His Christmas Surprise

by Harper, Grace

  Once I’d had my cuddle, I untangled my arms and legs and tilted my head up to gauge his mood.

  “I’ve already done most of the work. The blocks of icing are mainly for the cake covering. I need to make three hundred petals in red for the rest of the flowers. If you could get the large plastic boxes by the back door, you’ll see that I don’t need to be in here for much more than four hours.”

  “Really? Is that all?”

  “Probably. My thumb may slow me down, but it should be fine. Go and get your laptop and work in here, keep me company. There seems no point being in separate rooms in this big house and you can tell me some stories of your trips while I work.”

  I took his hand before he walked to the boxes. “We have time for a quick kiss,” I said, sitting up straighter waiting for his lips to touch mine.

  He kissed me quickly and got the boxes, peeling off the lids, staring at all the icing flowers placed in rows. Layer over layer of roses sitting proud.

  “Why so many?”

  “Mollie wanted a petal for every day that has passed since they reunited and the day they get married. One thousand eight hundred and twenty-three days.”

  “Wow, that’s romantic.”

  “She never used to be, it was all work with Mollie, changing beds and making breakfasts at her guest house. She doted on her guests, not leaving any time for romance. When Charlie was snowed in and couldn’t get a flight back to his company, she was forced to relax and rekindle their childhood friendship.”

  “Where were you the first time they met?”

  “When they first met as teenagers?”

  “Yeah,” he said, taking a seat far away from any of the icing sugar I was throwing on the tabletop. “I never saw you.”

  “I was probably kissing a boy in a bus shelter. I didn’t care much for the beach which was where Mollie spent a lot of her days.”

  “Bronwyn.”

  “What? We were fifteen, I was allowed to kiss the boys at that age. Kids these days are doing a lot more. I didn’t have sex until I was twenty. It was disastrous, the first time.”

  “Mine wasn’t any better.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Seventeen, with a girl from my economics class. I was doing my A-Levels at the time, just finished my first-year exams and we got drunk and had sex in the back seat of my car.”

  “I’m always amazed that people can have sex in a car, there never seems to be enough room for all the limbs to be at the right angle.”

  “I had an estate car, loads of room.” Dean gave me a cheeky wink.

  “Oh.”

  We fell silent for a while. I concentrated on making the red roses that would be positioned in between all the white roses. They’d match her bouquet and snake down the three layers of cake like a waterfall.

  “What about your first kiss?” I asked.

  “I was at a school disco, this girl asked for a Christmas kiss. I pecked her on the lips, and she frowned, shaking her head. A proper kiss, she’d said, French kiss. It was really intimidating to be asked to kiss a girl at thirteen.”

  “Was there loads of saliva, messy, fumbling, ten seconds and then that was it?”

  “Pretty much, was that how it was for you?”

  “Similar but I wasn’t in charge, he was. His hands were everywhere, I swear he’d grown an extra pair to grab my boobs and my arse at the same time.”

  “I would never want to be a teenager again, far too painful and embarrassing talking to girls, taking them on dates, wondering if you were going to be dumped the next day.”

  “It hasn’t changed now that we’re adults, except we get drunk instead and eat copious amounts of chocolate when the guy doesn’t call again after an amazing date. How can two people go on a date and one of them has a terrible time, and the other has a fantastic time?”

  “No idea, surely you get some clue the other one isn’t interested.”

  “Men are odd.”

  “Women are odd. I don’t think I’ll ever work them out.”

  I carved out a rose and held it up to the light to make sure the petals were curving out.

  “You need to find the one, and then you can stop trying. She’ll make everything easy to understand and you’ll live happily ever after.”

  “It’s that easy?” Dean asked. He wasn’t convinced.

  “So Mollie tells me, every moment she gets.”

  Sometime later, all the roses were finished, sitting proudly in rows alongside the plastic boxes. Now came the hard part, pressing them onto the cake. That part was where I needed to concentrate and not think about what I’d just said to Dean. It was easy when you found someone who relaxed you to the point of coma inside twenty-four hours.

  Dean and I had bounced around the house over the last couple of days like we’d lived there all our lives and I didn’t know what to make of that revelation. I imagined I’d be having one-night stands and casual sex for the rest of my life, or until no one wanted a haggard old spinster. Now that I’d met Dean, I had all kinds of scenarios floating around my head.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  Dean peered over his laptop to see how far I’d gotten with the cake. Not very far. I was having trouble lifting the cakes on top of each other without damaging the icing. I’d managed to insert the support posts into the bottom cake but positioning the second layer perfectly was proving impossible.

  “Saggy boobs and I need a new thumb.”

  “I’m not going anywhere near the saggy boobs comment as your breasts are perfect. Why do you need a new thumb?”

  “It still has a bit of heat in it.”

  “And?”

  “It’s melting the icing sugar.”

  “Oh. Do you want some help?”

  “If you can wash your hands in freezing cold water, dry them and come over here. I can direct you.”

