He shrugged. ‘Oh. You got a whole mile away. Whoop-de-doo. Aren’t you adventurous?’ The animosity was a two-way thing.
He dumped his large duffel bag on the floor and threw his coat on top, cool blue eyes roving her face, then her ears, the tinsel, her flannelette pyjamas. Which had to be the most sexless items of clothing she owned. Which didn’t matter. Isaac was just a flatmate. Her big brother’s best friend. Nothing else.
Apart from … weird, his eyes were vivid and bright and amused. And somebody else might well have thought they were attractive, but she didn’t. Not a bit. Not at all. They were too blue. Too cool. Too … knowing. He gave her one of his trademark long, slow smiles. Which didn’t work the way he might have hoped. She did a mental body scan to check. Nope. No reaction at all.
Through her pre-pubescent years she’d done everything to garner his attention—and had probably appeared as an exasperating little diva. Then she’d woken up to the reality that he was not interested, and then neither was she once she’d discovered bigger and—she’d thought—better men to chase. Real men, not teenage boys … and then … The shame shimmied through her and burned bright in her cheeks. Eight years and she still felt it.
Well, and then Isaac had been lost in the whole sordid slipstream.
He took a step forward and plucked the tinsel from her arm between his finger and thumb, gave it a sorry little look then let it drop to the floor like an undesirable. ‘I’m very sorry to have to break this to you, Poppy, but I think your Christmas fairy days might be over.’
Grabbing a bauble from her ear, she wrapped it round one of the needleless branches. Then did the same with the other one. In a last act of defiance she placed the tinsel from the floor in pride of place in the middle of the tree. ‘Well, gee, thanks.’
‘I just think it might be a little unstable.’ He glanced up at the wonky, droopy top of the tree, then watched her sway. ‘Like you perhaps?’
‘Hey, be rude about me all you like, that’s normal service. But you do not insult my tree.’ She eyed the wine bottle behind him. No harm in a little more. ‘Me and this tree have been together a long time, and no one’s going to criti … be rude about it. Pass me that glass?’ She pointed to the bottle and the glass and then realised that, irritating or not, she should at least be polite to him. Who knew? He might be an expert at rodent removal.
‘D’you want to get yourself a glass, too? There’s plenty … oh.’ There appeared to be a lot of bottle and not a lot of anything in it. ‘You want the last dribble? Or we could open another one?’ Two bottles downed already? Now she was all out. ‘Beer? Eggnog?’
‘No. Thanks. I’ve just been working down at Blue and I’ve had my share for tonight.’ His too-bright, too-blue eyes narrowed as his gaze roved her face again. ‘And you look a little like you might have, too?’
‘Hmm. I thought there was more in there. I’m just …’ His smile made him look like some major celeb. She’d never noticed that before either. Gangly teenager Isaac was now pretty damned handsome? Who knew? And now he was swaying, too. Oops … no, it was her … What was she doing? The tree … yes, the tree. ‘I just need to finish this decorating. Then I really should go to bed.’
‘You need a hand?’
‘Going to bed? No. I don’t think—’ She looked down at his palm. It was a nice hand. Slender fingers, neat nails and the slightly roughened skin of a man who worked with his hands …
Oh, and his brain. Because he was also too clever and too successful—seemed the man just knew instinctively about bars and where to put them and who to market them to. Clever, and her brother’s friend. And then he’d found out her deepest, darkest secret …
Stupid. Stupid.
‘No. Thanks. I’m just finishing this. You can go.’ She wafted her hand to him to leave, needed him to leave as that memory rose, scoring the insides of her gut like sandpaper.
She slid her fist back into the decorations box. Something warm banged against it, then darted out of the hole. Something brown. Small. With more legs than she had time to count.
‘Yikes!’ Jumping back, she stepped on Isaac’s booted foot, banged against his body—which was a whole lot firmer than she ever remembered—and ricocheted off him into an armchair, which she scrambled on, all the better to get out of the way of a man-eating furball. Her heart pounded against her ribcage. ‘What … the … hell was that?’
Isaac laughed as he ducked down to the floor. ‘Shh … it’s just a little mouse. Very frightened now, too, by your crazy demonic scream.’ He crawled along the carpet, hemming the creature into a corner, then swooped in and grabbed.
It darted away, under the TV cupboard and into a very dark corner. Now the only view Poppy had was of a very firm-looking jeans-clad backside. And a slice of skin between his belt and T-shirt, skin that for an odd reason made her tummy do a little somersault. Seemed Isaac had recently been somewhere sun-kissed as well as wintry northern Europe. ‘Have you got it?’
A muffled voice came from underneath the cupboard. ‘For an educated woman who uses scalpels for a living you’re mighty squeamish when it comes to tiny pests. I think it’s escaped.’
‘You think? You think? I can’t live here thinking I don’t have mice. I want to know I don’t have mice. I don’t like them, they scare me, however irrational that makes me. And where there’s one, there’s always more. There could be fifty of them.’
‘Then at least you won’t be alone, right?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Sure you are.’ He scrambled up, looked at her all hunched up on the chair and grinned. ‘So you were yelling at some poor, unsuspecting, innocent bystanders. Very loudly.’
‘They were down there across the road and I’m up here behind a window. They didn’t hear.’
‘No. But I imagine the rest of the building did. Where is everyone?’
She slumped down, choosing not to have any more wine, because, seriously, two bottles were way more than she usually had. The mouse had done a runner, so she shovelled her feet under her backside in case it decided to retrace its teeny steps. ‘They’re all out. Gone. Holidays, shopping … all insanely happy and …’ Left behind.
He perched on the arm of the chair, arms folded over his chest—looking as if he was trying to appear sympathetic but inwardly laughing. The way his face lit up when he laughed … that mouth, so nice, so weird. And maybe it was Shiraz-coloured glasses because he was so good-looking weird. Attractive weird. Sexy weird. Infuriating Isaac was eye candy, too. Who knew?
She’d been so busy being annoyed at him living in her space that she hadn’t thought anything else about him at all. Apart from being aware of an electric current every time she was in the same room as him. She’d always assumed that had been caused by her anger at his general class-A irritatingness. ‘Fancy them going off and having a nice time without you. Poor Poppy. Lonely?’
And he was a mind-reader, too, but no way would she fess up to such an idea. ‘Don’t be silly. It’s great that they’re all sorted—it gets them off my hands. Finally.’
‘You love it, though, playing the mum, looking after them all, nurturing them … putting up the tree as a surprise for when they get home. Sweet. You don’t want to be alone at all, do you?’
‘You make it sound pathetic when really I’m just using you all to pay the mortgage.’
He leant towards her. ‘Hey, I was joking—at least you were the sensible sibling and put your money into bricks and mortar instead of partying it away like Alex. And it’s a great flat even if it does get a little busy. And leaky. But the company helps, right?’