might.’ Romy’s throat was so tight, it came out as an embarrassing squeak.
‘And would you kiss me back? If we were really engaged?’
‘Probably,’ she managed.
Lex brought his gloved hands up to cup her face, and Romy trembled with a terrible anticipation.
‘Then let’s show Willie just how in love we are,’ he said, and bent his mouth to hers.
His lips were warm, so warm in contrast to the stinging cold of the air, and so sure. They sent Romy plummeting through twelve long years, and she clutched at Lex’s jacket, gripped by a dizzying mixture of excitement and fear and utter peace. Her senses whirled as she swung wildly between extremes, between heat and cold, between then and now. Between stillness and rush. Between the sense of coming home and the sense of standing on the edge of a dizzying drop.
When Lex pulled her closer and deepened the kiss, Romy wrapped her arms around him and kissed him back harder, breathless at the rightness of it. It felt so good to taste him again, to hold him again. Every cell in her body was sighing—no, was singing—‘At last! At last!’ The sunlight glinting on the snow was inside her, sparkling and flickering and shimmering along her veins in a glittery rush.
They broke for breath, kissed again before they could realise just what they were doing. Or that was how it felt to Romy, who had abandoned any attempt to think and was desperate to hold onto this moment, pressed against Lex’s hard body, kissing him, being kissed, and the dazzling light all around them.
And then, out of nowhere, there was a huge bump, like a ship knocking into them, and they both lurched to one side.
‘What the—?’
Magnus, bored, was looking for attention, and was rubbing his great rump against Lex, who drew a long and not entirely steady breath and let Romy go.
‘I think maybe I needed that, Magnus,’ he said.
Romy swallowed. She felt jarred, as if she had been on a spinning roundabout that had suddenly stopped, and it was all she could do not to throw herself back into Lex’s arms.
But that would be a very, very bad idea, she remembered. Because they weren’t in Paris now. They were in Scotland, and it was twelve years later and very cold, and they were just pretending. It had just been a kiss for show, in case Willie was watching.
Hadn’t it?
She moistened her lips. ‘We’d better go in,’ she said, barely registering the dog gambolling beside them. ‘Freya might be awake.’
‘Yes,’ said Lex, ‘perhaps we better had.’
What chance had he had of working after that? Lex switched off the light and climbed into bed beside Romy. It had been madness to kiss her out there in the snow, but he hadn’t been able to stop himself. She had been so close, so perfect, and it had felt so right. The feel of her, the taste of her had set tremors going in his heart. He could almost hear it cracking.
It had been his own fault. He should have stayed inside and worked, the way he had intended to do. But when they came back to the house, and Romy went off to find Freya, instead of sitting down at his computer and emailing Summer, Lex had wandered around, eventually finding himself in a room that was empty of all but a few chairs and a piano.
And not just any piano. A Bösendorfer, no less. Lex had a grand in his penthouse apartment, but it wasn’t as big as this one. To Lex, it seemed to exert a pull that drew him across the room, to run his hand over its gleaming mahogany top and then lift the lid to press a key, then another and another. Without quite knowing how it had happened, Lex found himself sitting on the stool and letting his fingers run over the keys and then he was playing.
He played out the tumult of feeling inside him that had gripped him ever since Romy had ducked her head and stepped into the cabin. He played out the memory of her touch, the way she made him feel, and then, so gradually he hardly noticed that he was doing it, he started to play the strange feeling of liberation that morning, that sense of being dropped into a different world, isolated by the snow, where all the usual rules were suspended.
And after a while, the tune changed again, to echo old Scottish folk songs that he had once learnt, and to play out the glittering morning and the air and the hills and the water, and Romy, laughing in the snow.
Lex played on, absorbed in the music, unaware of anyone else until a movement from doorway made him look up. Willie was there, listening, and the grief in his eyes made Lex’s fingers still.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I should have asked if I could use the piano.’
Willie waved the apology aside. ‘I’m glad you did. I haven’t heard it since Moira died, but I can’t bring myself to get rid it.’
He asked if Lex would play again that evening, and Lex was glad to. He didn’t normally like performing for an audience, but playing was better than sitting next to Romy and feeling his hands itch with the need to touch her. Better than having to pretend to her that he didn’t want her, while pretending to Willie that he did.
He found some music in the piano stool, and played the most battered scores, which he guessed would have been Moira Grant’s favourites. Romy sat next to Willie and held his hand while the tears rolled down his face.
‘Thank you,’ he said simply when Lex had finished. ‘I’m glad you came. I’m glad my store’s going to be run by a man who can play like that.’
The thaw had set in already. By lunchtime, the glittering morning had vanished beneath the cloud cover, and the temperature had risen with remarkable speed. Tomorrow, it was clear, they would be able to leave. Lex lay in the dark and listened to the steady drip, drip, drip of melting snow outside the window.
Get through tonight, he told himself. That’s all you have to do.
Beside him, Romy was concentrating on breathing very quietly. The curtains hanging round the bed smelt musty, but the sheets were clean and faintly scented. The mattress was comfortable. It was dark. She had hardly slept the night before and now she was very tired.
There was no reason why she shouldn’t be able to sleep.
Except the memory of that kiss that had been thrumming beneath her skin all day. And then Lex’s playing had stirred up emotions Romy had rather left buried. She hadn’t been able to take her eyes off his hands while he was playing, hadn’t been able to stop remembering those long, dextrous fingers smoothing and stroking, exploring her, unlocking her.
Stop thinking about it, she told herself. Get through tonight. That’s all you have to do.
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