“Front or back?” the handsome young man in front of Jenny asked.

A wink in his grey eyes indicated that he was talking about something other than the marzipan pig he was holding in his hand. He had been placed opposite of her at the table and now he took full advantage of her attention.

“Whatever,” Jenny replied. “Just give my portion to the kids.”

“They’ve had enough, but you certainly need a little sweetening, puss. You haven’t smiled at me once,” Patrick said with a wide smile.

As her brother’s best friend, he and his mother had been invited to spend Christmas with them, much to Jenny’s frustration.

His mother, Ruth, was a longtime friend of Jenny’s mother, Laila, and neither of the mothers seemed to understand why Jenny disliked Ruth’s precious son.

He was a good-looking man with a slender but muscular build. His dark hair and chiselled features had always made him popular among the opposite sex.

Through the years, Jenny had seen too many women throw themselves in his wake, only to be discarded when something new and shiny caught his attention.

At one time, she had been one of them, a fact that she tried very hard to repress and store in a folder of her most embarrassing moments. She knew she wasn’t bad looking with her thin but curvy figure and her long brown hair.

All the same, the worst about Patrick was his constant urge to tease her. Most likely he wanted her to blush like a young virgin before declaring her complete adoration to him.

Some men were just too full of themselves and she had no qualms about puncturing an ego or two.

“Would this do?” Jenny said as she gave him a forced smile.

“I’m still not convinced. You can do a lot better than that,” Patrick-the-annoying interrupted her thoughts.

“Oh, come on. Just give her half the pig and be done with it,” Ruth interrupted her son. “She won it after finding the other part of the almond in the porridge.”

Patrick handed her the backside.

“You look like a back girl,” he said and grinned at her.

She sneered at him and took a large bite of the pig. He watched her carefully while he made no attempt to eat his own piece. Licking her lips, she looked him straight in the eye and challenged him to irritate her further.

Instead, she was surprised to see that his eyes were focused on her mouth and his face held a strange expression.

“You’re right,” Jenny couldn’t help herself saying as he finally took a bite off his own piece. “I prefer the backside. It’s so much larger.”

He seemed to have swallowed wrong and he coughed violently.