He kisses me. His hand slides along my jaw and cups my face as he draws me to him and presses his lips to mine. It’s soft and gentle at first, just a chaste touch of lips on lips. I can feel the outline of his piercing against my skin and it makes me shiver in the most delicious way. I’ve been desperate to kiss him since the moment I caught sight of that silver ball glinting in his lip. My fingers come up and wind in his gorgeous hair and tug him closer and he takes the hint and kisses me harder, his thumb rubbing gently along my jaw, his stubble dragging against my chin. I let out a little moan of desire and he echoes it, and then he’s gone.

He scrambles back onto his knees and runs a hand over his face. ‘I’m so sorry. I think all those berries must’ve got to me. They probably release a mind-altering poison or something in such vast amounts. Hallucinogenic properties in those mistletoe berries, I’m telling you. It’s the only explanation. Or maybe this moss has got some dodgy mushrooms growing in it.’ He runs his fingers through the tufted greenery, looking for evidence.

He’s right, of course. Well, maybe not about the mushrooms, but kissing him is the last thing I intended to do. If mistletoe berries aren’t known for their psychedelic properties, then his aftershave might be.

He yanks the backpack over and starts clearing up the debris from our picnic, his fingers shaking so much that he keeps dropping things, his cheeks flaring so adorably red that I want to throw my arms around him, but I force myself to be sensible. I swore no men, only trees. Just because he’s got a tattoo of a tree, it doesn’t count.

‘Well, you’re supposed to kiss under a sprig of mistletoe, you certainly have to kiss when you find a whole tree of the stuff, don’t you?’ I say, desperate to ease the weird tension that’s shot through the clearing. It’s not like he did anything wrong because I wanted to kiss him too. But running a Christmas tree farm is complicated enough without adding Noel to the mix, and I can’t make another mistake like I did with Steve.

‘Aye. Wouldn’t want to anger any ancient druids.’

It makes me giggle and he looks up and meets my eyes with a grin that looks forced, but it does ease the atmosphere between us. It’s just because we were both a bit raw and exposed after talking so openly. It didn’t mean anything.

On the plus side, if there are any ancient druids looking down on us, we definitely made them blush.

Chapter 13