Page 53 of A Winter Kiss on Rochester Mews
Tom must have felt it too because he lurched back, still gazing at Mattie as if she was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
‘I’m wondering what it would be like to kiss you,’ he said.What?She must have heard him wrong.
Why would Tom want to kiss her? Why would shewantTom to kiss her? Because she did. She really did. She felt quite breathless, as though someone had squeezed all the air out of the room.
‘Do you think that would be a good idea?’ she gasped.
‘I think it’s probably a very bad idea,’ Tom said gravely and Mattie felt everything in her deflate as if someone had stuck a pin in her.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Oh. OK, then.’
‘Though I still want to,’ Tom said, but he looked away, shifted his long legs so they couldn’t brush against Mattie’s poor, defenceless knees, and the moment was gone. If the moment had ever happened, that is. She must have imagined it. ‘But, sadly, yes, it’s a very bad idea.’
She took a deep breath, then with one hand braced on the edge of the table, she managed to get to her feet, which felt as wobbly as a new-born foal’s. ‘We need a new house rule!’
‘We’ve got so many house rules that I’m losing track of them all,’ Tom complained, with a weary look at the ceiling. ‘We’ll have to print them out and get them lanimated. Animated. Lantimated.’
‘You mean laminated.’ The only reason that Mattie could pronounce the word was because she made laminated dough on a daily basis. ‘Anyway, new house rule: anything that happens in this flat, stays in this flat. Flatmate solidarity and all that. Sound good to you?’
‘Sounds amazing,’ Tom agreed. He shot out his arm. ‘Shake on it!’
Mattie’s hands were hot and sweaty. ‘Do we have to?’
‘Shall we seal it with a kiss then?’
‘You are unhealthily obsessed with the idea of kissing me,’ she said, breathless once more, because he really was being sonice. Better than nice. It was quite validating that a man wanted to kiss her. Especially Tom, who she’d been so mean to. Still, Tom had been quite mean to her too and, despite his protestations to the contrary, he still might prove to be a Lothario. ‘No, look! We’ll shake.’
Hot hand collided with hot hand, fingers entwined, skin ablaze. It wasn’t so much a handshake as a clasp.
Both Mattie and Tom stared down at their joined hands. His thumb gently rubbed the soft and suddenly very sensitive scar from a burn where Mattie had once dropped a just-out-of-the-frying-pan beignet.
‘Bed,’ she said desperately.
‘Oh, yes. Our own beds? Is that still the plan?’
‘Yes!’ Mattie slowly pulled her hand from his grasp. ‘How could you think otherwise?’ She took a very definite step away from him. And another one. And another, until she was at the kitchen doorway. ‘It’salwaysgoing to be the plan.’
‘That’s a pity,’ Tom murmured, so quietly that Mattie wasn’t sure if she’d heard him correctly, before she fled for the safety of her bedroom.
Mattie had barely placed her muggy, fuggy head on her pillow, quite convinced that she wouldn’t be able to go to sleep, when a few seconds later, her alarm was blaring out.
A quick glance at the time showed that it wasn’t a few seconds. She’d actually slept for a not-great-but-doable five hours. She’d done a whole day on five hours sleep before, but not when she’d had a bruising confrontation with the former love of her life and then sunk two bottles of red wine while having an emotionally exhausting heart to heart with the man that she shared a living space with.
Who was she even kidding? She and Tom lived together. They were flatmates. After last night, they were probably friends. Tom had made it perfectly clear that kissing her was something he’d thought about, which had made Mattie wonder what it might be like to kiss him …
Mattie rushed to the bathroom to splash icy cold water on her face. The shock of it was enough to make her come to her senses, though not enough to lose the pounding head or the furry, sour taste in her mouth.
A bracing lukewarm shower and a vigorous teeth-cleaning session afterwards didn’t make Mattie feel any more human. And as she left her room, trying to walk and tie the laces on her sneakers at the same time, she cast a longing look at Tom’s door, behind which he was sleeping peacefully because Happy Ever After didn’t open until ten.
In fact, it wasn’t until ten thirty that Tom appeared in the tearooms. His face was grey, his hair looked as if it had lost an argument with a force-ten gale and the buttons on his cursed cardigan were done up crooked. Mattie paused from picking up a croissant to scrutinise Tom’s midsection – she was finding that cake tongs and shaking hands were not a great combination. Then she blushed.
Fortunately, Tom was in no fit state to realise where Mattie’s eyes had been lingering. ‘You’re well?’ Tom asked in the same manner that he might enquire about the health of an elderly aunt. ‘Because I’m not. I feel like I’ve been trampled on by elephants.’
Cuthbert peered at Tom from his perch behind the counter. He’d taken to wearing a tie with little Christmas trees on it. Sophie was convinced that by Christmas week he’d have upgraded to a full Santa suit. ‘Young man, this is what we call the wages of gin.’
‘Gin had nothing to do with it,’ Mattie muttered because she’d already had a lecture from Cuthbert that morning on the dangers of excessive drinking. ‘It was all the fault of the red wine and I feel horrible too,’ she added in a low voice because she didn’t want the couple who were waiting to hear and start a wild rumour that she was infecting her baked goods with a flu virus. ‘Having to handle sausage meat when you have a hangover? I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.’
‘Talking of which …’ Tom said, ‘are you still upset about what happened with Steven?’
