Chapter 9
Aurora
The Covent Garden Christmas Market is exactly as magical as I'd hoped it would be. Twinkling lights are strung between Victorian buildings, creating a canopy of stars above our heads. The scent of cinnamon and roasted chestnuts hangs in the crisp air, mingling with pine and spiced wine.
A choir somewhere in the distance sings “Silent Night,” their voices carrying over the hum of the crowd. Children dart between adults, their laughter bright and infectious, while snow falls in lazy spirals, dusting the cobblestones and making everything look like a scene from a Christmas card.
I spin slowly, trying to take it all in at once—the lights, the music, the sheer joy of it all. When I complete my turn, I find Cole watching me with his hands in his pockets and an expression that makes my heart do that stupid fluttery thing again.
“What?” I ask, suddenly self-conscious. I reach up to touch my hair, then my cheeks. “Do I have something on my face?”
“No.” His lips quirk up at one corner, and there's a hint of a smile in his voice. “You just look happy.”
A wide smile overtakes me, and I spin about once more in sheer delight. “I am happy.”
And I am.
Despite waking up alone this morning with nothing but a note. Despite the little voice in my head that niggled at me, telling me I should've been more hurt than I was. Despite knowing this is temporary. I'm genuinely, stupidly happy.
When I first saw him outside that Pret, my heart had nearly stopped. Part of me wanted to be angry about the way he left. But then he apologised with genuine regret in those green eyes, and I realised I didn't want to waste such a serendipitous meeting.
“Is that a bad thing?” I ask softly as I tilt my head to study him.
“No, no. Not at all.” He steps closer, and snowflakes catch on his dark lashes. His voice drops intimately despite the crowd around us. “It’s nice. Watching someone truly enjoy things instead of just going through the motions.”
“You could try it sometime, you know.” I poke his chest playfully, acutely aware of the solid warmth beneath my fingertip. “Enjoying things.”
“I’m working on it.” Something in his tone has my pulse skipping a beat. “You’re a very effective tutor.”
The way he says it, like I’m somehow responsible for this shift in him, for the softening around his edges, makes my stomach flip dangerously.
I like that I bring out a recklessness in him. That he cancelled meetings and took a risk on spending the afternoon with me, when it’s clearly so out of character.
I’m suddenly very aware of how close we’re standing. Of how his breath creates little clouds in the cold air that mingle with mine. Of how effortless it would be to close the distance and…
“Come on,” I blurt, needing to break the moment before I do something impulsive. “Let's explore before I combust from Christmas excitement.”
He laughs, a warm sound that seems to wrap around me, and I realise it's something I don't hear nearly enough. It’s a sound I could very easily become addicted to. The way it transforms his face and lights up his eyes.
When we pass a stall decorated with evergreen garlands and red ribbons, I stop and tug on Cole's sleeve.
“Mulled wine,” I announce with a gigantic, cheesy grin. “You promised.”
“That was before I could smell it,” Cole deadpans.
“No way. Not happening.” I'm already pulling him toward the stall. “You can't experience a proper Christmas market without mulled wine, Hotshot.”
“Watch me,” he says dryly.
“Where's your sense of adventure?”
“Back at the office with my sanity, clearly,” he mutters, but he's already reaching for his wallet, insistent upon paying despite my protests.
When he passes me my cup, his hand lingers on mine for a beat too long to be accidental, his thumb brushing against my knuckles in a way that sends heat skating up my arm.
“See?” I take a sip, letting the spices spread through my chest. “Perfection.”
He takes a cautious sip, his gaze still on me over the rim of his cup. Those green eyes are doing things to my equilibrium that have nothing to do with the wine. “It's tolerable.”
“High praise from Ebenezer Scrooge,” I tease, pressing my lips together but unable to suppress my grin.
“I'm not a Scrooge,” he retorts, but there's a glint in his eyes that wasn't there before. A playfulness I'm learning to coax out of him.
“You literally just called mulled wine 'tolerable' like it committed a crime against your taste buds.”
His lips twitch ever-so-slightly. “Perhaps it did.”
I giggle, and he shakes his head, though I catch the smile he's trying to hide—and the way his eyes haven't left my face, like he's memorising something. “Drink your wine, Scrooge.”
He takes another sip anyway, and I count that as a win.
