Christmas Wishes, Mistletoe Kisses

CHAPTER ONE

MOST women would have given at least one kidney to be in Louise’s shoes-both literally and figuratively. The shoes in question were hot off the Paris catwalk, impossibly high heels held to her foot by delicately interwoven silver straps. The main attraction, however, was the man sitting across the dinner table from her. The very same hunk of gorgeousness who had topped a magazine poll of ‘Hollywood’s Hottest’ only last Thursday.

Louise stared at her cutlery, intent on tracing a figure of eight pattern on her dessert spoon and eavesdropped on conversations in the busy restaurant. Other people’s conversations. Other people’s lives.

Her dinner companion shifted in his seat and the heel of his boot made jarring contact with the little toe of her right foot. She jerked away and leaned over to rub it.

‘Thanks a bunch, Toby!’ she said, glaring at him from half under the table.

Toby stopped grinning at a pair of bleached blonde socialites who were in the process of wafting past their table and turned to face her, eyebrows raised. ‘What?’

‘Never mind,’ she muttered and sat up straight again, carefully crossing her ankles and tucking them under her chair. Her little toe was still warm and pulsing.

The waiter appeared with their exquisite-looking entrées and Toby’s eyebrows relaxed back into their normal ‘sexily brooding’ position as he started tearing into his guinea-fowl. Louise’s knife and fork stayed on the tablecloth.

He hadn’t even bothered with his normal comments about the carbs on her plate. She was supposed to be getting rid of that baby weight, remember? Never mind that Jack had just turned eight. His father was still living in a dream world if he thought she was going to be able to squeeze back into those size zero designer frocks hanging in the back of her wardrobe.

But then Toby had emotionally checked out of their marriage some time ago. She kept up the pretence for Jack’s sake, posed and smiled for the press and celebrity magazines and fiercely denied any rumours of a rift. He hadn’t ever said he’d stopped loving her, but it was evident in the things he didn’t do, the things he didn’t say. And then there was the latest rumour…

She picked up her cutlery and attacked her pasta.

‘Slow down, Lulu! No one’s timing you,’ Toby said, eyes still on his plate.

Lulu. When they’d first met, she’d thought it had been cute that he’d picked up on, and used, her baby brother’s attempts at her name. Lulu was exotic, exciting…and a heck of a lot more interesting than plain old Louise. She’d liked being Lulu back then.

Now she just wanted him to see Louise again. She stopped eating and looked at him, waiting for him to raise his head, give her a smile, his trademark cheeky wink-anything.

He waved for the waiter and asked for another bottle of wine. Then she saw him glance across and nod at the two blondes, now seated a few tables away, but not once in the next ten minutes did he look at her. Her seat might as well have been empty.

‘Toby?’

‘What?’ Finally he glanced in her direction. But once, where she had been able to see her dreams coming to life, there was only a vacancy.

He rubbed his front tooth with his forefinger and it made a horrible squeaking noise. ‘Do I have spinach on my teeth, or something?’

She shook her head. What spinach would dare sully the picture of masculine perfection sitting opposite her? The thought was almost sacrilegious. She was tempted to laugh.

The words wouldn’t come. How did you ask what she wanted to ask? And how did you stand the answer?

She tried to say it with her eyes instead. When she’d been modelling, photographers had always raved about the ‘intensity’ in her eyes. She tried to show it all-the emptiness inside her, the magnetic force that kept the pair of them revolving around each other, the small spark of hope that hadn’t quite been extinguished yet. If he’d just do it once…really connect with her…

‘Jeez, Lulu. Cheer up, will-’

A chime from the phone in his pocket interrupted him. He slid it out and held it shielded in his hand and slightly under the table. The only change in his features was a slight curve of his bottom lip. Now he looked at her properly. He searched her face for a reaction, and then returned the mobile to his jacket pocket and returned his gaze to his plate.

She waited.

He shrugged. ‘Work stuff. You know…’

Unfortunately she had the feeling that she did know. And she kept knowing all the way through dinner as she shoved one forkful after another into her mouth, tasting nothing.

The rumour was true.

