The Mills & Boon Christmas Wishes Collection. Maisey Yates

How did he learn to kiss like that? It took my breath away.

      A second later Amory appeared in the doorway. “We found the cutest cottage… Oh, um, never mind,” she said, ducking back behind the door.

      Kai dropped his hands and laughed, calling out to her. “It’s OK, Amory. I’m going to help Micah and Isla with the chalets. I’ll talk to you later, Clio.” He headed out, giving me a look that said this isn’t over as he walked away.

      Knowing what was about to come I went to follow, but Amory hooked my elbow as I walked past. “You’re not getting away that easily,” she said, eyes bright. “What happened? Your cheeks are rosy pink and you’ve got those dazed-up manga eyes happening. He kissed you, didn’t he?”

      “I kissed him!”

      “And?” she said, hopping from foot to foot with excitement.

      “And then again you walked in! Do you have some kind of radar?”

      She cupped her face. “God, I want to slap my own face! We need a signal, like a napkin on the door handle, or a…”

      I laughed. “Amory, it wasn’t planned! It was a spontaneous thing! It’s not like I plan to swoon my way around the lodge, flinging myself against every surface so he can ravish me!”

      “Why not?” she asked, her face a mask of seriousness. “It’s your lodge!”

      I sat at the kitchen table and cradled my head. “Urgh. I’m thirty-three, almost thirty-four in fact, and I’m acting like a lovestruck fool. He completely befuddles me, and the brain in my head goes on vacation.”

      “Lust, pure and simple,” she said with a firm nod. “I’ve seen it before; you’ll survive.”

      “It’s more than lust.” I wanted to snatch the words back as soon as they escaped. “Well, what I mean to say is, it’s just, it’s not…”

      She rolled her eyes and sighed dramatically. “Clio, you like the damn man, and he clearly likes you. It’s really a very simple equation. Girl tells boy, or boy tells girl, hey, I really like you, and I want to take this kissing thing a few steps further…”

      I held up a hand. “Oh, my God, please don’t school me on how to date a guy.”

      She huffed. “Someone needs to!”

      “They do not!”

      She stared me down, and I knew by the set of her lips that she had a trump card. Damn it, she always had one up her sleeve. “OK, tell me the last guy you admitted your feelings to?”

      “You want me to go back through my past boyfriends?”

      She wrinkled her brow. “Clio, you dated them for about five seconds. I don’t think you committed to anyone in the whole time you were in New York!”

      Damn it, she had a memory like an elephant. “There’s no point dating someone when they’re not The One. Why waste my time?”

      “Stop trying to avoid the question. Who have you ever told you’re keen on them? Given them the green light? Fluttered those silky long lashes and said with real words, ‘I, Clio Winters, think you’re a bit of all right, and I’d like to invite you to share my thousand-thread-count cotton sheets for the evening’. Give me a name. One name.”

      I let out a peal of laughter. So, I really liked expensive sheets? They made good bedfellows! “I can rely on my sheets, you know? They’re always there, just how I left them. I get into bed and they wrap their silky threads around…”

      “Stop! You’re doing it again! When have you ever admitted to any man how you felt? Have you ever?”

      I considered it. Had I ever told anyone how I felt without knowing for sure how they felt about me first? There’d really been no one serious except for Timothy… Puppy love, I reminded myself. Too many years ago to count.

      “You know, I don’t think I have.” This time I stopped her from interrupting by placing a hand over her mouth. “And that’s only because they didn’t set my world on fire. My heart didn’t race, I didn’t think poetically. If I was away from them, they didn’t cross my mind. Shouldn’t real love be arresting, and stop you in your tracks, make your heart sing, your body tingle, make everything else seem unimportant? And anyway…” I took my hand from her mouth. “Why does it matter? You’ve distracted me on purpose to hear me blather on like a fool.”

      “Why does it matter? Because Kai is exactly like you! He’s not going to admit to it, and you’re pussyfooting around him, and I want to grab you two and bash your heads together.”

      I just stared at her, so she sighed and continued: “You’re both happy sneaking kisses here and there, but neither of you is brave enough to admit how you feel! He’ll leave, and you’ll pine for him. Admit, even just to me, that he does make your heart sing, your body tingle – that’s how you know what real love feels like.” She folded her arms triumphantly.

      I still wasn’t convinced. “He did say the most beautiful things just now, but it was like he was talking about another girl,” I said, slowly.

      She laughed. “Oh my God! He’s trying to let you know, it’s OK to love him! GOD, WOMAN!”

      Was I that bad at reading his signals? Sure, I’d made the leap and kissed him a few times, it was impossible not to. But love was so complicated! Could I even call it love? This whole love scenario was so much easier when it was about someone else.

      “You see, he’s having some really huge issues with his family, and I don’t want him sort of using me as a pick-me-up and then realizing it was a mistake.”

      Just when I was hoping to change the subject Micah walked in wearing his perpetual half-smirk, carrying in a parcel that had been delivered. He glanced from me to Amory and tutted, plonking himself on the seat next to me.

      “Boy talk?” he said, earnestly.

      “She’s at it again,” Amory said.

      “Oh no you don’t. Don’t think you’re talking over me again, you two.”

      They just ignored me, and continued: “So she’s kissed him again, but he’s got some family problem – I mean who doesn’t these days, but for the sake of argument, let’s roll with it – and she seems to think he thinks she’s a nice soft landing pad on which to lick his wounds, but then once healed he’ll flit off to the never-never.”

      Micah nodded, and linked his fingers, taking his time to consider it all. “But she knows him, right? She knows he’s not exactly the love ‘em and leave ‘em type? I mean, we haven’t seen him act remotely like that, have we? He’s been almost gentlemanly with his favors, like something out of a period drama.”

      “Right? It’s amazing people like her manage to procreate. At this rate they might hold hands by 2020.”

      I held up a finger. “Aha. We’ve held hands, thank you very much.”

      They continued to ignore me and instead diagnosed my love life. “So what is her problem? Commitment-phobe?” Micah asked, wrinkling his brow.

      Amory shook her head. “Even though that’s the kind of vibe she gives out. Like, stay away, I am too busy for the likes of you. Here’s me, running my business, crooning to Bonnie Tyler when I’ve had too many glasses of red wine. Here’s me buying one-thousand-thread-count sheets online again. And so they stay away. Really, she’s scared of rejection. Would rather keep her steely heart in one piece even if it means the only love in her life is an eighties ballad and some freshly washed Egyptian cotton.”

      “Guys, seriously, you’re not Oprah, OK? Not even Dr Phil. You’re so far off base it’s not even funny.”

      Micah gave me the sweetest smile, but it was sad too, like he could see something I couldn’t.

      “What