‘Much more his old self,’ Nico answered drily, the flickering flame from the candle on their table reflecting in his eyes. ‘He told me how lucky I was to be out this evening with a beautiful, warm, kind, intelligent woman.’ A smile made his eyes bluer. ‘As if I hadn’t noticed.’
‘Oh,’ she breathed, her heart launching into a gallop.
‘Tell me something,’ he went on, but paused to lift his wine glass to his lips. Was it her imagination or was there a sheen on his skin as if from nerves? ‘Is Albin in your thoughts much?’
She swallowed, feeling as if her reply was important and wanting to be honest. ‘He’s crossed my mind a couple of times. It would be odd if being a mile as the crow flies from Hannah Anna Butik didn’t remind me but, apart from the little matter of the several thousand pounds he owes me, he doesn’t mean anything to me. Not now. He killed my feelings when he showed me his unpleasant side.’ She didn’t add that the man who filled her thoughts was Nico.
He nodded as if satisfied and released her hand as their meal arrived, the sauce from the meatballs pooling around boiled potatoes and dark red lingonberry jam. He ate well, with hardly any of the playing with his food that Hannah had observed in the past, and she wondered if it was a sign he was feeling better about life. The level of champagne sank until all that remained in the bottle was air.
‘More champagne?’ Nico asked, laying his cutlery neatly on his empty plate.
‘Not for me, thanks.’ She was already floating on a cloud of bubbles. ‘But I’d love coffee.’
He ordered then leaned closer once again, voice low, eyes bright, so close she could see tiny flecks of green and gold among the blue. ‘What did you wish for in the Gold Room today?’
She flushed as she remembered that half-formed but fully felt wish. ‘You can’t share wishes. They don’t come true.’ Not even superstition was going to make her jeopardise whatever magic was trembling just within her grasp this evening.
‘Was it X-rated?’ he murmured. Then, deliberately, ‘Like mine?’
She swallowed, mind flying to exactly what X-rated thoughts his wish could have involved.
He lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed her fingers. ‘I’ve been wishing since your brother’s wedding that we could have those slow dances back.’
Her skin tingled from the brush of his lips but she couldn’t let his comment go unchallenged. ‘It wasn’t me who went off and danced with Amanda Louise.’
He propped his chin on his fist. ‘It wasn’t me who didn’t own up to having a boyfriend.’ His tone was as challenging as hers.
Wrong-footed, Hannah frowned, trying to remember events. ‘I don’t think I deliberately didn’t tell you. I knew there was something wrong with the relationship and actually made the decision to end things on that evening. I’d already tried to talk to Albin about why he’d changed towards me but he claimed to be under too much stress to deal with it. Turned out it was so he could sort everything out in his own favour while I was away. I was trying not to sour the wedding by thinking about him,’ she admitted. ‘Sorry.’ Then, because she wanted to know, she said, ‘I think Amanda Louise might have been hoping for more from you.’ She told him about the ‘snagged and shagged’ conversation she’d overheard at breakfast the next day.
Surprise flitted over his face. ‘I went to my room alone to relieve the babysitter … and think about you.’
‘Oh,’ she breathed, both intrigued and charmed at his frankness. ‘Well. We can’t dance here. No music.’ She shrugged in mock despair, glancing around the beautifully dressed tables as if an orchestra might be hiding behind a white napkin.
A grin quirked his lips. ‘There must be a killer chat-up line about you and me making beautiful music together but I’m not enough of a lizard to carry it off.’
She smothered a laugh. ‘I’m not sure anyone is.’ Then her amusement faded and this time she was the one to take his hand as she looked him in the eye. ‘The only feelings I have left for Albin are disappointment and irritation. The nicer emotions vanished like a snowman in the rain.’
He kissed her fingers again then smoothed back her hair. ‘I’d very much like to go somewhere where there’s no table between us.’
Heat rushed up from the soles of her feet. ‘I want that too.’
They paid their bill and zipped their coats. They stepped outside and the snowstorm swallowed them up. ‘Whoo!’ shouted Hannah, trying to shield her face from the driving, stinging snow.
‘Come on!’ Nico threw his arm around her and they were blown back to the hotel by the storm’s wintry breath, staggering on slushy pavements.
