Page 69 of The Duke Who Saved Christmas
She slammed the door behind her, and I shook my head, but I was happy she was safely inside—without slipping on her arse.
I dropped my forehead to the steering wheel and banged my head against it a few times. With any luck, it’d knock the ideas of kissing the woman right out of my head and send them into orbit where they belonged.
Because…fuck.
Sylvie Harding was tying me up in bloody knots, and I wasn’t sure what I could do about it. I wasn’t sure there was anything I could do about it.
Staying away from her wasn’t an option.
Not now I knew what it was like to kiss her. It didn’t matter that it was accidental or fleeting, that it was a giant fucking mistake she’d literally ran away from.
She’d kissed me.
I knew what it was like to have her lips touch mine. I knew how soft they were, how it felt for that short time, and that meant I couldn’t help but think about what it would be like to kiss her properly.
I wanted to kiss her until her breath hitched.
Until her cheeks flushed.
Until her knees gave out.
Fuck.
***
“Did you have dinner with Sylvie last night?” Mum asked, strolling through the kitchen with her nose stuck in the local newspaper. “Was it a date?”
“Yes, I did, and no, it wasn’t,” I replied. “Watch the stool.”
She stopped and closed the paper, then looked at her feet. “Oh, thank you, darling. I didn’t see that there.”
“Yes, having a paper held against your face does somewhat impede visibility.”
“Don’t be smart with me.” She folded the paper up, leant over the island, and tapped it on my head. “I was reading the football scores, that’s all.”
I wasn’t going to ask. The last time the woman read a football score, I was eighteen and playing my last game for the local development team before I left for university.
It’d been thirteen years.
It wasn’t as if she followed a league.
“What makes you ask about Sylvie?” I questioned, raising my mug to my mouth.
Mum shrugged a shoulder. “Is there tea in that pot?”
“Mhmm.”
“Lovely.” She took one of the empty mugs the housekeeper had laid out this morning and made herself a cup. “Kathleen sawyou having dinner last night and said you looked frightfully cosy, so I thought I’d ask. Forgive me for being presumptuous.” She smiled at me, and her eyes sparkled in a way that said she didn’t wantorexpect my forgiveness.
That was fine.
I wasn’t going to offer it.
And ‘frightfully cosy’ was a bit of an overstatement.
“Mm, no. It was a coincidence. I was delivering the three footers Rebecca had ordered,” I explained. “I went in to give her the delivery receipt and saw Sylvie. She looked pretty down, so I thought I’d check on her since I was done.”
“And ordered her wine and food?”
