What could be bad enough to make a man like this feel the need to hide? Would she ever find out? Too serious, she thought, reaching for yet more wine. Way too serious, and none of her business. They’d been thrown together by a set of freaky circumstances and he’d been kind enough to let her stay, and even to share some saliva with her. She should repay him by keeping her nose – and all of her other body parts – out of his business.

      “Well, I understand that,” she replied. “I’m a fugitive myself. I ran away into the wilds of Scotland too, away from my own wedding, shortly after seeing Doug disappear up Becky’s frock. Okay, I was aiming for London and I ended up—”

      “Here, with me. Which is no sane person’s idea of an escape,” he said, his tone suddenly quiet and serious, his face cast down in the shimmering firelight. There was a sadness in this man, making guest appearances when Leah least expected it. She felt her own pain well up in response; scrunched up her eyes so she wouldn’t cry. What a pair of losers.

      It was Christmas, she told herself. And nobody should be allowed to be sad at Christmas — no matter how good the reasons. It is, after all, the season to be jolly.

      “Yep. I ended up here, with you, Mr Cavelli. Where I’ve had to endure sexual harassment, and been forced into becoming your chief cook and bottle washer. Talking of which, are you ready for your next course, sir?”

      “Yes. Into the kitchen, woman,” he said, noticing the way she’d picked up on his mood, and tried to deflect it. Moving his mental course…what? His usual default setting of morose solitude? Around this time of year it seemed to be the only mood he was capable of. God, he was becoming a pain in the ass, he decided. He was even sick of himself.

      Yet with Leah around, he felt different. The anxiety felt diffused by the easy positivity and flirty charm that seemed to be her default setting. He knew she must be in pain; knew she must be grieving for her lost future, no matter how much she mocked herself and her circumstances. Nobody could walk away from that kind of experience unharmed. And this Doug guy must be a total idiot. Who could have a woman like Leah waiting for him and still want more?

      Not love…but chemistry. Burning, sparkling, blazing chemistry that threatened to set them both on fire. She was way too vulnerable for that right now, even if she didn’t think she was. And as for him - he always would be too vulnerable. After Meredith, there was nothing left to give. His body, yes. But more? The sort of more a woman like Leah deserved? No. That part of him just didn’t exist any more. And that’s what his Mom and his brother could never get. He wasn’t

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