Before she could come out from behind the reception desk the door to the clinic flew open, slammed against the doorstop and whacked back again, only to meet a human doorstop. She shivered against the blast of cold air and looked across in time to catch the divot between Max Kirkpatrick’s eyebrows furrow in apology. ‘The door caught a draught.’ He scanned the large reception area in slow motion. There were the usual accoutrements of a veterinary clinic. Dog food displays. A wall full of indestructible toys. Educational posters.
As Max’s eyes narrowed and the divot between his eyebrows deepened, she suddenly saw what he saw. An insane riot of Christmas decorations covering absolutely everything. Hamish may have gone a bit OTT with the tinsel and glittery snowflakes. ‘You certainly like your Christmas decor,’ he said dryly.
‘Not your cup of tea?’
‘Not so much.’
She gave a nonchalant shrug. Drowning in tinsel wasn’t everyone’s idea of Yuletide joy. She was more of a warm twinkly lights and a few well-placed baubles girl herself but ever since Nick had been killed on Christmas Eve and the news of his death had reached them on Christmas Day thirteen long years ago, she’d struggled to recapture the love she’d always had for the festive season.
She glanced behind him. ‘Where’re your patients?’
‘Outside.’ He flicked his thumb over his shoulders, those dark eyes of his not leaving hers for as much as a millisecond. ‘They’re having a snowball fight.’
‘Brilliant!’ She clapped her hands. ‘Some say it’s good for the soul.’
‘Some say it’s good for getting pneumonia.’ His eyes left hers and landed on her jumper. It featured three polar bears ice skating along a river up to the North Pole. ‘Nice jumper.’ His eyes were not on her belly button.
‘Thanks.’ She tilted her head, forcing his eyes back up to meet hers. ‘I bought it in town if you want one.’
‘It isn’t my usual colour palette.’
She snorted. The man was dressed in top to toe navy blue.
‘At least you’re honest.’
‘Some say to a fault.’ He dropped her a wink that, judging from his follow-up expression, he hadn’t planned to drop.
Esme looked straight into his eyes and just as they had that first time they’d met, they released a hot, sweet glittery heat that swept through her bloodstream with a not-too-subtle message. Max Kirkpatrick floated her boat. She gave herself a little shake. This wasn’t a dating session, it was the beginning of a series of rigorous training sessions for the dogs and the new residents. And yet…
She forced her cheeky grin into a look of pure innocence. ‘Any chance you’re open to being converted? To the Christmas thing?’
A shadow tamped out the glints of fun in his dark eyes. ‘I’d say about as likely as one of Santa’s reindeer swooping down and taking me for a ride.’
No wiggle room in that response.
She rolled her shoulders beneath the thick wool of her jumper. Rough against smooth. Would she feel the same sensation if Max were to slip his hands…? Stop that!
She wove her fingers together and adopted a pious expression as she began the lie she told herself every year. ‘I happen to love Christmas and all of the ancillary—’ her voice dropped an octave ‘—accoutrements.’
They both looked surprised at her foray into ‘bedroom voice’. No one more so than Esme. The last thing Christmas was was sexy. Hot chocolate, cosy fires and Christmas trees, definitely. Sultry voices and shoulder wriggles in silly Christmas jumpers? Not even close.
The fact she even looked forward to the holiday was little short of a miracle.
Ever since Nick’s commanding officer had shown up at their front door on Christmas Day all those years ago, Esme had been trying to convince herself it was still the best day of the year. Impossible when they’d been told the rebel forces had taken advantage of the holiday to set intricately built tripwire bombs across the village where Nick had been stationed. Even tougher when they’d found out the only reason Nick had been out and about had been to deliver presents to a bunch of young soldiers who’d been finding it tough to be so far away from home.
Ever since that day Christmas had been like participating in a dreary panto. Each of them going through the motions, pretending they were happy, when all they wanted to do was weep for the golden boy they’d lost. Not that ‘they’ were much of a they any more. Esme’s doomed romance had taken up the first year after Nick’s death.
Her mother had reshaped her grief into a near pathological need to enjoy life. Parties, swanning around the globe, scandalous affairs that had quickly led to the end of her parents’ long and happy marriage. Her father had passed away three years after Nick had and their mother was now married to a Greek shipping magnate, so it was just Esme and Charles now, neither one of them doing all that well at re-injecting joy into Christmas.
No doubt as a former soldier, Max had his own particular days he didn’t like. Unlike her, he didn’t seem all that interested in trying to tap into any tendrils of Christmas cheer lurking somewhere in his heart. For the past thirteen years it had been like a mission for her. Which maybe defeated the purpose—pounding a square peg into a round hole—but there was something about Christmas that sang to her and she wanted to find that music again.
From a very early age she had believed that Christmas was magical. The decorations, the frenzied build-up, the secrets. More than any of those, though, she’d always loved the giving. Much more than the receiving. Seeing the joy on someone’s face when they opened an unexpected present, or a child who had their first proper spin round the ice rink at the Christmas carnival, or someone’s eyes widening as the first snowflake of the season landed on their mittened palm…she loved it. She just wished that the joy of the season touched her heart the way it used to.
All of which reminded her… She lifted up the tray of biscuits resting on the counter. ‘Are you so anti-Christmas that you’d refuse a homemade gingerbread man?’
Max rolled his eyes at her as if she were the lost cause.
Well, to each his own. At least he knew his mind. Honesty was clearly his policy and he stuck to it even if it did make him look like a Scrooge. She could respect that. A slow grin crept back onto her lips. Even Scrooge saw the light in the end.
TWO SECONDS.
Two measly seconds was all it took for Max to start working on an exit plan. Impossible, given his idiotic instinct to volunteer as Euan’s guardian, but how the hell was he meant to survive? Esme was a walking, talking Christmas minx. One who, without as much as a how do you do, had him dropping winks and staring at her boobs. Classy. He really suited the whole ‘landed gentry’ surroundings. Not.
If he didn’t watch himself he’d have her over his shoulder, out the door and high-tailing it around Heatherglen on a quest for mistletoe. He’d bet her lips tasted like peppermint. Or whatever it was Christmas was meant to taste of.
Sugar and spice and all sorts of things that were wickedly nice.
He stuffed his hands in his pockets. He shouldn’t be thinking about what anybody’s lips tasted of. He should be thinking about Euan and Fenella and their dogs and the time he’d no longer have to spend with them in A and E because of this excellent opportunity to turn their lives around. A much more practical line of thought.
A woman wearing a gilet with her name and the therapy centre’s logo stitched onto it pushed through the swinging doors that led to the kennels. Margaret. She was thirty-something. Dark-haired. Rosy-cheeked, from the cold most