Eager to escape her memories of Christmas past

Angie has left snow and mistletoe far behind to spend the holidays in exotic Kuala Lumpur. The last thing she’s looking for is romance, but it’s hard to ignore Alex Farhadi, the sexy, mysterious man next door. Unable to resist their mutual desire, Angie allows herself to indulge in a passionate vacation affair. She has every intention of returning to Boston—alone. But as her time with Alex runs out, Angie can’t imagine facing the New Year without him.…

Escaping Christmas
Charlotte Ashwood

www.millsandboon.co.uk

This book is dedicated to my husband. For giving me a safe place from which to write, for your encouragement and for babysitting the kids while I ran off to write in coffee shops. Thank you my love.

Charlotte always wanted to write romantic stories. She's a sucker for a happy ending and spent a good deal of her time in law school matchmaking for her friends and acquaintances.

She's married to her dream man and they have three children. When she's not busy writing, Charlotte likes to travel with her family and experience different cultures.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter One

Angie stepped out of the elevator, staring eagerly at the take-out container of Baskin-Robbins ice cream in her hand, and promptly tripped over her own feet. For a fraction of a second she registered the fact that her ice cream was not going to survive the fall before she bumped into something hard.

“Oomph!”

“I’ve got you.” A sexy voice reached down and caressed her as she felt strong, muscular arms breaking her fall.

“My ice cream!”Angie couldn’t hide her relief as she caught the container before it hit the ground. What was that scent? She inched closer so she could get another whiff. Hmm, smelled like spice. There was a woodsy aroma there, too. And he definitely smelled like a man. She inhaled again and almost jumped when he let out a sexy chuckle.

“I promise you, I wash regularly. I’ve even been known to take a shower on occasion.”

Her face flushed with embarrassment, Angie stiffened and realized she was still in his arms. She took a step back and felt strangely bereft when his arms fell away. “I’m sorry, I’m quite clumsy,” she said, looking anywhere but at her rescuer, trying to figure out why her pulse was racing.

“Hey, no sweat. It was entirely my pleasure.”

She lifted her head then and stared into the sparkling brown eyes of her next-door neighbor. She frowned. They had met a couple of times around the elevator, and something about this man, with his roguish good looks and curly black hair, had always rubbed her the wrong way. Probably because she kept wondering what it would be like to kiss him, and images of him naked kept flashing up at unwanted times. She needed to extricate herself from this situation if she didn’t want him to see that those images had begun flashing once more.

“Well, thanks, anyway. I need to go.” She fidgeted with her purse strings while carefully holding on to the container of ice cream. Realizing how ungracious she sounded, Angie sighed, and before she could stop herself she blurted out, “I don’t mind sharing this.” She lifted the container slightly.

His eyes widened, and for a second he looked like he was going to say yes, but then they clouded with regret.

“I would love to, but I need to be somewhere else. I’ll take a rain check.”

That was when she took in the fact that he was dressed in a tailored shirt and what appeared to be designer jeans. He looked ready for a night out. The tightness in Angela’s stomach eased a little, and she couldn’t hide her relief. She’d regretted her impulsive offer almost as soon as she’d made it.

“No problem. Thanks for saving my ice cream.” She turned to leave.

“Wait!”

Damn. She’d almost escaped. Slowly she turned back to face him, one eyebrow lifted in inquiry.

“What’s your name?”

“Angie Scot.”

He closed the gap between them. “I’m Alex Farhadi.”

He stretched out a hand and waited till she reluctantly placed hers in his. Her skin tingled where their palms touched.

“I meant what I said about taking a rain check,” he said slowly, looking straight into her eyes.

Angie gazed into his eyes and felt her stomach give a slow flip. That was not a good sign. First the tingle, now a flip? She was beginning to get warning signals, the big, blinking, neon-colored kind. His eyes were doing funny things to her, too. They were deep pools of caramel, and he was looking at her intently, as though she were the only woman in the world. Of course, she was the only other person standing there, just outside the elevator. At that reminder, she blinked and realized her hand was still enveloped by his much larger one. She tugged gently, and he let go immediately, but her hand still retained the warmth of his.

“I’ll be seeing you around, then.” He flashed a smile at her.

Not if she saw him first, she decided. But she just shrugged and nodded. “Sure.”

