A Dream Christmas. Кэрол Мортимер

begin to believe it … in a hundred years or so.

      ‘You’d keep me here, twiddling my thumbs for a whole month?’ Riley looked horrified. James smiled smugly; he knew that asking Riley to sit still and do nothing was torture. He didn’t mind a little torture when she was daring to leave him. Leave the job … the job. Not him. Get it straight, moron.

      ‘I’ll do whatever I damn well have to. Tell me why.’

      Riley stalked up to him, stood on tiptoe and put her face as close to his as she could get it. James looked at her mouth and wished that she was about to kiss him but he knew her too well to assume that.

      ‘I am leaving. Deal with it.’

      ‘Over my dead body!’ James shouted as she headed out of his office.

      At the door Riley stopped and sent him a cold, sharp smile. ‘That can be arranged …’

      STORMING BACK TOWARDS the lift, Riley punched buttons on her mobile and slapped it to her ear. Ignoring the curious looks of her colleagues, she silently urged Morgan to answer her call.

      It didn’t matter that Morgan was James’s sister; she could speak to her about anything, including what an utter ass her brother could be. As she and Morgan had been friends since their childhood, they’d had a lot of conversations about his ass-like qualities.

      Morgan’s mobile went to voicemail and Riley left a message. ‘Answer your phone, dammit! Your brother is the biggest jerk this side of the Atlantic. You will not believe what he’s just said to me—’

       Beeeeeeeeeepppppppp.

      Riley cursed and pushed redial. She’d been eight when she’d first met him; as he was five years older than her she’d had a lifetime of watching women fall at his feet. He’d play with them, get bored and then move on. Pretty girls, smart girls, outgoing girls—he never stuck to any of them. Okay, in fairness, he’d kept Liz around for a while, and no one knew why they’d broken up, but afterwards James had just thrown himself back into his ‘bag ‘em, tag ‘em and toss ‘em’ routine.

      ‘As I was saying, James drives me freakin’ insane. Do you know that he called my art “fiddling”? Fiddling, Morgs? I nearly ripped his head off that strong, muscly neck …’

       Beeeeeeeep.

      Riley considered throwing her mobile against the wall; instead, she stepped into a blessedly empty lift and pushed the green phone icon again and waited as it dialled. James’s lack of commitment had always made her wary of him, scared of allowing herself to fall all the way in love with him.

       ‘This is Morgan. Please leave a message and I’ll get back to you.’

      It took Riley a moment to realise why the lift wasn’t going up and she furiously jabbed a finger on the button for the top floor. ‘He has no respect for what I do, my work or my art,’ she continued into the phone. ‘And I hate the fact that I just see him and I want to get him naked…. I’m sorry, I know you don’t think your brother is sexy, but he is. Gorgeous but such a jerk!’

      In hindsight, that had been the main reason why she’d walked away at nineteen. There were other reasons but mainly she’d been terrified to become too involved with him—to run the risk of him becoming bored with her. She’d always known that loving and losing James would be the emotional equivalent of being disembowelled with a butter knife and she doubted she would ever recover. Anyway, that was beside the point, seeing that he no longer had any interest in a relationship with her.

      He had once and she’d let him slip away. Right man, but too young and too dumb to realise that you didn’t get second chances.

      Message finally received, Universe.

      ‘This is Morgan. Please leave a message …’

       Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!

      ‘I am on my way up to see you and you’d better be there! I’m having a meltdown here!’

      Riley rested her head against the cool metal of the lift panel and stared at her feet. It would be okay, she told herself. She had years of savings behind her and those dollars allowed her the freedom of options. When she returned to Cape Town she would go back to designing windows, do some graphic design, teach art and pottery, maybe run something similar to the inner city art programme she’d been helping with recently as a way to fill up her time.

      She’d do something different to feel a little less lost, not so alone.

      When she stepped out of the lift at the top floor, Morgan stood there waiting for her, a cup of coffee and a chocolate bar in her hand.

      Riley reached for both with vigour. ‘Did you listen to my messages?’

      Morgan shook her head. ‘Four calls in two minutes signalled a crisis; I knew you were on your way up.’ She gestured to her studio. ‘Come in and tell me what my idiot brother has done now.’

       CHAPTER TWO

      SHE’D DONE IT …

      Riley watched her guests step into the lift of her apartment building and smiled in relief at Hannah and Jedd’s loving faces. Morgan winked at her as she dropped her head onto Noah’s broad shoulder and she blew her a kiss just before the lift doors closed.

      With Morgan’s encouragement, she’d had the Moreaus over for dinner in her loft apartment, had served them calamari risotto and explained that she was in a rut, that she needed to leave Moreau’s and explore her options.

      As if she were their child, and she was in so many ways, they’d prodded and poked, interrogated her motivations, discussed her reasoning and then given her their blessing. As Morgan had predicted, they just wanted her to be happy. If leaving meant her being happy then they could live with losing their window designer.

      Riley turned to walk down the landing back to her apartment. She was almost at her door when she heard footsteps on the flight of stairs just around the corner from her front door. She peeked around the corner to see James jogging up the stairs—he rarely used a lift—and instantly clocked his furious face, his tense shoulders and the muscle ticking in his jaw.

      Riley winced as she noticed his flashing green eyes. He stopped at the top of the stairs and slapped his hand on his hips, lifting his head at her open front door. ‘Can I come in?’

      ‘Nope, you’re not bringing all that angry energy into my home. We’ll stay outside,’ she ordered. Not that she really believed in all that stuff, but if he came across her doorway she knew that she would strip him naked and do him on her couch, her yellow wingback chair, on her wooden floor …

      She was nuts. Horny and nuts. A dangerous combination.

      ‘Inside, Riley.’

      ‘Not going to happen.’ Riley shook her head a couple of times and folded her arms.

      James hauled in a breath, looked at the ceiling and sighed. ‘Okay, let’s do it the hard way then.’

      Using his superior strength against her, he looped an arm around her waist and picked her up and walked her into the apartment as easily as if he were carrying a sack of potatoes. Dammit! He was seriously starting to annoy her with this carrying her around kick he was on.

      ‘Stop lugging me around!’

      ‘Stop being a brat.’ James dumped Riley on her purple-and-white-checked couch and loomed over her, his hands back on his hips. ‘Why did you tell my family that you were resigning when we hadn’t finished discussing it?’

      Discussing it? Really? That was stretching the truth …

      Riley blew her fringe out of her eyes and silently cursed James’s mum. Just after she’d told