Page 47 of All I Want for Christmas

‘But will it come in time? I’ve got a meeting with Otto tomorrow and absolutely nothing to give him.’ She sighed again, running her hands down her face and keeping them planted on her cheeks as she stared at the boxes. They might as well have been empty for all the good they were doing her. ‘Oh God, what if he pulls me off the project and gives it to someone else?’

Max was quiet for a moment. ‘He won’t do that.’

She raised an eyebrow. Her advisor was a demanding and ambitious man. ‘You don’t know that. I’m only on the job because the official researcher is on maternity leave and her replacement is too busy with the rest of the retrospective.’

He didn’t reply but got up from the sofa, moving into the kitchen and returning a few moments later with a bottle of wine and two glasses.

‘Oh...no. I need to keep a clear head,’ she protested weakly as he poured.

‘One drink won’t hurt. You need a break. You’ve been working non-stop all weekend. Tell Otto I can vouch for that. You can call me as a character witness.’ He handed her a glass and collapsed back onto his side of the sofa with one for himself.

‘It won’t help. Otto needs information, not excuses. The clock is ticking and—’

‘Drink.’

She obeyed. ‘...Oh, that’s good.’

‘Yeah.’

She looked at the glass, taking in the deep claret colour, before looking back at him. ‘Do you always have to have the best of everything?’

He hesitated. ‘Is that a bad thing?’

‘No, of course not.’

His eyes narrowed as if he didn’t believe her, but she wasn’t sure she believed herself either.Washe spoilt, pampered, over-privileged? Did he know how to do anything for himself, or was it all done for him – meals delivered by the best restaurant in the city, housekeepers, assistants and security guards on tap to keep all the plates spinning? Was his world so vacuous and empty that he had to fill it with bright, shiny things: Liebermanns and models and premier grand cru?

He put the AirPod back in and returned his attention to the match. Darcy resumed her final trawl through the last box of the day: some letters Trier had received from a French artist called Louis Moreau. By this time, Trier had moved on to Rome and was living and working in a tiny studio in Trastevere. Her French was decent, but her eyes narrowed as she struggled to decipher the handwriting, which was tightly scripted, with frequent ink blots that made the job of reading markedly harder.

She sipped her wine, tucking her knees up to her chin as she read:‘The heat was unbearable...peace conference...Versailles...proposition Dessoye...’

She yawned, unable to suppress it in time. French politics was not what she needed to know about...She needed a woman’s name. She forced herself to focus, envisaging Otto’s face across the desk from her tomorrow. She just needed something, anything.

She frowned, stumbling upon some sentences that she couldn’t decipher at all. She tried again.

‘What is it?’

She looked up to find Max watching her again. ‘Oh...I just can’t understand what this says,’ she said, holding up the letter. ‘It’s in French.’

‘I speak French. Let me see.’ She went to hand it over to him, but instead he got up and sank down on the cushion next to her. ‘Which bit?’ he asked, peering over her shoulder.

Darcy fell very still at the sudden proximity. Their legs were pressed together as the cushions splayed and she was close enough to smell a faint woody scent on his skin – cologne or body wash, she wasn’t sure.

‘This,’ she murmured, pointing as he read it a few times. On the face of it, he was simply being helpful, but she detected a deeper shift, something far more fundamental changing between them.

‘It says they’re proposing a bill for electoral reform embracing thescrutin de listemethod and a system of proportional representation.’

‘Oh. Well, no wonder I couldn’t understand it. I can barely understand that in English; that’s definitely beyond my A-level French.’

He smiled at her. ‘Riveting stuff.’

‘I know. Aren’t I lucky?’ His face was just inches from hers, and she saw his gaze openly drop to her mouth. All day – all weekend – the tension had flickered quietly beneath every word, every look, though they had resolutely ignored it; but as his eyes rose to hers now, she knew this time it was no good. No matter what he had said about them having to keep things strictly professional, this mutual attraction wasn’t going to go away. It was going to just keep sitting between them like a giant black cat – determined to be acknowledged – and she made no attempt to pull back as he leaned in at last and finally kissed her.

His lips tasted of wine, like hers, as he pressed his mouth to hers softly, at first. She felt his scent envelop her; what had been faint at a few inches away was now distinct and intoxicating. The pressure lessened on her lips for one moment, two, both of them breathing quickly, knowing that this had been a question and the next kiss would be the answer. The passion flooded her, running like a riptide between them, coming in at sharp angles, tugging at her feet and trying to upend her. Both of them.

It was better even than she could have imagined and as he came in again, the kiss grew stronger and deeper, his mouth beginning to open, his head to move, the tip of his tongue finding hers. Her heart rate had already accelerated to double time and—

The doorbell rang.

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