‘Thanks for the tip.’ He stared out at the sky again and they sat in silence. The unspoken questions hung heavy in the air. What were they doing, sat together on the edge of the world? Why were they both still here? What did they want from each other?
‘Who made the snowman?’ he asked, after a while.
‘Madeleine did most of the work.’ Tania smiled at the memory of Madeleine winding that ridiculous scarf around its neck, the satisfaction clear in her eyes as she pulled her woolly hat further over the curtains of her brown hair and stood back to admire her handiwork. Pressing a little of the snow into the palm of her glove, she bounced it until it fell off. ‘She’s lucky that the snow stuck together, sometimes it’s too dry.’
From the corner of her eye she could tell he was watching her, the edges of his lips curling into the hint of a smile. He balled a soft fistful of snow from the roof.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It definitely sticks together.’ He launched it gently in her direction. It disintegrated against the arm of her jacket, partly sticking, partly shattering into shards of glitter in the moonlight.
‘Oh, I see,’ she said. ‘Challenge accepted.’ Her retaliation came in the form of a double handful of snow aimed at his face. It missed, hitting the roof behind him instead. She ducked down to grab more from the ground while he swiped snow from the roof and sent it arcing towards her. As she stood upright it hit her on the side of her neck, some of the snow melting instantly against her skin and sliding down the inside of her collar. The shiver was involuntarily. ‘Bastard,’ she squeaked, inhaling the word as the shock of the cold took effect.
‘Oh, shit,’ he said, laughing. ‘I was aiming over your head, honestly.’
As he pulled off a glove, his gaze assessed the damage, the laugh gone with his concentration turning to the task in hand. An innocent enough action as he flicked the worst of the snow away, but every gentle touch of his fingertips was supercharged against Tania’s skin. She hadn’t been expecting such a strong reaction to his sudden proximity and she stood, stock-still, aware of everything and nothing all at the same time. She could smell pine needles, but wasn’t sure if it came from the trees that surrounded them, or his skin. Breathing in again, the pine needles were joined this time by a note of cinnamon, or perhaps citrus.
She glanced up at his face, at the concentration written all over it, the ridiculously long eyelashes framing his serious nut-brown eyes, the beginnings of a shadow prickling his jawline. His lips, gently parted, breath escaping them in a puff of silver. Another shiver, but this time it had nothing to do with the last of the icy water trickling down her neck.
He continued to brush at her collar, even though the snow was long gone. It was as if he didn’t want to relinquish his reason to be this close to her. The movement of his fingers slowed, became more lingering, more languid. He pushed at her hair, exposing more of her neck to the moonlight, giving his fingers more skin to trail their way across. The soft lines between his eyebrows creased as his hand stopped moving, resting lightly against the curve of her neck, tiny movements from his thumb caressing the skin beneath her jaw. Tania realised she was holding her breath, desperately hoping that he might replace his touch with his lips. She wanted the warmth from his breath against her neck, the feel of his lips against her skin.
Instead, he gently removed his fingers. He sighed and made to take a step back.
‘No,’ she said, prompted into action and folding her gloved hand around the collar of his jacket. She took hold of the material and pulled him closer again. ‘You’re not going anywhere.’
She’d planned to bring him up here and explain that, if all it was destined to be was a quick Christmas shag in the mountains, then she had more important people to concentrate on. That she had her friend to think about, that Clara needed her a hell of a lot more than Tania needed a time-sensitive fling with him. That she would be able to ignore the feeling in the base of her stomach; and the thoughts that had flitted through her mind all night would eventually subside.
That if they were just going to be wasting a little time together, then they were wasting one another’s time.
But as her lips found his, and the arms he wrapped around her felt every bit as strong as she’d hoped they would, and she yielded to the pressure from his lips and his tongue and his heat, she knew it wasn’t going to be that simple.
Chapter 21
‘How long should we wait?’ Clara said, checking her watch again. ‘They left a good half an hour ago.’ She glanced at Tom, busy as always in the kitchen, lowering her voice as she said, ‘I don’t think it’s fair on Tom.’
The lift of Rose’s eyebrows told her they were thinking along the same lines. If Tania did reappear any time soon, it was perfectly possible that food would be the last thing on her mind, anyway.
‘I’ll phone her, find out how long she’s going to be,’ Rose said, reaching for her mobile. A futile exercise, as it turned out, when Tania’s phone lit up and began to vibrate its way across the coffee table. ‘Great,’ Rose said, cancelling the call.
‘I hope she’s OK.’ Madeleine fiddled absently with a cuff. ‘I just thought …’
‘You just thought you’d play matchmaker,’ Rose said. ‘Which is cool. But rather surplus to requirements, where Tania is concerned.’
Clara got to her feet and headed towards Tom. In her opinion, a matchmaker was exactly what Taniadidneed. Her friend had never had trouble finding men, but the ones she found were, more often than not, trouble. She wondered if Gull fell into that category. And if he didn’t, she wondered if Tania would allow him to get any closer to her than her statutory skin-deep approach to relationships.
‘Tom, I think we should make a start on dinner. Can you keep some for Tania, and her guest if he stays?’
‘Of course.’ Flashing her an amiable smile, he wiped his fingers on a tea towel as he checked the oven. ‘Just give me five minutes to dish up and it’ll be ready.’
Clara found herself smiling, too, reaching out a hand to rest on his arm. ‘Thank you.’
His skin was warm under her touch, as were his eyes when he turned to look at her. ‘Clara, it’s my pleasure,’ he said, the burr of his accent as soft as the words spoken.
An indeterminate amount of time passed for Tania, in Gull’s arms. She lost all sense of time around the same moment she lost the ability to hold herself up. It was just as well his arms maintained their firm grip around her waist, her stumble simply prompting him to pull her against him even harder.
It wasn’t that she’d never been kissed like this before. It wasn’t anything as coy as that. It wasn’t even how much he was turning her on, although that was at the high end on the scale of lukewarm to seismic. There was something else that was turning this into a kiss her knees seemed unprepared for.
The trouble was, she had no idea what that was. Her brain couldn’t form the nebulous, fractured glimpses into a firm thought. And, at this moment, she decided it didn’t really matter. She could try to pin that down at some other time. A time when she wasn’t totally absorbed by the pressure from his firm body against hers, with the backs of her legs tight against the edge of the building and her concentration on his kiss blocking out the rest of the world. All she needed in this moment was his touch, her accompanying trembling told her that much. This moment was absolute.
Eventually, when he did pull back from her, checking his watch and swearing under his breath, she couldn’t focus on anything properly.
