Proposal At The Winter Ball (Harlequin Romance)

by Jessica Gilmore

  Alex rolled over, throwing his arm across her as he did so, and she lay there, enjoying his weight on her, the skin against skin, the smell of him. ‘Mmm?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Go back to sleep.’

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Yes, more than okay.’ But she wasn’t. The reality of what they had done was bearing down upon her. ‘Are we?’

  ‘Are we what?’

  ‘Okay?’

  He moved, propping himself up on one arm so that he could look down at her, a dark shadow in the dim room. ‘Second thoughts, Flora?’

  ‘No. I mean, it’s a little late for that.’

  He smoothed her hair back from her face, a tender gesture that made her chest ache and her eyes swell. ‘Good. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring, but right now I don’t want to change a thing. Except wonder why we didn’t do this a long time ago.’ His hand trailed a long, languorous line down her face, down her throat, down and down. It would be so easy to let it continue its slow tortuous journey.

  But his words reminded her of her vow. Her vow to try and help him. To make things right, somehow. She caught his wrist as it moved to her ribcage and held it. ‘What happened, Alex?’

  He laughed low and soft. ‘Do you need me to explain it to you?’

  She couldn’t help smiling in response but she clasped his wrist, her fingers stroking the tender skin on the inside. ‘Not tonight. Then.’

  He froze. ‘Don’t, Flora.’

  But she knew. If she didn’t ask him now he would never tell her. After all he had kept his secrets through the long, boozy university years, through long walks and bonfire heart-to-hearts. Through backpacking and narrow boats and noisy festivals. But tonight was different. Tonight there were no rules.

  ‘You came home from school,’ she remembered. ‘I had finished my GCSEs and you had done your AS Levels. I thought we would have another long summer together. But you were different. Quieter, more intense. More buttoned up. I had the most ginormous crush on you, which I tried to hide, of course. But that summer there were times when you looked at me as if...’ Her voice trailed off.

  ‘As if I felt the same way?’ he said softly.

  ‘We would be somewhere, just the two of us. On the roof talking, or lying on the grass, and I would look at you and it was as if time would stop.’ Their eyes would meet, her stomach would tighten in delicious anticipation and she would find it hard to get her breath. ‘And then nothing...’ She sighed. ‘I tried to kiss you that time. When we were watching that ridiculous horror film where all the teenagers died. I thought you would kiss me back but you didn’t. You looked so revolted...’ Her voice trailed away as she relived the utter humiliation, the heartbreak all over again.

  He pulled his hand away from her gentle grasp, pushing the hair out of his eyes. ‘Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if we had got together then. Do you think we’d be the friends we are now, our past relationship something to look back on nostalgically? Or maybe we would have ended badly and not speak at all. Or maybe we would have made it. Do you think that likely? How many people get together in their teens and make it all the way through college and university?’

  ‘Not many,’ she conceded. But they might have. If he’d wanted it.

  ‘You changed that year.’ He was still propped up on one arm, still looking down at her. She could smell the champagne on his breath, feel each rustle as he moved. ‘Boys watched you all the time—and I watched them watching you. But you didn’t even notice. I nearly made a move that New Year but I was away at school and we both had exams. So I told myself to wait. Wait till the summer.’

  ‘What changed?’ She hadn’t imagined it; he had felt it too.

  ‘My dad blamed me for my mother’s death.’ He said it so matter-of-factly that she could only lie there, blinking at the sudden change in conversation. ‘Did I ever tell you that?’

  ‘No.’ She moved away, just far enough to allow her to sit up, hugging her knees to her chest as she tried to make out his expression in the dim light from the fire. ‘I don’t understand. How? I mean, it was suicide, wasn’t it? Awful and tragic but nobody’s fault.’

  ‘He didn’t want children. All he wanted was her, just her. You know my father. He’s not the caring, sharing type. But she wanted a baby so much he gave in. He said it was the biggest mistake he ever made. That I was the biggest mistake... He was never really explicit but I think she suffered from fairly severe postnatal depression.’

