A Winter’s Tale by Carrie Elks (12)

‘You’re in charge of a dog?’ Cesca asked, sounding as though she was trying to swallow down a laugh. ‘But you hate dogs.’

‘He’s OK,’ Kitty said, keeping her voice low as she leaned her head against the living room wall. Jonas was about ten yards away, attempting to arrange the nativity scene on the console table. Even with that distance, she didn’t want him to hear and spoil the surprise. ‘He’s just a puppy.’

‘How the hell do you get yourself into these situations?’ Cesca asked. ‘Only you would end up in the middle of nowhere with a bloody dog.’

‘Unlike you,’ Kitty pointed out, still whispering, ‘who just ended up in the middle of nowhere with the man she hated most in the world.’

‘Well now you put it like that, maybe we’ve got a lot in common.’ This time Cesca let her laughter escape, chuckling loudly. ‘But don’t forget I ended up falling in love with that man. Don’t tell me you’re going to fall in love with the dog, too?’

Kitty rolled her eyes. ‘That’s lovely, Jonas,’ she shouted as he looked at her for a reaction. ‘They look great.’ Bringing her attention back to her sister, she added, ‘I don’t think I’ll be falling for any animals here. Or men, for that matter.’ Why the heck did that make her think about Adam? Ugh, she needed to get him out of her brain. ‘And anyway, the dog has been found a temporary home, far away from me. I only have to see him once a day.’

‘Ooh, where?’

‘He’s staying with Jonas’s uncle.’

‘The famous Adam Klein? Mr Cornflakes?’ Cesca asked, sounding surprised. ‘Doesn’t he hate your guts?’

‘That’s him.’

‘Maybe he’s not so bad after all,’ Cesca said. ‘How old did you say he was again?’

‘Cess…’ Kitty warned. ‘Don’t go there.’

‘Where? I’m just asking how old he is, for sisterly reasons. You know, in case the two of you end up bonding over cornflakes or something.’

‘Stop it.’

Cesca laughed. ‘So how old is he? Tell me, or I’ll Google him. And then I’ll send you sexy photos of him every day.’

Kitty sighed. Once Cesca got the bit between her teeth she was impossible to evade. ‘I don’t know, thirty-something, I guess?’

‘Ooh, a much older man. You floozy.’

‘There’s nothing going on!’ Kitty protested. Annie walked into the living room and raised an eyebrow at her. ‘I’ve got to go, I’m in the middle of decorating the house.’

‘OK, but call me back later. I need to know everything.’

‘There’s nothing to know. And I’m busy later.’

‘Doing what?’ Cesca asked.

‘Avoiding you. Now goodbye.’ Kitty flicked her finger across the screen, ending the call, before walking over to help Jonas and Annie with the decorations.

Less than a minute later her phone buzzed in her pocket, telling her she had a text message. It was almost certainly from Cesca.

Yeah, she wouldn’t be looking at that any time soon.

 

By the time Adam and his father returned to the house in the late afternoon, all the decorations were hanging and the tree was lit up with hundreds of tiny lights. They blinked on and off to the sound of the Christmas album, while Jonas and Kitty sang along.

Adam’s expression of shock when he walked through the door made Kitty want to smile. He looked around, his eyes wide, as if full of childlike wonder. Mr Klein’s eyes filled with tears, and he shook his head.

‘Did you do this?’ Adam asked Annie, his voice gruff.

‘The three of us did. Though I have to admit with my knees being as bad as they are, Kitty did most of the hard work.’

‘You should have seen her climb up the ladder to put the star at the top of the tree,’ Jonas told him. ‘She was so wobbly I thought she was going to fall off.’

‘I’m not good with heights,’ Kitty admitted, looking at the floor with embarrassment. ‘I got a little dizzy up there.’

When she looked up again, her eyes met Adam’s. Like earlier, when they were talking about the dog, he had a softness in his expression that almost took her breath away.

‘Thank you,’ he finally said. ‘It means a lot.’