Finally, they burst into the hotel foyer, faces pink and burning. They shoved back hoods and stripped off icy gloves and scarves and Nico kissed her all the way up in the lift, lips cold and tongue hot.
In the corridor between their rooms he halted, kissing her more gently, lips soft against her chilly cheeks and the corner of her mouth. ‘I don’t want to take anything for granted,’ he breathed, more a question than a statement.
‘My room has twin beds,’ she said against his mouth.
‘One of the things I like most about you is that you’re so refreshingly direct,’ he murmured. ‘You’ve no idea how relaxing it is not to be permanently guessing or playing games. My room has a king.’ In a second they were through his door, kissing while he fumbled one-handedly with the lights. He dragged her out of her coat. She pulled off her hat.
He caught his breath as her hair fell around her shoulders. ‘You’re so beautiful.’
Then he fast-forwarded himself out of his coat and sweatshirt. Used to him in winter clothes, she let her gaze travel pleasurably across his torso, lean but full of muscle. The cords of his arms shifted as he reached for her, stroking, caressing, rumbling with pleasure in the back of his throat. He kissed her shoulders where they showed through the cut-outs in her top. ‘I’ve wanted to do that all evening. There’s something so sexy about that small amount of naked flesh.’ It didn’t deter him from sliding the top up and over her head. When he unfastened her jeans a thrill rushed through her as she felt the air on the sensitive skin of her belly. Her legs lost their bones.
‘My jeans won’t come off over my boots,’ she murmured.
He steered her gently towards the bed. ‘Leave them to me.’ He laid her back on the cool cotton covers. A couple of flicks as he dealt with her laces then two tugs and the boots were gone, then her jeans. Nico rose, eyes glittering, and managed to hook her into his arms and up the bed. He paused to kiss her, then pulled back, kicking off his boots and shucking his jeans, his eyes roaming over what heated skin wasn’t covered by her black panties and yellow-flowered bra. Dropping onto the bed beside her, he nuzzled the tops of her breasts. ‘Mmm, Hannah.’ It curled her toes.
Pressing against his erection, she ran her palms over the firm heat of his shoulders and chest. His breath caught as her hand travelled down, relishing the smooth, taut abdomen and snaky hips.
His unfocused gaze met hers. ‘The refreshing directness gets better and better. Jeez.’ His gasp as she slid her fingers inside the elastic of his boxers was muffled by her breasts, his breath hot on her skin.
He reached around for the clasp of her bra and as he pulled it slowly off she forgot how to breathe, almost levitating from the bed at the pure pleasure of his skin sliding over hers. He eased aside her underwear and touched her and she felt a jolt of excitement so fierce she wanted to shove against him till he filled her up. Her whole body was consumed with the intimacy of making love, the give and take, the electricity that set fire to her nerve endings and fried her brain.
She kissed the hot skin of his neck and shoulders. ‘I hope you have condoms. I want nothing more in the world than you inside me.’
She didn’t have long to wait.
Chapter Twenty-Two
His phone ringing was as unwelcome as a drunk bellowing in the street as you drifted off to sleep. Nico took a moment to orientate himself, the night rushing bac
k to him as he saw Hannah blinking sleepily on the pillow beside him, silky, tawny hair tumbling. He dropped a kiss on her temple then leaned out of the bed to extricate the phone from his jeans pocket. Its screen told him it was exactly eight a.m. The name that flashed up was his mother’s, but it was his daughter’s voice he heard.
‘Hi, Josie,’ he mumbled, voice gravelly from sleep, examining the unfamiliar feeling of being in bed with someone other than Josie’s mother while he talked to Josie. ‘OK, sweetheart?’
Josie’s young excited voice burst in his ear. ‘Dad! It’s snowed and snowed! And Farmor says are you ready for breakfast? You are, aren’t you? Farmor says some of the snow will go from the roads but it’ll stay in the parks.’
Nico smiled at the joyful young voice. ‘I need to shower. How about in an hour?’ He gazed down at Hannah and slid the duvet away from her beautiful breasts. His hand slid down to cup her and Hannah slipped her own hand beneath the covers and, judging from her, ‘Mmm,’ was happy to find morning glory in full bloom. He hadn’t thrilled to the sexy, life-affirming experience of waking to a hot, naked woman in his bed since the early days with Loren. Making love to Hannah had been amazing.
