Page 82 of Winter Magic on Railway Lane

He looked around at the kitchen. ‘I guess all this is a far cry from your heady nights away with the airline crew,’ he said.

She shook her head. ‘Actually, I used to be what they call a “slam clicker” on layovers.’

‘A what?’ he asked.

‘It means I used to shut my hotel door, clicked the lock and didn’t see my fellow crew members until we showed up to fly again the following day,’ she told him. ‘Layovers were my time for myself. I used to read up on chocolate or explore the local food scene.’ She looked up at him. ‘What about you? I heard you led a pretty wild nightlife whilst you were away all those years.’

‘It meant nothing to me,’ he told her. ‘It was all so frivolous and fake.’ He paused before carrying on, ‘Unlike you, Mrs Connolly. You were the real deal.’

She took a sharp intake of breath. ‘So any near Mrs since then?’ she quipped, trying to keep the atmosphere light.

He smiled. ‘Many,’ he replied. ‘But nobody else came close to making me hear wedding bells.’

She raised a sardonic eyebrow. ‘Don’t you mean hearing a synthetic organ in an Elvis chapel?’ she said, with a grin.

‘Actually I found it very romantic,’ he said.

She laughed. ‘We were both drunk!’

But Ethan wasn’t laughing. ‘I wasn’t that drunk,’ he told her, shaking his head.

He took a step forward until their bodies were almost touching.

‘Ethan,’ she whispered, staring up at the intensity in his eyes.

He didn’t need to tell her what he was thinking. She knew exactly what he wanted. And she wanted it too.

She couldn’t stop herself from reaching up to draw him closer to her. Her hands automatically crept around his shoulders and up to his head to draw his down to hers.

She heard him groan briefly before dropping his lips onto hers and then she was lost in time. Everything stood still and it was just them. She was back in his arms at last. Back where she had always wanted to be.

She felt his hands on her back, pulling her against him so that there was no space between them at all. It felt so right, as his kiss deepened. She felt whole again, as if the other half of her that had been missing for so long was finally complete once more.

At some point, in a daze, she felt him pull back slightly.

‘Libby,’ he whispered before stepping away from her and running a hand through his hair. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.’

‘Why not?’ she blurted out.

‘Because this doesn’t end well for us,’ he told her. ‘Because no relationship of mine ends in a happy ever after, however much I care for you. It’s all fake and lies.’

‘You think that kiss was fake?’ she asked, hurt and confused. ‘Did it feel fake to you?’

‘No,’ he replied. ‘And it never did. But…’

Libby stood still, holding her breath and waiting for him to pull her close once more. She silently willed him to trust her and not the cynicism that his mum had shown him throughout his childhood.

But instead, he turned his back on her, pulling out his phone. ‘I’ve got quite a bit to do before the first train run later,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you on the platform tonight?’

She nodded, even though he was halfway across the lounge by now.

He was running away again, she thought, thinking back to when he had told her about his mum’s cheating.

As she watched him leave, she wondered whether he was right. Perhaps it had been a mistake for them both to kiss. So why did she want nothing more than to run back into his arms?

49

Libby had enjoyed the Christmas train ride with her dad immensely. Hearing him narrate the story over the speakers had been the icing on the cake, as far as she was concerned. But the rest was so magical, so incredible, that she couldn’t wait to have just a little more magic that evening when she had volunteered to help out at the station with the very first run for paying passengers.