Rachel felt that hope flare up again. She just hoped Damon was brave enough to feel it too.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
‘IN FACT, I was thinking, maybe we could still get together, now and then, if you wanted. Just casually, of course.’ Damon was talking for the sake of talking and he knew it. But if he stopped, he knew Rachel was going to ask him for something he didn’t know how to give. So he just kept going. ‘It seems a shame to give up such great chemistry completely, right?’
Please, let it be enough. It’s all I know how to give you. Please.
He just needed time. He wasn’t an idiot. He’d known long before Celeste brought it to his attention that he was in over his head here. That what he felt for Rachel wasn’t like anything he’d felt before. That was why it was so terrifying.
Hell, he’d known nine years ago that if he got too close to this woman he’d fall. At eighteen he’d been smart enough to run the other way.
Apparently, growing up had made him stupid.
He needed time to figure out what it meant. How it fitted in with who he was. How he could still be him, when he felt this way about her.
‘I think a spring fling has a nice sound to it anyway, don’t you?’ He flashed his best, most charming smile, and hoped.
But Rachel wasn’t smiling. He knew that, even in the pitch dark of the winter night, with only faint lights from the windows, the moon and the street lights behind them to help him figure it out.
He stopped talking. People had been talking over Rachel, talking for her, for too many years already. He might be a complete arse but he wasn’t going to be another of those people.
However hard it was, he needed to listen to what she had to say.
‘Damon. That’s what I came here tonight to tell you. I don’t want a fling, festive, spring or otherwise, with you.’ She paused, taking a breath, and Damon resisted the urge to interrupt her. Just. ‘I’m in love with you. I know that wasn’t the deal we made, and it definitely wasn’t what I planned but… I knew it was a risk. I’ve, well, had a crush on you basically the whole time I’ve known you. I knew I should stay away to protect my own heart, I knew that you didn’t do commitment, that you weren’t offering anything beyond this Christmas. But the way I feel when I’m with you… Damon, you make me feel like I can do anything, and I want more of that feeling.’
‘You can do anything,’ he told her, because it might be his last chance. ‘You’re amazing.’
‘That’s what made me believe I could do this.’ She met his gaze with her own, and even in the half-light he could see the steely determination in it. ‘You taught me to ask for what I wanted. So I’m asking. I want you, Damon. Not for a fling, or for a season. Forever. I want you to love me the way I love you. I want us to be together. And I think deep down you might want the same thing too. So I’m asking…do you?’
It was as if his world had frozen.
So many years, so many people, jobs, opportunities, and nobody had ever asked him to stay, to commit. Not outright like that. Oh, people had hinted, made suggestions, always couched in terms that allowed them to save face if he said no. And he had always said no, because that wasn’t who he was.
For the first time, the smallest corner of his heart wanted to say yes.
But he couldn’t.
So he tried to negotiate.
‘I’m not ready to say goodbye to you yet, if that’s what you mean. So maybe we could—’
‘It’s not what I mean,’ she interrupted him, proving once and for all that she wasn’t the shy, easily intimidated Rachel everyone else seemed to think she was. ‘I’m not asking you to propose marriage here and now or anything, but I need to know if you’re willing to give a relationship between us a proper shot. To admit that this isn’t just “colleagues who have sex” or even a festive fling. That what we have matters. It’s special, and it means something, and you’re willing to commit to finding out where that leads us. If you can’t do that—’
‘I don’t commit,’ he said, automatically. ‘You know that.’
Was it the moonlight that made her expression look so pitying? He hoped so.
‘Because you have to keep your options open, right?’ She nodded and got to her feet, shrugging off his jacket and laying it on her empty seat. ‘Okay, then. Well, in that case, thank you for my first festive fling. It honestly changed my life. I’ll see you at work next week.’ And with that, she turned her back on him and walked away, taking that part of his heart he’d been ignoring for so long with her.
‘Wait!’ he called, but while her footsteps slowed, just for a moment, when he couldn’t find any more words to follow up with, she didn’t stop.
She left him sitting there in his parents’ garden, feeling like the biggest idiot known to man.
A feeling that didn’t dissipate when his sister appeared a few minutes later, and sat down beside him on the swing, crushing his jacket.
‘You are the biggest idiot known to man,’ she said.
‘I know.’ But what else could he have done? Rachel was asking for something he wasn’t able to give. Saying no now was far easier on everyone than going along with what she wanted, only to break her heart later when she realised he wasn’t the man she’d hoped he could be.
‘Let me guess.’ Celeste kicked off the floor with one foot, making the old swing seat sway forward and back. ‘She asked you to commit and you said no.’
‘Basically.’
‘Why? Because you wanted to be free to sleep with as many other women as possible?’
