A flush rose in her cheeks. You didn’t exorcise the ghost of a dead marriage by sleeping with your ex-husband, no matter how sexy he was. And Nick was sexy, all right. She didn’t have to be in love with him anymore to recognize that. Still, it wasn’t desire she’d felt last night, lying in his arms. It was much more. Warmth, and comfort, and a sense of rightness and such deep well-being that—
‘Hi.’
Holly swung around. Nick was standing in the doorway. Her heart tripped at the sight of him. This was the Nick she remembered, not a sophisticated man in an expensive trench coat and custom-made suit, but a guy who looked like an ad for outdoor living. He was wearing a turtleneck under a worn flannel shirt, faded jeans and leather hiking boots that looked even older than hers. There was a day-old stubble on his jaw, and a beat-up leather jacket hung over his shoulder from his thumb.
It was as if no time had passed. He looked gorgeous and just a little dangerous, the way he’d looked the first Christmas they’d come here…
And the last.
That last Christmas was the one she had to remember, when they’d finally admitted what each had known for months, that their marriage was not dying but dead, and that the only decent thing to do was give it a quick burial.
‘Hi,’ she said, and flashed a quick smile. ‘I made some more coffee and the eggs are ready to go.’ She smiled again, even more brightly. ‘No bacon, I’m afraid, so you’ll just have to make do with whatever I can whip up.’
‘Over easy is okay with me.’
‘Well, I have some cheese. And some cream. If you’re feeling adventuresome…’
‘That’s right, I almost forgot. Cookbooks, you said.’ Nick shrugged. ‘What the heck? Surprise me.’ He shrugged on his jacket and pulled a toothbrush from his pocket. ‘Just give me five minutes to use the facilities…’
Holly laughed. ‘You’ll be back quicker than that. I’ve already used the facilities. It’s probably ten below zero outside.’
Nick grinned. ‘Thanks for the words of warning, but you’ll see. This is guy weather. I can handle it.’
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’ Holly grinned. ‘That’s what they all say.’
* * *
He came bursting through the door minutes later, snow sparkling on his hair and on his shoulders, with a pile of wood in his arms.
‘You weren’t kidding! Ten below is right.’
‘Told you so.’
‘Let me just dump this wood and then I’ll set us up for breakfast on the coffee table, so we can stay warm beside the… Hey. You already did.’
He dropped the wood, straightened up, and put his hands on his hips. Holly had moved the coffee table so that it stood before the fireplace. She’d set two places, complete with linen napkins. A small basket stood centred between the settings, heaped with…
‘Biscuits?’Nick said, looking up at her in amazement.
Holly blushed. ‘I brought some leftover stuff, from home.’
‘Leftover biscuits?’
‘Uh-huh. I’ve been trying out new recipes, trying to zero in on what I want to do in my next book… Oh, for Pete’s sake.’ She sat down, cross-legged, before the table. ‘Stop looking at me as if I’d just invented penicillin or something. Let’s eat, before we both collapse from hunger.’
She served him something that looked like a cheese omelette but tasted like heaven. It was either almost as good as the light-as-air biscuits or maybe the biscuits were almost as good as the egg stuff. Nick couldn’t tell and besides, it didn’t much matter. The meal was incredible, all the more so because it had been cooked over an open fire by a woman whose only claim to culinary fame had been…
’A Hundred and One Ways to Cook Hamburger.’ Holly folded her linen napkin and smiled at him. ‘That was my very first book.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘Cross my heart. I’d been doing a column for a magazine, and I’d done some pieces on inexpensive meals for couples just starting out—’
‘Dining on the Cheapside,’ Nick said. ‘Wasn’t that what we called it?’
Holly laughed. ‘Yes. I mentioned that, to my editor, and she really thought it would make a good title, but—’
‘But?’
But I knew that I’d never be able to look at the book without thinking of you…
‘But I was afraid it would sound too, ah, too flip.’ Holly reached for the coffee pot and refilled both their cups. ‘So, we went with something more straightforward.’
‘And the cookbook was a success?’
She nodded. ‘More than we’d expected. They’d done an initial print run of 25,000 and they’d have been happy with a fifty per cent sell-through, but—’