“Are you okay?”
She lifted her hand and gave him a thumbs-up. There was no way she could talk at the moment. Her breathing remained labored for the next few minutes. When she finally found the strength, she turned to him and smiled.
“You rocked my world in more ways than one. Thank you so much.” She bent closer and placed a tiny kiss on his lips.
“I love you, Patience Middleton, but I have to talk to you.”
She wrapped her arms around him, exhausted. Her legs were sore. What more could he have in store for her? This was incredible, to say the least. She couldn’t imagine anything better.
He kissed her cheek, her hair, and finally her lips.
“Get dressed so we can talk, please.”
Dressed? She thought for sure he had more sexual acts planned.
“Humor me.”
His seriousness took her off guard.
“Okay.”
He released her and quickly picked up his clothing.
“I’ll be waiting in the living room for you.”
She nodded and headed to her room, where she quickly threw on her dress. She ran a brush through her hair and wondered what could possibly be so important. She’d resolved to have more patience, and she’d shown that when she didn’t question him, even though a million questions racked her brain.
She prayed he hadn’t decided to leave Nancy’s employment now that they were moving forward with the relationship. She knew Kyle adored him, but she also knew how William felt about mixing business with pleasure. He’d said it was a surprise, though. She wouldn’t consider quitting his job a surprise. Well, maybe.
“Oh damn. I’ll just go into the living room and find out. Why am I torturing myself?”
She quickly left her bedroom and rushed into the living room. She stopped dead in her tracks when she realized he’d decorated the couch with rose petals. There were two champagne flutes, each filled with the bubbly liquid. The lights were turned off, and the only lighting came from the many candles he’d lit. On the coffee table sat two plates and various closed boxes.
“Oh my. This is absolutely beautiful.” She felt a tear threatening. No one had ever done anything so special for her—ever.
“I hoped you’d be surprised.” He stood facing the couch, waiting for her to make her grand entrance. “You look stunning. Please come join me.”
He held out his hand, and she walked around and accepted. He led her to the couch and waited for her to be seated.
She watched in awe as he picked up the champagne glass and handed it to her.
Their fingers touched as she took the glass from him.
“I got us some scrumptious things to eat.”
“I can’t wait to taste them. What’s in the boxes?”
“It’s New Year’s Eve. Didn’t you just promise to be more patient?”
“William!”
“All sorts of things.” He sat down next to her. “You know how I feel about you, right?”
“Yes,” she said cautiously. She didn’t like the direction his tone took. “Please stop torturing me like this—just spill it. Tell me what this is all about.”
He laughed. “You really need to practice your patience.”
She covered his hand with hers. “Yes, and I’m sorry. I’m worried, and when I panic—well, you know.”
“That’s what I love about you.” His hand grazed her hair. “Then again, there isn’t anything I don’t love about you.”
She lowered her head, embarrassed. His compliments were charming, and she felt the same way about him.
“You know I’d do anything for you, right?”
She looked up and met his gaze. “Yes.”
When he removed his hands from her and reached to the table, she wondered if he was seriously going to ditch their conversation for food. He wouldn’t leave her in suspense much longer, would he?
He picked up the box and held it in his hands on his lap. He stared at the box, not speaking.
Is this a test?
She bit the inside of her cheek, trying not to demand he tell her what was going on. She was just about to blurt out when he let out a sigh.
Dear God, that’s not good.
“I’ve never been good with words, so forgive me if this comes out awkward.”
Now he was really scaring her. What the fuck?
“I wanted to find the perfect time to give you your fantasy, and tonight seemed like the right place and the right time.”
“It was. I’m glad I waited, though you scared the hell out of me, but that’s another story.”
“Yeah, I know and I’m sorry. It’s just for it to appear real, I had to. I hope you’ll find it in your heart to forgive me.”
“I already have.”
“Good. So anyway, back to what I was saying. I want to make you happy every minute, every hour of every day.”
“I know.”
“No, it’s more than that.”
