Christmas in Charmed Castle

This is my submission for the WINTER HOLIDAYS 2019 contest.

It's about 9K words and meant to be a cute, fun and romantic short story. The sexy bits are in the middle towards the end.

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Seraphine pulled the hood of her jacket up to cover her freezing ears and quickly thrust her hands deeper into her pockets. The voice of the lady announcer crackled through the speakers for the fifth time in the past twenty minutes, "Dear travelers, all train services to Brussels Central Station are canceled due to unexpected technical difficulties."

The fifth time had felt excessive and personal. She flipped off one of the speakers and immediately regretted her action as the icy gust feasted on the skin at her knuckles. Returning the numb hand to the pocket, she wrinkled her nose to stifle a sneeze.

A white hatchback car chose that moment to roll to a stop right in front of her. Its window on the passenger side rolled down, revealing the glacier blue eyes of the driver. And impossibly, the temperature dropped a few degrees centigrade more around Seraphine. She let out a shudder that originated from the base of her spine.

She should have called an Uber or just hitchhiked her way to the castle instead of calling Nathaniel. Or walked. She could've walked three hundred kilometers south in the dead of the winter. At least she knew then, if she died or got kidnapped, she'd die with some dignity, and not of humiliation and disdain.

"Come on." Nathaniel's cool, calm voice seeped through from the gap of the window as he gestured towards the vents. "You're wasting the heating."

Seraphine looked up to the pale blue sky to ask for more patience. That was a lie. She'd asked for a teleporter.

She looked over her shoulder longingly at the train tracks one last time before hearing the crackling that preluded the smug announcement for the sixth time. She pulled on the handle of Nathaniel's car to let herself in.

He dragged his cold, judgmental gaze over her reddened cheeks and snotty nose before twisting one of the knobs on the control panel and shifting the car back into drive. And then they took off.

The usual silence between them soon replaced the initial awkwardness, and Seraphine divined that between silence and disdain, she'd rather have the silence as barren branches and dry flat landscape rushed past them. It would be three hours. Tops.

"Thanks for picking me up." Dabbing her nose with a tissue, she managed to remember to thank him; after all, he had made a detour to pick her up at the train station, and she was not entirely without manners.

He didn't even look at her. "Why weren't you wearing gloves?"

Her brow furrowed at his question about her sartorial choices. "Gloves are not practical."

"And frozen hands are?" The judgment in his tone could cut through ice.

"I can't use my phone with gloves on."

"Your phone is in your backpack and you haven't looked at it once."

"I get carsick."

He shot her a sideways glance as if he knew she was not telling him the truth. Fine. She was not. She couldn't find both gloves before she rushed out of the door to catch the train that was now canceled, and she had not expected the weather to be so brutal. She sniffed, probably a little too loudly just to annoy him.

A ghost of a smile twitched one side of his lips up, and a dimple flashed on his cheek before nonchalance quickly replaced it as if smiling was a crime.

"Here"—he reached a hand to tweak one of the knobs—"you can turn up the heater."

She snapped her gaze to him before registering what he was trying to do. "Thanks," she grunted.

But before guilt could steal its way into her thought, he slammed the door in its face, asking, "Don't you have somewhere better to be?"

Then she understood; letting her do her own climate control was yet another way to make her feel unwelcome in his space. The first time they saw each other was through the gaping doors of the office elevator. She had just spent an extra five minutes explaining to the security guard that she was new at the magazine and she was late for work on her first day. When the security gate finally opened, she made for the elevator doors. That was when she saw a pair of steely blue eyes the color of morning sky. Nathaniel had looked up from his phone and caught her gaze. Her lips parted as she watched the beautiful man stretch his arm towards the call buttons. Then the two doors clapped in her face with a click.

She shouldn't have called him.

"I was hoping the international trains could provide better entertainment, but they are canceled due to the inability to thaw train tracks in the twenty-first century."

"I mean for the holiday," he said, his voice calm as if he hadn't heard her sarcasm at all. Seraphine hated that. His calmness felt as if other people didn't matter to him, as if she and her feelings didn't matter to him. "You don't have to go investigate a haunted castle during your Christmas holiday."

"So you can break the story?" she asked.

