His Christmas Acquisition

‘I’m nothing if not one-hundred-percent reliable.’ He held out a carrier bag. ‘Champagne.’

Flustered, she kept her eyes firmly on his face, deliberately avoiding the muscular legs encased in pair of black trousers and the way those top two undone buttons of his cream shirt exposed the shadow of fine, dark hair.

‘Thanks.’ She reached out for the carrier bag and was startled when from behind his back he produced a small gift-wrapped box. ‘What’s this?’

‘A present.’

‘I’m still working my way through the bottle of perfume you gave me last year.’ She wiped her hands and then began opening the present.

Her mouth went dry. She had been privy to quite a few of his gifts to women. They ranged from extravagant bouquets of flowers to jewellery to trips to health spas. This, however, was nothing like that. In the small box was an antique butterfly brooch and she picked it up, held it up to the light and then set it back down in its bed of tissue paper before raising her eyes to his.

‘You bought me a butterfly,’ she whispered.

‘I noticed that you had a few on your mantelpiece in the sitting room. I guessed you collect them. I found this one at an antique shop in Spitalfields.’

‘It’s beautiful, but I can’t accept it.’ She thrust it at him and turned away, her face burning.

‘Why not?’

‘Because … because …’

‘Because you don’t collect them?’

‘I do, but …’

‘But it’s yet another of those secrets of yours that you’d rather I knew nothing about?’

‘It just isn’t appropriate,’ Jamie told him stiffly. In her head, she pictured him roaming through a market, chancing upon the one thing he knew would appeal to her, handing over not a great deal of cash for it, but it never took much to win someone over. Except, she wasn’t on the market to be won over. Nor was he on the market for doing anything but what came naturally to him—thinking outside the box. It was why he was such a tremendous success in his field.

‘Okay, but you know that it’s an insult to return a gift.’ Ryan shrugged. ‘I’m in your house. Consider it a small token of gratitude for rescuing a lonely soul from wandering the streets of London on Christmas day.’