He started to open the box, and she knew she would scream with frustration if he grew silent on her again. This pausing and making her wait was killing her.
“I—”
“What, William? Please, just say what’s on your mind.”
He stood up abruptly and walked to the other side of the room. The box dropped, and when she scooped it up, she noticed it was empty.
Strange.
He kept his back to her for a few moments and then came back. Instead of sitting next to her, he fell to one knee and pulled out a little blue velvet box.
“Patience Middleton, will you marry me?”
She gasped. This was not what she’d expected. She thought for sure it was bad news, but it wasn’t. This was exhilarating news. The most wonderful, joyful news.
“Yes!”
He opened the box, and she was stunned by the emerald-cut diamond that sat inside. One large diamond in the middle, two smaller ones on each side, and three smaller ones beside each of those.
“It’s exquisite.”
“Here, let me put it on you.”
She watched as he removed it from the box, and she held out a shaky hand. He managed to slide the ring onto her finger, in spite of her shivering hand.
She admired it and all of its sparkles.
“Wow, I didn’t think I could fall in love so fast or even consider marrying anyone, but you…you made me see how great love can be. I love you, William, and I’ll be thrilled to be your wife.”
She sealed it with a kiss.
THE END
About the Author
Amber grew up reading sick and twisted murder mysteries. Romance was for little kids and their fairy tales. One day, after her grandmother died and she inherited a boat load of romances, Amber found a new genre to love. Then she discovered erotic romance and found her calling.
In the summer, when not creating sexy, seductive stories, Amber can be found at the ocean or floating around in her pool, with music blasting in the background. In the winter she enjoys sitting in her sunroom watching the snow fall, with the fireplace glowing. She also spends lots of time with her husband, children, grandchildren, and three dogs.
Winter Sparks
Rent-a-Gentleman Two
Rebecca Fairfax
About the Story
Winter-spring? No: winter sparks!
Meet Hugo Winter, gorgeous fifty-something all-round perfect gentleman, and Alessa Marks, sexy late-twenties local journalist—and not really an elegant lady. While entrepreneur Hugo is at meetings with city luminaries and pitching venture capital ideas to fellow businessmen, Alessa’s probably chasing a reclusive rock star for an interview or sticking her nose into a local scandal for her column, Sparks, in the Montford Herald.
When an unexpected meeting just before Christmas brings never-the-twain Hugo and Alessa together, sparks combust. But can a winter-spring relationship, particularly one that starts out with passion hot enough to melt snow, really work out? Especially when Hugo’s reluctant to speak about his past, making Ale
ssa determined to ferret out his secrets? Will their love wither in the frost or bloom with the spring?
To my daughter, who has the patience of a saint.
Chapter One
Friday morning found Alessandra Marks, Sparks to most people, in a pub, wondering why the stale Guinness smell that impregnated every pub carpet should be so prevalent in a hostelry with bare floorboards. Ten o’clock. Too early for a drink, even by the traditionally louche standards of a journalist, but she wasn’t there for the cask ale or the botanicals-enhanced “vodka for grown-ups” gin bar. No, the first appointment in her diary for that day was for the pub’s annual exorcism.
“Are these licensed premises actually haunted?” she asked the Bishop of Montford, there to officiate and resplendent in his long white vestment and ceremonial mitre headdress.
“Shouldn’t be, or His Excellency here is slipping in his yearly duty!” quipped the Lord Mayor, there as official witness and a sight to behold with his black tricorn hat topping his chubby-cheeked face and his ermine-trimmed robes swaddling his tubby figure.
Alessa felt underdressed—she was one of the few, male and female, not wearing a skirt of some kind and was distinctly lacking in the accessories department, compared to the Lord Mayor’s heavy gold chain and seal and the bishop’s amethyst ring and matching jewel in the top of his staff, all giving off glittery glints in the pub’s weak light.
In this bit of Montford’s Old Town, she wasn’t far from the Players Theatre and its costume hire service. Should she pop along and get something more splendid than her ‘uniform’ of straight-leg jeans, striped shirt worn with sweater, and heavy-soled ankle boots? Nah. No time, even if she could be bothered.