  Dean closed his laptop, eyed me sceptically and then did as he was asked. He rolled up his sleeves in the chilly room, which made all sorts of erotic thoughts run through my head. Dean had the same fine veering of hair on his arms as he did on his legs.

  He gently lifted the middle cake tier, and I guided his hands to where I needed him to be. We were face to face holding on the cake like it was a newborn baby. Once it was in position, the weight of it pierced the plastic tubes and began to sink down. Using my good hand, flat on top of the iced cake, I helped its journey, thinking about sinking down on Dean.

  “One more, the top tier if you don’t mind repeating the process. Then you can go back to writing your article.”

  I held my palms over his once more to guide him into place. He was breaking out in perspiration along his hairline. He must have been in trickier situations than this.

  “Why are you so nervous?”

  “I don’t want to fuck this up. This is the cake you’ve made for my best friend’s wedding, I don’t want to let either of you down.”

  “It’s all done, you can relax,” I said, patting his hand for him to take them away and not overheat the icing.

  Dean scurried away from me, back to the safety of his laptop. He bashed away at the keys, glancing my way every few minutes as I pinned the white and red roses to the cake bases.

  A couple of hours later, I needed to stand up, go for a pee, sleep for a week and drink some alcohol. Which order, it didn’t matter, but the bathroom was more pressing than the others. The cake was made. Pride filled my chest as I turned it on its spinning base so I could see every angle. This was my first wedding cake. No one else I knew had married since I owned the bakery in the small town. Mollie was my first and probably my last wedding cake if I was going to make a habit of burning my thumb. Dean had disappeared some time ago leaving me in isolation but not before strapping a fresh hot water bottle to my tummy. It had long cooled. Discarding all of my clothing apart from my knickers, I left the kitchen to go in search of warmth. My t-shirt and bottoms were covered in icing sugar powder. The thought of the white powder crusted into his carpets did
n’t sit well with his hospitality. I ran up the back stairs to the room he’d put me up in and rummaged through his drawers. Everything looked too good to throw on without a shower. Looking around the room for inspiration, I spotted his dressing gown. Perfect.

  It smelled of his aftershave, as I wrapped it around me and tied the belt, it felt comfortable. I showered for thirty seconds in freezing cold water, found something resembling underwear and put his robe back on. The stark contrast to living next to my shop on the high street with the constant noise of people and cars to the isolation and silence of a house in the middle of snow-covered fields was so different I couldn’t remember the sound I was used to a few days ago.

  Dean’s family house was big enough to lose someone and small enough to feel like a home. The carpet in the corridor was worn with decades of footsteps. I loved that the carpet didn’t go to the edges and you could see a glimpse of the hardwood floor next to the gold strip along the edge of the carpet. There was understated wealth in the house. Cream wallpaper that looked like it was painted on with a runner at waist height the whole way down the corridor. Above the wooden runner was cream wallpaper again with a subtle red pinstripe. Most of the walls at shoulder height were covered in oil paintings of animals. Many were horses, a couple of paintings with dogs in them. Only one had a portrait of an elderly man. At the bottom of the picture was a small square brass plaque that had a name inscribed. I had to lean closer to attempt reading the name. The darkness of the corridor made it hard to see anything at all with clarity. I used the torch on my phone to guide my way. The plaque was old, possibly tarnished gold. I did what every non-respectful person would do and licked my thumb to smear across the name. If the portrait could come to life, he would’ve rolled his eyes. All I managed to do was rub more grime into the swirling scripted name.

  “Are you defacing my great grandfather’s portrait?”

  I stumbled back so fast, I tripped over my own feet, landing on my arse, looking up at the oil painting. I bet if the man were alive, he would be bent over double, laughing at me. Much like Dean was, right at that moment. He approached me, sniggering, offering a hand to help me up. Stuffing my phone in my pocket, I took his offer with both hands, so he could haul my arse off the carpet. I came up with more vigour than I expected and came chest to chest with Dean. He stole a quick kiss.

  “You scared me, I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry, it was hilarious to watch your reaction.” Dean took my hand to turn us to face his great grandfather. He took out his own phone to switch on the light. “This is Percy, and I never met him, he died long before I was born, but he was the first owner of this house.”

  “What did he do?”

  “For a job?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He was a stonemason, built the house with his own hands alongside his work crew. For a time he was on an equal footing, building the house with the staff he hired for his other construction projects. He put another man in his place as the foreman to run the show. They built the walls around the main garden side by side for weeks on end. They are all rubble as no one took care of them over the years. My great grandfather claimed he knew his workmen like family after they finished the house and vowed to keep them on until they chose to stop working. He kept his word too. Each year he was alive, at Christmastime, he would invite them to the house for a glass of wine and some food. It was a small community in those days, everyone knew everybody.”

  “Wow, a true family home.”

