Knight and Sleigh: An Erotic Lucien Knight Christmas Novella (9 page)

Lucien’s tone was cool, belying the anger and hurt behind it. He felt winded. After everything they’d done together today. The confidences he’d shared. The physical intimacy. And yet she’d brought this… this thing with her. Into their bed. He feared what it meant.
 

She crossed to the bed and sat down. When she reached for the card he let her take it, offended enough by it to shove it towards her in quiet disgust. He was still as stone, staring at her.
 

‘Don’t do that, Lucien. Please don’t turn away from me.’
 

‘You miss him.’ Lucien stated flatly. He felt as if a million meteorites were crash landing inside his head, explosion after red fireball explosion, hitting their targets, making him flinch with almost physical pain. ‘You’re thinking of him.’
 

‘No,’ Sophie said, suddenly forceful. ‘No, I don’t. I’m not. Look at me.’
 

When he didn’t, she touched his jaw, then grasped it and turned his face to hers.
 

‘It was in amongst the forwarded mail. Remember that brown envelope from my parents’ house?’
 

She paused to reach down for the other letters he’d discarded beneath the card, then searched under the blankets before pulling out the envelope and another handful of junk mail and flyers.
 

‘See? I’d stashed it in my bag at mum and dad’s and forgotten about it, and I opened it this afternoon to pass the time when you were outside with Henrik.’
 

She stared into his eyes, direct, clear and urgent.
 

‘Do you honestly think that I could miss him after what he did to me? After everything we’ve shared?’ She broke off, lowering her hands to cover his.
 

He was still looking at her warily, and Sophie found herself suddenly furious with him.
 

‘Lucien, wake up. How can you even think that? I don’t miss one damn thing about him. You’re better, sexier, kinder. You’re more, Lucien. You’re more in every last way.’
 

He searched her face for any sign of deception and found only honesty and love.
 

‘No one’s ever loved me the way you do,’ she said, half laughing and half crying, incredulous. ‘You make me believe in fairytales, and in happy endings. There’s no room in my heart for him, Lucien. You fill it up.’
 

She ripped the card into pieces as she spoke.
 

‘This has no place here. I’m so sorry it was in the envelope, and I’m even sorrier it was in our bed.’
 

Lucien’s breath shuddered out, and his eyes found hers for a fistful of heartbeats. Wordlessly, he took the torn card from her trembling hands and stalked from the room, flinging the pieces into the embers of the fire in the living room before going back into the bedroom and sitting down with his head in his hands.
 

‘This place is making me fucking crazy,’ he said, lifting his gaze to look at her.
 

She reached out and held his face in her hands, kissing him as she rested her forehead against his.
 

‘I love the crazy bones of you,’ she murmured. ‘You’re allowed to be sentimental sometimes, Lucien, and you’re allowed to be jealous.’
 

He thought about denying both counts, but knew that she saw straight through him and sighed.
 

‘Fine,’ he said, exasperated by his own vulnerabilities as far as Sophie was concerned. ‘I’m just the jealous, sentimental man who loves you.’
 

‘You can be him. You can be that man, without it compromising what you show to the rest of the world. I love that this side of you is for my eyes only. And Heathcliff’s, now,’ she added, after a pause, laying her fingers over his lips when he opened them to answer.
 

‘Don’t even try to deny it, iceman. I know he’s made his way under your skin already.’
 

Much later that night, Sophie and Lucien lay tangled up in each other and the soft blankets of the big sleigh bed, Heathcliff snoozing contentedly in the warm crook behind Lucien’s knee.
 

Snow drifted silently down outside the picture window, and a bright shaft of moonlight fell across the peaceful room, illuminating the calendar now hanging in its rightful place.
 

Lucien looked at it as he drifted towards sleep, at his name picked out amongst the stars, and he offered a silent, wishful God Jul to his mother. Coming back to the cabin had brought back so many memories, memories he’d suppressed for such a long time that he thought they’d left him altogether.  
 