‘Kitty had another idea as well. She suggested we move the big screen TV up to Mrs Klein’s room so we can all have movie nights together. You know how much Mary loves her Christmas films.’

‘It was your idea, too,’ Kitty protested. She felt uncomfortable in the spotlight of everybody’s stares. ‘You were the one who said she loved It’s a Wonderful Life, so don’t give me all the credit.’

Adam was still looking at her. Kitty had to admit there was something about his scrutiny that made her feel warm from the inside out. There was also something about seeing him up here in the house that confused her; surrounded by civilisation he looked less angry and feral than he did when she saw him down by the lake.

For the first time she saw a resemblance to Everett in him. As much as she disliked her boss, she had to admit he was a good-looking man. Not attractive, though. That took more than simple skin-deep beauty. To be attractive you had to have a beautiful soul. With his angry temperament and heated outbursts, Everett clearly didn’t have that.

‘I think it’s a great idea,’ Adam said, his voice still soft. ‘I’ll get the TV carried up to her room. Her ambulance should be here in an hour or so. It will be good to have her home for the holidays.’

Something about his expression tugged at Kitty’s heartstrings. His eyes were clouded and distant, like a little boy lost.

Memories of her own mother popped into Kitty’s mind. Faded photographs of a woman who always had the biggest smile, surrounded by four young girls and the chaos they brought with them. With her family around her, Milly Shakespeare always seemed in her element.

Maybe he noticed the tears springing to Kitty’s eyes, or perhaps he was just grateful for her suggestions. Whatever it was, Adam walked over and grabbed her hand, squeezing it tightly within his calloused palm. The unexpected shock of his touch made Kitty’s heart stutter.

‘Thank you,’ Adam said again. ‘It will mean everything to Mom.’

Her breath still caught in her throat, all Kitty could do was nod, biting her lip to stop the tears from forming. Adam let her hand go and turned away, walking out of the kitchen and into the hallway. She watched him intently, trying to work out exactly who he was. Angry deer-killer, gruff bearded man, kind uncle… None of them quite described the man whose touch just set her on fire. He was multifaceted and complicated as hell, more difficult to work out than a quadratic equation.

Yet he was a puzzle she was desperate to solve.

 

Adam walked into the living room and over to the wide picture window, leaning against the wall in an effort to catch his breath. He had to leave the kitchen before he did something stupid… like cry, or possibly hug the hell out of Jonas’s English nanny. There was something about the way she was staring at him, her eyes wide and glassy, her expression full of emotion, that made him want to gather her in his arms and hold her tight.

It was just the excitement of the day playing tricks on his mind. Even when he was filming, and having to deal with the horrors of drug dealers or traffickers, he always managed to find succour in the warm arms of a willing woman. This need for Kitty Shakespeare was no different to that.

A distraction, that’s all she was. Not an unwelcome one, either. But it took a lot for him to drag his mind away from the way she’d looked in that hallway, her blonde hair haloed by the flashing tree lights. A conflict raged inside him, and he tried to remind himself that she’d driven him crazy ever since she’d arrived on the mountain, from the moment he’d climbed out of his truck and seen her leaning over that dying deer.

But that wasn’t all she was. He’d seen her play with Jonas until the kid was howling with laughter, take care of a puppy that she hadn’t asked for, and now she’d decorated a house that didn’t belong to her. She was kind, that much was obvious, but there was so much more to her than that. It was taking every ounce of strength he had not to want to find out what that was.

His father walked into the room and came to a stop on the rug in the centre of the wooden floor, looking all around at the festive decorations. He had an air of frailty that wasn’t there before. His wife’s accident had taken its toll on his father, too. The man Adam remembered from his childhood – that vibrant, alpha male who spent his daytime hours in the corporate rat race and yet still managed to find quality time for his sons – was long gone.

‘Your mom’s going to love this,’ his dad said, finally resting his gaze on Adam. ‘She always did like to go all-out for the holidays.’

Adam flashed his father a stiff smile. ‘She will. Do you remember the Christmas I broke my arm? She still insisted I climb up the ladder and hang the decorations one-handed. She said that just because I was stupid enough to get caught on the football field, didn’t mean I got excused from doing the hard work at home.’

