Christmas Angel for the Billionaire

CHAPTER NINE

ANNIE, desperate to find some way to make George see beyond the defence mechanism that his daughter was using to save herself from the risk of hurt, was so deep in thought as she pushed open the kitchen door with her shoulder that the spicy scent of the Christmas cake baking took her unawares.

A punch to the heart.

Like the fresh, zingy scent of the trees, it evoked only painful memories and the armful of tinsel she was carrying slithered to the floor as she came to a dead stop.

‘What’s wrong?’ George asked, following her in.

She tried to speak, couldn’t. Instead, she shook her head and, giving herself time to recover, she bent to scoop up the glittering strands, only to find herself face to face with George as he joined her down at floor level.

‘What is it?’ he asked quietly as he took the pot plant from her.

‘Nothing. It’s nothing.’ Dredging up a smile-a lady never showed her feelings-she wound a thick gold strand of tinsel around his neck. ‘Just blinded by all this glitter,’ she said, clutching it to her as she made a move to stand.

He caught her by the wrist, keeping her where she was.

‘G-George…’ she begged, her voice hoarse with the effort of keeping up the smile.

‘You will tell me,’ he warned her, his own smile just as broad, just as false as her own as he took a purple strand of tinsel and slowly wrapped it, once, twice around her throat before, his hand still tightly around her wrist, he drew her to her feet.

‘Oh, well, there’s a picture,’ Hetty said, laughing as she caught sight of them. ‘Did you buy up their entire stock, Xan?’

‘You can never have too much tinsel,’ she said as she trailed in with the rest of it.

‘Is that right?’ She took her coat from the hook and said, ‘I’ll be off now, if you don’t mind, Annie. The cake should be done by one-thirty. I’ve set the timer. Just stick a skewer in the centre and if it comes out clean you can take it out.’ She put on her gloves, found her car keys and picked up a bag laden with treats for the invalid. ‘I’ve made vegetable soup for lunch. Just help yourself.’

‘Can I do something about dinner?’ Annie asked.

George, giving her a look that suggested she was kidding herself, said, ‘Why don’t I get a takeaway?’

‘Oh, great!’ Xandra said, sorting through the tinsel and finding a heavy strand in shocking pink and throwing it around herself like a boa. ‘Can we have Chinese? Please, please, please…’

‘Annie?’ he asked, turning to her.

‘I couldn’t think of anything I’d like more,’ she said and got a quizzical look for her pains. She ignored it. ‘I hope Mr Saxon will be feeling better today, Hetty.’

‘Can I come with you?’ Xandra asked. ‘I could decorate his bed. Cheer him up.’

‘I don’t think they’ll let you do that. Decorations would get in the way if…’ Her voice faltered momentarily before she forced a smile. ‘And what about this tree you’ve bought? You can’t leave your father to put it up by himself.’

‘Trees. We bought two, but they’ll wait until the morning.’

‘Will they? But if you come with me you’ll be stuck in the hospital all day. And, besides, Granddad will want to know why you’re home. I don’t think it’ll do his heart any good if he finds out you’ve been suspended from school, young lady.’

‘He wouldn’t care. He thinks Dower House is a total waste of money.’

‘Your grandfather always did believe that education is for wimps,’ George said. Then, clearly wishing he’d kept his mouth shut, he said, ‘Go with your grandmother-’

‘George-’

‘I’ll pick her up when I’ve finished the Bentley,’ he said, glancing at his watch. ‘Three o’clock? Be waiting outside. I’m not coming in to fetch you.’

‘Congratulations, George,’ Annie said when they’d gone. ‘You came within a cat’s whisker of behaving like a father for a moment, but you managed to rescue the situation before you could be mistaken for anyone who gives a damn.’

Furious with him for missing such a chance, she crossed to the stove, took the lid off the soup and banged it on the side.

‘Pass me a bowl if you want some of this,’ she said, sticking out a hand.

He put a bowl in it without a word and she filled the ladle with the thick soup, only to find her hand was shaking so much that she couldn’t hold it. She dropped it back in the saucepan and George grabbed the bowl before she dropped that too.

‘Damn you,’ she said, hanging onto the rail that ran along the front of the oven. ‘Would it have hurt you so much to spend a few minutes with your father? Have you any idea how lucky you are to have him? Have a mother who cares enough to make your favourite food?’

