Christmas Wishes, Mistletoe Kisses

CHAPTER EIGHT

WHAT she really needed, Louise thought, was to stop looking at Ben as if he were a Christmas present she wanted to unwrap. It was easier said than done.

The different-sized baubles on the Christmas tree twinkled, reflecting the light from the candles placed all around the room. This wasn’t her festive daydream, starring Ben, but it was close. There was the tree, the fire, the sense that someone had thought about her for a change…

Actually, reality was better. The meal, the wine, the companionship had been a much sweeter present than the anonymous gift in the silver box in her fantasies. But, whatever was missing, whatever had changed from her daydreams, one thing remained the same. Ben. It all revolved around him.

The other thing she needed to do was to stop babbling on about losing herself. But the babbling was helping keep a whole other set of urges at bay, so it would do nicely for now. She folded her hands in her lap and smiled at him. ‘So…that’s what I am. A WAG. A woman who defined herself by her husband and is now adrift with no direction in her life, no purpose.’

Ben began to disagree, but she was on a roll, so she just kept going. ‘I’ve got plenty of money, so I don’t need to work, but I do need to do more than just look after Jack and-’ she waved a hand to indicate the freshly refurbished room ‘-decorate. But, apart from knowing how to pout for the camera, I have no qualifications. I didn’t even finish school.’

There. That would scare him off. He’d have to believe she was a bimbo now. Only, when she dared to look at him, he didn’t seem convinced. She would just have to try harder.

‘Oh, I tried all sorts of jobs while I was married to Toby. He was always encouraging me to do some of the things his friends’ wives were up to. I did the whole charity circuit, then I tried a bit of television presenting on a fashion show-and was supremely bad at it.’ She let out an empty little laugh and Ben fidgeted on the other end of the day bed. ‘They never asked me back. I even designed my own range of sunglasses.’

She looked at Ben and waited for a reaction. He shrugged, as if to say, So what?

Yeah, so what? That was what the buying public had thought too. It had been an utter flop.

She took a breath, searching for another stupid exploit to fill the silence with. Nothing came. What a waste. She was thirty-one years old and this was the sum total of what she’d achieved in her life. It was pathetic.

‘Why didn’t you finish school?’

She looked at Ben, expecting to see that same superior look that many people gave her when they found out that little bit of information. Everyone knew that models were thick, and wasn’t she a glowing representative of the stereotype?

‘Louise? What happened?’

He genuinely wanted to know. She frowned and looked away. He might just be the first person to ask why.

‘Dad’s illness got worse when I was about fifteen. Some days he needed me at home. Of course, there were home helps and health visitors, but the area where we lived was poor and the local services were overstretched. On his bad days, it wouldn’t have done any good to go to school, because I wouldn’t have been able to concentrate anyway.’

Ben reached over and simply took her hand. That one gesture was enough to roughen her voice and moisten her eyes again. She ought to stop, but she couldn’t. She’d needed to say all of this for such a long time.

‘In my last year of school, when I should have been taking my GCSEs, he deteriorated even further. I’d missed so much by then that I didn’t even want to go in. And some of the girls were horrible…you know how girls can be. But Dad was in so much pain, he became angry and difficult sometimes and took his frustration out on me-not physically-just verbally. But I understood, really I did.’

Ben’s thumb gently stroked the back of her hand and she felt something hard inside herself crumple. More tears flowed and she pulled her hand away to mop them up with a tissue. Things were getting far too maudlin. It was time to brighten the story up.

‘Anyway, Cinderella got her happy ending,’ she said brightly. ‘Just before my seventeenth birthday I was spotted by a scout from a modelling agency and the rest, as they say, is history.’

He held a box of tissues out to her and she took another one. ‘What happened to the rest of your family?’

The noise she made using the tissue was truly disgusting. ‘Well, my wages helped buy a new house, pay for university fees and things like that. Sarah, the next eldest after me, is a lawyer now and she emigrated to Australia five years ago. The rest have all gone out to visit her this year, but I didn’t want to be away from Jack for that long. Billy and Charlotte still live in London-he manages a restaurant, she’s a hairdresser. And Charlie, the youngest, is just finishing university. He wants to be an actor.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘There’s no telling some people.’

