As they approached her doorstep, she paused and gave him a half smile.“Madge pointed out that I may have been a wee bit severe on you, too.”
He felt himself brighten.“Madge likes me?”
Gloria opened the front door and gestured inside.“You don’t see her anywhere, do you?She’s hoping you’ll compromise me.”
“So am I,” he said fervently.“So am I.”
She tossed him a saucy look over her shoulder.“I’m still considering it.”
“What?”He chased after her.“You’ve been having carnal thoughts about me?”
“I’ll let you know when I decide.”She pressed her finger to his lips and turned away.
His head swam.Or maybe that was his blood, rushing to his trousers at once.
Christopher was thrilled not to be the only one hoping for pleasurable adventures in their future.
So thrilled that he belatedly realized he was still wearing his hat and coat.He jogged back to the front door to place his outerwear on their customary spot on the rack, then returned to the kitchen to visit the plum pudding.
It wasn’t there.
He swung his gaze up to the ceiling in confusion.The hook was there; the pudding was not.He turned in a slow circle, darting searching glances about the kitchen.One hook.Zero puddings.A mystery.
“Where’s the pudding?”he called out.
Gloria appeared in the corridor but did not immediately answer.
A strange frustration gnawed at him.
“I come in, I hang my coat, I bid ‘good day’ to the pudding.”He motioned up toward the empty hook.“No pudding.Did you eat it?”
She crossed her arms in silence.
“Did you give it away?”
She lifted her brows.
“Did you hide it from me?”he asked in exasperation.
Gloria tilted her head.“Maybe.”
“What on earth for?”he demanded.
She stepped closer.
“This feeling you’re experiencing, this lack of equilibrium… The sensation that something is missing, that something is wrong, that something is not as it should be… That a part of your life is incomplete and no longer fits?That’s how I feel when you take away something comforting to me.Something familiar.”She paused before adding, “Amplified by a thousand.”
“It’s a pudding,” he told her.“I was surprised, perhaps, but it didn’t leave a hole in my heart.”
“It made a small one,” she said.“Just for a second.Think back.You had a ritual.Something familiar that made you happy.And I took it away.Why do you think you cared?”
It was more than a ritual, he realized.Her cottage had begun to feel like a home they shared together.The empty spot left by the pudding made him realize how big of a holeshewould leave if he lost her, too.He had not liked the sensation at all.
Before he could answer, she ducked out of the corridor for a moment and then reappeared with the pudding.
“It was in the observatory,” she said as she hung it back on the hook.“I didn’t mean to hide it from you.I felt like the observatory was more ‘ours’ than the kitchen.So, I thought you might like to keep our pudding close.”
He wanted to keepherclose for as long as he could.He longed to share much more with her than pudding.