She turned to face him. He was still wearing the tinsel and he should have looked ridiculous. The truth was that he could have been wearing a pair of glass tree baubles dangling from his ears and Xandra’s Santa hat and he’d still melt her bones.

That didn’t lessen her anger.

‘What did he do to you?’ she asked. ‘Why do you hate him so much?’

‘It’s what he didn’t do that’s the problem, but this isn’t about me, is it?’

He reached out, touched her cheek, then held up his fingers so that she could see that they were wet.

‘Why are you crying, Annie?’

‘For the waste. The stupid waste…’ Then, dragging in a deep, shuddering breath, she shook her head and rubbed her palms over her face to dry tears she hadn’t been conscious of shedding. ‘I’m sorry. You’re right. I’ve no right to shout at you. I know nothing about what happened between you and your father. It’s just this time of year. It’s just…’

She stalled, unable to even say the word.

‘It’s just Christmas,’ he said. ‘I saw the way you reacted when you walked into the kitchen. As if you’d been struck. Spice, nuts, fruit, brandy. It’s the quintessential smell of the season. And scent evokes memory as nothing else can.’

She opened her mouth, closed it. Swallowed.

‘You think you’re alone in hating it?’

She shook her head. Took a long, shuddering breath. Then, realising what he’d said, she looked up. ‘Xandra said you hate Christmas. Said she knew why.’

‘I came home for Christmas at the end of my first term at university to be met with the news that Penny was pregnant. My father was delighted, in case you’re wondering. He thought I’d have to give up all thought of university and join him in the business. He was going to build us a house in the paddock, give me a partnership-’

‘And you turned him down.’

‘Penny thought, once we were actually married-and believe me, there’s nothing like a shotgun wedding to add a little cheer for Christmas-that she could persuade me to change my mind.’ He managed a wry smile. ‘I’ve never eaten Christmas cake since.’

She stared at him, then realised that he was joking. Making light of a desperate memory. She wondered just how much pressure-emotional and financial-he’d endured.

‘You didn’t have to marry her. People don’t these days.’

‘It was my responsibility. My baby.’

She reached out to him. Touched his big, capable hand. Afraid for him.

If Xandra had inherited just one tenth of his stubborn determination, she feared they were heading for the kind of confrontation that could shatter any hope of reconciliation.

‘What happened to you, Annie?’ he asked. ‘What are you really running away from?’

‘Apart from Christmas?’

‘There’s no escape from that,’ he said, ‘unless, like Lady Rose Napier, you can borrow a palace from a friend.’

How ironic was that? She’d sent Lydia to a Christmas free zone, while she’d found herself in tinsel land.

‘How is it on a Californian beach?’ she asked in an attempt to head off the big question.

‘Sunny, but it’s not the weather, or the decorations or the carols. The trouble with Christmas is that, no matter how high the presents are piled, it shines a light into the empty spaces. Highlights what’s missing from your life.’ He curved his palm around her cheek. ‘What’s missing from yours, Annie?’

His touch was warm, his gentle voice coaxing and somehow the words were out before she could stop them.

‘My parents. They were killed a week before the holiday. They were away and I was fizzing with excitement, waiting for them to come home so that we could decorate the tree, but they never came.’

There was an infinitesimal pause as he absorbed this information. ‘Was it a road accident?’

They had been on a road. Four innocent people who, in the true spirit of Christmas, had been taking aid to a group of desperate people. Food, medicine, clothes, toys even. She’d sent her favourite doll for them to give to some poor homeless, starving child.

She wanted to tell him all that, but she couldn’t because then he’d know who she was and she’d have to leave. And she didn’t want to leave.

‘They were passengers,’ she said. ‘Two other people with them died, too.’ She never forgot them or their families, who went through this same annual nightmare as she did. ‘They were buried on the day before Christmas Eve and then everything went on as if nothing had changed. The tree lights were turned on, there were candles in the church on Christmas morning, presents after tea. It was what they would have expected, I was told. Anything else would be letting them down.’

And then there had been the Boxing Day shoot.

She looked up at George. ‘Every year it’s as if I’m six years old,’ she said, trying to make him understand. ‘The tree, church, unwrapping presents. Going through the motions, smiling because it’s expected and every year that makes me a little bit more-’ she clenched her fists, trying to catch the word, but it spilled over, unstoppable ‘-angry.’