All afternoon, since she’d spoken to her friend on the phone, she’d hoped it was all silly speculation, someone putting two and two together and coming up with five. Six years ago, when the tabloids had been jumping with the stories of Toby’s ‘secret love trysts’ with his leading lady, she’d refused to believe it, had given interview after interview denying there had been any truth in it. During the second ‘incident’ she’d done the same but, while her outward performance had been just as impassioned, inside she’d been counting all the things that hadn’t added up: the hushed phone calls, the extra meetings with his agent. Never enough to pin him down, but just enough to make her die a little more each time she shook her head for the reporters and dismissed it as nonsense.

She blocked out the busy restaurant with her eyelids. No way could she go through that again. And no way could she put Jack through it. He’d been too young to understand before, but he was reading so well now. What if he saw something on the front of a newspaper? She squeezed her jaw together. What kind of message was she giving to her son by lying to the world and letting Toby use her as a doormat? What kind of man would he become if this was his example?

‘Oh, my God! It’s Tobias Thornton! Can I have your autograph?’

Louise’s eyes snapped open and she stared at two women hovering-no, make that drooling-next to Toby’s chair. Toby smiled and did the gracious but smouldering thing his fans loved him for as he put his ostentatious squiggle on the woman’s napkin. Louise just tapped her foot.

Only when they’d finished gushing and jiggling on the spot did they glance at her. And a split second scowl was obviously all she was worth. They didn’t even bother keeping their voices down as they walked away. Huddled over her new treasure, she clearly heard one say, ‘He is so hot!’

Toby opened his mouth to speak but, once again, his phone got the first word in. He glanced at the display, stifled a smile, then gestured to Louise that he was going to have to take this one. ‘My agent,’ he mouthed as he walked off to stand near the bar.

My foot, thought Louise, as the waiter cleared her half-eaten pasta.

She watched him out of the corner of her eye as he talked. Her husband smiled and laughed and absent-mindedly preened himself in the mirror behind the bar. His agent was male, over fifty and as wide as he was tall. No, Louise could do the maths. And the number she kept coming up with was four.

Even as something withered inside her, she sat up straighter in her chair. She demanded eye contact from Toby as he finished his call and sauntered back towards her. Now she got her smile-warm, bright, his eyes telling her she was the most wonderful thing in the world.

As he sat down at the table, he reached for her hand and brushed her knuckle with the tip of his thumb. Louise leaned forward and smiled back at him, turning on the wattage as only a former model knew how to do. And when Toby leaned in, clearly hoping he was going to be able to have his cake and eat it too this evening, she let the grin slide from her face and spoke in a low, scratchy whisper.

‘Toby…’ She paused, mentally adding all the names she wasn’t about to call him out loud. ‘I want a divorce.’

A hefty gust of wind blew up the river and ruffled the tips of the waves. The small dinghy rocked as Ben tied it to an ancient blackened mooring ring on a stone jetty. He stared at the knot and did an extra half-hitch, just to be sure, then climbed out, walked up along the jetty and headed up a narrow, stony path that traversed the steep and wooded hill.

He whistled as he walked, stopping every now and then just to smell the clean, slightly salty air and listen to the nagging seagulls that swooped over the river. At first glance it seemed as if he was walking through traditional English countryside, but every now and then he would pass a reminder that this wasn’t a wilderness, but a once-loved, slightly exotic garden. Bamboo hid among the oaks and palms stood shoulder to shoulder with willows and birches.

After only ten minutes the woods thinned and faded away until he was standing in a grassy clearing that was dominated by a majestic, if slightly crumbling, white Georgian mansion.

Each time he saw this beautiful building now, he felt a little sadder. Even if he hadn’t known its history, hadn’t known that the last owner had been dead for more than two years, he would have been able to tell that Whitehaven was empty. There was something eerily vacant about those tall windows that stared, un-blinking, out over the treetops to the river below and the rolling countryside of the far bank.

He ambled up to the front porch and tugged at a trail of ivy that had wound itself up the base of one of the thick white pillars. It had been nearly a month since his last visit and the grounds were so huge there was no way he could single-handedly keep the advancing weeds at bay. Too many vines and brambles were sneaking up to the house, reclaiming the land as their own.

Laura would have hated to see her beloved garden’s gradual surrender. He could imagine her reaction if she could have seen it now-the sharp shake of her snowy-white head, the determined glint in those cloudy eyes. Laura would have flexed her knobbly knuckles and reached for the secateurs in a shot. Not that her arthritic hands could have done much good.