  A stab of sorrow ran her straight through as she pictured the lonely motherless little boy alone with an indifferent father. Allowed to grow up believing he was the cause of his mother’s death. ‘Oh, Alex. I’m so sorry.’

  He shifted, sitting up beside her on the bed, leaning back against the pillows. ‘She hid it from him, from the doctors, from everyone. Until I was two. Then she just gave up. She left a note, saying what a terrible mother she was. That she couldn’t love me the way she was supposed to. That I would be better off without her...’

  Flora touched his face. ‘That doesn’t make it your fault. You know that, right?’

  ‘My father thought so.’ His voice was bleak. ‘That’s when he began to work all hours, leaving me with a series of nannies, packing me off to boarding school as soon as he could. He told me it was a shame he had to wait until I was eight, that he would have sent me at five if he could have.’

  Flora hadn’t thought it was possible to think any worse of Alex’s father. She had been spectacularly wrong. ‘He’s a vicious, nasty man. No wonder you came to live with us.’

  He carried on as if she hadn’t interrupted. ‘He married again. I didn’t really see much of him then, or of that particular stepmother, but apparently she wanted kids, wanted me around more and so the marriage broke up. He blamed me for that as well. I guess it was easier than blaming himself. And then that year, when I was seventeen, he remarried again.’

  ‘Christa.’ Oh, Flora remembered Alex’s second stepmother with her habit of flirting with every male within a five-mile radius. She had made Flora, already self-conscious, feel so gauche, so huge like an oversized giant. ‘Horry had a real crush on her. Do you remember how she used to parade around in those teeny bikinis when we came over to swim?’ She laughed but he didn’t join in and her laughter trailed off awkwardly.

  ‘It was so nice at first to have someone care. Someone to bring me drinks, and praise me and take notice, as if I were part of a real family. It didn’t even occur to me that other people’s mums didn’t ask their teenaged sons to rub suntan oil onto their bare back or sunbathe topless in front of them.’

  Flora’s stomach churned and she pressed her hand to her mouth. ‘Alex...’

  ‘She started to drop by my room for a chat when I was in bed. She’d stroke my hair and rub my shoulders.’ His voice cracked. ‘I was this big hormonal wreck. This woman, this beautiful, desirable woman, was touching me and I wanted her. I wanted her to keep touching me. But at the same time she revolted me, she was married to my father. And there was you...’

  ‘Me?’ Flora didn’t know at which point her eyes had filled with tears, hadn’t felt them roll down her face, it wasn’t until her voice broke on a sob that she realised she was crying. Crying for the little boy abandoned by his father, for the boy on the brink of adulthood betrayed by those he trusted to look after him.

  ‘I was falling in love with you that summer. But how could I touch you when at night...when I didn’t turn her away...when I lay there waiting and didn’t say no.’

  ‘You were a child!’

  ‘I was seventeen,’ he corrected her. ‘I knew what I was doing. I knew it was wrong—on every level. But I didn’t stop her. I let her in my room, I let her into my bed and in the end I didn’t just lie there...’

  Flora swallowed, clutching her stomach, nausea rolling through her. That wom
an with her tinkling laugh and soft voice and Alex? And yet it all made a hideous kind of sense. How withdrawn he had become, the way he would look at her as if something was tearing him apart but Flora couldn’t reach him. The knowing smile Christa would wear, the possessive way she’d clasp his shoulders. How had she been so blind?

  She made an effort to sound calm, to let him finally relieve himself of the burden he’d been carrying. ‘What happened next?’

  ‘By the end of the summer she had stopped being cautious. I didn’t want... It was one thing at night, with the lights out—that was more like a dream, you know? As if it wasn’t real. I would be back at school soon and the whole thing would just disappear. But Christa didn’t want that. She started to try and kiss me in the house, run her hand over my shoulder in front of people. She wanted to make love in the pool, in the kitchen. The more I tried to pull away, the more determined she became. I was just a pet, her toy. She didn’t want me to have any say in where or when or what. She was in control. And she was out of control. It was inevitable, I guess, that we’d be found out. My dad came home early one day and caught us.’

