If Kisses Were Snowflakes

by Serenity Woods

  “I was lonely. I’d been lonely for so long.” Her expression twisted as if she’d eaten something bitter. “You never let me in, Hal.”

  But he was in no mood to discuss what she saw as his emotional failures. “Don’t change the fucking subject. Charles lives in my house and doesn’t pay a penny toward the mortgage. How is that fair?”

  She lowered her gaze and said nothing.

  “Make the most of it,” Hal said, knowing she felt guilty. “My lawyer’s going to push for the house to go up for sale in the New Year.”

  Her gaze snapped back to his. “We agreed I’d keep the house.”

  “No, you stated that was what you wanted. I agreed because I didn’t want my kids to be homeless. But if you’re staying with Charles, he can buy you a new home. He’s the son of the richest earl in Scotland, for fuck’s sake.”

  “But the children—”

  Anger swelled inside him at the thought that she was going to use their kids against him. “Can come and live with me in the cottage.”

  Her eyes widened. “In that tiny place? They are not going to school on Holy Island.”

  He took a step toward her, furious. “Don’t push me,” he said quietly. “I could have made things extremely difficult for you when Charles moved in, but I didn’t want to upset the kids. I have my limits, though, and I’m very close to reaching them. Tell Charles that if he doesn’t stop fucking me around at work, I’ll push for full custody of the kids.”

  All the color faded from her cheeks. “You wouldn’t.”

  He didn’t reply, just held her gaze and narrowed his eyes.

  Behind her, the door opened, and Charles came marching out.

  “What’s going on?” he demanded. He put an arm around the shivering Rebecca. “Are you okay?”

  Hal turned away, sick to his stomach. “Don’t worry, I’m going.”

  “You cold-hearted bastard,” Rebecca yelled after him. “She’s fucking welcome to you! Does she know you’ve got a fucking heart of ice?”

  Hal ignored her, walked to his car, got in, and left in a squeal of tires.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Angel had only just taken her first sip from the mug of mulled wine when the pub door opened and Hal appeared in a flurry of snowflakes. He pulled off the beanie he was wearing, scattering the snow across the floor, and ruffled his hair as he scanned the room.

  She caught her breath, conscious of the way her heart had skipped a beat. His gaze fell on her, and she smiled.

  He didn’t smile back. He walked across the room to stand over her, and for a moment she thought he was about to say he’d changed his mind and wasn’t going to stay. His blue eyes blazed, and he looked angry. Her smile faded. Shit. What had happened?

  Then he slipped a hand to the back of her head, bent at the waist, and kissed her.

  It sent her head spinning and stole all the breath from her lungs. His mouth moved across hers, his lips soft, and he gave a deep sigh that brought all the hairs rising on the back of her neck. Her cheeks flamed, and when he straightened, she was vaguely aware of a few people in the room looking at them with amused smiles.

  He studied her, looking as if he’d surprised himself. Then his lips twitched. “Want another drink?”

  “I’ve only just started this one,” she said, her voice little more than a squeak.

  His smile spread, a tad mischievous, and he walked off up to the bar, where she heard him ordering a mug of the mulled wine for himself as he said hello to a few people he obviously recognized.

  She lowered her gaze to her mug, trying to act as if gorgeous guys waltzed up to her every day and planted a smacker on her lips, but it was difficult because that never happened in real life.

  It was a touch presumptuous, she thought. They weren’t exactly dating, and a kiss in private was a lot different to a smooch in public. She should be annoyed and indignant at the way he’d taken such liberties.

  She wasn’t, though. Funny, that.

  He brought his mug back and placed it on the table, then slid down the zipper of his jacket and slipped it off, putting it over the back of his chair. Finally, he sat opposite her, his knees brushing hers under the table.

  He sipped his mulled wine, his eyes meeting hers over the rim of the cup. Then he started laughing and put the mug down.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have done that. It was very rude.”

  “It was a little improper,” she agreed.

  He leaned forward, tipping his head to the side as he studied her face. “Can you forgive me? I’ve been thinking about you all day, and as soon as I saw you... I lost my mind.”

  Their gazes locked. For a moment, everything else dimmed—the sound of Fairytale of New York filtering across the room from the speakers, the glitter of the tinsel around the open fireplace, the sparkle of the fairy lights over the bar, the smell of her mulled wine, all cinnamon and vanilla and oranges—and Hal filled her entire world, her whole heart.

  “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me,” she told him, and he smiled.

  They were true words, but it was crazy—she’d only known him a few days. She couldn’t be feeling like this.

  But what was she feeling? Excited and hopeful and a little sexy. They were both grown, consenting adults. She was single and Hal’s marriage was over—they weren’t hurting anyone. They were on the verge of having a holiday fling, and what the hell did it matter if she took it at face value? Why shouldn’t she enjoy it? A little Christmas present to herself for all the crap she’d been through over the last few years.

  “I forgive you,” she whispered. “I’ve kinda been thinking the same thing all day myself.”

  They smiled at each other, and then she lowered her gaze to her mulled wine and stirred it with the cinnamon stick. “How’s your day been?” she asked him. “Drop the kids off okay?” She lifted her gaze again.

