One Scandalous Christmas Eve

by Susan Stephens

  ‘Is that why you’re doing nursing?’

  ‘Partially. I wanted to know more so that I could help people when they needed it and I like doing useful, practical stuff.’ Pixie sighed, a rueful smile tugging at her generous mouth. ‘And to be frank, I was also the sort of child who bandaged teddy bears and tried to raise orphaned baby birds. My brother calls it a save-the-world mentality.’

  ‘I have a brother too but we’re estranged,’ Tor heard himself volunteer, and wondered for the first time if that old saying about alcohol loosening the tongue could actually be true because he was gabbling like a chatterbox, which he was not and never had been. He was innately reserved, rather quiet outside working hours. Or was it her affecting him? Unthreatening and studiously unsexy as she was in her pale grey pyjamas adorned with little pink flamingos? And no sooner had he thought that than he had to notice the stupendously sexy thrust and sway of a pair of firm full breasts beneath her top as she clambered up on the stool to eat her toastie.

  ‘You’re estranged?’ Her big blue eyes clouded with sympathy. ‘That’s sad.’

  ‘No, it’s not. He slept with my wife!’ Tor bit out, shocking himself with that revelation, which had never crossed his lips before, not to anyone, not for any reason, a sordid secret he had planned to keep buried until the day he died.

  Pixie’s eyes widened in shock. ‘Oh, my goodness...’ she gasped. ‘Your brother did that?’

  ‘He and I didn’t grow up together. We are not close,’ Tor acknowledged grudgingly. ‘But I could never forgive him for that betrayal.’

  ‘Of course, you couldn’t.’

  That first confession having leapt from his tongue, Tor was discovering that for some inexplicable reason he could not hold back the rest. ‘On the night my wife died she admitted that she had fallen in love with Sev before we married but that she fought her feelings out of loyalty to me and assumed she would get over him.’

  ‘She still shouldn’t have married you,’ Pixie opined feelingly. ‘She should’ve told you she was having doubts before the wedding.’

  ‘That would certainly have been less devastating than the end result.’ His lean, bronzed face could have been sculpted out of granite, his dark-as-night eyes flinty and hard. ‘Finding out several years down the road that our whole life together was a fake, a lie, was much worse and...and I didn’t handle it well,’ he completed in a raw undertone.

  ‘I should think you were in shock.’ Pixie sighed, retrieving his coffee mug and moving to refill it.

  ‘Still doesn’t excuse me.’ The eyes she had believed were so dark focused on her absently and she saw the gleams of gold lightening them to bronze. Such beautiful eyes, fringed and enhanced by ridiculously long black lashes. He was shockingly attractive, she thought, struggling to concentrate and avert her attention from the perfect slash of his dark brows, the exotic slant of his high cheekbones and the fullness of his mouth.

  ‘Why? What did you do?’ she prompted.

  ‘When I arrived home, she was putting cases into her car. That was when she told me about the affair...at the very last minute. I had no suspicion that there was another man in her life but, after three years of what I had believed was a happy marriage, she was just going to leave me a note.’ His nostrils flared with disgust. ‘We had a massive argument. It was...chaotic,’ he selected roughly. ‘I barely knew what I was saying.’

  ‘Shock,’ she told him again. ‘It intensifies everything you feel but at the same time you’re not yourself. You’re not in control.’

  ‘I said a great deal I regret... I was cruel,’ Tor admitted unevenly, biting back the final shameful admission that Katerina had made, which had torn him apart: her insistence that the daughter he loved was not his child but had been fathered by her lover.

  ‘You weren’t prepared. You had no time to think.’

  Warmed by her compassionate need to console him, he reached for her hand where it rested on the counter and squeezed it gently before withdrawing his touch again. ‘You may be able to save the world, but you can’t save me from a world of regret. Katerina raced upstairs to lift our daughter out of her cot. My wife was very worked up by that stage and in no condition to drive. I tried to reason with her, but she wouldn’t listen to me. Sofia was screaming and upset...’

  His voice had become gruff and he lifted his hands to scrub at his face, wiping away the dampness on his cheeks, and her heart went out to him in that moment because she knew that he was recalling the guilt and powerlessness that grief inflicted. ‘It was all madness that night, madness and chaos,’ he continued. ‘Katerina drove off far too fast and the car skidded on the icy drive and careened into a wall.’

  ‘So, you saw it happen.’ Pixie was lost for words, full of sympathy for him, able to see that he was still torturing himself for what he had said and done that night in his own shock and distress.

  ‘And it was too late to change anything,’ he completed in a curt undertone.

  Her eyes connected with his, awash with fellow feeling and understanding. ‘You recall every wrong thing you ever did or said to the person. Every emotion is exaggerated. When my mother was passing, I was beating myself up for being cheeky to her when she had told me to clean my room. That’s being human.’

