Page 2 of Second Chance Christmas

Cassidy paused only to buy a cup of mulled wine, and had just taken her first sip when her father Harry appeared at their side.

“I was just about to try my luck at the bottle toss. Care to be my good luck charm?” He asked Audrey with a wiggle of his thick, grey eyebrows. The little girl let out a high pitched laugh and nodded.

“Bottle toss, bottle toss.”

“No more fairy floss,” Cassidy called after them both, but neither showed any sign of having heard. She took another gulp of mulled wine.

“Great minds think alike.”

Leo’s voice ran like melted butter down her spine. She ground her teeth. Without the protection of Audrey, or the need to be polite for her daughter’s sake, she whirled around to face him, her eyes alight with distaste.

“Don’t, Leondardo.”

He didn’t show even a flicker of surprise. “Don’t what?”

“Act like things are how they used to be.”

His brows knit together. “You can’t seriously still be angry at me?”

She opened her mouth to tell him of course she was, but thankfully slammed it shut again. To admit as much would be to tell him something that she wasn’t sure she wanted to reveal. She wasn’t sure what, only some sixth sense kept her quiet.

“I’m not angry with you,” she muttered. “I just don’t want to know you.”

“Wow.” He brushed a hand over his chin. “I kind of wish I’d known that half an hour ago.”

“Why? What difference would it have made?”

“Well, for one thing, I might not have accepted your dad’s invitation to dinner tomorrow night.”

Cassidy’s eyes widened. “Unaccept it.”

His laugh was a single sound, short and sharp. “Why should I?” He crossed his arms over his chest, reminding her of his inherent strength and fitness, of the sculpted body that had always distracted her, even before she’d understood that her feelings for him were changing.

“Because.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Come on, Leonardo,” she groaned. “Why would you come to dinner?”

“How many meals have we shared over the years, Cassidy?”

“Yes, but that was before you got drunk and slept with…” She pressed a hand to her forehead, rubbing her fingers up and down, trying to be calm. “Never mind.”

“It was six years ago,” he murmured. “And might I remind you, you were married mere months later? It can’t have cut you up that badly.”

She angled her face away, fury making her skin white. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Married with a baby on the way. Living the dream. So why act like you cared who I was sleeping with?”

“We were still together, remember?”

“I made a mistake.”

She took another sip of mulled wine but the pleasure of the drink had all but disappeared. She pushed the cup back onto the makeshift bar and braced her hands on her hips. “A mistake is forgetting to buy milk on the way home, or accidentally reversing into a tree. It isnotsome kind of sex-fest with a fan.”

He flinched. “Six years ago,” he reminded her, and suddenly, his face was close to Cassidy’s, as if he could get her to understand what he was saying if only he brought them eye to eye. “I was twenty one years old, and women were throwing themselves at me—,”

“Oh, you poor, adored athlete. Why didn’t you say so? Of course it wasn’t your fault. You don’t have something as simple as autonomy or free-will, or will-power, or loyalty,” she added.

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