She held out her digital voice recorder to capture the bishop’s practised tones that swooped up to the timber-beamed roof and back down again to the wooden floor as he recounted the history of the alms paid to the nearby Cathedral in perpetuity by every innkeeper of the Rose and Crown since the inn had been built in the sixteenth century, only to be interrupted by the Lord Mayor calling out that he betted the diocese wished the payment was index-linked to inflation, eh, eh?
Don Jackman, the current publican, probably glad the payment was still only four old pennies a year, grinned, showing off a gold tooth. Really, everyone has more bling than I do, Alessa thought. She inched back a little from the semi-circle of dignitaries and worthies to join Don and his staff lined up in front of the crackling log fire. She didn’t need to hear that in return for the alms, the diocese was charged with casting out unclean spirits from the hostelry, or the Lord Mayor’s quip that it didn’t just mean the sticky bottles from behind the bar, eh, now? Alessa preferred to cast out the December chill with the heat from the fireplace’s apple-scented flames, and hear what the publican and his staff were muttering about.
“Another square to me,” Don crowed, tapping the sheet of paper he held out for his bar staff. Alison Harper, bar manager, groaned as Don crossed off the square he’d indicated. He gave a nod to Alessa, a regular. “Hey, Sparks.”
“Damn! I had one about ‘spirits’ but not that exact ‘unclean spirits’ joke!” Alison slumped down into the cushioned recess at the side of the fireplace.
“Come on!” Kelvin, student and bartender, rallied Alison. “He’s bound to do the ‘watch out, mate, your handbag’s on fire!’ joke when the bishop starts up the incense in the censer. Then you’ll get a square!”
Oh. They were playing a Lord Mayor version of lingo bingo, were they? God knew she and her co-workers played a similar office-based version of it in management meetings at the Montford Herald, their slips on their knees under the table, crossing off clichés such as generate content, clickbait, or downward impact.
“Did he make the same jokes last year?” Alessa asked Don, indicating the Lord Mayor. Ever since he’d became a town councillor, he’d treated every meeting like a club stage. Alessa should know—she sat through enough Town Hall meetings. The word was they’d made the man Lord Mayor to kick him into a more ceremonial role, away from their day-to-day work.
“And the year before.” Don nodded, a little weary looking. Alessa understood that feeling of routine.
“Didn’t see you last night?” Don remarked, and Alessa shook her head, something she was able to do easily, being free of the usual Friday morning hangover, the painfully dehydrated brain and thickly dry mouth that came courtesy of the Thursdays Ladies’ Night cheap drinks.
“Keren came as usual. I got caught up in something.” She stopped. Last night hadn’t been the first occasion she’d cried off recently, and not because her private research was so very engrossing. Well, truth be told, she was looking deeper into writing about the county’s unexplored historical figures, whether as long reads for the Herald, or even articles to be pitched to other papers, or history or heritage magazines, or even publishers.
Her current fascination was Lady Elizabeth Latimer, of Sedley Castle out in Montfordshire county, whom some locals swore to be—and Alessa was slowly joining their ranks—the illegitimate daughter of Henry VIII’s last queen, Catherine Parr, and Thomas Seymour, and conceived when Catherine was still married to Henry and born before she took Thomas as her fourth husband.
Alessa frowned, stopping and smoothing out her face when she realized what she was doing. At twenty-seven, she’d started to be cautious about wrinkles. She used to look forward to Thursday nights, the-weekend-starts-here night of the week, but lately—
“Sparks!”
“About time!” Alessa called down to Miguel Almeida, the Herald’s photographer assigned to this story, who was bounding in with his usual double-speed, long-legged stride. She couldn’t be annoyed with him—he’d probably covered at least two items before zooming here to photograph this one. Luckily, he had the energy and stamina of an overgrown Portuguese mountain dog puppy in these times when staff cutbacks had added to everyone’s workload.
