He’d hoped, one day, to tell Abbie how much he’d missed her while he was in America, and how he’d known she wouldn’t enjoy his career any more than he did, and how he’d quit partly with her in mind. He’d thought it might seem a little romantic. Will was beginning to suspect he was a romantic, which was inconvenient, since the woman he wanted to be romantic for didn’t seem to like it.
“Wow,” Abbie said after a moment. There was a short silence, a silence in which she studied his face, then his glass of gin, then the bottle on the counter. “Wow,” she said again, softly. “Okay. Well. I’m happy for you, and a little sad, too, I suppose.”
He snorted. “Because I was such a gift to the industry.”
“Hey,” she said evenly, but there was a familiar protective bite to her words. Protective of him. He’d heard it sneak out before, whenever her brothers made good-natured jokes about his very face-and-biceps-oriented career. “You are talented, you know. I watched those Captain X films. You’re a master of camp comedy.”
He sighed. “Those films weren’t supposed to be a comedy, Abbie.”
“I know, but the writing is terrible, and I could probably write an essay on how your treatment of it elevated the text and made the first Captain X such a breakout hit.”
Will faltered. “Er,” he said, suddenly feeling a thousand times drunker. “Could you?”
“I could.” The words were light, so light as to seem thoughtless. She might have gotten away with that, if she hadn’t kept talking. “I know the last two films didn’t have amazing releases—they were kind of flogging a dead horse, at that point. But you still did a great job. You carried that franchise on your back, in my opinion. Maybe I should write an essay about it—” She broke off with a little huff of laughter that some might find wry, but Will heard embarrassment hidden there and knew she was simply self-conscious. “Well. Anyway. My point is, it’s a shame. But if this is what you want, I respect that. You know what you need.”
What I need is you. She really couldn’t help it, could she? Being divine, that is. Being sweet in the most unexpected ways, and smart, and unrelentingly sexy. He was doomed. He was absolutely doomed. He sighed into his gin.
Abbie bit her lip. “You seem … down, though.”
“Yeah,” he said hoarsely. Surely she knew why.
Or maybe not, because she told him, “It’ll be okay. You’ll find something else you love, and I assume you have enough money to keep you going while you figure it out.”
Will raised his eyebrows. “Do you? Because judging by the texts I’ve been getting from Jase, he’s worried I’ve been blowing my salary on yachts and motorbikes.”
“Jase is an idiot. If you were going to blow it on anything, it’d be gym equipment.” But he hadn’t blown it at all; he’d found someone smart and mathematical to invest it for him—specifically, Abbie and Jase’s brother Noah. The rest of the family didn’t know that, but Abs was looking at him now as if she’d guessed, as if she thought he was smart enough to do something like that. She’d always thought he was smart enough. She’d always expected the best of him.
And this really wasn’t helping the soul-deep crack in his solar plexus.
Abbie must’ve sensed the change in his thoughts, seen it on his face, because her smile faded and she shook her head. “Oh, Will. This is no good, is it?”
His heart stilled. Me being without you? No, it’s not. “What?”
“It’s Christmas, or near enough. We can’t have you upset. So …” She flicked a glance outside at the steady swirl of snow in the moonlight, and he saw a familiar, thoughtful smile curve her lips. “I know what we should do.”
Oh God, he thought. “Oh God,” he said. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Even though he suddenly really, really wanted to do it. “I’ll probably slip and break my neck.”
“Doubt it,” she replied. “How drunk are you? Get up,” she ordered, “and walk in a straight line.”
He did, though he knew he shouldn’t. “It’s the middle of the night, and we’re grown-ups.”
“Shut up. It’ll make you smile.” She watched his slightly wobbly walk, then shrugged her shoulders. “That’s good enough.”
“Is it?”
She clearly wasn’t listening. “Put some clothes on and meet me outside.”
Six
Abbie wasn’t entirely sure how she’d ended up here.
Actually, that wasn’t true. She knew how she’d ended up downstairs—couldn’t sleep, needed a cup of tea to silence the warring, worried thoughts in her mind. And she knew how she’d ended up wanting to make Will smile—she’d seen him drowning his sorrows during what sounded like a horrible call with his agent, had seen the sadness in his eyes as he spoke about ending his career, and knew from experience that deciding to cut something off because it was time didn’t stop it from hurting like hell.
She just wasn’t sure what had possessed her to fix things by dragging Will out to play in the snow.
Now here they stood, coats zipped up over their thermal pyjamas, bathed by the flashing red lights of Grandma’s giant SANTA STOP HERE inflatable. She snuck a look over at Will and found him tipping his head back to face the gently falling snow. His eyes were closed, his nose pink, his smile sweet and dreamy. Her heart stuttered. Her carefully muzzled emotions snarled awake. The sheer force of her want, stronger than ever—or maybe just harder to ignore—almost dragged her across the metres between them.
Abbie’s toes curled up in her boots as though she could cling to her spot on the grass.
For God’s sake, she was supposed to be staying away from him. He’d completely shorted out her circuits today, had tangled up so many dangerous emotions in her that she’d had no choice but to compartmentalise herself nearly to death. Will’s attraction to her? Locked up. Her desperate need for him? Chained down. The words “I’m trying to seriously date you” said in that steady, utterly unselfconscious way he had? Run through a shredder and locked in a box and thrown into a volcano.
She knew that wasn’t a healthy approach to coping, but what was she supposed to do? Have a full-blown emotional crisis over lunch? Scare her grandmother by ripping out her own heart and throwing it at Will’s head, which was what the prospect of admitting her feelings felt like? Far better to tie her inner turmoil to a chair, slap some tape over its mouth, and focus on the good, easy, simple stuff—like acting natural, and playing with Haddock, and putting up the last of the Christmas decorations. All of that stuff mattered, because it was immediate and it was familiar and it would stop her getting wrapped up in her own head and examining the way she’d almost dissolved at the thought of intimacy at least seven times today.