  ‘He blamed you.’ It wasn’t a question. She’d seen the aftermath. Alex, white-faced, all his worldly possessions in one bag, determined to make his own way in the world.

  ‘He told me I tainted everything I touched.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ but he was shaking his head even as she protested.

  ‘My mother died because she couldn’t love me. My father hates me. My stepmother...there’s something rotten at the heart of me, Flora.’

  ‘No. No, there isn’t.’ She was on her knees and holding onto him. ‘I love you, my parents adore you, for goodness’ sake even Minerva loves you, in her own way. There is a darkness in your family but it’s not you. It was never you.’

  But she wasn’t getting through; his voice was bleak, his face as blank as if it were carved out of marble. ‘I saw you look at me, back then, so hopeful. As if you were expecting something more. But I had nothing to give. Christa took it all, like some succubus, taking another piece of my soul every time we had sex. All those girls at the ice rink, and the girls I date now. I felt nothing. I am incapable of feeling anything real. That’s why I warned you to steer clear of me, Flora. There’s nothing real inside me.’

  She kissed him, his eyes, his cheeks, the strong line of his jaw, tasting the salt of her tears mingled with the salt on his skin. ‘You are real,’ she whispered as she pressed her mouth to his cold lips. ‘I know you are.’

  He didn’t respond for a long moment and then, with an anguished cry, he kissed her back; hard, feverish kisses as if he were drowning and she the air. Flora held on and let him hold on in return. She didn’t know who was saving who. And she wasn’t sure that it mattered.

  * * *

  Alex knew the exact moment Flora woke up. She didn’t move, didn’t speak, but he knew. He had kept watch over her through the night. A lone knight guarding his lady. Her breathing, so slow and steady, quickened. Her body tensed. Was she wondering what would happen in the harsh light of day? What reality would mean after the passions, the confidences, the outpourings of the night before.

  He wondered that too. He knew what had to be done but how he wished things were different. That he were different. ‘Lukewarm left-over champagne or coffee?’

  ‘Hmm?’ She sat up unsteadily, brushing the long tangled curls from her face and scrubbing her eyes like a small girl, her eyes widening as she looked at him. Was she surprised that he was out of bed? That he was already dressed in jogging bottoms and his own top, showered, shaved and ready to go. ‘You’re not serious about the champagne?’

  ‘It seems a shame to throw it away,’ he teased, deliberately keeping his tone light. ‘No. If it was chilled then that would be a whole different matter. There’s eggs. We could make breakfast or would you rather have some back at the hotel? There’s time. I texted your instructor to arrange a later meeting time.’

  ‘A later time?’ She sank back down onto her pillows dramatically. ‘I was planning to spend all day in the spa today. I have barely slept...’ She stopped, her cheeks pinkening in an interesting way. He wondered just how far down her blush crept—and then pulled his mind resolutely back to the matter at hand.

  ‘Don’t forget you have to get down the mountain first,’ Alex said helpfully and was rewarded with a glare.

  ‘Can’t we just stay here for ever?’ There was a plaintive note in her voice. He knew with utter certainty that it wasn’t just the skiing she was thinking about. It was the aftermath. Of course she was.

  His chest squeezed in sudden longing. Stay here for ever. Just Flora and Alex and a large bed and a supply of champagne. No facing the real world, no dealing with any situation. He inhaled long and deep, pushing the enticing vision away. ‘What would we do when the food ran out? Hunt squirrels and roast them on the stove?’

  ‘Not much meat on a squirrel.’

  ‘Then we’d better return to real life. Sorry, Flora.’

  She put out her hand. Part of him wanted to pretend he hadn’t seen it, the other part was drawn to her, could no more walk away than he could stop breathing. He paced himself as he walked towards the bed, slow, unhurried steps, seating himself on the edge, deliberately not touching her.

  ‘So, we pretend this hasn’t happened.’ She made it sound like a statement but he knew she needed an answer. Was she hoping he’d change his mind?

