Christmas Under the Northern Lights by Annie O'Neil

Author:Annie O'Neil
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2020-09-08T17:13:40+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

‘WHERE ARE YOU taking me?’ Audrey wasn’t nervous exactly, but... Okay, maybe a little.

‘Here,’ Cooper said, pulling off the coastal route to a viewing point at the north end of the island. He parked the vehicle so that it faced the sea.

‘Dark out tonight,’ Audrey said, looking for the moon and finding only the tiniest of slivers.

‘Perfect.’

‘For what?’ She poked Cooper in the arm. ‘What’s with the aura of mystery?’

‘You’ll see.’ Cooper smiled, undid his seatbelt and leant on the steering wheel to peer up at the sky. ‘No light pollution up here. I imagine it’s all Christmas lights and dazzle down in London.’

Audrey’s nerve-endings crackled. ‘Pretty much.’

‘Ex-boyfriend in London, too?’ Cooper asked.

His eyes were still on the sky which, now that she looked, Audrey could see was alight with stars. The incredible beauty of it took the edge off admitting, ‘Ex-fiancé.’

‘Ah.’

‘I found him rocking an elf by the Christmas tree after a Christmas party hop.’

He gave her a rueful smile. ‘That explains why you weren’t keen to wear the elf costume.’

‘Yup!’

She dug into her coat pockets and pulled out her gloves. As she worked each finger into place, she told him the rest. They’d been due to be married on Christmas Eve. She’d been stupid enough to insist upon paying for the wedding. Now she was jobless, and homeless—apart from this locum post and a room in his gran’s house for the duration!

‘You lived together?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘I’d just sold my parents’ house. Well...my house after my dad passed. Someone else’s house now. I’d moved in with Rafael two weeks earlier.’

For the first time she felt a proper burst of anger.

‘He didn’t even let me unpack my personal knick-knacks. Said the flat was fine as it was. What kind of person does that? And what kind of idiot doesn’t take it as a massive warning sign that things aren’t going well? Maybe I knew all along. Maybe I wasn’t unpacking things because there was a part of me that knew none of it was meant to be. Or maybe I’m reading too much into it. You haven’t exactly changed your grandmother’s place around...’

Cooper gave her a soft smile. ‘I’m not changing my grandmother’s place because I want to preserve what I can’t have any more.’

Audrey’s breath caught and constricted in her throat. ‘Do you think that’s what Rafael was doing? Preserving what he thought he couldn’t have any more?’

Cooper shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t presume to guess, but the fact he cheated so quickly does suggest his heart wasn’t in it.’

‘But he’s the one who proposed! We’d only been dating for three months!’ Audrey yanked her voice down from screeching fury to simmering rage. ‘He’s the one who wined and dined me. The one who convinced me to leave my job and work in paediatrics. I couldn’t really believe any of it was happening, to be perfectly honest. It felt...surreal.’

When what it should have felt like was a dream come true.

‘So...’ Cooper turned to face her, his expression not filled with pity, as she’d feared, more with empathy.

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