Not that he’d minded. Adam was always too active a child to willingly sit on the sidelines.

‘It’s going to mean a lot to her, spending this Christmas surrounded by her family.’ His father’s look was pointed.

‘It will,’ Adam agreed.

‘But there’s something that would mean more to her, something that’s been worrying at her for these past months.’

Discomfort wrapped its way around Adam like a heavy cloak. He knew exactly what his father was going to say, yet he didn’t want to engage with that train of thought. Truth be told, he didn’t want to have a conversation like that at all. He and his father usually stuck to easy topics, like sport and the Nasdaq, peppered with the occasional conversation about the news. As much as he loved his father, Adam had never shared an emotional vocabulary with him. The long, deep talks always happened with his mom.

But this was a discussion he was unwilling to have with either of them.

‘Dad…’

‘You know it’s true, son. It’s broken her heart seeing you and Ev at each other’s throats. We thought when you came back from Colombia and went to stay in LA, that everything was going to be OK. What the hell happened to the two of you out there? Why won’t you talk to him?’

Adam’s heart dropped. As a kid, his role in the family had always been that of the peacemaker. To be the one causing pain for his parents made him ache inside. But still, there was no way he could forgive his brother.

It choked him up to be caught in the middle.

‘I’ll be civil to him,’ Adam said. ‘But I can’t promise any more than that.’

‘But why?’

The confusion on his father’s face was killing him.

‘You don’t want to know.’ Of that Adam was certain. Though he’d never been a parent, he knew enough to understand his folks loved him and Everett equally. It had been so hard on them when he’d come back from filming in Colombia, not only hurt, but suffering from flashbacks that made him sweat in the night. To tell them what happened in California would only break their hearts even more than he already had. He wasn’t sure he could face that. Especially now his mom was coming home.

‘Can’t you give him a break? I know you’re not having a good time right now, but nor’s he. You can tell just by looking at him and Mia that things aren’t right. They can hardly stand to be around each other.’ His father shook his head slowly. ‘I don’t claim to understand what happened to make you hold a grudge, but I know your brother well enough to hazard a few guesses. Whatever it is, I can’t believe it’s worth losing a family member over.’

There was a part of Adam that wanted to spill the beans. To be that kid so long ago who trusted his parents with everything. But times had changed and now he bore the responsibility of his parents’ happiness. He wasn’t planning to make it any harder than it already was on them all.

So instead he shook his head, unable to say anything more. Mostly because there was nothing left to say.

 

The ambulance carrying his mother arrived a little over two hours later, accompanied by two private nurses and her personal physician. Money talked, and it mostly told people that they’d be well compensated if they worked for the Kleins. It took almost an hour to get her comfortably situated in her room, lying in the special bed they’d bought just for this purpose. She was hooked up to a drip – an intravenous pain relief that she could control herself. By early evening she seemed comfortable enough for visitors, and Adam sat with her as he ate his dinner, joking about how much better Annie’s stew was than the stuff she was getting through the tubes.

‘You always did love her cooking,’ his mom pointed out. ‘You should come up and eat with us more often.’

Adam took another mouthful of lamb casserole. ‘Yeah, well, I’m a big boy, I can look after myself.’

‘I know you can, darling.’ She patted his hand. ‘But sometimes we miss you. It must be very lonely in that cabin down there.’ She didn’t ask him how long he intended to hide out there. Even if she did, Adam wouldn’t have been able to answer her.

‘Your father tells me you’ve got a puppy down there,’ she said, changing the subject. ‘That must be interesting.’

They carried on talking as he ate, Adam entertaining his mother with stories about Jonas. He was careful not to mention Kitty too much, even though her name seemed to try to force its way in to every sentence he spoke. He didn’t want his mother asking him questions he wasn’t ready to answer yet.

Like why the hell did he ask her to come down to the cabin each morning, when he was already finding it hard to get her out of his mind?