Sophie stirred beside him, throwing her arm over his chest when he gathered her in. Wedged between the woman who loved him and the dog who was already developing a serious case of hero worship, Lucien closed his eyes, contented.
 

Mine, he thought, as he drifted towards sleep. My girl, my dog, my tribe.
 

My family. The word would have terrified him before he met Sophie. Maybe it was because two had become three that afternoon, or maybe it was because he was tired and overcome by the sentiment of Christmas, but for the first time ever, Lucien allowed his thoughts to rove into the future.
 

What lay ahead for them? Before he'd met Sophie he'd scorned domesticity, but little by little she'd shown him that ordinary could actually be rather extraordinary with the right person at your side.
 

Would their children one day discover the delights of their grandmother's beautiful advent calendar for themselves, laughing with gleeful wonder as they unearthed each lovely new thing she'd made?
 

He was almost asleep, dreaming for sure now, of Christmases to come, and of beautiful blonde children running in the snow with Heathcliff tumbling at their heels.
 

But most of all Lucien dreamt of Sophie, the girl who surprised him, the girl whose lipstick kiss on the back of an envelope had set the seal on his Viking heart forever.
 

GOD JUL.
 

“How can I make my CV more interesting, Kara? Even
I
wouldn’t employ me if this landed on my desk.” Sophie sighed and flipped the paper around on the small café table for her friend to read.

“So sex it up a bit, then. Everyone does it.” Kara ripped the top off a packet of sugar and shook it over the froth on her cappuccino. She scanned the CV as she twirled the long wooden stirrer around in her cup. “Take this sentence here. You say: I have worked as a personal assistant for ten years for a company director.”  

Sophie shrugged. “Well I have.”

“Yes,
I
know that,” Kara said, as if she were talking to a child. “But you have to make it sound cooler. Sexier. More fun.”

 “It isn’t cool,” Sophie snorted. “Or sexy. Or fun. I spend most of my time typing up estimates for double glazing and fending off Derek’s wandering hands.”

“Work with me here, Soph,” Kara sighed. “What’s the job you’re applying for?”

“Another manager’s PA role, but it’s a much bigger company.”

“Another building firm?”

“Umm, no.” Sophie stalled.

“Well what
do
they do, then? We can tailor your CV to whatever their business is.”

Sophie leaned in and lowered her voice so that no one else in the café would overhear. “It’s in the adult entertainment industry.”

Kara’s dark eyebrows shot into her heavy fringe as she started to laugh. “Holy cow, Soph! That’s some career move. Does Dan know?”

Sophie shook her head. Dan was away for a couple of days on business yet again, and it somehow hadn’t felt appropriate to tell him about the job advert over the phone. She could have told him before he’d left, of course, but he’d seemed busy and distant. If she were to be completely honest, she was holding off telling him unless it came to the point where she was actually offered the job. Why rock the boat unless she needed to?

Kara frowned. “How the hell am I going to spin the sex industry into your experience with a building company?”

“I have no clue.” Sophie bit the end off the flake from her hot chocolate and started to laugh. “You could always say I’m experienced with erections.”

Kara grinned and pulled her laptop out of her bag. “Now you’re talking. Come on. Let’s see what we can do.”

A couple of hours and two large frosted blueberry muffins later, Sophie slid her new, sexed-up CV into its envelope and dropped it into the postbox with a kiss for good luck.

Lucien Knight dropped the foul plastic cup of coffee from the vending machine into the waste paper basket and glanced over the CVs that had arrived in the morning’s mail. If any of them happened to mention their coffee making skills, they’d just earned themselves an automatic pass to the interview stages to be his new PA.

Too old
. The first CV followed his coffee into the bin.

Young kids.
The second one followed the first.

It wasn’t that he was ageist, or unsupportive of mothers. It was simply that he wanted a PA who would make him their number one priority, and in his experience, older women tried to mother him and young mothers were too distracted mothering someone else to make him number one on their list.

The third envelope seemed to be sealed with traces of lipstick, which was no bad thing in his book.

