Melt Your Heart
Chapter 41: Immovable Objects, Unstoppable Forces

Abigail Pershing had never experienced a Christmas like this one; a house full of laughter, living room strewn with discarded wrapping paper, glitter, and cookie crumbs.

It was getting a little much for her though, having this many people in the house so often. When it was guests, it was different. She didn't feel the need to entertain them, and if guests did want to be entertained, Cassie was far more capable.

Although Abigail would really rather that people went back to their own homes so she could spend the rest of Christmas Day with Cassie, the twins, and hopefully Sam, there was still one extra person she wished was there.

Stephanie.

She still felt like a fool for inviting her. No, she felt like a fool for inviting her when Stephanie had a boyfriend - someone she'd definitely want to have all to herself considering it was their first Christmas as a couple.

She was still cursing generations of her Merriwick ancestors for not passing down the power to have some kind of precognition before she put her foot quite so firmly into her mouth. But apparently matters of the heart weren't something anyone had any control over.

Presents had been opened, lunch had been eaten, and now their guests were snoozing in front of the fire, but still no Stephanie.

Abigail had given her up as lost cause, and was pouring one more glass of mulled wine than was truly necessary, when she sensed rather than heard the front door creak open. Curiosity piqued, Abigail picked up her wine glass and sashayed through the house.

"Oh, so you aren't dead in a ditch?" she asked, the ice in her voicing matching the freezing wind that was blowing in through the open door. She didn't want to examine too closely where this sudden burst of frigid anger had come from.

"Abigail, please. Don't start."

Abigail was surprised again – because apparently that was the current theme – by the matching frost - and was that exasperation? - in the other woman's voice.

"Can I come in?" she asked, when Abigail became the immovable object to Stephanie's unstoppable force and simply surveyed her over the rim of her wine glass in a manner that would make a lesser woman shrivel in her designer suede boots.

"Well, you were invited," Abigail commented, standing aside to let Stephanie past and closing the front door against the artic temperature. "And you're alone," she added uselessly as Stephanie unzipped her boots.

"Correct on both counts," Stephanie replied, adding her coat to the collection in the hallway.

"I'm guessing you could use one of these," Abigail said, wafting the wine glass in Stephanie's vague direction, because she still wasn't putting her full faith in her intuition. This seemed to be the right call, as Stephanie swiped the glass straight from Abigail's hand and took a long swallow.

"Right again," she confirmed, and Abigail smiled for the first time since the other woman had arrived at the front door.

Abigail took the glass back, and led the way through to the kitchen. She had a feeling - correct again, so maybe her gifts weren't completely on the fritz - that Stephanie wasn't quite ready for the onslaught of the rest of the guests, welcoming though they would be, especially because she had arrived alone.

Silently, she prepared a glass of wine for Stephanie but chose not to refill her own drink, she wanted to be clear-headed for the inevitable following conversation. Or if she needed to drive to Blairsville and put a hex on someone.

Either way, setting her wine aside for a glass of water seemed the sensible option; it seemed like something that Cassie would do.

Although it was killing her, Abigail stood still and silent, waiting while Stephanie continued to sip gratefully at the warm, spiced wine. She was quite proud of herself that she hadn't ripped the glass from the blonde's hands and smashed it against the tile before Stephanie finally spoke.

"Did you know that Simon is already married?"

Abigail did a double take. Okay, seriously, what was going on with her powers? Had they abandoned her, or did she just not want to acknowledge what they were telling her, so she suppressed and ignored them?

Another thought, for another time.

"I, what…how could I know that?" she asked, not impressed with herself for the way she spluttered out the words.

"I don't know, Abigail. It's just that you always seem to know everything - sometimes even before it happens," Stephanie said with a shrug, closer to the truth than she could possibly know. Although, if you wanted to split hairs, that was more Cassie's department.

"And if I knew something like that, you think I wouldn't tell you?" She was incredulous.

"It was a rhetorical question," Stephanie replied, and she was relieved to find that the other woman appeared as clueless as she'd been until several hours ago.

"I'm sorry," Abigail said, and she found that she meant it. She couldn't care less that Stephanie had ended a relationship with yet another mediocre man who wasn't even halfway good enough for her, but she always hated to see how hurt and disappointed her friend was in the aftermath.

"I'm not," Stephanie said, turning away briefly to refill her wine. "It's better to find out now than before I did something stupid like fall in love with him."

"On Christmas Day, though," Abigail muttered, wondering it if would be more effective to start pulling out Simon's toenails or fingernails first. "That's really shitty, Steph."

"Correct again," she said.

Abigail nodded slowly, pleased that Stephanie seemed pissed off but not upset as such. The tears might come later, that was probably a given, but for now her friend seemed to be okay.

