Page 42 of A Winter Kiss on Rochester Mews
As Mattie shoved Hershey’s Kisses into the scored squares of her just-out-of-the-oven gingerbread, all she could think about were kisses. She’d probably never kiss anyone ever again. Or be kissed. Or be held in someone’s arms.
‘And I’m absolutely fine with that,’ Mattie muttered the words out loud so they’d have more meaning, then cut out five gingerbread squares, arranged them on a plate and left the kitchen.
‘Just taking these into the shop,’ she said to Cuthbert as she passed. It was nearly eight, almost closing time, and only the last stragglers were left in the tearooms, resting aching feet, shopping bags stashed under the tables as they chased the last crumb of a restorative snack, drained the last drop of a reviving coffee.
The bookshop was also almost empty of customers: a couple of browsers, someone paying at the till, someone else paying Samin situas he perched on the sofa with an iPad. Even the Mistletoe Booth was empty, but as Mattie came through the arch, her eyes found Tom, who was halfway up the rolling ladder, while a middle-aged man stood underneath with a spreadsheet.
‘No, she’s definitely got that one,’ he said in a despairing voice. ‘Are you sure that Jilly Cooper hasn’t written any more books?’
‘I could look on the computer, but I’m ninety-nine per cent sure that she hasn’t,’ Tom said in an equally despairing voice as if the man and his spreadsheet had been there for quite some time. ‘What about a writer who’s similar to Jilly Cooper?’
‘They have to have horses in them,’ the man said. ‘My mother will only read books about romance and horses.’
Tom’s jaw looked particularly tense. Mattie knew him well enough now to be able to tell when he was stifling a sigh or, more likely, a sarcastic retort. He looked behind him for a kindred spirit he could roll his eyes at, but unfortunately for him Nina was back in the Erotica section where she’d been talking aboutménagefiction with two young women. ‘One man is hard enough work,’ Nina had been explaining. ‘Having to cope with two of them would just be exhausting because you know that neither of them would remember to put the loo seat down.’
Tom had to settle for Mattie, who tried to smile to show that she was here to make amends. He was too overwrought to do anything but grimace back and slant his eyes in the direction of his customer who was staring down at his spreadsheet.
This would be the perfect time for Mattie to hold up her plate and say in a jaunty tone, ‘Fancy a kiss?’ Except it would be a gingerbread kiss, which was the only kind of kiss that Tom could expect from her. Even as she lifted the plate, the shop door opened, the bell jangled.
Mattie glanced over at the new arrival, only for the colour to drain from her face as her blood rushed through her veins and down to the floor, leaving her cold and trembling.
The plate left Mattie’s nerveless fingers and crashed to the floor, gingerbread scattering to the four corners.
‘Mattie? Are you all right?’ she heard Posy say from somewhere behind her – but she only had eyes for the man at the door.
‘Matilda,’ he said, in that silky voice that she’d once loved until it had been used as a weapon against her. ‘It’s been too long. How the devil are you, my darling?’
Steven was as beautiful as Mattie remembered him. More beautiful because she’d let her anger and grief dim the sheen of his dark hair, dull the light of his warm, brown eyes, blunt the angles of his quite extraordinary cheekbones and the strong line of his jaw.
Her memory had played tricks on her and made Steven less – less beautiful, less charismatic, less everything. When Mattie had thought about him, wondered how she could ever have loved him, the Steven she’d seen in her mind’s eye hadn’t been as tall, or as finely put together.
Now, as he came closer, Mattie was too shocked to shrink back but stood there, still and pale and cold, as he took her frozen hands so he could brush his lips against each cheek. She’d even forgotten that he always smelled good, of figs and exotic spices.
But she hadn’t forgotten how Steven could fill a room with the sheer force of his presence so no one else seemed to exist.
‘Matilda,’ he said reproachfully, teasingly. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost. No welcome for your old friend?’
‘What are you doing here?’ Mattie was amazed that she could make words come out of her mouth. Was astounded that her legs still worked and that she could take the unsteady steps she needed to sink down on the sofa.
‘I’m in town for a few days,’ he said easily, although all eyes were on him. Posy and Verity behind the counter unabashedly staring at him, Nina had come out from the Erotica section and was running an appraising eye over Steven’s lithe, lean form as if she was about to put a bid on him. ‘I couldn’t be in London without looking you up, could I?’
Only Tom seemed disinterested. He shot Steven one cold, dismissive look from his eyrie halfway up the rolling ladder then turned back to the man with the spreadsheet. ‘I’ve got a couple of novels by Fiona Walker. They’re very horsey. Your mother might like them.’
‘You could have,’ Mattie said, wishing suddenly that Tom wasn’t up the rolling ladder but on terra firma, tutting loudly and complaining about people bringing their personal lives into the shop, as he did whenever Posy or Nina were oversharing about their husbands. Tom could kill a mood quicker than boiling hot water could kill a swarm of ants, but he was of no help in this instance. That was all right though. Mattie could deal with Steven’s sudden and very unwelcome appearance, all by herself. She lifted her chin, the way she faced every challenge. ‘Why on earth would you think I’d ever want to see you again?’
Steven smiled sadly. ‘That’s rather unfair, isn’t it?’ Then he turned his face away from her and ran his hand through his glossy brown hair, temporarily ruffling it the better to display his exquisite bone structure. It was a move that used to make Mattie come quite undone in the early days when she still couldn’t believe that she’d bagged herself such a hottie. Now she realised she was immune to it.
‘Mattie? You’re not going to introduce us?’ Posy asked in a rather breathless voice. Despite her handsome husband, she obviously wasn’t immune to the charms of a man who looked like he modelled for Calvin Klein in his spare time.
‘Steven,’ Mattie said flatly. ‘He was in my patisserie class in Paris.’
‘We were a little more than classmates,’ Steven admonished. ‘Alotmore.’
‘I’m Posy, this is my shop and Mattie runs the tearooms attached to it,’ Posy said in a friendly voice because she was at the mercy of her hormones and completely off her game. Whereas Nina and Verity had now picked up on Mattie’s distress: the stiff line of her spine, the raspy tone of her voice, the stricken, desperate look in her wide eyes.
‘It’s one minute past eight,’ Nina announced in an unnecessarily loud voice. ‘This is your five-minute warning, people! Please make your way to a pay point, some of us have got homes to go to!’
‘Don’t be so rude, Nina!’ Posy scolded.