Sophie Black. She passed the age test, and made no reference to kids, or to a husband either for that matter. She did however, make a great deal of her excellent personal skills, and she’d made sure to mention how extremely open she was to new ideas. Girls who were extremely open to new ideas interested him a lot, as did girls who sealed their envelopes with a kiss.  Despite the fact that Sophie Black didn’t allude to her coffee making skills, he filed her CV on the interview pile anyway.

“Kara! I’ve got an interview for that PA job at Knight Inc.,” Sophie whispered into her mobile. She glanced towards the office door where she could see Derek and one of the site foremen engaged in a heated discussion.

“No way! That’s hilarious!” Kara hissed back, obviously equally as unable to chat but desperate for the gossip.

As soon as the thick cream envelope bearing the Knight Inc. logo had landed on the doormat next to a ruck of brown bills that morning, Sophie had felt an undeniable fizz of excitement. Dan had glanced up from his newspaper as she’d come back into the kitchen with the mail in her hand.

“Anything interesting?”

“Not really. Bills. Flyers.” She’d dropped it on the work surface. “You know, junk.”

He’d looked down again before she’d even finished speaking, and for once she’d been glad of his disinterest.

“So when is it?” Kara whispered in her ear.

“After work on Monday. What should I wear do you think?”

“Err, a French maid’s outfit? Naughty nurse?” Kara’s laugh was pure smut down the phone line.

“I’m being serious, Kara. They’ll be expecting someone cool and sophisticated, and my wardrobe consists of a uniform of deathly dull chain store work suits.”

“Then you’d better thank your lucky stars you’ve got me,” Kara laughed. “I’ll come over on Sunday and sort you out.”

“You’re a life saver.” Sophie said, bolstered by her friend’s support. “I’ll get the wine in. Dan’s away again for ten days from tomorrow so we’ll have the house to ourselves.”

 “You’re on, chick. Gotta go.” Kara mumbled. “Tosser Boss is eyeballing me.”

Several hours later, Sophie tipped a pre-bagged salad into a bowl and splashed a little dressing over it as she placed it in the middle of the dining table. A soft smile touched her lips as she laid a hand against the cool wood. Large and oak, she could well remember the day some years ago when she’d brought Dan a new tie and re-enacted Pretty Woman for him when he’d arrived home. He’d loosened his tie at the sight of her in just stilettos and his gift, and they’d christened the dining table, swiftly followed by the stairs.

Thinking back now, Sophie could barely believe it had ever happened.

Who were those people?

Dan had swept her off her feet from the first moment she met him, and when he proposed to her on her twenty-first birthday she hadn’t needed to think twice. Sure, they were young, but they were in love, and any attempts at guidance from their families fell on stony ground.  And for the most part, it worked. Wasn’t it true for all long-term relationships that the excitement slows down once the first flush of lust fades away? Sophie had read enough magazine articles to know that she was in the majority when it came to having a love life that was more about routine than spontaneous sex on the dining table. And, if the truth be told, it probably wasn’t all Dan’s fault. Sophie knew she could just as easily be the one to instigate something, but what? And when? Dan was away so much that he could officially be classed as a part time husband, if such a role existed.

Which by default made Sophie a part time wife. The thought unsettled her, and she still had a frown on her face when Dan came through the door a few moments later.

“All right, babe?” He dropped a kiss on her forehead as he deposited his briefcase on the floor.

Sophie smiled and forced her melancholy mood aside. Tonight was their last night together for ten days; it wasn’t the moment to rock the boat. “I’m fine,” she said. “Hungry? I made pizza.”

Dan shrugged out of his suit jacket and headed for the stairs.

“Sure. Let me just go and get out of these and I’m all yours.”

Sophie sliced the pizza and put wine on the table, and she smiled when Dan came down in old jeans and a white T-shirt. His hair was still shower-damp, and his feet were bare. These were the times when he felt like he was hers again, the few and far between occasions when he didn’t have his suit on and his Blackberry glued against his ear. His rapid promotion through the ranks at work had been champagne moments at home, but every increment in wages had brought with it more responsibility and more travel.