"If you, uh, ever want to talk about…" Abigail tried, but Stephanie cut her off with a laugh.

"I appreciate it, I really do. But it's not necessary." She picked up her glass and headed toward the living room, throwing a backward glance over her shoulder. "I think I'm done with men now anyway."

Abigail stood in the kitchen a while longer, thinking that more wine might be required after all, because, really, what exactly did that mean?


Mid-afternoon, just as the sky was beginning to darken, Cassie caught Sam trying to escape from Grey House.

"Not so fast," she said, surprising him as he fiddled with the doorknob, wondering why it wouldn't yield to his touch and if swearing at it would help or make the situation worse.

"Ah, Cassie, I was just…" he stuttered, about as capable of coming up with a convincing lie as he was escaping the house.

"Sneaking out?" she guessed, putting her hands on her hips and trying to look displeased with him even as she threatened to smirk.

"I thought you'd want some time, just you and your family," he said. "I don't want to intrude."

"You're absolutely not intruding," she told him, taking another couple of steps across the kitchen tile. "If you want to go home, I understand. But we'd like you to stay."

It was true that they hadn't spent much time together, what with the craziness of Christmas Day and catering for a full house of Middleton residents.

"Well, if you're sure…"

"I'm sure."

Sam shucked off his jacket again, suddenly aware that he and Cassie were very much alone, the rest of the party happening behind the closed living room door. He tried to make a point of not being alone with her for too long; the last time it had happened they'd gotten far too close.

"Am I allowed to tell you how beautiful you look today?" he asked, throwing caution to the wind but also reassuring himself that he might have said the same thing to Abigail, or Stephanie, except he wouldn't be thinking about peeling them out of their Christmas cocktail dresses.

Cassie flushed, suddenly caught off guard. Her senses were getting stronger, but Sam had a way of clouding them.

"Thank you," she said softly, her hands subconsciously caressing the velvety red material at her hips.

They stood like that for a beat too long, Sam forcing himself to hold eye contact with her because he didn't trust his gaze not to lower just where her tastefully displayed cleavage would tantalise him.

God, he wanted her.

But if he was ever going to have her, it wasn't going to be hard and fast in the Grey House kitchen on Christmas Day when there were at least twenty people who could stumble across them.

Well, it might be.

It just wouldn't be the first time.

For her part, Cassie was still thinking about her revelation of earlier that morning. Initially she had been shocked by the strength and certainty of her feelings. Especially coming on the heels of her dream about Jake, which now she could see, in the cold light of a December afternoon, was a goodbye of sorts.

All the reasons for not being with Sam remained, though. In fact, his bombshell about quitting the hospital to open his own private practice had only proved Cassie's reservations correct: there was simply no way the two of them could put the time and effort needed into negotiating a relationship when they were also juggling two children and two budding businesses. And there was Joanne to consider as well. She might be spending Christmas with Sam's parents, but with her wanderlust it was unlikely she'd want to stay there long, and her condition wasn't ever going to improve drastically.

But none of that meant she didn't want to find the nearest sprig of mistletoe and kiss him underneath it until neither of them could breathe.

"We should probably get back to the party," Sam said, noting the darkening gleam in Cassie's already dark eyes. He'd seen it before, of course, on the night when she'd let him – encouraged him – unbutton her blouse and tease the swells of her breasts with his lips and his tongue.

He'd kept himself awake many a night imagining exactly what might or could have happened if Abigail hadn't chosen that moment to call about James' sickness.

"We probably should," she agreed, but she didn't move, wanting to drag out this moment of privacy with him for just a little longer before she had to go back to being mom and host.

She took a breath and stepped closer to him, taking his hand and leading him back through the kitchen and into the hallway. The flash of green and white caught her eye, and she only had to time to think her cousin's name, before Sam spotted it too.

He looked at her, his eyebrows raised in a silent question.

"I think it's bad luck, if we don't," Cassie said, her heart rate at least triple its usual count.

She was finally going to get to kiss him again.

In slow motion, she felt Sam's hands shape her waist, not putting any pressure but holding her steady, as if only by touching her he could prove this was real. Her own hands were resting on his chest, braced there in case it was too much and she needed to push him away.

She smiled when she saw his face inch towards hers, then closed her eyes as she felt his breath across her parted lips. Her body was on fire from the inside out, arousal blazing through her system. She could almost feel the softness of his lips against hers when she heard a crash, followed by the living room door being pulled open and a long, mournful cry of "Mommmmmyyyy.".

She kept her eyes closed for another moment, gently pushing Sam away from her. His eyes showed understanding even as they registered disappointment, and lust, as he let her go.

As he stood alone in the hallway, trying to catch his breath and put the lid back on his own arousal, Sam realised sadly that Cassie was right.

There really was just too much going on in both of their lives for this to work.