Somehow, her hand was back in Ben’s and he was stroking it again.

‘What about your dad?’

Drat! Why did this man have to be so good at reading between the lines?

‘He died less than a year after I started modelling.’ She looked into Ben’s eyes, desperate in this moment for someone else to understand what she’d done. ‘I let him down,’ she whispered. ‘I should have been there.’

And then she started crying, really crying. None of that sniffing nonsense she’d been doing up until now. Big, fat tears rolled down her cheeks. She tried to talk, but her vocal cords had gone on strike.

Gently, slowly, so she wasn’t even sure how they’d got there, a pair of strong arms wrapped around her. Time seemed to slow as she sobbed against his chest, but it could only have been a few minutes.

‘I’ve kind of blown your plan for a Merry Christmas right out of the water, haven’t I?’ she said, thinking she should pull away but doing nothing about it. ‘But thank you for trying. I’m not sure there was ever much hope for a woman who doesn’t know who to be any more.’

Ben shifted beneath her. His hands came up to cradle her face and he made her look at him.

No one had ever looked at her that way before, as if she were delicate, precious. Her heart, which had been shrivelled like one of the dates her Auntie June used to serve up on Boxing Day, swelled.

His voice was low and scratchy. ‘Louise, you are…I…’

For a man who always knew what to say, he was a little short on words at the moment. That couldn’t be a good thing. Ben’s features clouded and she could tell he was struggling.

Say something, she shouted in her head. Tell me! Tell me who you think I am! I need to know!

He was no longer looking at her, but was staring at a piece of blank wall behind her, his mind whirring and, when he looked back at her, her heart stood still for a beat. In his eyes was a renewed sense of purpose and she knew he had something to say. She waited. And Ben just looked at her as if there weren’t adequate words to communicate what he was thinking. Oh, how she wished he would try.

His gaze dropped to her lips and she felt them part slightly and her breath catch.

He was going to kiss her. The world started to somersault.

Slowly, he bent his head to meet hers, giving her ample time to move away if she wanted to. But, despite all her ground rules about keeping things ‘safe’, about keeping things locked away in her daydreams, Louise found she didn’t want to move. She wanted him to come towards her. She wanted to taste him, an experience her daydreams had never been able to provide.

The touch of his mouth on hers was exquisitely tender, soft as a whisper. She closed her eyes and gave up all hope of keeping fantasy and reality separate.

Oh, this was better than she’d ever imagined. As Ben kissed her again, still with the same soul-wrenching gentleness, the nerve-endings in her lips burst into life. He moved his hands from her face, ran them through her hair and pulled her closer to him as he fell back against the pile of cushions.

Louise followed him gladly, relishing the fact that she was in total control. Now, instead of being kissed, she kissed. Ben liked it-she could tell from the low sound he made in the back of his throat.

They kissed each other sweetly, slowly, as if time had stopped for them and all that existed was this moment. After a while, the intensity of their kisses deepened. His lips sought her neck, her jaw line, her earlobe, and Louise began to tingle all over.

She wanted to lose herself in this feeling. Of being desired. Of being feminine. And of being powerful. It was as if she’d entered a realm where she was who she’d always wanted to be, and she wasn’t prepared to relinquish that feeling easily.

Rolling over, she pulled him on top of her, giving her hands access to the strong, broad muscles of his back. Ben responded by running a hand down the side of her torso, skimming the curve of her waist. The air between them crackled and popped like the logs on the fire.

Hadn’t she said something tonight along the lines of not knowing what she wanted? Well, she had no problem pinpointing that now-it was all blazingly clear. She wanted Ben. All of him. Right here. Right now.

Taking a deep breath, she wiggled her hands between their bodies and fiddled with the top button of his shirt. A shiver of nerves ran through her.

