Page 173 of The Duke Who Saved Christmas
She stretched her arms up over her head with another yawn. “Eh. It’s not the end of the world.”
“Wow. It’s like you’ve had a personality transplant.”
“It’s like you want matching couple scars.”
I grinned. “Maybe I do. They’re more permanent than tattoos, aren’t they?”
She glared at me as she climbed out of bed. “You—”
“Uncle Tommy!”
“Coming, coming!” I shouted back. Sylvie wrapped herself in my dressing gown and perched on the edge of the bed as another yawn took over, and I tugged on some pyjamas before opening the door. “Happy now?”
Danny grinned and held out a pile of plaid that remarkably resembled the pyjamas he was wearing. “Grandma said, ‘Get your bums out of bed and put these on!’”
He shoved the fabric at me before I could do anything, and just as I opened my mouth to ask him what it was, he bolted down the hallway and disappeared around the corner.
Sylvie popped up behind me. “Oh. Pyjamas.”
I kicked the door shut and separated the pieces. “Two pairs of. One is your size.”
“Your mother is exceptionally organised.”
“I’m going to go with ‘aggressively hopeful.’” I passed her the pair in her size and tossed mine on the bed so I could change. “You better put those on, or she’ll think you’re rejecting her.”
“I could never.” She yawned again. “If this doesn’t work out, I’m going to take her up on the whole adoption thing. I think I’d wear a feather boa to breakfast if your mother asked me to.”
“What if I asked you to?”
“I’d tell you to dance naked through the village with it before I did it.” She shed the robe and grinned at me, then grabbed the pyjamas from where she’d set them on the bed. “Mostly for my amusement, though.”
“The things you find entertaining scare me slightly.” I put the pyjamas on and stretched out. “Come on. He’ll only come back and start hitting a wooden spoon against a pan if we don’t move it.”
“Do you have experience with that?” Sylvie asked, quickly brushing her hair.
“Yes. I learnt my lesson last year,” I said morosely. “There’s nothing like a spoon against a frying pan about three inches from your eardrum to make you get the fuck out of bed.”
She nodded slowly and put her slippers on. “I can imagine that to be a very effective way of waking someone up. Noted.”
“For what? I always wake up before you,” I replied, following her out of the bedroom. “If anyone needs waking up with a one-man band, it’s you.”
“Irrelevant. I’ve been busier than usual the last few days. I’m usually awake with the birds to get my day started. I just need a few days to catch up on my sleep, that’s all.”
“That’s all? You’ve barely slept in days.”
“Exactly. Once I’m all caught up, I’ll be fine. Plus, it’s warmer down south, so—” She cut herself off. “But that doesn’t matter.”
“You can talk about it, you know,” I said quietly. “Being here and pretending doesn’t make the fact you live hundreds of miles away any less true.”
She stopped in the middle of the hallway and pinched my sleeve, lowering her gaze to the floor. “I know, but…”
“We’ll figure it out,” I promised her, kissing her forehead. “You have commitments you can’t just drop because I conned you into falling in love with me.”
“Ah, I’m glad you admit it was all a trap.”
“Of course, it was. You weren’t going to do it by yourself. Don’t you know I engineered every single thing that went wrong with the wedding just so I could swoop in and save the day?”
“You set a man’s vehicle on fire on the motorway just to trick me into falling for you? I don’t know if I’m impressed or horrified by the risk you took.”