He nodded once. "Yes."

There was no modesty in this man.

She raised her eyebrow. "Don't you have better places to be?"

He thought for a while before saying, "Christmas hookups are always too needy in my experience." She rolled her eyes at that.

"We don't have to talk, you know." She bent down to reach for her laptop in the backpack, cutting this conversation short. "I can just work."

Firing up the laptop, she started typing her password to log in. And it worked like a shield around her, protecting her from Nathaniel. Now she just needed to hook it up to WiFi; she fished out her phone from the front pocket and switched on the hotspot, ignoring the teasing look on his face. She frowned and tilted her head. Why teasing?

He answered her silent question. "Don't you get carsick?"

Seraphine felt her cheeks warm. "I only get carsick when it's convenient."

There was a pause in the air; she looked to him when she sensed his gaze on her. Then his eyes softened as he let out a barely-there chuckle. The smile brought out the wrinkles around those baby blue eyes.

As if he realized he'd let positive emotions slip through, he hid away his smile and said quietly, "You didn't answer my question."

And then she was saved by her ringtone.

Or so she thought. She glanced hopefully at the caller ID before grimacing and muting the call.

Nathaniel's smug voice drifted over. "Why are you spending your Christmas holiday working?"

The phone again. Her mother was nothing but persistent.

"Should I get that for you?" he teased without much amusement, annoyed by the ringtone, as was she.

She swiped left on the little red phone icon. Huffing a long breath in defeat, she said, "Perhaps you should."

Surprised by her admission, he spun his golden head around to meet her gaze, and then she said, "My parents are calling to ask why I'm not going home for Christmas."

"And why not?"

Because she was thirty-one and had no ring on her finger.

All her life, she had never disappointed her family; she'd always been the perfect daughter. Until one day she was not. Until bringing home a degree only garnered her a perfunctory smile. Until suddenly her cousins ten years younger than she was were getting married and became the center of attention. Until all conversations, like Roman roads, inadvertently and purposefully led to the question of the missing man in her life. She sometimes wondered if it was the twenty-first century in which she was living.

But that was not Nathaniel's business.

"Because we have a ghost to catch," she said.

"Ghost or husband?"

She gasped, "How did you—"

He nodded at her phone, which was blinking happily with a cascade of notifications. Of course, he could not read minds; he just had superhuman eyesight.

Her mother had texted her asking when she was arriving and whether they should prepare an extra seat and a double bed for a plus one.

"You know, there are no such things as ghosts," he said.

She humphed.

He blinked, and then in a low voice, "You can't really believe in ghosts."

"I don't," she said, tilting her chin. "It's the butler."

"What?"

"It's always the butler, isn't it?" she asked, looking to him.

The corner of his mouth twitched. "No."

Seraphine waved a hand. "Then how else do you explain—"

"Physics." His voice cut through. She tightened her jaw and narrowed her eyes on him. She could show him how physics worked with her fist. Shaking her head to clear that thought, she said, "It's the butler. I don't trust him."

He took a long look at her, making her wonder if she'd said something wrong. Then he asked, "How did you get us bumped up on the waitlist?"

She chewed on her lower lip and kept quiet. The magazine had been trying to put together a piece on the so-called haunted castles in western Europe for the past year with the goal that the only thing that was doing the haunting was the people. Some castles embraced the chance of getting more exposure; some, like the one they were heading to, however, required some creative solutions.

He continued, "We're not some Instagram influencers or paranormal investigators that profit on the gore, so how did you get us in?"

He was not going to like the answer.

"I may have told a white lie or two."

*****

Seraphine was not his cup of tea.

She was too hotheaded, too impulsive and altogether too warm. Nathaniel liked his girls passionate but sensible, with a heavy emphasis on the latter. The kind that understood all good times must come to an end; Seraphine, on the other hand, looked like she was always having a good time.

He did, inconveniently, notice how perfectly she fit in his arm even when she was tensing up, and that she smelled like the Christmas tea he once had at an Austrian Christmas market when he was a boy, swinging between his parents' arms, asking for more sugar in his tea. He shook his head.

