Christmas at the Little Clock House on the Green. Eve Devon
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Название: Christmas at the Little Clock House on the Green
Автор: Eve Devon
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Контркультура
Серия: Whispers Wood
isbn: 9780008211059
isbn:
‘Sorry,’ Kate started babbling. ‘Totally the wrong time to drop the L-bomb. At work of all places. I couldn’t pick somewhere romantic? All the times you’ve said the words to me and I haven’t said them back. Oh—,’ she broke off as Daniel closed the distance in one easy stride, swept her up into his arms and kissed her.
As his mouth sealed across hers, a familiar buzz lit across nerve-endings and ignited to spread through her veins. As his lips rubbed, coaxed, revered, she felt more of the slippy-slidey, twisty-tangled conflict inside of her settle.
‘Wow,’ she said.
‘Wow,’ he echoed with a grin. ‘And then there’s also this,’ he held up the key he’d had cut to Myrtle Cottage.
He’d given her the key to his place, Mistletoe Cottage, weeks ago. Presented it as a point of practicality and with his matter-of-fact tone that she found so sexy, how could she refuse? Even as she’d worried exchanging keys was moving fast, she’d still taken that key and let herself in with it that night and stolen into his bed to surprise him.
Yesterday she’d found herself buying his favourite brand of bread. The one with the sixty-three different types of seeds that dropped down the grill of the toaster and worked their way into the strangest of places. The one he liked to wolf down when he returned from his morning run before he got into the shower. Before then getting back into bed with her, claiming he was the perfect wake-up call.
He was, but that was beside the point.
The point was they were leaving more and more bits of themselves at each other’s places … and, well, what did that all mean?
Only this morning she’d realised that the coat she’d been vaguely thinking of wearing today, was probably still at his place.
Had he hung it up?
Did he care that it was there?
Did he want to move in with her?
Wait! What?
This past summer had been a crazy spectacular rollercoaster of competing with Daniel for The Clock House while falling for him, hook, line and sinker. There was still so much they were finding out about each other and now – already – to be thinking about moving in together?
Kate swallowed and stepped out of his arms. It was enough they had keys to each other’s cottages.
Moving in together would be, well, three words: Way, way too soon.
Okay, that was four words, but you get what she’s thinking, right?
To cover her pounding heart, she reached for her pen and her ever-present pad of post-it notes.
She’d be totally cray-cray adding more pressure to their relationship. They hadn’t even opened The Clock House yet.
Leaning down she forced herself to concentrate on what she should really be thinking about, and proud that her handwriting didn’t show any sign of “moving-in-together” shakiness, she wrote: Find someone to manage Cocktails & Chai, and underlined it four times.
Crouching Dragon, Hidden Bartender
Emma
Emma Danes blew a strand of rapidly frizzing blonde hair out of her eyes and looked on in horrid fascination at the human pretzel facing the class.
‘… And as you bend your body down to the earth,’ the yoga instructor drawled, ‘bring your palms to the floor, squeeze your triceps against your inner thighs, and tip your body forward until your feet leave the ground and your body-weight is resting on your hands.’
Um … yeah … no way was she attempting that balancing pose Emma decided as the butterflies fluttered wildly inside her. She attempted that, pee was probably going to come out!
Honestly, of all the yoga-joints in all the world, you’d think she’d have noticed that the one half a block from her apartment had a super-advanced class at eleven thirty on a Monday morning. Then again, normally at this time on a Monday she was taking an acting class.
Or at an audition.
Or knocking on her agent, Penny’s, door, calling out ‘Penny’ three times in rapid succession.
Poor Penny. She must be so over everyone going Sheldon on her.
Thinking of Penny, she stared hard at her lucky bag crocheted in raspberry, denim and sunshiny yellows that she’d casually tossed at the foot of her yoga mat.
Just imagining the phone inside ringing with the news had her heart bouncing down to her stomach and getting caught up in the excitement swirling there. It was as if she’d swallowed a giant ball of tangled-up Christmas lights and someone had plugged them in to test out the techno, techno, techno light setting.
But she’d deal with the reduced-to-jelly nerves all day long because she hadn’t got this wrong.
Today was the diem and she was going to carpe every last drop out of it.
She’d nailed the audition and the call-back. The screen-test couldn’t have gone better and all the great feedback she’d received surely meant that finally the hard work, the sacrifice, the rejection, ahem, rejections, were going to be worth it.
Planets had aligned.
Unicorns had gathered.
And after years in La La Land, Emma Danes was finally getting the lead part in the rom-com of her dreams.
Filming on location in England, here she came.
She bent her head to hide the proudly joyous grin spreading across her face and decided to attempt the yoga pose after all.
Halfway through rearranging her body she heard the buzz from her bag and looked up to see it gently vibrating. With a soft yelp, she leaped upon it and uncaring of where she was, fished the phone from out of her bag, and whispered, ‘Penny?’ into it.
‘Sugar Bean? Are you sitting down?’ There was a short silence and then, ‘I’ve just heard back and I don’t know what to tell you. I’m so sorry.’
The earth’s gravitational pull came to a clattering halt.
That was surely the only reason Emma could possibly be sinking to her yoga mat in a tangle of disbelief. It couldn’t possibly have been Penny’s greeting, her tone, her actual words or Emma’s amazing powers of deduction that was very definitely suggesting…
Emma squeezed her eyes shut.