  He gave her an appraising look. “That obvious, was it?”

  “You seemed... angry when you came in.”

  He sighed and leaned back, an arm over the back of the chair. “Frustrated, maybe. Yeah, perhaps a little angry. Better now, though.”

  “Want to talk about it?”

  He shrugged, dragged his thumb up the rim of the mug, and sucked a drop of the wine off it. “I said something I regret now. I lost my temper. She makes me...” He blew out a breath and ran his hand through his hair.

  “Tell me about her,” Angel said. “Where did you meet her?”

  He gave her a strange look. “Are you sure?”

  “I’d like to know more about you.” Plus, she wanted to know more about the woman who’d called Halvar Carlson Mr. Frosty. How could anyone think this man was cold-hearted? Angel only had to take one look into his eyes to know his feelings ran very deep. Was he just not very good at expressing them? “Where did you meet her?”

  He turned his mug around in his hands. “She was in the year below me at university. Her name was Rebecca Simmons. She came from money—it was evident in her accent, her clothes, and the way she carried herself. She was nearly six feet tall, and with long hair the color of fire.”

  “I guessed,” Angel said, referring to Brenna’s hair.

  He gave her a brief smile. “When she walked into a room, every other girl faded into the background. She was stunning.” Angel was just starting to feel a twinge of envy at his open admiration when he added, “I didn’t realize at the time her beauty was only skin deep.”

  She didn’t say anything, not knowing how to respond to a comment like that. Hal met her gaze, then huffed a sigh and tipped back his head to look at the ceiling for a moment. “Sorry.”

  “You don’t have to apologize to me.”

  “I didn’t mean it. I’m feeling mean and spiteful.”

  “Hey, if you can’t be Scrooge at this time of the year, when can you be?”

  “You shouldn’t be nice to me. I’m a horrible person.”

  “You’re really not, or at least, if you
are I have a feeling you’ve been pushed into it. I have to tell you, Hal, that Jamie told me your wife had an affair with your boss.”

  “Shit, really?”

  “Yeah. He called him a nob.”

  They both started laughing. “It’s an apt description,” Hal said.

  “What happened?”

  He stretched out his legs, and she saw a little of the tension leaving his body as the warmth, the wine, and maybe Santa’s imminent arrival, began to work its magic.

  “At uni, I was in the same year as a guy called Charles Wallace. We took a dislike to each other from the start. He’s the younger son of a rich Scottish earl who claims he’s a descendant of the William Wallace. I was from a poor background and had to work every evening behind the student bar to pay my way through uni. I found him arrogant and obnoxious; he resented that I was working class but had a lot of friends and was fairly popular. We clashed in the debating team and on the rugby field, and then...” He sighed.

  “You fell for the same girl,” Angel said.

  “Yeah. Charles pursued her for months. I used to watch them from behind the bar every night. Rebecca would come in with her friends to drink and to dance, and Charles and his cronies would circle the girls like wolves waiting to pounce. Rebecca liked all the attention, and she’d dance and flirt with Charles, but she was always looking past him to see if I was watching. So, one night at a Christmas party, while Charles was distracted with a drinking game, I asked her out, and she said yes.”

  Angel pulled a face. “I guess that didn’t go down well with him.”

  “I sometimes wonder whether it was his plan all along to wait for our relationship to fail. I think he guessed she would make my life a misery, because I never had the kind of money she was used to, and she wasn’t the sort of girl who could live on love alone.”

  She would make my life a misery. Angel felt a pang of sadness for him. It hardly sounded like an idyllic relationship. Why was it so hard to find someone who made you happy? “You got married, though?”

  “Yes. Against the wishes of her family, which she quite enjoyed. They were disappointed with my lack of social standing and refused to come to the wedding. Rebecca was excited by that in the beginning and saw herself as a rebel. We had Jamie, and then she got pregnant with Brenna. That’s when it all started to go wrong.”

  Angel watched his gaze drift to the window, to the snow that was falling in big, thick flakes. “Is that when she had an affair?”

  “No. To be fair to Charles, he didn’t appear on the scene until we were already in trouble.” He scratched at a mark on the table. “When I graduated, I landed the position at English Heritage as an architectural illustrator. It was my dream job, and I bit their hands off for it. I travelled a lot around the north of England studying and drawing old buildings. I loved it, but I was away from home a lot and worked long hours. It was hard on Rebecca, and she resented it. She wanted to pursue her own career in interior decoration, which was fair enough. I suggested she get a position at an established firm and learn the ropes, but she wanted to be some kind of big-shot freelance. Trouble was, she had no clue how to run a business. I did everything I could to help, but she saw it as interfering and just got angry with me for poking my nose in. She was making a fraction of the money that I was. She had no idea how to budget, and no interest in learning. I was the one who paid the bills because she didn’t have a clue—if I’d left it to her, we would have been out on the street in months.”

  His words were defensive—he was waiting for her to express her outrage that he’d controlled the purse. There was more to this story than he was telling her. His wife really had done a number on him. Angel made sure to keep her expression blank and just nodded.