The market stretches out before us like something from a storybook, and I can't help but stop at every single stall, just as I warned him I would.
Cole doesn't complain, just follows along with that barely-there smirk. His hands are shoved in his coat pockets since finishing his mulled wine, and he occasionally offers dry commentary that makes me laugh harder than it probably should.
“Do you absolutely need an ornament of a hedgehog wearing a Santa hat?” he asks when I pick one up.
“Need? No, not in the slightest. Want? Absolutely.” I turn it over in my hands, admiring the tiny details. The little ceramic hedgehog has a distinctly grumpy expression that makes me smile. “Look how grumpy he looks. He reminds me of someone.”
I stare at Cole pointedly before quirking an eyebrow.
“I'm not grumpy.”
“You're delightfully grumpy.” I put the hedgehog back down, moving to the next stall, where glass ornaments catch the light like captured rainbows. “It's one of your better qualities, if you ask me.”
“One of?” He follows me, close enough that our shoulders brush, and I'm acutely aware of the heat radiating from him even through our winter coats. Close enough that I can smell his cologne mixed with the crisp air. “Care to elaborate on the others, Sweetheart?”
The way he says that word—low and intimate, like a caress—makes my skin prickle with awareness. Makes me remember how it sounded in the dark, breathed against my neck, my lips, other places that make me flush just thinking about them.
While I push down the memories of last night, I pretend to think about it, making a point of tapping my chin as I examine a delicate glass snowflake. “Well, you're tall. That's helpful for reaching things.”
“Helpful for reaching things,” he repeats flatly, in a way that has me suppressing my threatening laughter.
“And you have excellent taste in whisky.”
“Better.” He nods, as though placated.
“And,” I say, glancing up at him through my lashes, “I can tell by the way you talk about your daughter that you're a wonderful dad.”
Something in his expression softens, his eyes warming in the glow of the market lights. “That's three things.”
“There's a fourth, actually. You did save my life. Twice today.” I bump my shoulder against his, letting it linger there. “That's pretty heroic, if you ask me.”
He raises an eyebrow, the corner of his mouth quirking up in that way that does dangerous things to my pulse.
His hand comes to rest on the small of my back, guiding me around an exceptionally crowded section of the market, and even through my coat, I can feel the warmth of his palm, the possessive way his fingers splay across my spine.
“Twice? Are you sure you're not being a tad dramatic?”
“First, the cyclist, then steadying me when that rude businessman nearly sent me flying into a lamp post,” I point out, warming to my argument.
I tilt my head up to meet his gaze, and something flares between us in the space of a heartbeat.
Something hungry that reminds me of how he looked at me last night.
“Two heroic rescues in one afternoon. You're really committed to this whole book boyfriend thing, aren't you?”
His eyes spark with something that makes my breath catch. “Do you think it’s working?”
“Maybe,” I admit, forcing myself to sound casual, even as his hand stays firmly at my back, warm and steady and making me want to lean into him. “Though I have to say, all this rescuing and apologising is very heroic. You're making it really hard to believe that note you left.”
His jaw tightens slightly, and I see the flash of something complicated in his eyes. “I meant what I said in that note.”
“I know you did.” I hold his gaze, my voice softening. “But just so you know, being a good guy doesn't require being perfect, Cole. It just requires showing up.”
His voice drops lower as he leans in slightly. “You might be giving me too much credit.”
“Or maybe you're being too hard on yourself,” I counter quietly, then deliberately lighten my tone before this gets too heavy. “But what do I know? I'm just the girl who keeps wandering into traffic.”
“Twice in one day,” he says, and there's warmth in his expression now, the tension from a moment ago melting away. “That takes a special kind of talent.”
He's close enough now that I catch the scent of his woodsy cologne mixed with cinnamon from the mulled wine, and it's making me slightly dizzy. Or maybe that's just him.
I reach up to brush a snowflake from his shoulder, my fingers lingering perhaps a moment too long. Long enough to feel the solid muscle beneath his coat, to remember what it felt like without any barriers between us. “I prefer to think of it as keeping you on your toes.”
“Is that what we're calling it?” His thumb brushes against my back, a slow, deliberate stroke that makes heat pool low in my belly.
I grin up at him. “So you're saying you wish you hadn't saved me? Think of all the witty banter and mulled wine you'd have missed out on.”