She felt his eyes on her as she turned and walked the short distance to her door. While she searched her purse for her keys, she risked a glance behind her and was slightly disappointed to find he was no longer there. She had not heard the elevator, and she knew it was because she had been preoccupied by lingering thoughts of a pair of brown eyes. Well, not exactly brown. More like liquid gold. Even now, she was thinking about them, and that irritated her to no end. She had not come to Kuala Lumpur to think about men, no matter how gorgeous they were. She finally located her keys and let herself into her apartment. Who needed men when one had ice cream?

Several days later Angie walked into the Starbucks just around the corner from her apartment building. The cool air in the café was a welcome relief from the hot sun outside. Even though it was only 10:00 a.m. the heat was almost unbearable. It was the first time she had ventured outside her apartment in three days. She had spent the time writing, thinking about her life and trying not to think about her brown-eyed neighbor. She had not seen him again, but he’d made his presence known. A container of ice cream had been delivered to her door with an A scrawled in a rough man-script on a tiny card.

It was a small gesture, yet it had had a profound effect on her. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had done something nice for her. Well, apart from Elizabeth, her mother-in-law, but she had a guilty conscience to assuage.

“What can I get you, ma’am?”

She blinked at the smiling barista and her mind went blank. After a few seconds of scanning the menu, she went with the first thing that caught her eye. “Hi, I’ll have a caramel latte.”

Now why on earth had she ordered that, she wondered to herself. She didn’t even like lattes, for crying out loud…and caramel? She knew who she had to blame for that choice.

With a small smile, she paid for her coffee and took a table by the window. She gazed out onto the street with unseeing eyes. Sitting there, staring out the window on a sunny morning in a quiet area of Kuala Lumpur, she finally felt a semblance of peace. The past year had been hell, and she didn’t know how to put the broken pieces of her life back together again, but at that moment it didn’t seem to matter so much that she had nowhere to call home, or that she was unemployed and an emotional wreck. For the first time in a year, she was just glad to be alive.

Angie was lost in thought when she suddenly got the feeling she was being watched. She turned her head, and right there, sitting within her direct line of vision at the other side of the café, was her caramel-eyed neighbor. He was staring at her with such intensity that she felt her face fill with color, much to her annoyance.

Angie stared back for a few seconds, which stretched into a full minute. The surrounding noise faded into the background as they looked at each other across the room. There was a pull in his eyes that drew her in so far she felt like she was drowning. Her pulse picked up speed. She told herself that she needed to look away, but she couldn’t seem to break the gaze.

Just then someone waved a hand in front of Alex, and he looked away. That was when Angie noticed that he had a companion with him—a beautiful woman with large brown eyes framed by long, dark lashes and thick waves of dark brown hair spilling down past her shoulders. She was looking at Angie with amusement.

Angie averted her eyes. She was not disappointed because he had a girlfriend. She was just annoyed that even though he was involved with such a beautiful woman, he had flirted with her by the elevator. What was it with men, anyway? Was it so impossible to find a faithful one?

She took a sip from her latte and grimaced. It wasn’t so bad; it just wasn’t her thing. As she absently brought the mug back to her mouth, she casually glanced at the table where Alex had been sitting with his companion and found it empty.

“Looking for someone?”

Angie’s head snapped up, and there he was, standing beside her table, looking annoyingly sexy in a blue-and-white-striped work shirt tucked into black slacks. The sleeves were rolled up, exposing his forearms.

“Hi.”

“Hey.” His eyes smiled at her and she felt her pulse speed up. “Mind if I have this seat?”

She shrugged, and he sat down elegantly in the chair opposite her.

“Where’s your friend?” Angie asked.

“My sister decided she did not like my inattention and went shopping.” His eyes sparkled with amusement.

The ghost of a smile appeared on her lips. “I would choose shopping, too.”

“She’s my baby sister and incredibly spoiled. Some inattention is good for her.”

Angie heard the affection for his sister in his voice and felt a pang of regret. She’d often wondered what it would be like to have a brother or a sister. It had always been just her and her mom. Her dad hadn’t even stuck around long enough to get to know her, and his family had refused to acknowledge her altogether. She shrugged off the feeling. She’d done well for herself, and her life had been great, until recently. She missed her mom terribly.

“What’s going on behind those beautiful eyes?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Are you flirting with me?”

“Would you like me to flirt with you?” he asked.

Angie shrugged, which just made him chuckle.