  “At the time he built this, he’d already owned a lot of land further north. Had houses built all over mid-Wales. He lived off the rents, but after each generation, there were fewer houses as they were sold during hard times. He built this house as a retirement home. My great grandfather left it to my great uncle. Apparently, my grandfather didn’t want to live in the middle of nowhere, preferring Cardiff instead. My great Uncle’s only son died in the second world war and left it to me.”

  “It’s a wonderful home. What will you do with it?”

  “I don’t know. A decision for another day. Is the cake finished?”

  “Yes, is your article finished?”

  “Yep. All ready to send to the editor when we have service again. Some power lines are down with the weight of the snow. There are overhead cables around this area that powers this house.”

  “Shit, what about tomorrow and the wedding? Mollie will be so disappointed.”

  “If what you tell me about Mollie is true, she’ll be here tomorrow afternoon. She can be married by candlelight if need be. We don’t need power for them to declare their love for one another. What do you think they did when my great grandfather’s father was alive? He was a stonemason too, handed down the family knowledge.”

  “I don’t know, that must have been halfway through the 1800s.”

  “Towards the tail end of the century. There was electricity in some areas but not here or further north where all the properties were built and rented. They said their vows in their coats, in a small chapel and then went back home again. No reception, no dancing. A fifteen-minute ceremony and then back in time for tea.”

  “How very boring.”

  “I think it’s romantic. More about the marriage than the wedding. Simpler times. If I got married, that’s how I would want it. A winter wedding, then straight back to the house for mulled wine, baked cheese and fresh bread. I wouldn’t want to have a party after the ceremony, I would want to spend the rest of the day with just my bride.”

  “You’re an old romantic.”

  “I like to think so. Just need to find a bride that thinks the same way.”

  Dean dropped his head and smiled, giving me a quick glance as he squeezed my hand.

  “Come, I have prepared something for us if you’ll indulge me?”

  I went with Dean, following as he led us through the house and back to the living room door. He gave me one more shy smile and opened the living room door only lit by the fire. In front of the sofa was a mattress with a dozen pillows, blankets and a duvet. He’d made camp by the fire. A bottle of red wine and two glasses sat by the edge of the flagstone by the fireguard.

  “This looks wonderful.”

  “You were so cold last night, I thought this would be better. It means we’ll need to snuggle up.”

  “I think I can cope with sleeping next to you, much better than a hot water bottle.”

  I walked into the room, heading for the sofa first. More blankets were folded on the cushions along with a pile of books that had seen better days. I picked up with first, Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. There were a couple of Agatha Christie novels as well as a few autobiographies of people I’d never heard about. I was another step closer to never wanting to leave this house or Dean’s side. His consideration was a thousand percent more than anyone I had ever met before. Taking care of me became second nature to him, without any way of knowing what I wanted. Yet, here I was, with everything I needed.

  I settled on the sofa, dragging a blanket over my legs, the robe giving me warmth from the waist up. Dean handed me a glass of wine, not asking if I wanted it. It was in the smallest glass I had ever seen. Taking a sip, my eyes bugged at the strong taste. I’d taken a considerable gulp thinking it was a cheap bottle of red wine he’d found in the cellar. It was so potent it burned my throat.

  Dean joined me on the sofa with his glass and took a delicate sip.

  “It’s Port,” he said, trying to hide his grin. “It will warm your soul.”

  “It will disintegrate my stomach.”

  “Only if you gulp it down,” he said, reaching behind the back of the sofa.

  He brought a wooden chopping board with a large wedge of cheese, a stack of pickled onions and a pile of crackers. He made a space between our bodies on top of the books to make a table. We ate in silence, sharing the knife as we cut chunks of cheese, eating, glancing and smiling.

  I had nothing to say, nothing to ask, which made me feel guilty. We were on a date of sorts, and I had
no desire to know anything about Dean’s past. My preference was to listen to the fire crackle and enjoy his company. I’d never been with a man without the pressure to be something he wanted. I knew everyone in town, dated some men, slept with a few and a relationship with one. None of them compared to the man sitting next to me.

  “I leave on Christmas Day. I thought you should know that.”

  Dean had waited until I had a cracker loaded with cheese, halfway to my mouth to blurt out his news.

  “So soon after the wedding?”

  I didn’t want my perfectly constructed cheese mountain anymore and put it back on the chopping board.

  “I’m afraid so. I didn’t think it would matter until this moment.”

  “Why this moment?”

  “I’ve realised that this moment is the happiest I’ve been for a very long time. It’s the first time I’ve felt at home, and it has nothing to do with the house.”

  “Really, that’s crazy. You’re stranded in a house with no electricity or telephone connection to the outside world. Added to that, you have to share the place with a mad baker who is clumsy.”

  Dean ignored all the negatives I rattled out. “You don’t feel it? The tranquillity?”

  “I feel it,” I whispered, reluctant to admit it now that I knew he was going in less than two days.

  “I’m sorry,” Dean said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I have to go away. I don’t want to, but I made a commitment to the magazine.”