Cosy Christmas ✓

4 / deck the halls

"Come, sit," she said. "You can relax. Have a drink." Posy patted the space next to her, and Connor obligingly sat, letting out a long breath. He tried not to arouse suspicion, but she was perceptive, and he hadn't yet mastered the art of subtlety. Her eyebrows pulled together and she studied his face for a second. "Sure you're alright, Connor?"

"Yeah, yeah," he said, with as much conviction in his voice as he could muster, when really he felt a little queasy. "Bloody cold outside."

Posy laughed and nodded. "You're not wrong there," she said. "I can still hardly feel my fingers." She rubbed her hands together and clasped them around her mug, taking full advantage of the heat of her coffee. Connor was torn. Part of him wanted to stay right where he was, to indulge in the calmness of just being with her, whereas a competing part told him to go and get the tree, to just get it over and done with.

"I should get the tree," he said, voicing his thought, and he stood. Posy looked up at him, but she said nothing, and from her expression he figured that it was simply a case of her not quite knowing what to say. Digging his hands into his pockets, he headed back outside and clenched his jaw as he untied the rope that held the tree to the roof of his car. It wasn't anything too extravagant, the top of the tree just about five feet off the ground, but as Posy had argued, the height didn't matter when she was supposed to be off her feet. Plus, she'd be more helpful with a smaller tree, else Connor would be resigned to doing everything she couldn't reach. That suited him well. The last thing he wanted to have to do was finish it off with a star on top.

The size made it easy for him to drag into the house, hoisting it into his arms so as not to spoil the carpet, and he set down the stand before angling the tree in the vice.

"You really are very useful," Posy noted with a chuckle. "I don't know what the fuck I'd be doing without you. Do you need a hand?" She leant forward on the sofa, watching Connor as he held the tree in place with one hand and tightened the stand with the other, and she couldn't see the way he gritted his teeth, nor could she hear the pounding of his heart as though it was trying to burst out of his chest.

"Nope," he said, standing after a minute or so. "It's all good."

"Perfect," she said. "Now sit down. Relax. I mean it, Connor." She put her feet up on the coffee table and sipped her drink. "You've just spent more than an hour pushing me round a garden centre in fucking freezing weather, and I am not light at this time of year. Put your feet up. I have biscuits in the cupboard, and you know where the tea is." She gave him a comforting smile, as though she could read him, and he hoped that wasn't the case. She was just friendly. "I want to talk."

He raised his eyebrows, unconsciously wringing his wrists as he sat with his elbows on his knees, ready to bolt. Not that he planned to. It was just his default position, especially in the presence of a tree he was in charge of decorating, and those four words had never been ones to reassure him. His past three relationships had ended fairly soon after he had heard those words spoken. "About what?"

She laughed and shrugged. "I don't know. But I figure we might as well get to know each other, right? I don't know about you, but I tend to know a guy before I bring him home." She moved her finger in a circle. "We seem to have gone in an odd direction. So make yourself a cup of tea and while you're at it, could you grab me a biscuit or two?"

Connor got to his feet with his hands on his knees, nodding at Posy before he stepped into the kitchen and looked through three cupboards before he found a biscuit assortment, half of them gone already. Posy seemed to like the same ones as him, all the good ones vanished, and he let out a hum of quiet amusement as he waited for the kettle to boil. Tapping his foot, he drummed the fingers of one hand on the counter to a tune in his head, the other scratching the back of his neck. It was a habit he had developed a few years ago, and one he hadn't managed to shake. At the beginning, it had worsened to the point that he was left with a patch of raw skin just below his hairline at the nape of his neck. That had subsided after a few months, but anxious fingers had a habit of snaking back to that spot.