She didn’t know where that had come from, but it was as if at that moment a dam had burst and all the pent-up emotion of the last twenty years burst out.

‘I hate it,’ she said, banging on his chest with her bunched fists. ‘Hate the carols…’ Bang…‘Hate the lights…’ Bang…‘The falseness…’ He caught her wrists.

‘Is that what you’re really running away from, Annie?’ he asked, holding her off.

‘Yes.’ She pulled back, shaking her head as she crumpled against the stove and slid to the floor. ‘No…’

George didn’t try to coax her up, but kept hold of her hands, going down with her, encouraging her to lean against him so that her cheek was against the hard fabric of his overalls.

‘No,’ he agreed.

He smelled of engine oil, spruce, some warmer scent that was George himself that mingled to make something new, something that held no bad memories for her, and she let her head fall against his chest.

‘You can run away from Christmas, Annie, but you can’t escape what it is you hate about it. The bad memories.’

‘I thought if I could just get away for a while, see things from a different perspective,’ she said after a while, ‘I might find a way to deal with it. But you’re right. It’s nothing to do with the season. It simply shines a light on everything that’s wrong in our lives.’

George held her, her hair against his cheek, thinking about an unhappy little girl who had spent year after year being brave for the adults who clearly hadn’t a clue how to cope with her grief. And he wondered whether his daughter’s desperate need to decorate every surface for the holiday exposed the emptiness at the heart of her life too.

‘We are what circumstances make us,’ he said, leaning back. ‘My father used to make me work in the garage. Every day, after school, he set me a task that I had to finish before I was allowed to go and get on with my homework.’

He knew she’d turned to look up at him, but he kept staring ahead, remembering how it had been.

Remembering the weeks, months, years when anger had kept him going.

‘I learned fast.’ He’d had to if he was to defeat his father. ‘He set me ever more complex, time-consuming tasks, reasoning that if I failed at school I would have no choice but to stay here, so that he could be George Saxon and not just the “and Son”.’

By the time he’d been old enough to work that out, pity him, the battle lines were drawn and there was no going back.

‘If I inherited one thing from my old man it was obstinacy. I got up early, worked late. Learned to manage on the minimum of sleep. And when I left for university I was the best mechanic in the garage, including my father. He never forgave me for that.’

Finally he looked down at her, not quite believing that he was sharing his most painful memories with a woman he’d picked up on the side of the road the evening before.

Could scarcely believe that sitting here, on the floor of his mother’s kitchen with his arm around her, was the nearest he’d come to peace for as long as he could remember.

‘And you still found time for girls?’

‘That last summer, before I went up to university, I found time for a lot of things that I’d missed out on.’ Life at home might have been unbearable, but there had been compensations. ‘The minute I turned eighteen, I got a job at a garage that paid me what I was actually worth.’

‘Your poor mother. It must have been as restful as living with two big cats walking stiff-legged around one another, hackles raised.’

He smiled. ‘Don’t tell me, you were the fly on the wall?’

‘I’ve spent a lot of my life watching people. I can read body language as well as I read English.’

He must have shown a flicker of dismay because she laughed. ‘Most body language. There are gaps in my knowledge.’

‘What kind of gaps?’

She shook her head. ‘Tell me what you did. After you’d turned your back on the “and Son”. What paid for the California beach house? The fees for Dower House?’

‘I knew two things-software engineering and cars-so I put them together and developed a software application for the motor industry. My father disapproves of computers on principle. Driving, for him, is a question of man and machine-nothing in between. So he never forgave me for that, either.’

‘Maybe you have to forgive yourself first,’ she said.

Forgive himself?

For a moment his brain floundered with the concept, but only for a moment. Annie was looking up at him, smiling a little as if she knew something he didn’t. The tears she’d shed had added a sparkle to her eyes and as her lips parted to reveal a glimpse of perfect teeth he forgot what she’d said, knew only that he wanted to kiss her, was trembling with the need to kiss her in a way he hadn’t since he was eighteen years old and Penny Lomax had made a man of him.

‘Who are you?’ he demanded, but as she opened her mouth to answer him he covered it with his hand.

‘No. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.’

He didn’t want her to tell him anything that would stop him from kissing her, from doing what he’d wanted to do ever since she’d stumbled into him and her scent had taken up residence in his head.

