Married Under The Mistletoe. Linda Goodnight
and chips on the table had long ago grown cold and greasy. Papers, phone numbers, business cards and other evidence of a budding business venture lay strewn around him in the darkness. He should be satisfied. But he wasn’t.
Except for a few, brief conversations Stephanie Ellison had avoided being alone with him since his arrival. She was friendly enough when he went into the restaurant. She even smiled indulgently at his feeble jokes and brought him a drink. But long after the restaurant closed, she remained downstairs.
And he wanted to know why. This was her flat. She should be comfortable here even with him present. Worst of all, he didn’t enjoy feeling like an interloper. He’d had enough of that when he was a kid and Mum brought friends to their hotel.
So tonight he’d waited up for little Miss Manager.
When her key turned in the lock and she walked in, Daniel was ready for her.
Light flooded the room.
“Are you avoiding me?”
Stephanie looked up, manicured fingers on the light switch, clearly startled to find him still awake, sitting in the midnight darkness. “I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me.”
She didn’t answer. Instead, she took one glance at the flat and started her incessant tidying up.
“Leave it,” he growled, annoyed that once again she was trying to sidestep him.
She kept working. “My goodness, you’re in a mood tonight. What’s wrong?”
“You.” Actually, she wasn’t the only problem, but the one he wanted fixed first. The others could wait.
Her fidgety hands stilled on the fish and chips wrapper. “And just what have I done that’s so terrible?”
“You skip out of here at pre-dawn, seldom come up to your own flat throughout the day, and then sneak in long after I’ve gone to bed.”
“Managing a restaurant requires long hours.” She tossed his forgotten dinner into the bin and then turned on him, green eyes flashing. “And I do not sneak.”
“Have you always worked eighteen-hour days? Or only since taking me on as a flatmate?”
She gathered the papers from the floor and made a perfect stack on the table. “Why are you asking me this?”
“Just answer the question. Are you avoiding me?”
“Of course not. How ridiculous.”
“Good. Then stop clearing up my mess and come sit down.”
“I’ve worked all day and I’m very tired.”
“You are avoiding me. All I’m asking is a few minutes of your time. We are flatmates, after all. We live together, but one of us is not living here.” Daniel didn’t care that he sounded like a nagging wife. He wanted to know what her problem was.
She rolled her eyes. “Okay. Fine. I’ll sit.”
And she did. Like a gorgeous red-plumed bird, she perched on the edge of a chair opposite him ready to fly away at any moment. Her hands twisted restlessly in her lap. He had the strongest urge to reach over and take hold of them.
“I haven’t ax-murdered you in your sleep, have I?”
Her lips twitched. “Evidently not.”
At last. He was getting somewhere, though why he cared, he couldn’t say.
“So stop being so jumpy.” It irritated him.
“I am not—” But she didn’t bother to finish the denial. “What do you want to talk about? Is there a problem with the flat? A problem with the new business?”
“Do you ever relax? Maybe read a book or watch the telly?”
“When I have time.”
Which he doubted was ever.
He pushed. “How much of London have you seen since you’ve been here?”
“Not nearly as much as I’d like, but I love it. The museums, the history.”
“We’re steps away from some of the finest museums in the world. Which ones have you seen?”
“The Royal College of Art,” she shot back.
No surprise there. He knew from looking at the walls in the flat and in the restaurant that she fancied modern art, the kind he couldn’t begin to understand. There wasn’t a realistic picture anywhere in the place.
“Where else?”
She shrugged and went silent.
“That’s it? You’ve not done the palace or the Victoria and Albert Museum?” They were right around the corner.
“Not yet. But I will.”
“What about Hyde Park?”
“I jog there.”
“A picnic is better. What say we have one?”
Her hands stopped fidgeting. “A picnic?”
Was that longing he heard?
“Yep. Tomorrow afternoon. Hyde Park.”
She shook her head; waves of red swung around her shoulders. “I’m too busy.”
“So am I.” Suddenly, he wanted a picnic more than anything. “But real life happens in between the busyness, Stephanie.”
Her gaze slid up to his, slid away, then came back again. She wanted to. He was certain of it.
He gave her a half smile. It probably looked sinister but he hoped for charm. “Avoiding me again?”
“No!”
He lifted a doubting brow.
She sighed. “All right, then, a picnic. Tomorrow after the noon rush.”
Triumph, way out of proportion to the event, expanded in Daniel’s chest. At last. He was getting somewhere with the cool and aloof one. Though why it mattered, he had no idea.
“You’re going on a picnic?” Chef Karl, slim and neat in his burgundy chef’s coat, froze with one hand on the parmesan and the other on a giant pan of fresh veal.
“Yes, Karl, a picnic,” Stephanie said coolly, though her nerves twitched like a cat’s tail. “Not bungee jumping from the London Bridge.”
“But—” his wide brow, reddened by heat and concentration, puckered “—you never take time off.”
“She is today.” Daniel, purring like an oversized pussycat and resembling a pillaging pirate, burst through the metal swinging doors that led into the kitchen from the back of the restaurant.
Stephanie’s twitchy nerves went haywire. She had to grab on to the stainless-steel counter to, literally, get a grip.
My goodness, that man takes up a lot of space.
Karl, who hadn’t a subtle bone in his body, looked from Stephanie to Daniel. “Oh. I see.”
Exactly what he saw, Stephanie didn’t know and didn’t want to know. The staff had no right to poke into her personal life, although she now realized she and Daniel would become this afternoon’s gossip.
Great. She was already struggling with last night’s decision. What had she been thinking to agree to such a silly thing? Such a dangerous thing? But the truth was she wanted to go on a picnic. With her new roommate. And she did not want to obsess over the reasons.
When she’d come in last night to find Daniel sitting in the dark surrounded by his usual mess, she’d been tempted to run back down the stairs. He was right. She had been avoiding the flat, partly because of him. Partly because she dreaded the nightmares that had begun with his arrival.
She