  “Once we had kids,” he continued, “financially it made more sense for her to stay at home and look after the children, because child care was eating up practically all of her wages.” He gave Angel a wary look. “I’m guessing you can see where this is going.”

  “Rebecca thought you were being sexist,” Angel stated.

  “Yes. Was I?” He shifted, obviously uncomfortable at the thought. “I still don’t know. I didn’t see it that way at the time. It wasn’t as if we were earning the same but I assumed she’d be the one to stay at home with the kids. If she’d been earning more, I would have been happy to discuss me staying at home. And I tried to talk to her about part time work, maybe me having one day off a week and looking after the kids at weekends so she could continue working. That wasn’t good enough for her. But it would have been crazy for me to give up the wage I was on. We’d never have been able to pay all the bills.”

  “Hal,” Angel said, “it’s okay, I get it. You don’t have to explain yourself to me.” She leaned forward and took Hal’s hand. “I think women use their gender too often as an excuse for why they can’t get what they want. It is difficult for women who have a career but who also want children, and there’s no easy answer to that. But you can’t just cry sexism in a situation like yours. Of course it made sense for you to continue working to support your family if your wage was significantly higher. Rebecca should have either put off having children until her career was more established and she was earning more and could afford childcare, or decided to wait until the children were older and throw herself into her business then.”

  Hal smiled. “You say such nice things.”

  “I’ve spent a lifetime telling myself I could have done things better,” she said vehemently, “and I’m not going to do it anymore. Neither should you. It doesn’t sound as if she was interested in coming to any kind of compromise.”

  “No, she really wasn’t.” He turned his hand over, palm up, and closed his fingers around hers. “Anyway, a chance came up for promotion at work. The job would have meant more money but also more time at the office. Rebecca told me that if I took it, our marriage would be over.”

  “So you turned it down,” Angel said softly.

  Hal shrugged. “I told her I wanted time to think about it. For those few days, she refused to speak to me. I thought she was being unreasonable, but we’d already had the argument about her not being able to do her job, and I wanted my marriage to work. In the end, I felt that it was my turn to make a sacrifice, and that it would be a gesture of goodwill toward her. So I turned it down.”

  The truth dawned on Angel then. “Oh Jesus. The guy who got the job was Charles.”

  “Yes. It was the beginning of the end. Even though I hadn’t taken the job, Rebecca resented my success. She hated being at home. I’d worked hard all the way through uni and had graduated without a single loan. I was so proud of that. But Rebecca didn’t care. She was unhappy, and she wanted to punish me, I guess. If she wanted something, she bought it, everything from clothes to stuff for the kids to furniture. She ran up thousands on our joint credit card, and just kept spending.”

  “Oh shit. What happened?”

  “We argued, as you can imagine. I tried to get her to find some help because I believed it had turned into an addiction. But she refused. She tried to get money from her father, and he gave her a small allowance to go toward paying the debt off, but she just spent it. I was so angry, frustrated, and embarrassed at owing money. I’d been brought up to believe you only spent what you had in your wallet. But she didn’t care. I fell out of love with her then, and she knew it. She missed being idolized. She’d met Charles again at a works function, and of course he was all over her. In less than six months, she was seeing him behind my back. Charles was never going to be able to avoid rubbing my nose in it, and he was the one who told me. I went home, told her I wanted a divorce, packed a bag, and walked out, the kids begging me not to go. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

  Angel pressed her fingers to her mouth as Hal stopped, overcome with emotion. He took several deep breaths, exhaled slowly, then extracted his hand from hers to take a long drink.

  “That’s so awful,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “That�
�s not the end of it.” His voice was bitter. “The following year, Charles moved into the house.”

  “Into your home?”

  “Yes. But he refuses to contribute anything toward it, even though the fucker owns half of Scotland. So at the moment I’m paying the mortgage and the credit card bills.”

  “Oh my God, that’s terrible. That can’t be legal, surely?”

  “My lawyer’s onto it, but you know how slow things work. I want the house sold so we can pay off the debt with the proceeds. The cottage here was my father’s, and his father’s before him, so there’s no mortgage, which is lucky, otherwise I’d really be struggling.”

  “But you’re not responsible for the credit card debt, surely, if she ran it up?”

  “The cards are in joint names,” he said. “So yes, I am. Legally, Charles isn’t responsible for her debt. I have to pay maintenance to Rebecca, and child support, pay the mortgage, and meet the credit card payments each month. It’s not been great.”

  “Oh, Hal, you poor thing.”

  He smiled at that. “Yeah, well. It will be sorted. I wasn’t going to push her to sell the house because of the kids, but now he’s there I’ve changed my mind—I need the money. Charles has property in Scotland and heaps of cash; he’ll easily be able to afford something else. I’m just worried they’ll move a long way away and I won’t get to see the kids as much.”

  “Would you consider having them here?”

  “She would never agree to that. And at the moment, I’m hardly ever home.”

  “I’m guessing your boss makes you work late?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Jeez, that’s awful. What a nob.”

  That made him laugh. “You’ve been listening to my son.”

  “Your son is spot on. It must be hard for you when you go to pick the kids up and see him in the house.”

  “It is. When I first found out, I went over there, dragged him outside, and broke his nose.”