At ninety-two, she’d been a feisty old bird, one worthy of such a demanding and magical place as Whitehaven. Perhaps that was why he came up here on the Sundays when it was his ex-wife’s turn to have Jasmine for the weekend. Perhaps that was why he tended to the lilies and carnivorous plants in the greenhouses and mowed the top and bottom lawns. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and shook his head as he crunched across the gravel driveway and made his way round the house and past the old stable block. He was keeping it all in trust on Laura’s behalf until the new owner came. Then he’d be able to spend his Sunday afternoons dozing in front of the rugby on TV and trying not to notice how still the house was without his whirlwind of a daughter.

He ducked through an arch and entered the walled garden. The whole grassy area was enclosed by a moss-covered red brick wall, and sloping greenhouses filled one side. It was the time of year that the insect-eating plants liked to hibernate and he needed to check on them, make sure the temperature in the old glass-houses was warm enough.

And so he pottered away for a good ten minutes, checking pots and inspecting leaves, until he heard a crash behind him. Instantly, he swung round, knocking a couple of tall pitcher plants off the bench.

The first thing he saw was the eyes-large, dark and stormy.

‘Get out! Get off my property at once!’

She was standing, hands on hips and her legs apart, but he noticed that she kept her distance and worried the ends of her coat sleeves with her fingers. His hands shot up in surrender and he backed away slightly, just to show he wasn’t a threat.

‘Sorry! I didn’t realise…I didn’t know anybody had-’

‘You’re trespassing!’

He nodded. Technically, he was. Only up until a few seconds ago he hadn’t known anybody cared-save a dead film star who’d loved this place as unconditionally as the children she’d never had.

‘I made a promise to the previous owner, when she was ill, that I would look after the garden until the house was sold.’

She just stared at him. Now his heart rate was starting to return to normal, he had time to look a little more closely at her. She was dressed entirely in black: black boots, black trousers and a long black coat. She even had long, almost-black hair. And, beneath her heavy fringe, her face held a stark and defiant beauty.

‘Well, the house has been sold. To me. So you can clear off now,’ she said.

He pressed his lips together. There wasn’t much he could say to that. But the thought of leaving Whitehaven and never coming back shadowed him like a black rain cloud. This new woman-striking as she was-didn’t look like the sort to potter around a greenhouse or dead-head flower borders.

He picked up his coat from where it lay on the bench and turned to go. ‘Sorry to disturb you. I won’t come again.’

‘Wait!’

He had almost reached the door at the end of the long, narrow greenhouse before she called out. He stopped, but didn’t turn round straight away. Slowly, and with a spark of matching defiance in his eyes, he circled round to face her.

She took a few steps forward, then stopped, her hands clasped in front of her. ‘The estate agent told me the place has been empty for years. Why do you still come?’

He shrugged. ‘A promise is a promise.’

Her brows crinkled and she nodded. A long silence stretched between them, yet he didn’t move because he had the oddest feeling she was on the verge of saying something. Finally, when she knotted her hands further and looked away, he took his signal to leave.

This time, he had his hand on the door knob before she spoke.

‘Did you really know her? Laura Hastings?’

He let his hand drop to his side and looked over his shoulder. ‘Yes.’ A flash of irritation shot through him. For some unfathomable reason, he’d not expected this of her. He’d thought her better than one of those busybodies who craved gossip about celebrities.

‘What was she like?’ Her voice was quiet, not gushing and over-inquisitive, but her question still annoyed him.

He stared at her blankly. ‘I really must be going. I meant what I said. I won’t trespass here again.’

She ran after him as he swung the greenhouse door open and stepped out into the chilly October air. He could hear the heels of her boots clopping on the iron grating in the greenhouse floor. The noise echoed and magnified and he let the door swing shut to muffle it.

‘Hey! You’re going the wrong way!’

No, he wasn’t. And he wasn’t in the mood for chit-chat, either.

She didn’t give up, though. Even though it must have been hell to stride after him in those high-heeled boots, she kept pace. Something to do with those long legs, probably. Either the changeable riverside weather had turned milder, or he could feel the hot anger radiating out from her as she closed the gap. He left the walled garden through a different gate from the one he’d entered by and chose a path that took him back down the hill towards his boat.