‘No!’ He was pretty sure he’d never find another woman like Rachel anyway. ‘Because I’m not that guy. I’d let her down, in the end, when she realised that.’
He needed to keep moving, keep things interesting, seek out new variety in his life. He couldn’t afford to become as tunnel-visioned as his parents had always been. He couldn’t pass up all the other opportunities that might come his way. Not other women, other relationships. Those were the last things on his mind right now. But committing, settling down, that meant saying no to other things, didn’t it? Meant always asking permission, always consulting someone else…
The way his parents never had.
They’d single-mindedly pursued their own interests and expected their children to be interested in the same things. He’d spent his whole life knowing he wasn’t good enough for them because he didn’t have that same passion for one subject. They’d chosen what mattered to them and gone after it, while he’d tried to take a different path by seeking variety in all things.
In fact, he’d chased constant change the way they’d chased their careers, to the point of ignoring all other options…
He’d thought he was so different from them, but what if he was just making the same mistakes in his own way? What if he’d been so fixated on moving forward that he failed to recognise the one thing worth standing still for?
Love.
‘Damon?’ Celeste actually sounded concerned, which meant he must look worse than he felt.
‘I’m okay.’ A lie, but then, she’d know that too.
‘For what it’s worth? I don’t think you’d let her down, little brother.’ Standing up, she pressed a quick kiss to his hair, something he couldn’t remember her doing since he was a child. ‘In fact, I think you’ve got a better handle on this love thing than most of us. You just need to be brave enough to go after it.’
Go after it. Go after her.
As he watched his sister walk away, the same way her best friend had not so long ago, the pieces started to fall into place in Damon’s head.
And suddenly, he knew what he had to do.
* * *
Rachel was not going to cry. She was absolutely not crying. She was not—
‘Need a tissue back there, love?’ The taxi driver reached back between the front seats and handed her one anyway, whic
h was just as well, as she couldn’t really talk much through her sobs.
‘Christmas can be tough,’ he added sagely as she blew her nose. ‘Now, let’s get you where you need to be.’
Theo had put her in the cab, bless him, and when the driver had asked her where she wanted to go she’d only hesitated for a moment.
She couldn’t go home, not knowing that Hannah, Gretchen, Maisie and her dad would be there, playing happy Christmas Eve family. Not when her stepsisters would know instantly what had happened—and wouldn’t hesitate to tell her that they had told her so. She needed a little time to herself before that happened.
She’d thought briefly of the department store. It would be empty, she had a key, and she could hide out in her little cupboard office until she felt ready to face the world again.
Except that was going backwards, back to who she had been before. And she wasn’t going to do that.
In fact, she’d sent her resignation letter to Hannah by email before heading to the party, just to ensure that she couldn’t.
So, with her past behind her, and the future she’d hoped for out of reach, that meant there was only one thing to do.
Build a new future.
‘Cressingham Arcade,’ she’d said. ‘Take me to the arcade.’
Because while the arcade would always be intrinsically linked to Damon in her mind and in her heart, it was also the place where she’d found her professional courage. It was where she’d realised for the first time that her window displays were something people valued, rather than something she was allowed to do as a favour from her stepmother. Where, working with the shopkeepers, she’d finally been able to put into practice all she’d learned in her years of studying, to bring to life all the ideas she had for bringing local businesses to the public eye. She’d been able to help people because she had skills and knowledge they didn’t. Ones they valued.
She’d never felt that way before. And she wasn’t going to give it up just because Damon wasn’t brave enough to face up to what he felt.
Besides, there was one last window she still hadn’t managed to transform. And she wanted it done before Christmas morning.
The arcade was in darkness, of course, but as she let herself in she realised it wasn’t actually empty. At the far end of the passageway there was a light on inside one shop. The shop she’d come to visit.
‘Mr Jenkins?’ Rachel leaned against the open doorway and looked in at the older man sitting hunched over at his desk.
He looked up, apparently unsurprised to see her. ‘You’re here to finish that window display, I suppose.’
‘If you don’t mind.’
Mr Jenkins waved a hand towards the window. ‘What do I care? It’s only my shop.’
That, Rachel decided, was practically an excited request for help, coming from Mr Jenkins.
‘I’ll get to work, then.’
* * *
The display had been building in her imagination for weeks, ever since she’d first visited the shop. Working under Mr Jenkins’s watchful eye—for all that he pretended he was paying her no attention at all—she quickly brought together all the elements she’d dreamt of.
