Page 30 of Christmas Romance Galore!
She shifted across the sofa so she was sat next to me to emphasise her point. “I just wanted to set things straight. Yesterday was just... nostalgia. It was a mistake, it was my fault and I didn’t want you to get the wrong end of the stick.” She went to touch my arm, then thought better of it. “It’s just been weird seeing you again after all this time, knowing what I felt about you back then, but never acting. It’s been a little confusing.”
The room swayed around me and I had to put out a hand to steady myself. What she’d felt about me? A small ball of vomit worked its way up my windpipe, but I swallowed it down, wincing.
“What do you mean, how you felt?” I paused. “How did you feel back then?”
Nicola looked up into the air and sighed. Then she gave a wry laugh, before focusing her gaze back on me. “Scared. Confused. Horny. In love.” She said all of those things and never took her eyes off me for a second. “I couldn’t put a name to any of it back then, but looking back, that’s what it was.”
“In love?” I could hardly believe my ears. She’d felt it too. Deep down, I knew she had.
She nodded, and took my hand. “Looking back, yes.”
Her thumb moved slowly across my palm.
I breathed in sharply.
Nicola Sheen had been in love with me, and I had been in love with Nicola Sheen.
It was the sweetest and cruellest blow of them all.
And now it was too late.
I shook my head and gave a rueful smile. “But you ran. You just ran.” I reached for her hand.
We both stared at her hand in mine. What might have happened? What might have become of us if we’d taken the path less travelled?
That was then, and back then, Nicola had chosen path B and run like the wind. Cut to today and we were at another junction. Which way were things going to go this time?
Her mouth closing in on mine told me the answer. Within seconds, her hot, firm body was pressing into mine and my pent up energy suddenly had somewhere to go. Then Nicola’s tongue was back inside my mouth, but unlike yesterday’s slow, sensual probing, this time, there was raw urgency about it. This was ten years of emotion and what-ifs pressing into me, asking questions that couldn’t possibly be answered.
My body was responding to everything Nicola was doing — pressing, grinding, wanting. I’d gone into cruise control, my moral compass covered with a blanket, my mind gone fishing. This felt wrong, but oh so right. When Nicola Sheen’s hand worked its way under my top and cupped my breast, I let out a groan of sexual frustration that was raw and unpolished. I was collapsing into her right there.
Encouraged, she undid the button on my trousers and slipped her hand inside.
I stopped breathing.
I couldn’t let this happen — not this way. I wanted to sleep with Nicola Sheen more than she would ever know, but not like this, not a quickie on my sofa. And not when she was engaged to my friend. It was so tempting, but...
Her fingers were so close, and it took every ounce of self-control I had to grab her arm and pull away, even though my pelvis betrayed me and pushed forward.
She stopped and opened her eyes.
We froze in time, suspended together.
Another train rattled by outside, and to my left, I saw our Christmas tree lights watching, blinking in disbelief.
“I can’t,” I whispered. I didn’t mean it, but it couldn’t be any other way. “Not like this.”
She crinkled her eyes, pain radiating from her. “I thought—”
I shook my head. “—Not like this,” I repeated. “I can’t do this with you now. You’re not available.”
She pulled her hand away and sat back on the sofa, breathing out in one long stream that I thought might never end.
We sat in silence for a few more seconds before Nicola sat forward and took a slug of her beer.
“This didn’t go as I planned,” she said, still breathing rapidly. She put down her beer.
“No?”