  ‘That’s best, isn’t it? No need to complicate things further.’ All he had to do was reach across, across just a few centimetres of rumpled white sheet. But it might as well have been metres, miles, oceans. Would she see a casual touch as encouragement? As a declaration?

  Would he mean it as such?

  He couldn’t. He mustn’t. If he allowed the slight torch she had always carried for him to blaze into brightness then all would be lost. He didn’t know which would be worse—if it flickered and died when she discovered how hollow he really was for herself. Or if it continued to flame until he did something stupid, something unconscionable and broke her heart.

  And he would.

  His father’s voice echoed through his mind. Mocking him. You taint everything you touch. Nobody could care for you. You disgust me.

  He couldn’t cope if he lost Flora.

  She touched his arm, a small caress. ‘What are you thinking?’ Ah, the million-dollar question and one he had always hated. He never got the answer right.

  But he was compelled to tell the truth. ‘I don’t want you to hate me.’

  She rounded on him, eyes blazing. ‘I could never hate you. Why? Because of last night? You were very clear it was a one-night deal and I understood that. Don’t make this into some kind of melodrama. It was just sex.’

  But her eyes fluttered as she said the words and she couldn’t look him in the eye.

  ‘Good sex,’ she amended. ‘But, you know, I’m not planning to join a nunnery because there won’t be a repeat.’

  Alex didn’t feel quite as comforted by her words as he should have done. This was the result he wanted, wasn’t it? There was a little part of him that had always wondered what if about Flora Buckingham and, sure, he had pointed out last night that a teen grand affair was bound to crash and burn, but still. He had wondered.

  Now he knew. And even better she had no expectations beyond a cup of coffee and that he guide her safely to the bottom of the ski slope. By the time they got back to her parents’ they would be their old selves. Only better. No more moments when he would look up and see a hopeful yearning in her face, no more watching her covertly as she walked across a room.

  They had scratched that itch and it was satisfied. Let Flora move on to someone who deserved her. As for him? Well, maybe he would date a little less widely, date a little more wisely.

  The thought made his chest feel as hollow
as his heart.

  Flora scrambled to her knees, the sheet held high against her chest, a thin barrier of cotton yet as effective as a cast-iron chastity belt. You have no rights here. ‘We just need to get through the rest of this week. What do you want to do, tell Camilla that we quarrelled and get your room back? I mean...’ as he raised an eyebrow at her ‘...you don’t want to spend the next three nights on that sofa, do you? Unless...’

  ‘Unless?’ His pulse began to pound at the spark in her eye.

  ‘We are meant to be dating, after all.’

  ‘Flora...’

  ‘Same rules,’ she said hurriedly. ‘No expectations, no protestations. What happens in Innsbruck stays in Innsbruck but, seriously. You can’t stay on the sofa. We don’t want to make Camilla suspicious. As long as we’re both clear about the rules, what’s the harm?’

  ‘We get back on Christmas Eve,’ he reminded her. ‘Straight to your parents’. Won’t they guess?’

  ‘How? We promised not to let anything change our friendship and it’ll be finished by then. Finished the moment we get into the taxi to drive to the airport. Maybe you were right, we would have had a mad teen thing, all drama and lust, and it would have been glorious—and it might have ruined us for ever. But we’re older now, we’re far more sensible. It doesn’t have to ruin anything. But I reckon we’re owed just a few days of crazy fun. We owe it to our younger selves.’

  It was a convincing argument—if he didn’t examine it too closely. ‘I suppose we do at some point. Guess it’s either now or when we’re in the nursing home.’

  ‘We might be married to other people when we’re in the nursing home,’ she pointed out. ‘Plus right now I’m still reasonably pert and have all my own teeth. You might not be so keen when we’re finally retired.’

  His mouth dried. Did she know what she was offering? The rest of the week as a no-strings, full-fun affair. He didn’t deserve it; he didn’t deserve her. But he wasn’t strong enough to turn her down.