A Mistletoe Proposal

CHAPTER SEVEN

PIPPA had spoken the truth about the coming evening. A client was giving a lavish reception to celebrate acquiring sole rights to a piece of valuable computer software and had offered several invitations to Farley & Son, whose work had been crucial in securing the contract in a bidding war. A little group of them were going, including David and herself.

‘Dress up to the nines,’ he told her. ‘Knock their eyes out. It’s good for business.’

She laughed but did as he wished, donning a shimmering white dress that combined beauty with elegance. The reception was held at London’s most costly hotel. They arrived in a fleet of expensive cars and were shown upstairs to the Grand Salon where their hosts were waiting to greet them effusively.

One of the younger wives, friendly with Pippa and new to this kind of function, was in transports. ‘Everybody who’s anybody in finance is here tonight,’ she said. ‘You probably know most of them.’

Pippa did indeed recognise many faces and began working the room, champagne in hand, charm on display, as was expected of her. As her friend had said, the cream of London’s financial establishment was gathered there, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise when her eyes fell on Roscoe Havering. Yet it was.

‘Good evening, Miss Jenson.’

‘Good evening, Mr Havering.’

‘I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised to see you here,’ he said, unconsciously echoing her own thought. ‘It’s the sort of gathering in which you shine.’

‘Strictly business,’ she said. ‘I can help to attract new clients here, and that’s what David expects me to do, so, if you’ll excuse me, I must get to work.’

‘Wait.’ His hand on her arm detained her. ‘Are you angry with me?’

‘Certainly not.’

‘Then why are you so determined to get away from me?’

‘Because, as I’ve tried to explain, for me this is a business meeting.’

‘Tell me the real reason. That’s not just efficiency I see in your eyes. It’s coldness and hostility. How have I offended you now?’

‘You haven’t.’

‘Little liar. Tell me the truth.’

‘You haven’t offended me, but I can’t pretend that you’re my favourite person.’

‘Because of Charlie?’

‘No, because of…lots of things.’

‘Name one.’

‘Stop interrogating me. I’m not in the dock.’

‘No, your victim is usually in the dock with you pressing home the questions. So, you can dish it out but you can’t take it?’

‘How dare you!’

‘Name something I’ve done to offend you-a new offence, not one you’ve told me about before.’

She ground her teeth, wondering how she could ever have sympathised with him.

‘All right,’ she said at last. ‘Franton.’

‘Who?’

‘You’ve forgotten him already, haven’t you? That poor man who burst into your office this morning.’

‘That “poor man”-’

‘Yes, yes, I know. Insider trading is wrong, but he’s not the only one who’s sailed a bit close to the wind, is he? I know someone else whose activities threaten your firm’s good name, but he doesn’t get chucked out. He gets protected. You hire a lawyer to keep him on the straight and narrow.’

‘He’s my brother-’

‘And Franton is a man with a wife and children. Maybe he doesn’t deserve a position of trust any more, but you threw him onto the scrap heap without a second thought.’

Pippa waited for Roscoe to speak but he was staring as though he’d just seen her for the first time.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’m a soppy, sentimental woman who doesn’t understand harsh reality and sticks her nose into what doesn’t concern her. There, now, I’ve saved you the trouble of saying it.’

‘Soppy and sentimental is the last thing I’d ever call you,’ Roscoe said. He seemed to be talking in a daze.

‘Well, anyway…since you’re employing me I suppose I had no right to fly at you like that.’

His voice was unexpectedly gentle. ‘You can say anything you like to me.’

‘No, really-it’s none of my business.’ Suddenly she was desperate to get away from him.

‘I wish I could explain to you what the pressures are-I think I could make you understand, and I’d like to feel that you did.’

‘As you say, I don’t know what it’s like for you.’ She gave a brittle laugh. ‘I don’t suppose I could imagine it.’

‘Pippa-’

‘Don’t let me keep you. We both need to drum up new business.’

She gave him a brilliant smile and moved firmly away. She didn’t even look back, but plunged into networking-smiling, laughing, making appointments, promising phone calls. It was an efficient evening and by the end of it she’d made a number of good contacts.

At last she found herself on the edge of a little group surrounding the managing director of the firm celebrating its triumph. He was growing expansive, making jokes.

Roscoe, standing nearby, joined in the polite laughter, while his eyes drifted over the crowd until he saw the person he wanted and watched her unobtrusively.

‘It’s been a good celebration,’ the managing director said. ‘Of course, I really wanted to arrange this evening a couple of weeks later, so that we could make it a Christmas party as well, but everyone’s calendar was crowded already.’

‘Such a shame,’ said a woman close by. ‘I simply adore Christmas.’