“His Excellency’s lighting the censer!” hissed Kelvin, making the staff and Alessa rush away from the fire’s warmth and down the two steps into the bar proper where the ceremony, the exorcism, was about to start.
Miguel blotted any sweat from his forehead with a tissue and took up position with his camera. Alessa threw back her thick blonde mane that no amount of layering seemed to thin out, instead only making it bounce around her face, and held out her recorder again.
“At least this job keeps you fit, gives you some ‘exorcise’!” called the Lord Mayor, who then looked hurt at the groans.
“Didn’t a publican die in here on the job, back in the nineteenth century?” Miguel asked, clicking away. “Just keeled over, working the beer pump? I read it in a book on Old Montford.” An incomer, he was interested in the town. He indicated the robed churchman asking for the intervention of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, then, with a nod to Catholicism, Archangel Michael, to cast out demons. “So, this could be just as well!”
The bishop swung the censer on its chain, and the massive waft of cedar and musk, woody and peppery, took Alessa back to Mitch and the Armani Privé cologne he used to douse himself in. Wow. That had been a long time ago, and while things had run their course and she didn’t miss him—or his industrial-strength quantities of cologne—she sort of missed…someone. Missed intimacy, she supposed. Oh, and sex. She coughed and dabbed at her eyes.
“The frankincense is strong.” Miguel turned his head away from the smoking metal orb reeking of smoke and pine needles.
“It’s not myrrh?” joked Alessa.
“That tends to be more lemony.” Miguel grinned, showing even, white teeth. “Years of Catholic Mass. You can’t mistake the scents.”
The Lord Mayor chose that moment to yell, “I say, Bishop, your handbag’s on fire!”
Alessa groaned and the bishop began a prayer of deliverance. Timely.
“Staying for a drink and a bite to eat?” Don asked her and Miguel after, as the audience started to file out.
Alessa, conducting hurried interviews with m
embers of the public who’d attended, shook her head. “But I’d love a coffee and a cheese toastie to go!” She made puppy-dog eyes at him as he waddled behind the bar.
“I caught that!” Miguel beckoned her over to show her the shot of her he’d just snapped on his digital. “Might be one for the board in the newsroom?” He rubbed his arm where she thumped it, pretending it hurt. “It’s nice!” he protested.
It was a funny pic, she supposed, showing her in her usual ‘done but undone vibe’, as Keren, her flatmate called it, messy honey-blonde hair usually escaping from a clip or elastic and her eyes here looking pleading, rather than assessing or narrowed in thought, framed by beige-blonde lashes and capped by brown-blonde brows. Her sister had always said Alessa would look exactly like a Golden Retriever if she had brown eyes instead of sapphire blue. Bitch.
“Oh, tack it up, by all means,” she told Miguel. “It’ll give Jim a target to aim at! Oh, excuse me, sir!” She leapt to catch a man just entering, who looked startled at her pounce, as well he might. “Did you know this pub has just undergone its yearly exorcism? And do you believe in ghosts?”
She managed three more mini interviews, to give texture to her piece, in the next ten minutes, the final one with a passerby in the cobbled street, some poor soul hurrying late for something, by the look of him, whom she charmed into being even later. It took balls of brass to be a newsman, it was said. What was the female equivalent? Ovaries of brass, to be a newswoman? That was fine by her. She didn’t particularly want children.
“Thanks, Don! Or rather, thanks, Kelvin, for making it!” Alessa added, taking the toasted sandwich in its paper bag. She realized as soon as she was in the street that taking lunch to go had been a silly idea. The pub’s warmth and glow had lured her into thinking the day was warmer than it was. But what could she expect in December? Huddled in her winter parka, she stood irresolute in the trickle of people. She should go back to the Herald, that unlovely brick and glass building at the top of the town. She had more than this item to write up. Still dithering, and chewing as she walked, Alessa decided to check in at Harley’s, Montford’s oldest family owned independent department store.
Whispers of Winter: A Limited Edition Collection of Winter Romances Page 77