There had been nobody else but Toby-and he’d grazed in other pastures. What if she wasn’t any good? What if she disappointed him? What if this all didn’t live up to the fairy tale in her head? For years, Toby had looked at her with a familiar apathy, and she couldn’t bear the thought of seeing the same deadness in Ben’s eyes in the morning. She was just going to have to pull out all the stops.

Ben, who had been trailing kisses from her collarbone to just below her ear, went still. Her heart began to pound. Ben looked as if he wanted to stop and say something but just couldn’t control himself. He kissed her again-hot and sweet and deep enough to make her toes burn.

She trembled as she tried to find a second button on his shirt, her fingers clumsy in the haze of her desire. Ben dragged his lips from hers and his hand closed over her fingers, which were still fiddling fruitlessly with the button.

‘We don’t need to rush into this,’ he whispered.

She knew what he was trying to do. He was trying to be the perfect gentleman, to give her an out. Her gaze locked with his. ‘Perhaps we do.’

Once again, he held her face in his hands and, this time, he delivered the sweetest kiss yet. She wiggled her fingers under his and succeeded in popping the button out of its hole. He gripped her hands more tightly.

‘Really, Louise. You don’t need someone taking advantage of you when you’re feeling vulnerable. Maybe this isn’t the right time to make this kind of decision.’

He traced the line of her jaw with his thumb and, although his eyes dropped to look at her mouth once again, he didn’t kiss her.

‘Why can’t I decide what I need?’ Even in her own ears her voice didn’t sound one hundred per cent convincing. But she didn’t want to give up yet. Moments like this were like Christmas itself-fleeting, magical. The day after tomorrow the glitter and the wonder would be gone and life would return to being grey and cold and ever so slightly emptier than before.

A slow, gentle smile crept across Ben’s face and she couldn’t help but smile back as his eyes glittered with fierce intensity.

‘Trust me,’ he said. ‘We don’t need to rush. I’m not going anywhere.’

Louise let out a shaky breath. It was very hard to believe that any of this could survive the night and live beyond the dawn. Her eyes must have betrayed her, because he lowered his head and kissed her again.

Carefully, he shifted until he was lying behind her and she was spooned up against him, her head resting on his arm. He pulled the quilt over the pair of them and they lay in the silence, staring into the fire and drawing strength and warmth from where their bodies made contact.

Louise’s eyelids flickered. Her head was filled with crackling fires, spiced wine and silver boxes wrapped with ribbons. She yawned and stretched one arm. That was the best night’s sleep she’d had since…

She wasn’t alone.

Foggily, she tried to decipher what her senses were telling her. There was a warm body wrapped around her, breathing rhythmically…a strange bed…and a Christmas tree in her room?

The Christmas tree!

Her eyelids pinged the rest of the way open and, suddenly, she was very much awake. That warm body tangled with hers belonged to Ben Oliver. She didn’t dare move, just in case it was all just another delicious dream.

Slowly, she made herself relax back against him. He mumbled something in his sleep-nonsense-and hugged her tighter. She smiled.

This was what contentment felt like. She’d forgotten its taste, its flavour.

Her eyes scanned the room once again, this time taking in the details. The fire was out, as were quite a few of the candles, but even with the flickering yellow glow from the few that were left, there was an odd silvery-blue light bathing the room.

Mind you, she’d never been in the boathouse this early in the morning before and she had no idea what time it was. Perhaps this was the colour of dawn down here so close to the river.

No, that wasn’t it. Gut instinct told her to go and look out of the window. She dropped one leg over the edge of the day bed and started to move, but Ben grumbled again and pulled her back, nuzzling into the side of her neck.

Half-asleep, he was adorable, but whether he’d feel the same way when he was fully conscious was another matter. She’d humiliated herself last night and the atmosphere between them was bound to be awkward. Things often looked different in the cold light of day. And, thinking about cold light, her curiosity got the better of her and she wriggled out of his arms, wrapping the patchwork quilt around her and leaving him covered with the goose down duvet.

As she stood, and could see out of the window, she gasped. Even a tug at the trailing quilt couldn’t stop her running to the door, flinging it wide and walking out on to the balcony.

Snow.