There were polite murmurs of agreement from almost everyone.

But not from Pippa, Roscoe realised. Beneath the perfectly applied make-up, her face had grown suddenly pale, almost drawn. She closed her eyes, keeping them shut just a moment too long, as though retreating into herself.

David spoke in Roscoe’s memory. ‘The nearer to Christmas it gets, the more of a workaholic she becomes… It’s as if she’s trying to avoid Christmas altogether.’

He studied Pippa, willing her to open her eyes so that he might read something in them. At last she did so, but when she saw him she turned quickly, as though she resented his gaze.

As she moved away a strange feeling assailed him. She was young, beautiful, the most alluring, magnetic woman in the room. And she was mysteriously alone. No man claimed her, and she claimed none either. For a blinding moment the sense of her isolation was so strong that it was as though everyone else had vanished, leaving her the sole occupant of the vast, echoing room.

Or a vast, echoing world.

He told himself not to indulge fanciful thoughts. But they wouldn’t be banished. He started to go after her but somebody called him, forcing him to smile and go on ‘business alert’. When he managed to escape, Pippa had vanished.

Along the front of the hotel were some elaborate balconies, decorative stonework wreathed in evergreen. Pippa wandered out, thankful to escape the air inside, heavily perfumed with money, seduction and intrigue. But it was too chilly to stay out long and after a few minutes she turned back. Then she stopped at the sight of the man standing there.

‘Good evening,’ he said.

After a moment memory awoke. This was the ‘big noise’ in the financial world, with whom Roscoe would soon merge his firm, becoming, if possible, more powerful and autocratic than he already was.

‘Mr Vanlen. I think we met briefly in Mr Havering’s office.’

‘You could say we “met”. It was more you putting yourself on display. Mind you, there’s plenty to display, I’ll give you that. You knew you were driving me crazy, and you meant to do it. Fine, I fell for it. Let’s talk.’

‘No, I-’

‘Oh, spare me the modest denials. You came out here knowing I’d follow you.’

‘No, I didn’t know you were here.’

‘I’ve been watching you all evening. Don’t pretend you didn’t know. Here’s the deal. You and I, together, for as long as it suits me. And you’ll find me generous.’

‘You’re mistaken,’ she said coldly. ‘I am not interested in you in any way, shape or form. Is that clear?’

But, as his self-satisfied smirk revealed, he interpreted this in his own way.

‘Evidently I didn’t make myself clear,’ he said. ‘Does this say it plainly enough?’

Pulling out a flat black box, he opened it to reveal a diamond pendant of beauty and value.

‘And that’s just the start,’ he added.

She regarded him wearily. ‘I’m supposed to be impressed by this, aren’t I?’ she said. ‘But I’m not interested. Can’t you understand that?’

‘Come, come. You’re a woman of the world. You know the score. You’re used to rich, powerful men and you like them that way, don’t you?’

‘Only if they’re interesting. Not all rich men are interesting. Some of them are plain bores.’

‘Money is never boring,’ he riposted. ‘Nor is power. You see them?’ He flung a hand in the direction of the room behind them. ‘The richest, most powerful men in London, and there isn’t one of them I couldn’t crush. Ask Havering. His investigations about me have shown him a few things that surprised him.’

‘He’s had you investigated? You sound very cool about it.’

Vanlen shrugged. ‘It’s no more that I expect, ahead of our tie-up. I’ve done the same to him, and I found things that surprised me too. It’s par for the course.’

He was right, she realised. This level of sharp-eyed suspicion was normal in the world of high finance where Roscoe inhabited a peak. But it made her shiver.

‘I know a few things about you too,’ Vanlen went on. ‘You like to play the field. No permanent lover to make things awkward. Fine, then we understand each other.’

His hand slid around her shoulder, making her move away quickly.

‘The one thing you don’t seem to understand is the word no,’ she snapped. ‘I’ll say it as often as I have to.’

‘But you don’t mean it,’ he protested. ‘Come on, just one little kiss to seal our bargain.’

Before she could stop him, he’d pulled her close and brushed her lips with his own. Exerting all her strength, she wrenched free.

‘Try that again and I’ll slap you so hard you’ll bounce into next week,’ she said breathlessly.

What he might have done then she never found out, for a cough from the shadows made them both turn. Roscoe was standing there.

‘I came to fetch you, Vanlen,’ he said. ‘There’s a big deal going on and they want you to be part of it.’

‘On my way,’ the man replied and vanished without a backward glance at Pippa. The scene between them might never have happened.

‘Thank you,’ she said coolly. ‘He was becoming a bore.’

He made a wryly humorous face. ‘Don’t tell me I arrived in time to save a damsel in distress?’