There were her mice, of course—those featured in every window, in one way or another. And elements from the other shops in the arcade too, like silk flowers from the florist’s, a lace veil from the bridal boutique, beautiful papers and pens from the stationer’s, all to display Mr Jenkins’s jewels on. But most of the display elements came from the jeweller’s itself—not just the rings and necklaces and gems, but the vintage typewriter he kept behind the desk, and the black and white photo of a beautiful young woman from the shelf above it.
‘My late wife,’ he said, gruffly, when she asked if she could use it. ‘She always liked putting on a show. Reckon she’d like to be in your window too.’
It was more than an hour later that she finally stepped outside the shop, stretched out the kinks in her back and neck, and stood back to admire her handiwork.
There, sprawling from left to right across the window display, was the story she wanted to tell. A love story, of course. One that spanned years and continents—courtesy of the vintage clocks and map Mr Jenkins had squirrelled away in a cupboard. One written in piles of letters—delivered by mice, naturally—and culminating in a stunning engagement ring.
Suddenly, one last mouse appeared. A mouse in a red jacket, singing Christmas carols, placed next to the ring by a hand she recognised, although the face attached to it was hidden by the shadows of the shop.
He must have come in the back way, her mind noted absently. Mr Jenkins hates it when he does that.
But the thought was so surreal, she couldn’t quite process it, let alone begin to hope. Maybe she was imagining things. That made more sense than the alternative right now, given the way the rest of the evening had gone.
Rachel stared at the mouse as the hand pulled away, even as she heard the shop door open, and someone join her outside.
‘It’s perfect.’
At the sound of Damon’s voice, the spell broke, and she spun around, the display forgotten.
‘What are you doing here?’ Anger rose up in her, unexpected and unbidden. This was her future she was chasing. Couldn’t he give her one night to move on from their fling?
But Damon shifted his weight from one foot to the other, his expression nervous in the faded yellow of the arcade’s vintage lighting.
‘I’m here to follow your lead,’ he said. ‘To finally admit what I want…and ask for it.’
Anger faded. Instead, that flicker of hope, the one she’d swallowed down and tried to ignore as she’d walked away from him, returned. ‘And what do you want?’ She kept her tone neutral, free from emotion or influence. He needed to tell her, this time. To ask for what he wanted. What they both needed.
‘You. If you’ll have me.’
‘Why?’ She hoped his reasons were good. Because it was taking everything she had not to jump into his arms right now.
‘Because…because I realised I’ve been trying so hard not to be my parents I turned into them anyway. Because I never thought I could matter to someone the way I want to matter to you. Because when I’m with you, I don’t feel like my worth is weighed out in my achievements or my focus. Because…’ He paused, and motioned to the window behind her, turning her around to look at it herself. ‘Because I see these perfect worlds you create and I want to make them real for you. I want to give you everything you ask for, everything you can imagine.’
Rachel didn’t look away from the window, from the story she’d told there, knowing that the minute she met his gaze again she’d be in his arms. She needed answers first. ‘But…you told me no. You said you couldn’t. What changed?’
‘The world,’ he said simply. ‘It’s so much emptier without you in it.’
‘Good answer,’ she muttered. ‘So, what exactly are you asking for? Another fling?’
She held her breath until she saw him shake his head in the glass of the window. And then, to her astonishment, she saw his reflection drop down to one knee.
Rachel spun around to face him. ‘No.’
‘Yes,’ he said, with a grin. ‘I hope.’
‘You hate commitment. You hate being tied down to anything. Why would you propose to me?’
Damon took her hands in his and tugged her closer. ‘Because you don’t tie me down. You make me feel like I can take on the world. So, Rachel Charles, will you do me the incredible honour of being my wife?’
It was crazy. She knew it was crazy.
But at the same time…it felt completely right.
She wanted this.
‘I’m a little surprised you’re not making me ask you,’ she joked.
‘Feel free.’
Laughing, Rachel dropped to her knees in front of him, mirroring his pose. ‘Damon Hunter
, will you marry me?’
‘In a heartbeat,’ he said, and kissed her.
She could feel a lifetime in that kiss. A whole story waiting to be written. She never wanted it to end.
Then Mr Jenkins coughed loudly behind her. ‘Suppose you two had better come in and pick a ring, then.’
Rachel met Damon’s gaze and found everything she was looking for there. This wasn’t a dream.
This was her, awake to her own life at last. To all the possibilities that might give her.
Give them. Together.
‘Come on,’ Damon said. ‘You get to choose the ring.’
‘Damn right I do,’ Rachel replied. ‘And then we can go and tell Celeste she gets to be maid of honour. And she’s not allowed to wear black.’
Because if she was starting her new life, there was no one else she wanted beside her than the man she loved and her best friend.
She just hoped that one day Celeste would find the kind of forever love that she had. And that when she did, she’d be brave enough to ask for love in return.
* * * * *
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