Fresh and white and everywhere. It weighed down the bare branches of the young trees and topped the large stones on the beach so they looked like giant cupcakes. It seemed as if the whole world was buried under a blanket of purity, the past forgotten, everything new.

She twirled around in amazement, taking it all in, then reached for the layer of snow, only an inch deep, that topped the balcony railing. The icy crystals crunched under the weight of her fingertips.

A floorboard creaked behind her and once again she was wrapped up in Ben Oliver. He’d brought the duvet with him and he folded it over them both. She held her breath. She’d thought that maybe he’d been giving her the brush-off last night, but the way he was holding her now, as if he wanted to seal their bodies together, laid those fears to rest. He rested his chin on her shoulder so his head was right next to hers and kissed her cheek near her ear.

‘Merry Christmas, Louise.’

She twisted her head to look at him, her eyebrows raised. She’d been so caught up in the magic of last night, the beauty of this morning, that she’d completely forgotten that it was Christmas Day.

‘Merry Christmas,’ she whispered back, suddenly feeling very shy. But, as she went to shake her fringe in front of her eyes, he stopped her with a gentle hand.

‘Don’t do that,’ he said, moving so they were now facing each other.

She wasn’t foolish enough to say, Do what? After glancing away for a second, she tilted her chin up and met his gaze.

‘That’s better.’

He smiled and, just like that, any residual awkwardness she’d been feeling evaporated. There was such warmth and light in his eyes, so many possibilities, that she felt an answering smile spread over her own face. So they stood there like that for goodness knew how long, grinning stupidly at each other, saying nothing and everything.

Then his eyes sobered and began to communicate all sorts of other things. Louise didn’t wait for him this time. There wasn’t much of a difference in their heights, and she reached up behind his neck and pulled him closer, lifting her heels off the floor just slightly.

Kissing Ben Oliver on a snow-dusted balcony on Christmas morning had to be one of the most romantic things she’d ever done. Not only were the kisses perfect, but the crisp cold air on her cheeks and the chill in her toes only seemed to increase the heat spreading from her core. She felt as if she was glowing from the inside out, so much so that shivers rippled through her.

Ben pulled away, just enough to focus on each other without going cross-eyed, and tucked the quilt tighter around her.

‘How do you feel about cold curry for breakfast?’

She grinned. ‘My absolute favourite.’

And, as he playfully pulled her back inside the boathouse, she took one last look at the picture-perfect scene outside. The river reflected the colour of the iron sky perfectly and smoke puffed from the chimneys in the village across the river. As far as the eye could see, the rolling hills were bleached and frosted like the icing on a giant Christmas cake.

It didn’t matter to Louise if winter had stolen all the shades and tones and left everything monochrome. To her, this morning, life was very much in Technicolor.

Ben ran up to his bedroom, slammed the door open and stripped all his clothes off in under a minute. The last sock still hadn’t hit the floor when he’d run into his bathroom and jumped in the shower.

He felt like a man possessed. Like a man with too much adrenaline coursing through his system, who was about to spontaneously combust. Realising he had just started to wash himself with conditioner, he forced himself to stand still and take a few deep breaths.

No good. He still felt like whooping aloud, or running down the street and knocking on every door just to tell them he’d kissed the most astounding, marvellous, complicated woman in the world and, once he was clean and changed, he was going to go back and do it again.

He yelled as shampoo got in his eye.

Slow down!

This time he was more successful. He managed to rest one hand against the tiled shower wall and watch the rise and fall of his chest slow a little. Relax. You can do it.

He finished his shower in a speed that could be classified more as ‘brisk efficiency’ than ‘mania’, cleaned his teeth and wandered back into the bedroom, whistling, a towel slung round his hips.

What time was it? He checked the digital alarm clock on his bedside table. Ten.

That meant he’d been gone about forty-five minutes. And it would probably be another hour until he saw her again.

