Page 32 of I’ll Be Home for Christmas

Bella

Andreas kept the cozy room behind the bar as a private area for guests who were staying at the Forest Inn.

A painted sign on the old stable door read Snug , and inside was a large fireplace, with French windows looking out onto the kitchen garden, and bookshelves covering two walls.

On either side of the snapping log fire were two large squishy sofas whose cushions had soaked in the scent of years of woodsmoke, and two Sherlock Holmes armchairs were placed either side of the windows.

Bella and Liam sat angled toward each other in the armchairs.

There were no other guests in the snug at present but when Liam had suggested they take the sofa, she had suggested the chairs instead—she needed the distance.

To be any closer to him than this was painful.

They each had a small side table beside them with an Old Fashioned in a whisky tumbler.

Bella sipped hers, little and often, to give her courage.

Fred had practically frog-marched her out of the house this evening, saying she needed to do a “deep focus clean” to kick-start ideas for a Hallow-Hart rebrand, which her daughter had assured her did not mean they had to change their name, only their “fuddy-duddy image.” Bella hadn’t known their image was “fuddy-duddy”—but who was she to argue with a genuine advertising professional?

She had begun her evening of banishment by calling Martha, to see if she fancied meeting her for dinner, but her bestie had told her to go to the Forest Inn and “wine and dine” Liam before somebody else did.

She had done just that, and after a cozy pie and mash special for two and bottle of red in the pub restaurant, here they were.

They had talked about work, about politics, about family and Windermere and Pine Bluff, they had talked about every safe topic, and now there was only the elephant in the room left to discuss. They sat quietly. Bella’s heart thrummed in her chest.

Liam had adored Claire. They’d been happy, and Bella knew that were it not for the cancer, they would be happy still.

She also knew that Claire had loved him enough to want him to be happy again; she’d told Bella herself when she’d received her final diagnosis.

“I want him to love again, Bella,” she had said.

“He’s too good a man, and he’s too damn young, to spend the rest of his life alone. ”

But would Liam feel that getting back together with an old girlfriend was a betrayal of Claire’s memory?

How would Bella even broach the subject?

It had been five years, which was both a long time and no time at all.

She couldn’t replace Claire, no one could.

All she could offer was her own flawed self and hope that Liam was willing to take a chance on her.

“You know, I was straight with Claire when I met her,” Liam began, his voice carrying the hoarseness it always did when he talked about his late wife. “She knew about you. That I’d been hanging on and hoping.”

Bella tensed.

“She was a wise woman,” Liam went on. “She ran circles round me. She knew that what she and I had was different to what I’d had with you, and that the two loves could exist in the universe without being in competition. I loved Claire with my whole heart.”

Bella felt her own heart constrict. He was going to tell her that there was no room for her.

She was thirty years too late. Of course she was.

Normal people—people who weren’t her, people who weren’t damaged goods—didn’t hanker after the person they’d been in love with as a teenager and for the rest of their life.

She tried to maintain a compassionate outward composure, while inside her heart crumbled like the cliffs at the bottom of her garden.

“We talked a lot before she passed,” Liam went on.

“About everything. A lot of it I didn’t want to hear; not then, when all I could think about was how desperate I was not to lose her.

But she wanted to say her piece while she still could, and the least I could do was listen.

She said we’d had a good marriage, and that when she was gone, she didn’t want me living like a loveless hermit.

” He shook his head and turned away from her to stare into the fire.

“I couldn’t imagine a life with anyone but her.

It was like she was speaking in another language, talking about me meeting someone else when she was still here; it felt blasphemous.

” His voice was rough with emotion and Bella wanted to reach out and comfort him, but she kept her hands in her lap.

A tear sparkled in the amber firelight as it rolled slowly down his cheek and disappeared into his beard, and her heart ached for him.

The rest of the world had zoned out of her consciousness.

The noise from the bar next door had dissolved; there was only her and Liam, and the crackle of flame on wood.

She had a sense of floating above herself while all her hopes of future happiness, all the longing in her stupid heart, swirled around her in a cloud, waiting to see if there would be a safe place for them to land.

She had closed the lid on a life with Liam when she was barely more than a girl, and now, as a fifty-two-year-old woman, the lock had broken and all her feelings were spilling out, and she didn’t know if she could force them back in again.

Liam took a pull on his drink and rested the tumbler back on the table, turning it slowly on its coaster, looking at the amber liquid gently coating the sides of the glass, rather than at her.

“I’m damaged goods, Bells. But I—” He stopped, and she watched the war of emotions raging across his face; the furrows in his brow were deep, dark grooves.

“When Claire first passed, I thought I’d die too.

But I didn’t. And as the years went by, well, the grief didn’t stop but it stopped feeling so sharp.

I feel like I can finally let myself hear what she was trying to tell me, without hating myself for it.

” He took a deep breath, still not looking at her, facing the window now, watching the lanterns sway in the breeze illuminating strips of the vegetable garden beyond.

“I have feelings for you, Bella. And what I’m trying to say to you,” he began slowly, “what I want to ask is, do you think that you might have feelings too? That there might be a chance for us, you and me?”

