meeting her fiancé’s family.
Leaving Sophie to ‘deliver Christmas’ to Max’s apartment.
His shoulders tensed as he slowly turned. ‘You either overheard my conversation with Sally that day in her office, or Sally repeated it to you.’ It was a statement rather than a question.
‘Sally would never do that,’ she assured him heatedly. ‘I—I was meeting Sally for lunch that day and I overheard the two of you talking. I thought it best to wait outside in the hallway till you’d finished,’ she admitted gruffly.
‘And in the meantime you eavesdropped on a private conversation!’ Max’s top lip curled back contemptuously.
‘Not intentionally! I just—I had arrived at Sally’s office a little early for lunch and the two of you were talking and I didn’t want to interrupt. I couldn’t help overhearing what you were discussing and—’
‘I should take a breath, Sophie,’ he advised scathingly.
She gave an impatient shake of her head. ‘Sally had nothing to do with the decision not to tell you of our family connection; that really was all my idea. Sally was short of time and I had nothing else to do over Christmas except look after Henry, and so I offered to organise Christmas for you and your family.’
‘To “deliver Christmas” was how you described it that first day, if I remember correctly,’ Max rasped harshly. ‘A direct quote from part of my conversation in Sally’s office that day. Which is no doubt the reason you were so damned contemptuous towards me when we first met.’
‘I thought you were just a Bah Humbug. I had no idea then of the reason why you’ve avoided celebrating Christmas for so many years,’ she defended uncomfortably.
But she had realised the reason now, Max accepted, after Janice’s indiscreet comments about their parents both dying at Christmas sixteen years ago.
None of which changed their current situation in the slightest.
‘Perhaps in future that will teach you not to make snap judgements about peo—’ Max broke off his scathing comment to look at Sophie searchingly. ‘You said that Sally and her parents are your only relatives?’
She gave a puzzled frown. ‘Yes.’
Max remembered that Sally had taken a week’s compassionate leave during the summer so that she could spend some time with her cousin, whose mother had just died after a long and painful illness. And then there had been another day off following that week, so that Sally could attend her aunt’s funeral.
And Sophie’s unfinished comment just now regarding her desire not to travel yet.
Was it possible that her aunt had been Sophie’s mother?
‘When did your own parents die, Sophie?’ he prompted huskily.
She frowned. ‘I don’t see …’
‘Humour me,’ Max bit out abruptly.
‘My father died fifteen years ago, and my mother … my mother died six months ago,’ she acknowledged huskily, her gaze not meeting his even though her chin rose challengingly. ‘It’s because she was so ill for so long that I didn’t finish my original college course.’
Max was angry with Sophie for not telling him of her connection to Sally. And even more furious with her for allowing him to believe that Henry was a man.
At the same time he couldn’t help but feel compassion for her recent loss. Because it was recent; losing a beloved parent was an ache, a hollowness that could never be truly filled. And he, of all people, should know how it felt to lose your parents, and to spend that first Christmas without them. Especially so when it had been just Sophie and her mother for so many years.
There were also his own strange, as yet inexplicable desires, feelings even, for Sophie. Feelings he was just too angry at the moment to even try to comprehend. Feelings that made him even angrier about this situation, if anything.
One thing he did know, no matter how cross he might be with Sophie right now—he had no intention of leaving her here to spend Christmas alone with that hissing, spitting fur ball!
He drew in a deep breath. ‘Does Sally have a travel basket for Henry?’
Sophie looked startled. ‘Sorry?’
‘You may well have cause to be before this Christmas is over,’ Max warned grimly. ‘But all I’m interested in knowing for now is whether or not you have a basket we can put that monster into—’ he shot Henry a quelling glance as he saw the black cat had slunk out from beneath the coffee table and was now eyeing him balefully ‘—while we drive back to my apartment.’
Sophie wasn’t just startled now; she was dumbstruck. Was Max seriously suggesting that she should not only continue to spend the rest of Christmas with him and his family at his apartment, but that she should also bring along the belligerent Henry to join them, too?
Because he wanted her to spend Christmas with him?
Doubtful, after this recent conversation.
It was more likely to be because she had been hired to ‘deliver Christmas’ to him and his family and Max still expected her to do exactly that.
‘The snow is falling heavier than ever, Sophie,’ Max rasped at her continued silence. ‘Which means we have to leave soon if we’re going to get back at all.’
It was the latter, of course, Sophie accepted heavily. She really shouldn’t harbour any illusions of it being anything else, despite their earlier intimacy.
She might have fallen in love with Max in just a few short days, but he certainly didn’t feel anything approaching that emotion for her.
And he never would …
‘WHO WOULD HAVE thought that a five-year-old could make a lapdog—or, in this case, cat—out of the fur ball?’ Max mused as he entered the kitchen of his apartment. He’d just spent several minutes in the sitting room watching Amy carry Henry around in her arms as if he were a baby while the cat looked up at her adoringly. ‘He’s a disgrace to the feline race!’
Sophie couldn’t help but laugh as she turned, her face flushed, from taking warmed mince pies from the oven, ready for an afternoon snack.
The last twenty-four hours had gone more smoothly than she could ever have hoped for, following that awful scene between herself and Max at Sally’s flat yesterday evening.
Present opening this morning had been fun. How could it not be, in the company of a five-year-old who still believed in Father Christmas?
To Sophie’s surprise, she had received gifts not only from Janice and Tom, and a separate one from Amy, but there had also been a present under the tree for her from Max. A beautiful pashmina in shades of russet and brown, which she had been convinced Janice must have chosen for him until the other woman assured her that she
