Page 8 of Christmas Ever After
‘Just leave me alone, okay?’
He doesn’t move so I raise my voice. ‘I don’t want you here! Go away!’
He looks taken aback by being shouted at and quickly gets to his feet. I manage to pull myself into a sitting position and swipe angrily at my face, trying to ignore the twinge of guilt for yelling. I’m angry at being caught crying, angry for letting myself have a moment of weakness, and for being so feeble. I still have two working feet. Icanget up. Iwillget up by myself. That was just truly horrific timing on his part.
He walks back over to the counter and picks up the box he brought and goes to leave, but he hesitates before he gets to the door. He looks over at me again and then shakes his head. ‘No. No, I’m not going anywhere.’
He puts the box back down on the counter. ‘Look, I know I’m probably the last person you want to see, but I can’t walk out of here in good conscience and leave you like this.’
‘What would you know about good conscience?’ I mutter as he comes back over and crouches in front of me, even though I’m reluctant to admit that I’m quite touched. If someone had shouted at me like that, I’d have stormed off without a second thought…
‘Can I at least call someone youwouldaccept help from?’ There’s kindness in his voice again and it makes my brain sputter to a halt. I’d expected ridicule. ‘A boyfriend, friend, or…?’
‘No. There’s no one.’ I didn’t intend to make my wretchedness quite so obvious. ‘Call the fire brigade. Maybe they can bring a forklift truck to right me and really put the cherry on the top of this hellish week. And it’s only Monday morning.’
He laughs. It starts off as a little chuckle, but it gradually increases until he’s full-on belly-laughing. From crouching he moves to sit on his knees because he’s laughing too hard to hold the position.
At first, I’m annoyed.There’sthe ridicule I expected, but his laugh is warm and genuine, and I feel like he’s laughingwithme, and I think about what a sight this must be. Me, with one arm in a splint, on the floor of my shop in floods of tears, being rescued by the man responsible for putting me in this predicament in the first place. And a mouse, sitting there, watching us both, and the ridiculousness of it makes me start laughing too.
‘Sorry,’ he says eventually, trying to catch his breath. ‘I didn’t mean to laugh, but…’
There are tears streaming down my face too, but they’re tears of laughter this time. ‘If anyone could see us now…’
‘Well, there’ll be no forklift trucks on my watch, okay? Look, I’m here, and…’ He looks around the empty shop. ‘No one else is. And I don’t come with flashing blue lights and sirens that would attract the attention ofeveryoneon the street. How about you let me help this one time and then we can both wipe it from our memories and go back to our regularly scheduled loathing?’
‘You’re my arch-nemesis!’
‘Am I?’ He sits back on his knees and thinks about it. ‘That makes me sound like a supervillain in a comic book movie. I know we don’t see eye to eye, but I didn’t realise I’d ever done anything bad enough to make me an arch-nemesis. An arch-rival, maybe? Especially when it comes to this shop-versus-shop thing, but…’
He trails off, sounding as if he’s waiting for me to shout at him again, but I don’t, and his face softens. ‘Whatareyou doing down there anyway?’
‘There was a mouse.’ I hold up the cotton bud container uselessly.
‘And you’re going to… poke it into submission with Q-tips?’
‘It may once have been a cotton bud container, but it’s now a highly sophisticated mouse trap and has been used successfully on many occasions. This wasnotone of them.’
‘I’d never have guessed.’
I make a face at his sarcasm. ‘Can you please go away? Don’t you think I’ve flailed around on the floor in front of handsome men enough for one week?’
He sits back on his knees again and a smile lights up his face. ‘You think I’m handsome?’
‘No,’ I snap, my face flaring even redder at the unintentional slip-up. He’s the personification of tall, dark and handsome, and heknowsit. ‘It was a figure of speech. I thinkyouthink you’re handsome.’
‘Can’t say I’ve thought about it, but thanks, I think.’
I sigh. I’ve never actually had a real conversation with Raphael before, and I’m wishing things had stayed that way. We do a lot of complainingabouteach other, but we’ve never had a one-to-one chat before. I don’t think our fellow shopkeepers have ever trusted us to be alone in each other’s company without one or the other of us losing an appendage or two.
‘So, you have a mouse problem?’ He sounds like he’s struggling to keep the amusement out of his tone. He’s got the voice of a fairy-tale prince – a voice so deep that I’ve often wondered if he’s putting it on, but talking to him like this makes me realise it’s his natural timbre.
‘At the moment I have a Raphael Dardenne problem.’
‘Many do.’ There’s a sadness in his voice that piques my interest, but he covers it quickly. ‘May I?’ Without waiting for an answer, he takes the cardboard half of the pot from my hand, stands up and goes to the counter where he picks up the plastic lid and puts it back on. ‘Ahh, so you put this bit over the mouse,then tip it up and put the lid back on, and you’ve drilled air holes so the mouse doesn’t suffocate. That’s very sweet.’
I’m struggling to get myself upright, buteverythingis so bruised and every movement hurts, and my wooden floor is shiny and slippery. If I can just turn myself over onto my knees, I can grab a giant nutcracker’s leg with my left hand and… I must make a noise because Raff drops the container on the counter and comes back over.
‘Okay, no flailing. Come here.’ He crouches down next to me again and pats his shoulder. ‘Put your arm around my neck.’ When I do, he continues. ‘Okay if I touch you here and here?’ One of his hands touches my knee and the other touches my back, and I nod, secretly quite impressed that he’s asked permission even to help me up. A very gentlemanly thing to do.