In his ear, Josie’s voice became muffled before returning full strength. ‘Farmor says half an hour should be ample. We’re hungry.’
He smothered a sigh but was too caring a dad to insist on an hour because he wanted sex again. ‘OK. See you downstairs.’ He ended the call and dropped his phone in favour of scooping Hannah’s soft, curvy body against his own. ‘Bloody kids.’
Hannah laughed, then her own phone began to shrill. Groaning, she rolled out from beneath the warmth of the quilt, casting around until she tracked the sound to the bag she’d abandoned by the door last night. Unselfconscious about her nudity – which suited him perfectly – she skipped back to the warmth of the bed. ‘Hi, Josie,’ she said into the handset, grinning at Nico.
Josie’s strident little voice reached Nico without needing to be put on speaker. ‘Oh, good, you’re not asleep. We’re meeting in half an hour for breakfast, OK? And have you seen how much it’s snowed? Farmor says Daddy’ll have to carry Maria or a snow plough will cover her up.’
Hannah managed an authentic-sounding yawn. ‘OK, see you soon.’ She managed to end the call before bursting into laughter. ‘I feel as guilty as a teenager up to no good,’ she murmured, kissing his neck.
He eased her closer, knocked out by the combination of soft skin and firm flesh. ‘One of the perils of being a parent is finding ways to have sex without scarring your offspring for life.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘This parental responsibility thing is tougher than I thought.’ She sobered. ‘I understand that you don’t shove your sex life in your kids’ faces. I’ll go back to my room to shower.’
‘Shame,’ he sighed. But she was right. He was getting so much enjoyment out of watching her hunt naked for her clothes that they’d never get downstairs on time if he got her soapy body in his hands.
Breakfast was leisurely, though Maria was outraged to discover the hotel had no ‘Beetabix’, as she called it. He diverted a tantrum by telling her she could have sponge cake instead. Her scream-face miraculously transformed into contentment and she munched cake between slugs of apple juice, pointing out of the window and saying, ‘Snow!’
‘It is.’ Nico hadn’t anticipated how hyper-aware of Hannah he’d feel and had trouble concentrating on even that level of conversation. It was obviously not appropriate to advertise to the assembled company how he and Hannah had spent the night and, judging by the way she focused on her breakfast, she was all too aware.
‘Do we have a plan for today, before we go home?’ Carina asked, stirring cream into her porridge.
Hannah reminded her, ‘I need to go off and track down my ex. He doesn’t know I’m in Stockholm so I hope to surprise him. I’ve been thinking and, although I don’t altogether want to, I should see what my old shop’s been turned into before heading for Albin’s office. I doubt I’ll get past the front desk but at least I can go public and loud there. People employed by the financial industry aren’t meant to be financially iffy.’
And he probably wouldn’t want details of his sex life bandying about either, Nico thought, even as he recoiled from the scenario Hannah described. ‘Why don’t I go with you?’
‘Because it’s not your problem,’ she said reasonably, turning her beautiful eyes on him, more green than blue in the winter light streaming through the windows. ‘You don’t want the kids around. Imagine if some security guy ejects me.’ She smiled, but with a steely glitter that told him she considered herself capable of dealing with this.
Her solicitude for the kids ignited an unexpected flame of happiness inside him but he searched for a way to prevent her from bearding Albin alone.
Unexpectedly, Carina came to his rescue. ‘It’s always better to have a witness to a dispute. I love to visit Gamla Stan so let’s go there together. Then Nico can go with you and I’ll take the children to my favourite tea shop.’
After a moment’s deliberation, Hannah nodded. ‘Good point about a witness. Thank you.’
They checked out after breakfast, stowing their bags once more in the luggage room, then crunched along gritted, slushy pavements to the nearby open area of Rosenbadsparken where the tree trunks were painted green with lichen. The kids wanted to run – or, in the case of Maria, stagger – over the fresh white snow until their tracks criss-crossed a hundred times. Nico helped them make a giant snowball but it was difficult to encourage Maria to keep her gloves on and when she began to cry at her reddened hands Hannah picked her up and wrapped her own scarf around the frozen digits. For reasons best known to a two-year-old, this proved more acceptable than gloves and she remained on Hannah’s hip shouting, ‘Yo-zee, My-dad, Far-mor … snow!’ and going off into a musical ‘har har har har har’ when Josie slipped and landed on her face.