Fluent in body language, she knew exactly what he was thinking and didn’t wait, but reached up and pulled him down to her, coming up to meet him with a raw to-hell-and-back kiss that said only one thing.

I want you. I need you.

Her other hand, clutching at his shoulder, her nails digging through the heavy material of his overalls, proclaimed the urgency of that need.

The heat of it shuddered through him, igniting a flame that would have taken an ice-cold shower to cool. Sitting by a solid-fuel stove, they didn’t stand a chance, even if he’d wanted one, he thought, tugging her shirt free of her jeans and reaching inside it to unhook the fastening of her bra. He half expected a bundle of twenty-pound notes to cascade out of it but, as he slid his hand inside it, it was filled with nothing more than a small, firm breast.

She moaned into his mouth, tearing at the studs on his overalls, her touch electric as she pushed up the T-shirt he was wearing beneath it before drawing back a little to look up at him, her eyes shining like hot sapphires, silently asking permission to touch him.

He shrugged his arms out of his overalls, pulled off the T-shirt he was wearing beneath it and fell back against the thick rag rug that had lain in that spot for as long as he could remember.

‘Help yourself,’ he said, grinning as he offered himself up to her.

Her fingers stopped a tantalising hair’s breadth from his skin.

‘What can I do?’

Do?

‘Anything…’ he began, then caught his breath as her fingertips made contact with his chest. ‘Anything that feels good,’ he managed, through a throat apparently stuffed with cobwebs. ‘Good for you,’ he added and he nearly lost it as they trailed down his chest, her long nails grazing the hollow of his stomach.

For a moment, as she straightened, he thought she’d changed her mind, but she caught the hem of her sweater and pulled it, shirt and bra over her head and discarded them impatiently. Her long body was taut, strong, her breasts were high, firm, beautiful and her eyes widened in shock and a shiver ran through her body as he touched a nipple.

‘You like that?’ he asked.

She made an unintelligible sound that was pure delight and, seizing her around the waist, he lifted her so that she straddled his body, wanting her to know that he liked it too. To feel his heat, know what she was doing to him. Had been doing to him since the moment she’d pitched into his arms.

For a moment she didn’t move, then, with the tiniest of sighs, she bent to lay her lips against his stomach and this time the moan came from him.

‘You like that?’ she asked mischievously, looking up with the smile of a child who’d just been given the freedom of a sweet shop. Then he was the one catching his breath as she leaned forward to touch her lips to his, her breasts brushing his chest. He wanted to crush her to him, overwhelm her, cut short the teasing foreplay, but some things were too good to rush and this was going to be very good indeed.

As she took her lips on a slow trail of moist kisses over his chin, down his throat, he held her in the very lightest of touches, his hands doing no more than rest against her ribcage, giving her control, all the time, all the freedom she wanted to explore his body, knowing that his time would come.

Little feathers of silky hair brushed against his skin, a subtle counterpoint to her tongue probing the hollows beneath his shoulders, to the satiny feel of her skin as his hands slid lower over her back, exploring the curve of her waist, learning the shape of her body.

Annie was drowning in pure sensation. The gentle touch of George’s hands as he caressed her back, her waist, slipping beneath the loose waist of her jeans to cup her bottom in his hands, holding her close so that she could feel the power of his need as she kissed and licked and nibbled at his chest, the hollow of his stomach. Came against the barrier of clothes.

Her lips were hot, swollen against his skin and every cell in her body was thrumming with power. For the first time in her life she felt totally alive, warm, vital. This ache in her womb, this need was the essence of life, of being a woman and she wanted him. Wanted all of him.

‘Touch me,’ she whispered as she pulled at the next stud.

Begging or commanding?

It didn’t matter. He’d told her she could do anything that felt good. And this felt…

He released the button at the waist of her jeans, pushed jeans, underwear over her hips.

There were no words to describe what this felt like. All she could manage was his name.

‘George…’

And then her body shattered.

George caught her, held her as she collapsed against him, kissing her shoulder, nuzzling his chin against her hair as she recovered, trying not to think about the look in her eyes, an appeal for something unknown, in that moment before she’d dissolved into his arms.

Because he knew where he’d see it before.

He murmured her name and when she looked up, her eyes filled with tears, he knew it was true. She was the ‘people’s virgin’.

‘Will I get sent to the Tower for that?’ he asked.