“Why aren’t you at work on a Monday morning?” she asked.

“I’d rather spend the time flirting with you.”

“Oh, please, spare me. Do those doe eyes actually work on any real human women?”

He blinked once then laughed. “You have a way with words, did you know that?”

“Thanks, but that doesn’t answer the question.”

“Hmm, you must not have been in Malaysia long if you don’t know about makan.”

“Makan?” Angie was intrigued.

Alex smiled, his eyes glittering with mischief.

“Well, literally it means food or a meal. You interfere with makan at your peril. However, I like to think of it as a philosophy.”

“How can food be a philosophy?”

“It’s more than just a question of food. Makanis when families get together during the day and friends sit down and catch up with each other. Makan also means to party or to feast. Anyway, lunch break is a serious event here.”

Angie was impressed. She was surprised to find such depth beneath his stereotypical good looks. Then again, maybe it was a fluke, or maybe he’d studied anthropology in college. Besides, she knew firsthand that depth of knowledge did not always translate to depth of feeling.

Alex watched her drift off again, lost in her thoughts. It would have been a blow to his ego to see her attention wander if he was not so fascinated by watching her. She was a beautiful woman, and she was getting more than a few looks from the male patrons of the café. But it was more than her beauty that drew him to her. The first thing he’d noticed about her was the haunted look in her eyes, like she’d been very badly hurt. Watching her, he wanted to gather her in his arms and make her sadness disappear.

He felt his mouth curve into a rueful smile at this thought. His cousin Hussein would say his Sir Galahad complex was showing.

“You’re staring,” she said.

“It’s hard not to. You went off somewhere inside your head, and I didn’t want to interrupt.”

She frowned slightly and turned to look at him. “Interrupt what?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “What were you thinking about?”

She picked up her mug and absently took a sip, then made a face and placed the mug back on the table.

“I was just wondering why on earth I decided to experiment with a caramel latte of all things.”

“I can show you where to get real coffee, not this fancy stuff. There’s this place I can take you to…. What are you doing this evening?”

She hesitated, and then shook her head. “I’m busy tonight. I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay. Maybe another time?”

She smiled that small half smile that barely reached her eyes. “Sure.”

He glanced at the clock on the wall in front of him and realized it was time to head back to the office.

“I need to get going. It was nice meeting you again, Angie Scot.”

She smiled and murmured something appropriate before turning back to her coffee. Alex felt like he had been dismissed. As he walked out of the café into the hot sunshine, he promised himself that she was not going to find it so easy to dismiss him again.

Chapter Two

Angie stood on her balcony and gazed at the Kuala Lumpur skyline. She could see the Twin Towers from there—it was already well after dusk, so they were fully lit. As she looked out at the view, she reflected on the call she’d just had with her mother-in-law. Since she lost her son a year ago, Elizabeth had become a different person. She had gone from treating Angie like some leprous gold digger to going out of her way to connect with the woman her son had treated so shabbily. It was a relationship Angie was still wary of, so when Elizabeth had started dishing out advice on taking chances and living life more fully, she’d quickly ended the call. It had been too late to stop the words from penetrating Angie’s self-imposed fog, though, and now she couldn’t think of anything else.

She knew her mother-in-law was right, she needed to give herself a chance to find love again. But not just yet. Maybe in a decade or two, when she had full control over every aspect of her life and no man could pull the rug from under her feet the way her husband had. Tired of her own thoughts, she decided to nip outside and buy her dinner.

Standing outside her apartment door an hour later, Angie bit back a sigh as she dug into her backpack for her keys. Since the bag served as a catchall for everything from train tickets to pencil stubs, it was taking her a while to find her key ring. The backpack was precariously balanced on one knee, and she was attempting to hold on to a take-out package of rice and Indian curry with her free hand. She rested her knee against the outer grill to stop herself from falling over.

“Excavating again?”

The takeout wobbled precariously, and she bit back a curse as it tilted a little to the side. Thankfully the box was very well sealed and nothing spilled. She turned to find Alex standing in front of her with a smile on his face. It was the first time she had seen him since their brief encounter at the coffee shop nearly a week before.

She pursed her lips in frustration. “What were you trying to do? Scare a few years off my life?”

He folded his arms across his chest and leaned casually against the wall.

“You were not scared.”

“Yeah… No thanks to you. And I almost lost my dinner,” she said. “Did you go on a trip or something?”

