Page 109 of Kiss Me at Christmas
“Rather them than me,” said James just as his phone began to ring. He pulled it from his coat pocket, frowning when he saw the name of the caller. “Lyra. Is everything all right?” His expression was serious and growing more so by the second. “Is she okay?” A beat as he listened. Harriet could hear crying down the phone. “All right, I’ll come up. No, it’s fine, nothing that can’t wait. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” More talking on the other end.“You too. Bye.” He slipped the phone back into his pocket, not making eye contact with Harriet as he took two steadying breaths, seemingly making decisions and locking them into place in his mind. “I have to go,” he said finally, meeting her eyes.
“Go where? Is Lyra okay?” she asked. Her stomach was sinking.
“She’s fine. I mean, she’s physically fine but she’s upset. I have to go to Edinburgh. Morgan was in a car accident this morning on her way to work.”
“Oh my god. Um, okay.” Her mind was scrabbling around trying to put everything together. “Is it serious? Morgan, I mean, is she seriously hurt?”
“Lyra says not. She’s just a bit shaken up. The paramedics assessed her on the scene and said she was fine to go home. They suggested she rest up for the day.”
“Right. So, Morgan’s okay and Lyra’s okay?” Harriet clarified.
“Yes. Both are fine. But Lyra is upset, and I said I’d go up there for moral support.”
“Does she need you to?” Harriet asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, only that she’s an adult and Morgan is clearly unhurt and what with all this going on…” She gestured to the mess down below.
“She was crying down the phone! She needs me!” His usual cool air had evaporated.
“There’s no need to raise your voice. I’m simply pointing out that we need you too. I need you.”
“I’m sorry Morgan didn’t time her road traffic accident better.”
“Don’t be a bum-wipe. You said Morgan is fine. You’re going to drive three hours in the snow because you feel guilty.”
“Why are you being like this?” he demanded.
She looked out toward the scaffold now being scaled by maintenance workers lugging chain saws.
“You asked me to put you first, to put down my phone and choose you instead, and I did. Now I’m asking you to put me first. Please. They are okay. Lyra is fine, you said so yourself, she’s a bit tearful, but surely it isn’t anything that can’t be soothed by a FaceTime?”
“I need to be there.”
“And I need you to be here. I haven’t asked you for anything. You have had to make exactly zero concessions for me. I am asking you for this one thing.”
He looked at her for a long moment.
“No, I’m sorry. I can’t.”
The words hit like a slap.
The swing doors swished closed behind him, and Harriet was left feeling more alone than she had in a long time.
“He is a man of passions,” said Gideon gently. She’d forgotten he was there.
“Yes,” Harriet replied absently. How quickly she had allowed herself to fall. A lifetime of caution thrown to the wind for a handsome face and some pretty words.
“Come now, my dear. We have play business to discuss. It’s early still, let us go to the little café on the corner and I’ll buy you breakfast, what do you say?”
Harriet looked down at the stage. Gideon touched her shoulder.
“I believe our Mr. Knight needs to deal with his ghosts, as we must ours, though of a Dickensian kind.”
She looked at him then, in his green corduroy cape.
“That’s very astute of you,” she said.