‘Not by me,’ she assured him, laughing shakily.

Damn it, she was crying with gratitude.

She sniffed. Brushed the tears from her cheeks with the palm of her hand, lifted damp lashes and finally realised that he wasn’t laughing with her.

‘What?’ she asked. ‘What did I do?’

He didn’t answer and he saw the exact moment when she realised that she answered not to the lie she’d told him when she’d sworn that Annie was her real name, but to Lady Rose.

‘Roseanne,’ she said. ‘My name is Roseanne. I was named for my grandmother but my mother thought I was entitled to a name of my own so she called me Annie.’

Did she think that was all that mattered? That she hadn’t actually lied about that.

Then, when he didn’t answer, ‘Does it matter?’

He picked up the clothes she’d discarded and thrust them at her.

‘George?’

For a long moment she didn’t take them but continued to look at him, those dangerous eyes pleading with him.

All his senses were vibrating with the feel of her, her touch, the musky scent of her most intimate being. They were urging him to say that it didn’t matter a damn before reaching out to take what she was offering him. Pretend that nothing mattered but this moment.

The shattering sound of the timer announcing that the cake was done saved them both.

‘Clearly it does,’ she said, snatching her clothes from his hand, standing up, turning her back on him as she pulled them on.

‘You used me,’ he said to her back. ‘You’re on a quest to lose your virginity before you settle for the guy with the castle.’

‘If that’s what you think then there’s nothing more to say. Pass me the oven gloves,’ she said, sticking out a hand as she opened the oven door.

He got up, passed her the thickly padded gloves, then pulled the overalls back on, fastening the studs with shaking fingers while, still with her back to him, she tested the cake.

‘Is it done?’

‘As if you care,’ she replied, still not looking at him but turning the cake out over the rack his mother had left out. When the cake didn’t fall out she gave it a shake, catching her breath as the hot tin touched the pale skin of her inner arm.

‘You have to leave it to cool for a few minutes,’ he said, taking her hand, turning it to look at the red mark.

‘I get cookery lessons too?’

‘Simple physics,’ he said, not bothering to ask her if it hurt, just grabbing her hand and taking her to the sink, where he turned on the cold tap, holding the burn beneath the running water.

It was icy-cold and he knew that would hurt as much as the burn but she clamped her jaws together. Schooled from the age of six not to show pain, she’d saved her tears for him.

It had taken the new, shocking pleasure of a man’s intimate touch to break down that reserve, reduce her to weeping for herself.

‘Who is she?’ he asked, not wanting to think about how that made him feel. Feeling would destroy him. ‘The girl in the photograph.’

‘Lydia,’ she said.

‘The friend who lent you her car? But she-’

‘Looks just like me? Type “Lady Rose” and “lookalike” into your search engine and you can book her next time you want “Lady Rose Napier” to grace your party.’

‘Why would I want a copy…?’

He managed to stop himself but she finished for him. ‘Why would you want a copy when you rejected the real thing?’

She was shaking, he realised. Or maybe it was him.

‘She’s a professional lookalike?’

‘Since she was fifteen years old. Her mother made her a copy of the outfit I was wearing on my sixteenth birthday and someone took a picture and sent it to the local newspaper. It’s not a full-time job for her, of course, but the manager of the supermarket where she works is very good about juggling her shifts.’

‘You paid a girl who works in a supermarket to take your place?’

‘No. She wouldn’t take any money. We met by chance one day and there was a connection.’

‘I’ll bet there was. Do you really trust her not to sell her story to the tabloids the minute she gets home?’

She looked up at him. ‘Do you know something, George? I don’t really care. I wanted to escape and she was willing to take my place so that I could disappear without raising a hue and cry. Once I go back I don’t care who knows.’

‘But how on earth will she carry it off? It’s one thing turning up at a party where everyone knows you’re not the real thing, but something like this…’ Words failed him.

‘There’s no one at Bab el Sama who knows me. I insisted on going there on my own.’

‘But if you wanted a break, surely-’

‘I wanted a break from being me, George. From my grandfather’s unspoken expectations. I wanted to be ordinary. Just be…myself.’

‘How is that?’ he asked, gently dabbing her arm dry.

‘I can’t feel a thing.’

He nodded. ‘I’ve got a car to fix,’ he said, tossing the towel aside, wishing he could say the same.

He walked from the room while he still could.