  Tor sat back tautly. ‘I don’t know why I’ve told you all this. I’ve never talked to anyone about it before.’

  ‘No one?’ Pixie pressed in surprise.

  ‘I didn’t want to tell anyone the truth about what happened that night. I didn’t want anyone judging Katerina or thinking less of her. The truth wouldn’t have eased the shock of her death and my daughter’s for anyone, least of all her own family. It would only have caused greater distress.’

  ‘But staying silent, forcing yourself to go on living a lie made it harder for you,’ Pixie slotted in with a frown.

  ‘I’ve got broad shoulders...and I really don’t know what I’m doing here,’ Tor confessed, the smouldering, breathtaking appeal of his bemused eyes and drowsy smile washing over her, imbuing her with a sense of connection she had never felt with any man before. ‘It must be true that it’s easier to talk to a stranger. But I think it’s time for me to order that taxi.’

  ‘Possibly,’ Pixie muttered self-consciously, scrambling off the stool in haste and beginning to tidy up to keep her hands busy. She stacked the dishwasher, darting round the island at speed to gather up the dishes before opening the tall larder cupboard to stow away the clutter of condiments that had been left sitting out.

  ‘What’s the address?’ he asked her as he paced several feet away with his phone in his hand, a deprecatory smile of great charm curving his mobile mouth at his having to ask that basic question that divulged the reality that he truly didn’t know where he was.

  For a split second she couldn’t drag her eyes from him, that half-smile somehow enhanced by the black shadow of stubble framing it and defining his strong jawline, his eyes gleaming a glorious tigerish gold. There was a condensed power to him, a leashed energy that sprang out at her.

  Pixie had to think for a second before trotting out the address in a rush, stumbling and correcting herself with the number, and she was already scolding herself for her reaction to him. He was a very, very good-looking guy and naturally she had noticed, but she had also immediately recognised that he was way, way out of her league. She was ordinary, he was something far superior, not only in the looks department, but also with his instinctive assurance and ingrained courtesy.

  ‘The taxi will be here in five minutes.’ Tor dug the phone back into his jeans and walked towards her.

  ‘I’ll wait outside. Thanks for feeding me...and for listening,’ he murmured ruefully. ‘I didn’t even ask you for your name.’

  She laughed. ‘Pixie...’

  His brows pleated as he stared at her. ‘Pixie?’

  ‘I was a very small, premature baby. Mum thought it was
cute.’ Pixie wrinkled her tip-tilted nose, eyes blue as cornflowers gazing up at him.

  Marvelling at the truth that she was barely tall enough to reach his chest, for he stood over six feet in height, he extended a lean brown hand. ‘I’m Alastor Sarantos but I’ve always been called Tor.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you.’

  As he swung away to leave, he walked head first into the larder cupboard door and reeled back from it, sufficiently stunned by the blow to his temple to grab the edge of the island to steady himself and stay upright. Pixie gasped and rushed over to him.

  ‘No...no, stay still, don’t move,’ she warned him. ‘You hit your head hard.’

  His hand lifted to his temple in a clumsy motion and he blinked in bemusement. ‘That hurt,’ he admitted.

  Guilt assailed Pixie as she glimpsed the still-swinging door, which she had neglected to close. It was her fault that he had been injured. ‘Can I check your head?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he told her, even as he swayed, and he frowned at her because, she reckoned, he was having difficulty focusing on her.

  ‘No, you’re not. Nobody could be fine after smacking their head that hard,’ she declared, running light fingers across his temple, feeling the bump in dismay while being relieved that he hadn’t cut himself and there was no blood. ‘You’re not bleeding but you are going to have a huge bruise. I think you should have it checked out at A & E because you probably have a concussion.’

  ‘I will be absolutely fine.’ Tor swore impatiently as he attempted to walk away and staggered slightly.

  ‘You’re still very dizzy. Take a moment to get steady. You can lie down in my room until the taxi arrives,’ Pixie murmured as she planted a bracing arm to his spine and directed him down the hall to the room next door. He towered over her, his big powerful frame rigid as he attempted to put mind over matter.

  ‘Are you feeling sick?’

  ‘No,’ he told her very drily.

  No, big masculine men didn’t like to be knocked off balance by any form of weakness, she thought, feeling guiltier than ever about his plight and his doubtless aching head as she pushed open the door of her room and guided him over to the bed.

  He lowered himself down and kicked off his shoes. Pixie set them side by side neatly on the rug. ‘You can nap. You seem to be thinking coherently.’

  From his prone position, Tor rested dazed, long-suffering dark golden eyes on her anxious face. ‘I don’t want to be saved right now. Go save someone else,’ he urged.

  It was a polite way of telling her that she was being irritating and she gritted her teeth on a sharp comeback.

  Copyright © 2020 by Lynne Graham

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  ISBN-13: 9781488068713

  One Scandalous Christmas Eve

  Copyright © 2020 by Susan Stephens

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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