Without really paying attention to what he was rummaging for in his chest of drawers, he pulled out clean clothes and got dressed. One last look in the mirror. He ran his hand through his wet hair, then stilled. Was this what Louise saw? A thirty-six-year old with dark hair and brown eyes? That description could probably fit hundreds of thousands of men up and down the country. Apart from the insane grin he just couldn’t wipe away completely, he was just an ordinary guy.

Okay, he wasn’t desperately bad-looking, but he’d be kidding himself if he thought he could compete with the men in Louise’s world. A world in which he clearly didn’t belong.

But Louise isn’t with one of them, a little voice whispered gleefully in his ear. She’s with you. She kissed you. Heck, she even wanted to make love with you.

At that point he told his male pride to get a grip.

Even so, the unquenchable grin widened.

He grabbed his watch, fastened it on his wrist and jumped down the stairs only two at a time. But when he got downstairs he couldn’t find his keys. He never lost his keys. He searched the pockets of his jacket, which he found on the floor rather than on its usual hook. Nothing. Rather than dropping it again, he pulled it on.

A panicky feeling started to breathe fire in his stomach. He had to get back! He’d be late!

For what? the sane side of himself said. There’s no timetable. So what if you arrive there at five past eleven rather than on the dot?

Okay, now he was scaring himself. He sat down on one of the chairs in the kitchen and thought about where he could have possibly left his keys since he’d run through the front door. Best thing was to retrace his steps. He went to the cottage door, opened it and found his bunch of keys dangling in the lock.

What was happening to him? The sky was under his feet and the earth above his head. When exactly had the universe turned itself inside out so everything was back to front? An image popped into his mind: Louise, wrapped in a quilt, standing on the boathouse balcony, tipping her head up to meet his eyes and daring him to love her.

It was a challenge he hadn’t refused, he realised.

He loved Louise.

Now he wasn’t so sure he wanted to wake all his neighbours up and share the news. Was he crazy? Quite possibly. How could whatever was happening between them have a future? His head told him to back out now; his heart told him not to lose faith.

With one startling flash he understood that the tables had been turned. He’d set out to be what Louise needed and, in the end, he’d discovered he needed her so badly it hurt. Fear sliced through him at the thought that there might not be a happy ending to this story.

He pulled his keys out of the lock and returned them to his pocket, then closed the door. He’d loved Megan, he was sure of that, but she’d never shaken his foundations like Louise did. What did that mean? Was this romance doomed or did that promise great things?

He ought to stay away, he decided. He ought to make an excuse to back out and stay away. That was the sensible thing to do. He nodded to himself, took off his jacket and carefully placed it on its hook.

Five minutes later he was in his dinghy, motoring across the river in the direction of the boathouse jetty.

Christmas was its own little universe for Louise and Ben. They shared a festive dinner of lasagne, which Louise found in the freezer, then retreated to the boathouse for the evening, where they talked and laughed and kissed and wished-not out loud, of course. Some things were far too delicate to be spoken aloud.

But this little universe was finite and, as night fell on Boxing Day, ugly reality started to shred the perfect picture they’d created.

Louise was sitting in one of the wicker chairs close to the fire with a book in her lap and Ben was stretched out on the day bed, trying not to doze. Suddenly, he raised his head and looked at her.

‘Louise?’

Her heart did a silly leap. Shouldn’t she be able to control that by now? It had started on Christmas morning when he’d reappeared, slightly damp and smiling, at her back door with a Christmas pudding big enough for ten and a bottle of port. Now, that was the way to spend Christmas. Especially if it involved being spoonfed the pudding in front of the fire.

She couldn’t remember a Christmas as perfect. Not even Jack’s first Christmas. Toby had spoiled it by getting drunk and disappearing off to a nightclub with one of his useless so-called friends.

‘What’s up?’ she said carefully.

Ben shifted himself on to one elbow. ‘What are we doing?’

‘Well, I’m supposed to be reading that biography about Laura I borrowed from you and you’re trying to pretend you didn’t finish off the last quarter of that plum pudding.’

Ben didn’t laugh as she expected him to. He gave a half smile, then jumped off the day bed and drew the other chair over so he could sit opposite her. He took her hands in his. ‘No, I mean you and me. What is this?’