His mother dozed a little after dinner, while Annie sat with her and did her knitting. So Adam wandered back downstairs, rinsing his dinner plate under the faucet and sliding it into the dishwasher. Standing up, he felt prickles on his neck when he realised he was being watched.

Kitty shot him a wary glance when he turned around. ‘How’s your mum doing?’

For some reason, he liked the way she kept her pronunciations. ‘Mum’ was so very British. ‘She’s sleeping right now, but she should be rested in an hour or so. We can start the movie as soon as she wakes up.’

Kitty shook the small, square box she was holding. ‘I was going to make some popcorn for Jonas. He’s so excited at staying up late to watch the movie. If he doesn’t scoff it all I was planning to show him how to thread it onto string. We can make popcorn chains.’

‘To eat?’ To his surprise, Adam found himself smiling at her. Did she know that her eyes always softened whenever she talked about Jonas? For some reason it warmed him. ‘Or for decoration?’

‘Knowing Jonas, for both. I can’t see the popcorn lasting long. He’s a monster when it comes to Orville Redenbacher.’ She put the first package into the microwave, pressing buttons so fast it almost made his eyes water. Kitty Shakespeare was a demon with the popcorn. Maybe they taught that kind of thing at nanny school. He closed his eyes, imagining a crowd of young women, all dressed like Mary Poppins. Except younger, and sexier.

Damn, where did that come from?

When she handed him two big bowls almost overflowing with fluffy white kernels, Adam grinned at her again, wishing that she’d smile back. ‘Sweet or salty?’

‘Both, of course.’ She rolled her eyes, as though his question had been stupid. Grabbing some cans of soda, she turned sharply on her heel and started to walk to the door. ‘Which one’s your favourite?’

‘Guess.’ He flashed her a grin. Was he flirting? It certainly seemed like it. A better question would be why was he flirting? And why couldn’t he tear his eyes away from her pretty pink lips?

Kitty stared at him, her eyes narrowed. Her silent scrutiny was pain and pleasure in equal measure. ‘Hmm, an amateur would immediately choose salty. After all, men like savoury things, and you come across as very manly…’

He held his breath as she continued.

‘But even though you’re very bristly on the outside, I’d swear that somewhere deep within there’s a little boy with a very sweet tooth.’

He swallowed hard. ‘Have you been talking to my mother?’

She bit her lip, and it sent a shock straight to his gut. ‘No,’ she said, still rolling the plump pinkness between her teeth. ‘Should I?’

‘Oh no, not unless you want to hear stories about how I always used to wet the bed, and that my first words were cookie and sugar.’

Finally, Kitty smiled, and it felt as though he’d won a big victory. ‘Your mum sounds like a very interesting lady.’

‘Oh yeah, that she is.’

He could feel the blood rushing through his veins, his pulse audible in his ears. Had he really thought she was self-obsessed? Nearly every word that came out of her mouth was about somebody else: his mom, Jonas, Annie. He remembered her kindness earlier that evening when she’d decorated the hallway and dug out the old holiday DVDs his mom had stashed in the family room. Kitty was both sweet and sexy, a dangerous combination that made him want to know everything about her.

An hour later they carried the snacks up to his mom’s bedroom, where Jonas had already taken residence on the easy chair next to her bed. His legs were curled beneath him, and he was sucking at the tip of his thumb, in that familiar way he did.

Adam laid the bowls on the table beside his mom’s bed. ‘We’ve brought snacks,’ he told her.

His mom coughed loudly. ‘Who’s we?’

Adam flushed, realising nobody had bothered introducing Kitty to his mother. For some reason that bothered him, much more than it probably should. For a girl who only walked into his life a few days earlier, she’d made a big impression.

‘Mom, this is Kitty. She’s Jonas’s nanny.’ The explanation fell far short of what he wanted to say. He couldn’t think of another way to describe her, though.

‘Come here.’ Mary Klein’s words seemed more of a command than anything else. Kitty stepped forward, placing her hands in Mary’s outstretched ones. He watched as his mother squeezed them, her grasp still surprisingly strong in spite of her condition. ‘Jonas has told me a lot about you,’ he heard her whisper. ‘Thank you for taking such good care of him.’