The fact that she did not think about the consequences before making up her stories proved how much of a hothead she was. Consequences such as, if one spun a heart-wrenching love story of how one met her husband at a ghost house and it'd be the most romantic idea if they could spend their first Christmas together as a married couple in an actual haunted castle, then one should reasonably expect that the castle would only provide one room for them. Because they were married.

And that put them in a peculiar position of pretending to be married while she asked the butler if they could have separate rooms.

"But you have so many rooms," she said.

"They are non-functional showrooms," he said, then he leaned in and added, "And I don't recommend staying in any of these display rooms at night."

Seraphine's shoulders shot up at the implication, and Nathaniel tightened his arm around her waist to sooth her out of instinct. She didn't actually believe in ghosts, did she?

"There's no heating," the butler explained. "The castle was built in the thirteenth century. They had terrible insulation back then."

Nathaniel could feel her physically relax against him through the layers of their jackets. She did believe in ghosts. God help him.

But the butler narrowed his eyes on her and tracked them down her person; the scrutiny bothered Nathaniel too much. And not just because the man got suspicious of their marital status and they might get thrown out. It bothered him on a visceral level and made him want to punch something.

So Nathaniel dropped a quick kiss on her lips to deter the butler's suspicion and pulled her behind him, shielding her away from the butler, but not before he met her round eyes. There was fire in those eyes as a flush rose to the tips of her ears. Fire that would burn him and leave him scorched.

Ignoring her and the touch of the soft skin on his lips, he said to the butler, "Please lead us to our room."

They followed the butler up one flight of the stairs and came up at the foot of a long, dark hallway lined with ornate doors and aristocratic portraits trapped in thick frames.

"To provide our guests with the most thrilling experience, we kept the premises in their original state. Each showroom"—the butler looked over his shoulder at Seraphine as he pushed open one of the doors—"is preserved to display exactly how it was used by the last baron and his family."

Then they became the sole focus of fifty pairs of porcelain doll eyes. Even Nathaniel was not immune to such eeriness, feeling a chill run down his spine as Seraphine clenched his hand before warmth returned.

Taking delight in their reactions, the butler waved his hand along the long hallway. "Each room is unique—the Baron and the family had a wide range of hobbies and collections—you are more than welcome to explore, but please do not touch anything. Like I said, these are showrooms."

He removed one key from a keyring and inserted it into the door. Dim yellow glow tried to crawl its way to them from the Victorian wall lights; it did not go far. "This will be your room. To encourage exploration, the bathroom is not fitted in the guest room; it is at the end of the hallway. Breakfast will be served at eight in the morning tomorrow in the kitchen, which is on the ground floor.

"Enjoy your stay." The butler turned around and disappeared down the staircase.

Seraphine whispered in his ear, "I told you it's the butler."

He cut her a look, and then he suddenly realized her hand was still tightly clasped in his. He let go of her hand as though it had burned him. At the same moment, she gasped, color draining from her face, "There's only one bed."

He lifted a golden eyebrow at her. "You should've thought about that."

*****

"What are you doing?" Nathaniel asked as Seraphine darted around the room, opening doors to each closet, slamming them when the closet turned out to be empty.

"Seraphine?" he asked again.

She would not survive the nights in the same room, let alone the same bed, with this man. She didn't want to freeze to death from sleeping next to the ice king, although his lips had felt warm—too warm—when he kissed her out of necessity.

Prying open another closet door, she stared into the empty abyss. How could they not have more pillows? And, of course, when she spun around, she found Nathaniel leaning against the only two pillows in the room, typing on his laptop, as though he'd spent a hundred nights sharing a bedroom with her.

"It's not the end of the world," he said from behind the screen, barely lifting his eyes from his email.

Her eyes widened at his words. "It's easy for you to say when you are the solution."

He turned towards her, closing his laptop. "I'm the what?"

"The solution."

"To the end of the world?" He frowned, confused.

She rolled her eyes upwards to look at the ceiling. Mistake. The ceiling was ripe with carnal pleasures and giant owls, a cheap rip-off of The Garden of Earthly Delights. Her gaze flickered back to Nathaniel and collided with his; she could not sleep with this much contempt.

"You know, to global warming?" she prompted, and when he did not respond, she waved her hand, showing her palm, "Because you're the ice king."