She folded the book closed and placed it on the coffee table. Laura’s carefree smile and laughing eyes in the cover picture mocked her. She bet Laura wouldn’t have got all tied up in knots about something like this. Laura would probably have said something droll and had her lover swooning at her feet in this kind of situation. But Ben wasn’t her lover, and it seemed that she was the one in most danger of swooning at present. This was all so new-this thing with Ben-that sometimes it felt raw, even though it was wonderful at the same time.

‘Ben Oliver, are you asking me if I want to be your girlfriend?’

There. That was as droll as she could manage. But she didn’t manage to pull off the knowing sophistication that was supposed to go with it when he leaned in close, gave her a soppy grin and said, ‘Yeah, I suppose I am.’

She grabbed him by the shirt collar and pulled him in close for a long, slow kiss.

He rested his forehead against hers. ‘It’s just that…’

What? Her heart began to thump. It was too perfect. Something had to go wrong, didn’t it?

‘Jas is home tomorrow and…’

She nodded. This had been a time out of time. Tomorrow they had to go back to their real lives, which seemed to be on parallel tracks, running close, but maybe never destined to cross and merge again.

‘I understand, Ben.’

He pulled away and looked intently at her face. ‘No…No, Louise. I meant…what are we going to say to the kids? Are we going to keep this a secret or are we going to shout it from the rooftops? It’s a delicate situation and we need to decide how to handle it.’

Relief flooded through her. Followed hastily by confusion. What were they going to tell the children? Jack was the worst blabbermouth known to man. She frowned. ‘Do we want to tell anyone?’

And, more to the point, what would they say if they did? Everything was so new between them. How should they define it? Of course, there would be far-reaching consequences as well.

‘You do realise that we might get media attention if we go public?’ she said.

Ben’s face was a picture of surprise, as if he’d totally forgotten about that side of her life. That only made her want to kiss him again. Everybody else always saw the glitter first and nothing second.

For the first time in days, she felt as if she were on familiar territory. ‘Believe me, you don’t want photographers camped on your doorstep. Why do you think I chose to live in such a remote place as Whitehaven? In the village, you and Jas would be easy pickings.’

‘Jas?’ There was more than a hint of panic in his voice. ‘You think they’d take pictures of Jas?’

Just great. This relationship was dead in the water before it had even begun, wasn’t it? She knew Ben well enough to know that creating a ‘normal’ life for his daughter was paramount.

She stroked his arm. ‘Who knows? The paparazzi are a law unto themselves. But I think we have to consider the possibility.’

They both stared at one another.

There were no easy answers to this one. The only way to really protect Ben and Jasmine was to call the whole thing off right now. She broke eye contact and stared at her feet. Just the thought of saying goodbye to Ben now made her hurt-physically hurt. Cold fear shot through her. Contemplating the possibility of losing him brought things sharply into focus: somewhere along the line, she’d fallen in love with Ben Oliver.

He gently brushed his fingers under her chin and tipped her face up to look at him. ‘Hey.’ The word was filled with such tender softness, she felt her eyes moisten. He smiled at her. ‘I told you before-I’m not going anywhere, okay?’

She nodded and the cold, sharp feeling gradually withdrew.

‘Here is my idea,’ he said. ‘We tell Jas and Jack-because they’re going to work it out pretty soon anyway-but we don’t tell anyone else yet. It will buy us some time, give us and the kids a chance to get used to things first.’

Sensible. He wanted to wait before letting the world know, just in case it didn’t work out.

‘I’ve got to wait at home for Megan to bring Jas back tomorrow, but I still want to see you.’

Good. She wanted to see him too. And she was greedily going to grab every chance to be with him.

‘Jas is due back at noon and it’s going to be quiet tomorrow-everyone recovering after Christmas. If you come for one o’clock and drive round, using the lanes rather than coming through the village, nobody will see you. Once you’re there, we’ll put your car in the garage.’

She smiled at him. Maybe this could be fun. Maybe she’d get to live her dream life for just a little bit longer before it all came crashing down around their ears.