“I take it you missed me, then?”

“Careful there, your modesty is showing.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

She sighed and shoved her meal at him. “Here, make yourself useful and hold this for me.”

She turned away to search once more for her keys. With fresh determination, she jiggled her backpack and finally clasped her hand around them.

“Thank goodness!” she muttered.

She opened her door and turned around to face him, swallowing as she took in his lean form dressed casually in a T-shirt over jeans. Nothing spectacular, yet on him the effect was incredible. She looked up and met his warm brown eyes. All traces of amusement were gone. Instead he was staring at her with deep intensity, almost as though he could see past the front she presented to the world to the real person inside. Feeling uncomfortable, she averted her gaze.

“Ah, thanks for holding my dinner,” she said, taking it back from him.

“My pleasure.”

She waited a beat and then reluctantly turned to go inside.

“Wait.”

She paused and turned back to him. He was smiling sheepishly.

“I got you something for Christmas.”

She shuddered inwardly at the reminder that it was Christmas day. A year ago today her entire world as she had known it had ceased to exist. No one could blame her for detesting the holiday and all the festivities that came with it.

“You didn’t have to do that,” she said, meaning it.

He shrugged, and a lock of hair fell over his forehead. She wanted to reach up and put it back in place. She didn’t, of course, but it kept nagging at her.

“I know I didn’t have to, but I wanted to. Here.”

She hadn’t even noticed that he was holding a shopping bag until he held it out to her. She hesitated, but finally took the bag.

“Thank you.”

“Right. Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas to you, too. Would you like to come in?” She wasn’t sure what made her ask, but suddenly it felt like the right thing to do.

He gazed at her steadily, as though measuring his reaction. And then he nodded slowly, which further convinced her that she’d made the right decision.

“Follow me. I still have some of that lovely ice cream you sent over. We could share that.” She smiled and led the way into her apartment, which opened into a cozy living area.

Angie’s apartment was decorated in earth tones with red accents and had a clean and sparse feel to it. She had fallen in love with the place the moment she’d walked in a couple of weeks ago. The clean lines and minimalist decor were in such sharp contrast to the chaos she’d left behind that she’d immediately relaxed, breathing for the first time in close to a year, or so it had seemed.

She took off the tiny black shrug she wore on top of her short floral-patterned summer dress and motioned for him to take off his shoes just inside the door, but he was already doing so. It was just one of the cultural differences she’d had to adjust to when she came to Kuala Lumpur; everyone took off their shoes before entering a home. She compromised by taking hers off inside her apartment.

“Do you want something to drink?” she asked as she turned on the air-conditioning. It might have been December, but Malaysia was as hot as Texas in July. When he nodded she moved toward the kitchen area. “Hot or cold?”

“Do you have any alcohol?”

“Um, there’s Scotch, vermouth, and some wine, white and red.” She catalogued the small bar she’d found when she’d moved in.

“I could do with a Scotch, thanks.”

“Make yourself comfortable,” she said from the kitchen, pausing to put down the takeout before reaching for a glass. She turned and found him sitting at the bar that separated the kitchen from the dining area. She raised an eyebrow but remained silent.

“So what made you change your mind?”

Angie frowned in confusion. “Change my mind about what?”

“About me.”

She glanced at the bottle in her hand before looking at him. When their eyes met, her pulse began to race and she felt that strange breathlessness again. “Who said I had?”

“You would not have invited me in if you had not.”

“But I invited you in the other day.”

“And heaved a huge sigh of relief when I didn’t take you up on it.” His eyes were twinkling with amusement.

She turned and pulled open the fridge, surprised that he was so astute.

“Ice?”

When he shook his head, she shut the fridge door and turned back to him. As she poured golden liquid into the glass, she searched for what to say. She knew what he was talking about; for the past year she’d ignored any form of male attention. But with her sexy next-door neighbor, she’d had to fight hard to remain aloof. Tonight was different, though. She had a deep need to forget and an inexplicable feeling that her gorgeous neighbor was just the person to help her do that.

“I only invited you in for some ice cream.”

“And here I am.” He raised the glass in a mock salute before emptying its contents down his throat. “You’re not planning anything weird, are you?”

“Like what?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Is the ice cream poisoned?”