‘Certainly not. Another moment and I’d have tossed him off the balcony, so you might say you spoilt my fun.’

‘My apologies.’

The feel of Vanlen’s mouth was still on hers, filling her with disgust and making her rub her mouth hard with tissues.

‘Yuck!’ she said.

‘It’s a pity he affects you like that. You could have been queen of London.’

‘Don’t you start. Did you hear what he said about you?’

‘Investigation? Sure. We each know enough to confront the other. Pippa, are you all right?’

She was still rubbing her mouth, and he caught himself up at once.

‘No, of course you’re not all right. Stupid of me. Don’t go at it so hard, you’ll hurt yourself.’

‘I can’t help it. He’s disgusting.’

‘Here, let me.’ Taking a clean handkerchief from his pocket, he began to rub gently.

‘It’s no use,’ she sighed. ‘I can still feel him. Perhaps another glass of champagne would wipe him away.’

‘I know something better,’ he said softly and laid his mouth against hers.

It was over in a second. His lips touched hers for a brief moment, just long enough to obliterate Vanlen, then they were gone.

Through the dim light, he saw the wild astonishment in her eyes and could just make out her lips shaping his name.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said stiffly. ‘I thought it might help.’

‘I-’

‘Come on.’ Taking her hand firmly, he led her back to where the crowd was beginning to disperse.

David was there, looking around, brightening when he saw her. ‘Ready to go?’ he asked cheerfully. ‘Yes…yes…’

‘I think she’s tired,’ Roscoe said. ‘The sooner she goes home, the better. Excuse me.’

He was gone.

In the car home Pippa pretended to be asleep so that she could avoid talking. But later, when she got into bed, she lay awake all night, staring into the darkness, trying to see what could not be seen and understand what could not be understood.

The following evening she went to have a family dinner at her beloved grandparents’ house on Crimea Street, and where she herself had lived for the last two years of their lives. These days Frank, his wife and children, lived there, with her other brother, Brian, just down the street. Now they returned her car with an air of triumph at having made it usable again.

Pippa hadn’t been back to the old home much recently, and for a while she could enjoy the company of her parents, nephews and nieces, most of whom lived no more than two streets away.

With so many children, it was inevitable that the Christmas decorations should go up early.

‘I keep telling them that it’s still too soon,’ Brian’s wife, Ruth, said in laughing despair. ‘But you might as well talk to the moon. As far as they’re concerned, it’s Christmas already. Hold that paper chain, would you?’

Pippa smiled mechanically. It was true, as David had suggested, that she had her own reasons for shying away from Christmas-for her, it had been a time of heartbreak. But this was no time to inflict her feelings on her family, so she spent a conventional evening climbing a stepladder and hanging up tinsel.

There was a moment of excitement when a box was brought down from the attic. Dust rose as it was unpacked, but the contents were disappointing.

‘A couple of tatty scarves,’ Ruth said disparagingly. ‘Gloves. Some old books. Let’s throw them out.’

‘No, give them to me,’ Pippa said quickly. She’d recognised the gloves as a pair Dee had worn, and it would be nice to keep them as a memento.

She wandered through the house, glancing into the bedroom where they had slept together until the end. Pippa’s mother Lilian crept in behind her and surveyed the double bed, which was still the same one where the old people had embraced each other as they’d drifted contentedly to the end of the road.

‘They were very happy together,’ she sighed. ‘And yet I can never see this room without feeling sad.’

‘I came in one morning to find that Gran had died in the night,’ Pippa remembered, ‘and Grandma was holding him. It wasn’t very long after they took that trip to Brighton, the honeymoon they never had.’

‘And they wouldn’t have had even that if you hadn’t taken them,’ Lilian recalled. ‘They told me it was the last thing that made everything perfect. Afterwards, they just slipped away.’

‘And that was what they both wanted,’ Pippa said. ‘Even missing them terribly, I couldn’t be unhappy for them. All they cared about was being together, and now they always will be.’

‘And one day that’s what you’ll have,’ Lilian said, regarding her tenderly. ‘Just be patient.’

‘Honestly, Mum, I don’t think like that any more. You start off telling yourself, “Never mind, there’s always next time”. But there isn’t really. There won’t be a next time for me, and it’s better if I face that now.’

‘Oh, darling, don’t say that,’ Lilian protested, almost tearful. ‘You can’t live your life without love.’

‘Why not? I have a great time, a successful job, a good social life-’

‘Oh, yes, every man falls at your feet in the first ten minutes,’ Lilian said with motherly disapproval.

‘Not quite every man,’ Pippa murmured.

‘Good. I’m glad some of them make you think.’