Eventually, Nico called a halt. ‘Time to go to Gamla Stan.’ He took Maria on his shoulders for the ten-minute walk, a mode of transport they both favoured over the buggy, which he’d left in Nässjö in any case.
They ambled across Vasabron gazing at the rushing water and the boats, the network of bridges connecting various parts of the city filled with cars or trains. Under the arches of the soaring parliamentary buildings Maria demanded to be returned to ground level to inspect the concrete lions placed in the streets as barriers to a repeat of the Stockholm truck attack. ‘RAAAAAH!’ she roared in her tiny voice, curling her fingers into claws as the lion gazed peaceably out from under his snow blanket. Nico was glad the innocence of children associated the lions with play, rather than the mowing down of innocent people who’d done nothing worse than be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
They turned uphill, passing shops and restaurants with blackboards offering hot chocolate, skirting the Nobel Museum, the old Stock Exchange, to browse the colourful Christmas market of Stortorget nestled between the buildings painted sage green, amber, blood red, pink or shades of honey, grey cobbles gleaming wet through trodden snow. The pretty red wooden stalls selling toys, ornaments, gifts and scarves were webbed with tinsel and coloured lights, the air heavy with the toffee-smell of street food.
Hannah was silent, though Josie’s chatter and Maria’s exclamations filled the air as she gazed around, her hair tumbling between hat and scarf, her gorgeous eyes wistful and apprehensive.
‘You OK?’ he murmured.
‘It’s odd to be back,’ she returned quietly. Odd, not good, he noticed. They were now yards from the shop she’d worked so hard to make a success and had such plans for, the shop that was inextricably bound up in her last relationship. He may have made love to her three times last night but, in comparison, he’d so far made it only to the fringes of her life.
He linked their gloved hands and she managed a smile but she clutched her stomach too. ‘I’m dreading seeing Hannah Anna Butik erased by some tawdry club with black curtains and a sinister sign above t
he door,’ she confessed.
He squeezed her fingers. His mum had taken the girls to look at a stall of wooden carvings painted green and red. ‘You don’t have to see it. We could head straight for Albin’s office in Frihamnen. Or I’ll pop round the corner and check it out and tell you.’
For a moment she looked tempted. Then she lifted her chin. ‘That feels too much like letting Albin win. It’ll be like the dentist – I’ll feel better once it’s over.’
Carina came back from the stall and agreed to take the children to the tea shop in Västerlånggatan, swinging Maria up into her arms. Nico dropped kisses on the girls’ heads and, after much waving goodbye, watched the little party depart, Josie trying to skate on the slushy snow.
Then, gripping Hannah’s hand, aware of her taking a deep breath, strode beside her out of the square and into Köpmangatan, more muted than Stortorget both in colour and noise level. As their feet carried them over the cobbles and around the corner onto less trampled snow, her stride faltered.
Nico halted.
The facade of Hannah Anna Butik didn’t look to have changed.
Fairy lights edged a window display of red hats and white scarves punctuated by the dull sheen of leather goods. As they watched, a woman emerged from the shop with a green paper carrier bearing the legend Hannah Anna Butik in gold.
Hannah dropped his hand, gasping, ‘What the hell?’
‘I don’t know. Let’s find out what’s going on.’ Nico had a nasty feeling Hannah wasn’t going to like it.
With a convulsive movement she marched up and blew through the front door like a storm. Nico followed a few casual paces behind, thinking it might prove useful not to make it obvious to whoever Hannah was about to confront that she had back-up. He closed the door, which was still trembling from the force of her entrance. A sweeping glance told him a man and a woman were standing behind the counter gaping at Hannah. He turned a browsing shopper’s stare on a stand of leather belts.
Christmas Wishes: From the Sunday Times bestselling and award-winning author of romance fiction comes a feel-good cosy Christmas read Page 26
