Page 115 of Kiss Me at Christmas
“So it would seem.” James’s voice was smooth and calm. Harriet seethed.How dare he be calm!
More people called out to him in greeting.Well, isn’t he just Mr. Popular!Mallory caught her eye and nodded slightly, but she didn’t need that to make her aware that James was right behind her. She could feel his presence. She had known that he would make a beeline for her,and she hadn’t yet decided what she should do about it. Left to her own devices she would like to walk away without acknowledging him; actually, she would probably run. But her students were here and they believed her to be a grown-up, even though she felt like a girl who’d been stood up at the school disco. The insinuation that one day all the chaos and confusion of the teen years would melt away to be replaced by a sage state of adulthood was possibly the biggest mutual lie of adult humans the world over, but it wasn’t her place to shatter the illusions of the young, not today.
“Harriet, could I possibly have a word?”
I can think of at least seventeen—let’s start with “armpit fungus” and work our way through the alphabet!
She turned to him, forcing a smile and trying to ignore the hammering of her heart and the way his eyes looked like they held sentiments that she didn’t know if she was ready to hear.
“Of course.” She turned back to Mallory. “Excuse me, Mallory, I’ll be back in a moment.”
Without looking at him, she began walking toward the backstage, stepping gingerly around the buckets and wet towels dotted all over the place and making sure not to slip. She knew he was following her. Once they’d left the noise of the auditorium behind, she carried on past the makeshift coffee area and let herself into another dressing room, farther along the corridor where she was sure they wouldn’t be disturbed.
Once inside, she closed the door. Instinctively she folded her arms across her chest and then unfolded them, forcing herself to keep an open posture; she didn’t want him to think that she was protecting herself, even if that was exactly what she wanted to do. She wanted toarmor up and save the soft parts of herself from being pierced, but she’d be damned if she’d let him know it.
She lifted her chin and pulled her shoulders back.
“How is Morgan?”
James, usually so buttoned up and ready to argue his case, seemed at sixes and sevens. “She’s fine. A touch of whiplash, perhaps.”
“And Lyra?”
“Also fine. Relieved that her mum’s okay.”
“Excellent. Well then, I’d better get back, lots to do to make the place shipshape again. Though as I’m sure you can see, we’ve made inroads since you left. Turns out we were just fine without you.”So much for taking the high ground!“I’m sorry, that was mean of me, can we strike that from the record?”
“Sustained,” he said.
“Thanks.”
She shook her head at her idiot self and made to leave.
“I made a mistake,” he said, stopping her in her tracks. “All my priorities were suddenly standing in line and glaring me in the face, and I panicked and went with the one that was shouting the loudest.”
Oh, for cluck’s sake!How could she argue with that?
“No,” she sighed, and looked to the ceiling. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Your priority should always be your daughter.”
“My presence was very much surplus to requirements, a fact which was obvious when I turned up at the door on my white steed and found them eating popcorn and watching movies.”
“You didn’t know that when you left. For all you knew she might have been putting on a brave face. You did the right thing for Lyra. But Lyra isn’t the issue.”
“I know what you’re going to say.” He looked down at his shoes.
“But I’m going to say it anyway. I understand that you have all kinds of guilt around Lyra and Morgan. And I fully expect and accept that Lyra comes first for you, that’s a given, I wouldn’t want it any other way. But I was angry and hurt at the way you cut and ran when the sky in the theater was literally falling and tried to makemefeel bad about it. I’m happy to play second fiddle to Lyra, but not to Morgan.”
He rubbed his hand over his unshaven face; it suited him but was a testament to his distraction.
“I was an arsehole and I tried to turn my guilt around onto you and I’m sorry, really I am, that was inexcusable behavior and you deserved better.”
She sighed. He was making this very hard for her. “It doesn’t change our situation.”
“I don’t want to be with Morgan,” he said.
That didn’t exactly answer her question.
“But I owe her so much. She brought up my child,” he said.