She saw the dimples before a satanic, lopsided smile appeared. "Because I'm cold and heartless."

She nodded.

Then he pressed his thin lips into a firm line before he said, "I guess that means it's warmer to sleep in one of the showrooms than in the same bed with me."

"Exactly," she said, head bobbing up and down with approval.

Nathaniel's gaze didn't falter on hers; the end of his eyebrow twitched when she blinked blankly at him.

Wait a second.

She swallowed as he challenged her with those icy cold blue eyes. She tightened her jaw. She could freeze here or freeze somewhere else.

And so, on a deep breath, Seraphine put on her jacket, picked up her backpack and stalked out of the room. With absolutely no idea where to go next.

But anywhere would be better than with Nathaniel. Well. She needed to avoid the doll room. If she could remember which door it was.

The only light source in the hallway was the dying yellow glow struggling to fill the entire space from their—his room through the gaping door, a gradated yellow trapezoid tapering into the darkness.

She reached into her backpack pocket for the flashlight on her phone. Clicking on the button of the cold device, she fell into despair when she remembered she'd forgot to turn off the WiFi hotspot earlier in the car; she'd switched it on, connected it to her laptop, but Nathaniel distracted her from actually working. And the phone battery was now completely drained. At the same time, the sound of keycaps clicking disappeared from the room, cutting her off from all the familiarity of modern technology. She was truly alone.

Zipping her jacket up to the bottom of her chin, she pulled up her hood and ventured into the dark until her vision adjusted to the new environment.

A raw tingle gathered at the base of her spine and spread itself into the fibers of her muscles. The eyes on the walls tracked her every movement, relishing in her pounding heart, as if they stared hard enough, the lords and the ladies could swap her soul with their caged ones. Seraphine let out a small squeal.

Her legs shuffled more quickly as she tried to escape the paintings and ended up at the end of the hallway, at the door of the bathroom.

Or as Seraphine put it now, her room.

She opened the door as the corners of her mouth turned up. A modest clawfoot tub occupied the center of the space, two wall lamps sitting quietly next to a mirror facing the toilet. It was not a big space, but it was warm enough to not wear a jacket inside. It was not a bright space, but Seraphine could see her fingers, and that was good enough.

Sitting on the rim of the tub, she turned on the faucet to test the hot water. The jets smoothed along the surface of the porcelain tub, splashing and trickling, as warm water sieved through her fingers. Seraphine's face split in half with a smile.

The zipper of her jacket parted with a swoosh. Letting the water fill the tub, she removed her sweater and the rest of her clothes in the meantime. Then she dipped one toe into the water before sinking in completely, submerged in the warmth.

The night was not too bad, after all. Her eyes fluttered shut as her mind drifted into a warm bliss, forgetting the events of today, forgetting the damp castle, forgetting Nathaniel: his cold, blue eyes and his warm hand when he held hers, and his lips on hers. Her breathing quickened.

Forgetting the footsteps in the hallway.

She opened her eyes. "Nathaniel?" she called out.

There was nothing. The footsteps had stopped at the sound of her voice.

"Nathaniel? Is that you?" she tried again, louder, sitting up in the bathtub.

The footsteps resumed, thudding and shuffling.

"This is not funny."

Her own voice bounced back into her from the stone walls. The water dripped steadily from her bathtub, hitting on the floor.

She stood up, looking around to find a towel to dry herself.

She'd seen the lamps and the mirror, the toilet and the bathtub, the sink and a hand towel—she made a mental note there—and toilet paper. She could always use her own clothes, as uncomfortable as it sounded.

Letting out a shiver, she doubled back to the hand towel. A thud. And two.

This was not the time to be picky. She snagged the hand towel from its rail and quickly ran it down her body.

Holding the hand towel close to her neck, she cracked the door to look into the hallway—a futile act as she couldn't see a thing—as the footsteps continued like a low steady drum. But at least the footsteps didn't get louder or closer with the opened door.

She looked down the hallway and focused on the single source of light. If she could hurry back to Nathaniel's room and ask him to fetch a towel, she could be drier and warmer. She just needed to make it back through the hallway under the watchful eyes of the lords and the ladies.