His father and Annie joined them, carrying eggnog for the adults and a chocolate milk for Jonas. Adam cued up the movie, while Annie and his father made themselves at home on the small velvet couch in the corner of the room. With Jonas on the easy chair, that only left the floor, and Kitty sat down cross-legged at the left-hand side of the bed, placing her bowl of popcorn down on the plush floor before taking a sip of her drink. He switched the lights low, with only the glow of his mom’s machines casting any illumination in the room until the TV came to life.

‘You hogging the snacks?’ he whispered, sitting down on the floor next to her. Unlike Kitty, sitting cross-legged wasn’t a natural position for Adam. Instead he stretched his long legs in front of him, taking up much more floor space than she did. Without asking, he grabbed a handful of her popcorn, putting the salty sweet kernels into his mouth. She huffed indignantly and he tried not to grin.

‘Get your own popcorn, you snack thief,’ she whispered, batting his hand away when he went in for more. On his second attempt, she grabbed hold of his hand, and he automatically found himself circling his fingers around hers. Like the rest of their bodies, his hand dominated hers, and he watched with fascination as she tried without success to escape his grasp. There was something about the way her palm fitted so perfectly within his that meant he couldn’t tear his eyes away.

Then the opening credits began and she used his distraction to pull away from his hold, swatting him softly on the wrist when he tried to grab her again. It was strange, but there was an emptiness in him, as if he’d already gotten used to the feeling of her hand. He wanted it back, that sweet feeling of contentment, of her soft, warm skin against his.

Like a teenage boy, he started to plot, working out how best he could maintain contact between them. Between the cloak of darkness, and the fact they were on the floor out of everybody’s view, it was as though they were the only two people in the room.

Each time she reached for more popcorn, Adam did the same, using the opportunity to brush his hands against hers. Sometimes he’d grab the handful she was going for, forcing a sigh of aggravation from her lips that made him want to kiss them hard and long.

He was like a kid pulling braids. Annoying her seemed the only thing he could do, and if he was being honest, he was enjoying it immensely. So when she finally picked up the bowl and moved it to her other side, far away from his grasp, he happily used the opportunity to snake his arm around her waist and dip his hand into the bowl.

‘What are you doing?’ Her soft voice was a rush of warmth against his ear. He hadn’t realised they were quite so close.

‘I’m hungry,’ he whispered back, unable to keep the smile from his face. ‘You can’t waft all that goodness in front of me and then take it away.’

‘Get your own snack.’

‘I like yours better.’ He took another few kernels, using the opportunity to brush his hand against her back, causing her to shiver in a way that made him want more.

‘You’re so annoying.’ Kitty dug her elbow into his waist. But she didn’t sound annoyed at all. Instead she sounded a little breathless, and when he looked at her face, illuminated by the flickering screen, he could see her eyes were wide and her lips plump. If only there were more light he’d have sworn her cheeks were flushed, too.

She had no business being so goddamned pretty, but he was glad she was. Silhouetted against the opening scene of the movie, he could see her thick eyelashes flutter as she blinked, and the way her lips opened slightly when she breathed in. He felt the urge to touch them, to trace a finger along the swollen skin, to watch her eyes widen as he pushed a thumb into her mouth.

‘Can we thread some popcorn now, Kitty?’ Jonas threw himself down next to them. Adam hadn’t noticed him getting up. Not that he had been paying any attention to anybody but Kitty. ‘We can loop it around the tree like you said.’

The interruption should have relieved the tension that had been building up between them, but when Adam glanced over at her again, Kitty was staring right back at him. She had her bottom lip pulled between her teeth. He could see the reflection of the big screen in her shining eyes, as James Stewart threw a lasso around the moon, promising to bring it down for his sweetheart.

In the movie, George wanted to give the girl of his dreams anything she wanted.

Even if Adam had a rope long enough, he never could have done the same.