‘Mum, please stop. I did my thinking years ago when a certain person did his vanishing act. That’s it. The man who can change my mind hasn’t been born.’

‘You’re only talking like this because you’re always depressed at Christmas, but I just know that one day someone will make your heart beat faster.’

‘You mean like Dad does with you?’ Pippa asked mischievously.

‘I admit your father’s no romantic hero, but he’s a decent man with a sweet temper. If he’d only stop breeding ferrets I’d have no complaints.’

‘Is someone talking about me?’ came a voice from the stairs as Pippa’s plump, balding father appeared.

In the laughter that followed, the subject was allowed to die and she was able to escape.

They all think it’s so easy, she mused. Find a man who makes your heart beat faster and that’s it. But suppose you don’t like him because he’s hard and cynical, and he looks down on you even while he’s looking you over. Suppose he infuriates you because you can’t stop thinking about him when you don’t want to, so that you just get angrier and angrier. Suppose he’s the wrong man in every possible way but that doesn’t seem to help because when he looks at you it makes you think of things you’d rather not think of. And then he does something-the last thing you expected-and it makes you want…it makes you want…oh, to hell with it! And him!

Charlie called her the next day and they arranged to meet for dinner the following evening.

‘And don’t worry about Roscoe turning up because he’s gone to Los Angeles,’ Charlie added.

‘Los Angeles?’ she murmured, recalling the words she’d overheard in his office. ‘But he was so definite about not going, said it was a waste of time.’

‘I know, and then suddenly he changed his mind, which is something he never does.’

‘Everybody does sometimes,’ she said mechanically, trying to ignore certain thoughts that clamoured for entrance to her mind.

They were astounding thoughts. They said he’d gone away to escape her after their two encounters, so confusingly different. He seemed to fight with her and kiss her, just as easily.

No, she corrected herself quickly. It hadn’t been a kiss, just a kindly gesture; almost medical in intent. But it had misfired. Meaning only to obliterate the memory of Vanlen’s lips, he’d replaced it with his own. Which surely hadn’t been his intention.

She remembered how quickly he’d backed off, clearly shocked. By himself, or by her? What had he read in her eyes that had sent him flying to the far side of the world?

The memories and questions raged inside her, warning her that the time was coming when she would have to face the truth. And the truth scared her.

At her insistence, Charlie took her to a sedate, conventional restaurant, where he was on his best behaviour. And, without Roscoe there, Pippa could raise the suspicion that had been nagging at her since the office meeting.

‘Now tell me the truth,’ she said. ‘You never did go into that shop, but Ginevra did, probably dressed in jeans with her hair covered. In the near darkness she looked like a man, so when she escaped and the owner caught up with you-well, it was her, wasn’t it?’

Charlie set his chin stubbornly. ‘You’re just imagining things.’

‘You gave the game away when Roscoe said people thought all lads were the same and you had that coughing fit. I suddenly saw what had happened. You were mistaken for her, and she just ran off and left you to suffer.’

‘Look-we were good together once and I can’t just drop her in it.’

Nothing would budge him from this position. Pippa seethed with frustration and ended the evening early.

Before going to bed, she sent an email to Roscoe. For some reason it wouldn’t come right and she had to reword it three times, eventually settling on:

Mr Havering,

I’ve just had a worrying talk with your brother. He didn’t break into the shop. It was Ginevra and three others. Mr Fletcher caught them but they ran off and by the time he caught up she’d vanished, and he assumed Charlie was the fourth.

Charlie’s having an attack of daft chivalry. I’ve tried to make him see sense, but he’s deaf to reason.

I’m afraid the ‘charms’ for which you hired me are drawing a blank, and it seemed only right to inform you of my failure.

I await your further instructions.

Yours sincerely,

Philippa Jenson

She read it through repeatedly, finally losing patience with herself for shilly-shallying and hitting the ‘send’ button violently. Then she threw herself into bed and pulled the covers over her head.

Next morning, she checked for a reply. But there was nothing.

Too soon. Think of the time difference. He must be asleep.

At work she accessed her home computer every hour, sure that this time there would be a response. Nothing.

Her email would have gone to his London office, she reasoned, and perhaps he wouldn’t see it until he returned. No way! An efficient man like Roscoe would link up from Los Angeles. He was ignoring her.

Her disappointment was severe-and irrational, she knew. This didn’t fit with her mental picture of him as a better man inside than he was on the outside. She felt personally let down.

She worked late that night, finally reaching home with relief.

Then she stopped, astounded, at the incredible sight that met her eyes. Roscoe was in the hall, seated on an ornate wooden bench. His head leaned back against the wall, his eyes were closed and his breathing suggested that he was asleep. He looked almost at the point of collapse.