Angie started to chuckle but quickly stopped herself and rolled her eyes instead, then perched on the only other high stool right beside him. She crossed her legs, the hem of her dress only coming to midthigh, and pushed back a few strands of wheat-blond hair that had escaped the clasp she’d used to subdue it earlier that day.

“Why would you think I’d want to poison you?”

“Any number of reasons.”

“You have a lot of women trying to poison you?”

He smiled wryly. “You’d be surprised at how many.”

“Well, relax, then. I have no wish to poison you. And I don’t plan to tie you up and turn you into my sex slave, either.”

Angie slipped the cover off the ice cream container. She sighed in appreciation as she picked up a pink spoon and eyed the three different flavors. She had a tough decision to make—start with the eye-catching tiramisu or go with her favorite, the chocolate chip? She decided on the unknown quantity, the Slam Dunk. It was vanilla with orange pretzels in it, and lived up to her expectations. Eyes closed, she had to hold back a moan of pleasure. God, but there was something sinful about Baskin-Robbins ice cream.

Alex inhaled sharply, and Angie’s eyes flew open at the sound. She turned to look at him and froze when she saw his expression.

Eyes narrowed, Alex gazed at her mouth with such hunger it took her breath away. “You can tie me up anytime you want,” he murmured.

Angie swallowed as her mind went wild with images of Alex tied to her bedposts and the many delicious things she could do with him at her mercy like that. Suddenly her chest felt tight, like there was not enough air in the room.

Alex felt desire slam into him as he watched Angie lick the ice-cream spoon. He had been attracted to her since the very first moment they’d met, and their meeting at the coffee shop had turned that spark into a flame. Yet nothing had prepared him for the intense heat that was now coursing through his body. He shifted on the stool, suddenly uncomfortable, and forced his gaze upward to find that he’d been caught staring. He could tell from the way her pupils were slightly dilated that she liked being watched. Looking into those eyes the color of midnight, he knew she was as affected as he was. He turned away and glanced around the room. As lovely as the apartment was, there was an obvious lack of Christmas decorations. “How come you have no Christmas stuff in here?”

Angie shrugged and pushed another spoonful of ice cream into her mouth, stalling for time. She was still trying to catch her breath after the moment they had just shared. As she looked around she realized that it was already dark outside. She’d drawn the lovely bamboo blinds that morning before she went out and hadn’t closed them yet. She turned to look at his face in profile and remembered his question. What could she say? That she’d crossed several continents just to get away from Christmas? She shrugged again.

“Don’t you get enough of Christmas stuff in all the malls?”

He smiled. “It’s crazy, isn’t it?”

Malaysians went all out when it came to Christmas. They didn’t even let a lack of snow stop them; they created their own snow in the malls and had sexy little elves passing out fliers advertising the many events that took place.

Handing him a spoon, she gestured to the ice cream. “It’s melting.”

Angie watched Alex as he took a spoonful of the ice cream. She saw his reaction and couldn’t help but chuckle.

“It’s divine, isn’t it?”

He nodded. “I can’t believe you’re sharing this.”

“Well, you sent it. Seemed rather churlish not to share with you.”

“I’m glad I got it, then.”

Angie caught her breath at the undertone in his voice but decided to ignore it. She was suddenly finding it hard to enjoy her ice cream, and not for the first time, she wanted to regret inviting Alex to share it with her. It was taking her completely out of her comfort zone, but she had to admit that she was enjoying the banter.

There was something really intimate about sharing ice cream with a stranger, and the air around them was slowly filling up with tension.

“So tell me something about you that I don’t know.”

She looked at him with a raised eyebrow. “Are you asking for my life story now?”

“It would be a good place to start.”

“Okay, I’ll play. But let’s do it this way. I’ll tell you something about me, then you tell me something about you.”

Angie wondered what the hell she was thinking. Oh, who was she kidding? She was thinking that it had been a year since she’d had sex, a year since any man had caught her interest. And going by the way she could feel heat pooling in her center, she knew Alex had done just that. The look on his face as he watched her lick that ice-cream spoon had convinced her the feeling was mutual. But it went beyond that. He made her feel good about herself, which was a feeling she’d forgotten. He looked at her like he saw the real Angie Scot, and he had no idea how sexy that was to her.

“You mean like truth or dare?”

His question brought her out of her reverie, and she caught her lower lip between her teeth. Dare she? But she already knew her answer. “Sure, why not?” She shrugged, trying to appear casual.

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