Page 6

“Monitoring my water usage?”

No, your smell.

A blush crept up her neck. “Just want to make sure I get a hot shower.”

She walked away before she could say anything more incriminating.

* * *

There were boxes, and boxes, of the stuff. Luke shook his head at his friend as he carried yet another crate from the hall cupboard, now known as the Christmas grotto—Anna’s name for it, not his—and into the living room.

Had his best friend really bought all this shit?

“God, he really loved Christmas.” Anna looked wistfully at the mounds of glittery, shiny things.

Luke looked crossly at the lights he’d spent far too much of today twisting round the tree. “He loved shopping.” His friend’s determination to drag him to the fanciest stores—come on Luke, a guy needs the right clothes to impress the women—had always been met with Luke’s equally fierce determination to avoid them at all costs. It had been a constant source of banter between them.

“Well duh, yes, but he loved Christmas, too. Especially this part, the anticipation of it.” Her voice sounded wistful as she lifted the lid off a box labelled ornaments and began pushing red and gold balls onto the tree, stopping every few seconds to stand back and assess. As if it made any fucking difference where the things went. “When we were kids, we used to drive our parents nuts, we got so excited,” she carried on in her soft voice. “First we had to get the right tree. We didn’t know you could cut your own, that came later. We were just happy walking to buy a tree and carrying it back under our arms. Then we’d fight over decorating it. Sometimes I’d catch him swapping my ornaments around afterwards, and of course I couldn’t do the same to his because I wasn’t tall enough.”

Her eyes lit up as she talked. She was enjoying the trip down memory lane. Basking in the happy glow of her recollections growing up.

He hated the reminder of Christmases gone by. There had been good ones, plenty of them. But it was the awful ones that burst into his head faster and lingered longer. Especially that last Christmas.

“Oh look, I remember this one.” She clutched at an ornament with a seaside scene on it. “We bought it in Key West.” She dived down to pick up another, a brown bear. “Oh and this we got when we went to Banff. Colin must have pinched them from Mom and Dad.” She turned to look at him. “Aren’t you going to share any of your Christmas tales? You and your mom must have had a tree, even if she was the one who decorated it.”

He forced himself to breathe, to keep his voice even. “I decorated it.”

“Oh.” Her mouth curved. “Not too cool, then.” She laughed. “Maybe you and Colin weren’t so different after all. He was just more open about his love for Christmas where you’re cagier. Like, God forbid you admit you enjoyed it, and ruin that carefully constructed tough guy image you’ve got going on.”

Her words brushed against wounds already raw from Colin’s death. He didn’t want to be reminded of how much better a person Colin was, he fucking knew it. Didn’t want to be reminded of his mum, of how he’d had to decorate their tree when chemo had made her too weak. Or of how, in their last Christmas together, she’d barely been able to struggle out of bed to look at the damn thing.

“Colin was always so confident in his own skin,” she carried on, unbothered by his lack of response. “He was happy to be the butt of jokes, to admit to things most guys are too embarrassed to admit to.” She waved at all the boxes. “I was there when he bought most of this stuff. The shop assistants always assumed it was for me, but he’d put them straight, tell them he wanted the giant snow globe, the—”

“It was for you.”

She stilled at his harsh tone, blue eyes wide with shock. “Well yes, he knew I enjoyed decorating the place too—”

“It was all for you,” he interrupted again. He tried to make his voice softer this time, but she’d raked up too many bad memories, rubbed salt into too many unhealed wounds. “Every damn fairy light, every bauble, every snow globe. The giant tree. You really think a single guy living in a million-dollar condo would have bothered with any of it if it hadn’t been for you?”

“What are you saying?” Her gaze skimmed over the decorations. “He only bought all this to, what, pander to his kid sister? That he didn’t enjoy putting them on the tree?” The telltale waver was back in her voice. The one that told him he’d gone way too far. “Are you saying I didn’t know my own brother?”

The confusion, the hurt in those expressive blue eyes, made something in his chest crack. “No, I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I think you always say exactly what you mean.” Tears streamed down her face and she scrambled to her feet. “Excuse me. I need to be somewhere you’re not for a while.”

He watched her walk away, red leggings that emphasized her curves, mismatched stripy socks, one red and green, one red and white. All topped by a Christmas jumper with dancing reindeer, similar to those he’d noticed on her pj’s this morning. No silk and sophistication for Anna. She was down to earth, unpretentious, fun—he distinctly remembered Colin always saying how much he enjoyed being with his sister because she was bubbly and up for a laugh.

When she wasn’t grieving. And having her spirit crushed by a brute and his big, clumsy mouth.

Frustrated with himself, he stood up. This was not what his friend would have had in mind when he’d painstakingly created the advent calendar. Anna was right, Colin would have known that without him forcing the issue, they would both have gone their separate ways after his death. Both faced mourning his loss, and the run up to Christmas, alone. Luke was no stranger to that, but Anna deserved whatever crumbs of joy she could find.

Heart heavy, he tapped on her door. “Anna.”

“If that’s the grumpy sonofabitch currently sharing this condo with her, she’s not here.”

His lips twitched. “When she comes back, can you tell her the grumpy git is very sorry for what he said.”

“I might.”