Page 11 of The Duke Who Saved Christmas
The good thing about Castleton was that everything in the village was within walking distance. It didn’t take terribly long to get from A to B, and I was even more grateful for that fact given the biting wind that was whipping through the air.
I pulled my hat from my bag and put it on, tugging it over my ears, and adjusted my scarf to give me as much coverage as possible. Living in the south had made me weak, and I’d packed the wrong damn scarf for this cold weather. I was either going to have to buy a new one or ask Nana for a key to my parents’ house to sneak out one of my old scarves before they returned from their place in Spain for the wedding.
The last thing I needed was to admit to my mum that I’d gone soft.
I’d never hear the end of it.
Despite my feelings about this place, I had to admit that everything about Castleton at Christmas was simply magical, and that became clearer and clearer as I made my way into the middle of the village.
The twenty-something foot tree in the centre of the square was intricately decorated with what had to be thousands of fairy lights and oversized baubles and snowflakes. Giant pinecones adorned the branches, and the empty ones were coated with a thick spraying of white to imitate snow.
A giant star twinkled on top, and strings of lights stretched out from that point to various other buildings around the square, dressing it in some sort of canopy of lighting that I knew I would look incredible as darkness fell.
Holly trees and fake snowmen decorated the sides of the road, and all the businesses on the square were appropriately decked out for the season with garlands and wreaths and twinkling lights in their windows, even though it wasn’t dark yet.
Clearly, Castleton had no intention of letting astronomical energy prices get in the way of their festive fun.
I swung a right and headed for the café. It was perhaps the most enthusiastically decorated business of the entire square with a nutcracker outside the door, a Santa hat shaped ‘open’ sign, and a full-blown Christmas village in the window. It was also the best spot in the village to get a hot chocolate in this cold weather, so that’s what I was going to do.
I didn’t recognise the young girl behind the counter, and that was something I was thankful for. I’d spent the entire day doing wedding stuff with and without Hazel, and all I wanted was to get a hot drink that’d hit the sweet spot without having to make small talk with the locals who would undoubtedly be happy to see me.
That’s what Castleton was.
One big happy family, where Harold from the butcher would meet Arnie at the pub and tell him that he saw you, and Arnie would tell his wife who’d tell her hairdresser at her appointment the next day, only everyone there would overhear, and they’d tell their mum or their dad or their babysitter, who’d tell the owner of the corner shop, their vet, their dentist, and their cousin’s ex-lover.
The next thing you knew, the news of your presence would spread like the flu in a preschool, except there was every chanceyou’d gain two kids, thirty pounds, a cheating ex-husband, and a hook for a hand along the way.
I paid for my hot chocolate and left as quickly as I could, avoiding a bumbling group of teenage girls who were giggling about something or another that I was sure I was far too old to understand. My phone buzzed in my pocket right as I pushed the door open, and I reached for it as I made my way outside.
I bumped the door with my hip as a shadow fell over me, and I instinctively stepped out of the way at the last second. The glaring blue of the paint on the inside of the door flashed before my eyes before it abruptly stopped, and I inhaled sharply at the sudden movement.
There was a hand on the door.
My gaze trailed from the hand along the arm, up to the shoulder and the clean-shaven, sharply shaped jaw that gave way to pale pink lips and a square nose. It continued until I caught a pair of dark blue eyes framed by dark brown lashes and brows and hair that peeked out from under a black bobble hat.
Eyes that were uncomfortably familiar.
Indignation flooded my body, setting every nerve ending alight with the kind of frustration you only saw in the movies. The kind that came with the sight of someone who was just downright bloody infuriating.
A stomach-squeezing, fist-balling, jaw-clenching, toe-tightening kind of indignation.
Him.
That bloody man.
The pain in my arse, the orchestrator of my nightmares, the absolute bane of my motherfucking existence for seven years of my life.
“You,” I said in a low voice, one so rough that it could wake the dead. “You.”
CHAPTER THREE – SYLVIE
His lips curled in what I assumed was equal disgust. “You,” he replied, casting his gaze over me. “What on Earth are you doing here?”
“Buying a hot chocolate, what does it bloody well look like?” I held the cup to justify myself, not like I needed to. “I’m surprised to see you mingling with the little people.”
Thomas chuckled. “You moved away years ago, Sylvie. Don’t act like you have any idea what it’s like here anymore.”
“I don’t want to know, nor do I need to.”