Bella felt like she’d been dropped from a great height.

She was plummeting, she could hear the blood rushing in her ears.

He looked at her then, his expression vulnerable, open, hopeful.

Her heart was pounding so hard she wondered if he could hear it.

But even if he’d not heard the hammering of her heart, there was no way he could have missed the shaky lungful of air she breathed in, or the tremor in her voice when she said quietly, “Yes. I’d like to find out. If there’s a chance for us. Very much.”

His mouth twitched into a tentative smile. “I’ve been so nervous. I didn’t know if you’d…still…after all this time.”

She wanted to tell him that she’d never stopped loving him.

That every man she’d loved since him had been merely a placeholder.

But she didn’t. Maybe there’d be a time for that, down the road.

Right now, they needed to start at the beginning and see where it took them.

So, instead of blasting him with three decades of longing, she mirrored his smile and said simply, “Yes. Still. After all this time.”

He reached his hand across the gap between them. She took it in her own.

The wonder of his being here, all these years later—graying at the temples, broader than he’d once been, but still everything she’d ever hoped for in a man—felt unreal, dreamlike.

But he was here, and he had feelings for her, and she knew she would be replaying this moment on a loop in her mind for the foreseeable future.

She gazed at him, feeling a deep sense of contentment percolate through her.

“Come away with me, Bells,” he said. “After Christmas, let’s go away for a few days, just us two. Start getting to know each other again, away from work and family commitments. What do you say?”

His words were like a strong wind stealing the breath from her lungs, and she laughed at the suddenness of it, trying to underplay the effect he was having on her. “I’m not sure that there’s much left of me, outside of work and family commitments.” She said it jokingly, but there was truth in it.

In the absence of any love life and no social life to speak of, these last few years, she had focused all her energies on the business, the aunts and her daughter.

She thought of Fred. They’d only just begun to find their way back to each other; was now the time to embark on a new relationship?

Fred felt she’d had to fight Bella’s boyfriends for her attention when she was a child.

Would the prospect of Bella stealing away with yet another man, just when they were getting closer, set them back irreparably?

“Bells?” Liam drew her attention back to him, his voice uncertain. “Is it too much too soon? Am I going too fast?” His face was etched with concern. “It’s been a long time since I’ve done any of this, I’m out of practice. If you need more time…”

“No!” she almost shouted, and then adjusted her volume. “No, it’s not too soon, I was just doing some mental logistics. I’d love for us to go away for a few days. Anywhere you like. Anywhere with you.”

It was only a few days. She deserved a break. She hadn’t taken a holiday in two years. The aunts would be fine, and Fred might enjoy having the house to herself. She needed to do this for herself. The universe was giving her a second chance, and she was not about to pass it up.

Liam stood, still holding her hand, and she stood too. She wobbled and he held her steady.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Very.” She laughed. “A little thunderstruck.”

“You and me both.”

They looked into each other’s eyes, really looked, for the first time in forever.

Bella had given up dreaming of this moment years ago, but occasionally she’d allowed herself to remember how they’d been, back then.

Precious hours squeezed in around their responsibilities, spent loving each other and dreaming of togetherness in endless tomorrows.

Before she’d turned him down and changed the course of both their futures.

And here they were again, battle-scarred and beautiful for it.

He hesitated, just once, and then he kissed her.

Whisky on their tongues, warm feelings in their bellies, and honey in their veins; decades and daydreams melting down and resolidifying into this one moment. It was a good first kiss.

—

“Will you tell Fred and the aunts that we’re seeing each other?” Liam asked as he walked her back to Hallow House.

He kept his arm tight around her, as though she might float away if he let go.

She felt so high, she just might. She didn’t want to spoil this night with reality.

She wanted to stay in this dreamland for a little longer, just her and Liam and the fairy lights, and the snow spreading out its feather carpet before them as they walked.

“I suppose so,” she said. “I’ll need to tread carefully with Fred. She doesn’t know that there’s that kind of history between us. So, us dating might come as a shock for her.”

“You don’t think she’ll be angry?”

Bella laughed. “Not with you, no, she adores you.”

“I don’t know how long I can go before it bursts out of me.”

She heard the smile in his voice and laid her head on his shoulder. “I’ll tell her soon. I promise.”

Hallow House was lit up like a carnival, but all the windows were dark, and she guessed everyone must be in bed.

She didn’t offer for Liam to come up, and he didn’t ask.

She wasn’t sure she could trust herself to stop at offering him coffee, and she didn’t want the first time they made love in more than three decades to be a sneaking, hushed affair.

She’d waited this long; she could hold on a little longer.

Instead, they kissed outside the large wrought-iron gates, beneath the smile of a benevolent moon, like two aging teenagers, until their lips were sore, and they were both breathless, smiling like they were drunk on each other.

Liam watched her all the way to the house, waving right up until she pushed the front door closed as quietly as she could.

She poured herself a glass of water in the kitchen.

She didn’t need to turn the lights on, she knew this house by heart.

In almost total darkness she made her way up the stairs to the same bedroom she’d had since she was a girl.

And when she sank into the soft mattress, smiling into the darkness, giddy with happiness, she felt almost that young again.