Let it Snow!

❄️Forty-Six❄️

Nora squealed with surprise when, upon entering the castle's dark and deserted Entry Hall with Eric, she found his hands closed around her waist, his arms lifting her up in the air as if she weighed nothing... and that he wasn't really drunk.

"Put me down!" she demanded, scowling down at him even as he said, "I'm so glad to finally see you again, I couldn't wait for this moment since Daniel mentioned you, I've been thinking about you for so long!"

"You are not drunk!" Nora accused him the moment he set her on her feet, taking a step away from him. "You... got Victoria drunk. Why?" she added, eyebrows drawn together in confusion. Why does it even matter? Just go home, her mind adviced her but her heart could not leave the boy still lurking in this strange man's eyes and actions, the boy who had been her first love, alone in the cold and dismal Entry Hall. Maybe he wasn't as drunk as he had pretended, but he had been drinking, and he was Martin's brother. She needed to make sure that he would find his way to Martin's flat.

She sighed. "Let me take you in, but then I want to go home."

"Let me walk with you home then, Nora, I haven't seen you in years, I want to talk to you," he said, taking her by the elbow, steering her towards the drawbridge.

"No. I don't want you to come with me. I don't want to talk to you tonight," she announced, shaking his hand off, wrapping her arms around her body, missing Martin, missing the promised night that would never happen now.

"Fine," he said, raising his hands in the air in mock surrender. "Come with me for a drink then, we can wait for my big brother together."

She could do with a drink, she mused, and she would have to talk to Eric sooner or later anyway; she had promised Martin. "All right. One drink, then you let me go home, alone," she bargained, the corners of her lips lifting in a hint of a smile. He hadn't changed, not on the inside. This was the Eric she remembered so well.

"Fine," he agreed easily, motioning for her to precede him in the direction of the brightly illuminated glass door of the hotel.

She let him help her out of her coat, waited for him to hand it over, together with his jacket, to a man standing by the door, then followed him across the large and almost empty reception interspersed with ancient looking armchairs and sofas towards the bar.

"I'll have a glass of white wine, thank you," she said to the young barman before Eric ordered the same.

They were the only customers at the moment, and it only took the barman seconds to bring the two large glasses of wine, only long enough for Nora to steal a glance at Eric. His black hair, which he used to keep short, was almost as long as his brother's now, making his resemblance of Martin more pronounced, just like his height and build. The most visible difference between the brothers were their eyes, Eric's were slightly darker, closer to brown than the mosaic of greens that composed Martin's mesmerising irises... Goodness she missed Martin, Nora thought, taking a long sip of her wine, impatient to finish her drink and go home. Where was he now? What was he doing? She took her phone from the pocket of her jeans and placed it on the shiny bar top where she could see it, remembering that Martin had promised to call her.

"You look gorgeous, Nora," Eric said, his eyes devouring her over the rim of his glass, setting her cheeks ablaze.

She would have given anything for these words, this look from him, once. "You are still the same," she muttered. She didn't really know what to talk about with him; the situation was awkward.

"You seem to have turned Victoria's life upside down. Poor girl, even though I told her more than once that Martin would never marry her, she refused to believe it until now," he mused, took a sip of his wine then went on, "She told me a couple of weeks ago that she felt Martin slipping through her fingers. That she had noticed a change in him and suspected he had met someone recently... She didn't think it was you only because she didn't know either of you back then when you and I dated, and he was so much in love with you."