‘I asked you to get off my land!’

He stopped and turned in one motion, and was surprised to find himself almost nose to nose with her. Not that she quite matched his six foot two, but she had the advantage of heels and a slight slope.

She stepped back but her eyes lost none of their ferocity.

He didn’t have time for mood swings and tantrums. He had more than he could handle of those from Megan at the moment. That was why coming to Whitehaven was such a good distraction on a Sunday afternoon. It soothed him.

He looked Miss High-and-Mighty right back in the eyes. ‘And I’m getting off your land as fast as I can.’ Even though he had a strange sense that she was the trespasser. She was the one spoiling the peace and quiet of the one perfect spot in this world.

Her lips pressed together in a pout. One that might have been quite appealing if he weren’t so angry with her for being here. ‘The road is that way.’ She jerked a thumb in the direction of the drive.

‘I know.’ He deliberately didn’t elaborate for a few seconds. Just because he was feeling unusually awkward, although, in the back of his mind, he knew she was bearing the brunt of his frustration with someone else. But the woman in front of him was cut from the same cloth-exclusive designer cloth, by the look of it-and he just couldn’t seem to stem his reaction. He took a deep breath. ‘But my boat is tied up down by the boathouse.’

He blinked, waiting for more of her frosty words.

‘I have a boathouse?’ Once again, the tide had changed and she was suddenly back to being wistful and dreamy and far too beautiful to be real. That just got his goat even more. When she spoke again she was staring off into the bare treetops above his head. ‘It’s real? It wasn’t just a film set?’

He shrugged and set off down the path and his features hardened as he heard her following him.

‘Now what? I’m going, okay?’ he called out, only half-turning to let the words drift over his shoulder.

‘I want to see the boathouse.’

Ben normally loved the walk back down the hill on an autumn afternoon, but today it was totally ruined for him. He couldn’t appreciate the beauty of the leaves, ranging from pale yellow to deep crimson. He didn’t even stop to watch the trails of smoke snaking from the cottages of Lower Hadwell, just across the river. All he could hear were the footsteps behind him. All he could see-even though she was directly behind him and completely out of sight-was a pair of intense, dark eyes looking scornfully at him. It wasn’t a moment too soon when he spotted the uneven stone steps that led down to the jetty.

As he reached the top step he heard a loud gasp behind him. Instinctively, he turned and put out a hand to steady her. But she hadn’t stumbled. And she hadn’t even registered his impulsive offer of help. She stood with her hands over her mouth and her eyes shining. Great. Now it was time for the waterworks. He was out of here.

As quickly as he could, he made his way to where his boat was tied and started untying the painter, busily ignoring her slow descent of the steps behind him. Just as he was about to step off the jetty and into the dinghy his mobile phone chimed in his back pocket. He would have ignored it, but it was Megan’s ring tone. Something might have happened to their daughter.

And, since she was standing within reaching distance, not doing much but staring at the old stone boathouse, he slapped the end of the rope into the frosty woman’s hands and dug around in his jeans pocket for his phone.

‘Dad?’ Not Megan, but Jasmine.

‘What’s up, Jellybean?’

There was a snort on the other end of the line. ‘Do you have to keep calling me that? I’m almost twelve. It’s hardly dignified.’

Ben’s brows lowered over his eyes. Less than twenty-four hours out of his custody and she was already starting to sound like her mother. ‘What’s up, Jas?’

‘Mum says she can’t drop me off this evening. She’s got something on. Can you come and get me?’

Ben looked at his watch. Jasmine had been due back at five. It was past three now. ‘What time?’ Maybe it was just as well he’d had to leave Whitehaven early. It would take all of that time to cross the river, walk back to the cottage and drive the ten miles to Totnes.

He waited while his daughter had a muffled conference with her mother.

‘Mum says she has to be out by four.’

Ben found himself striding along the jetty in front of the boathouse. ‘I can’t do it, Jas.’ He kept walking while Jasmine relayed the information back to Megan. And when he reached the end of the jetty he turned and went back the way he’d come.

‘Mum says she wants to talk to you.’

There was a clattering while the phone changed hands. Ben steeled himself.

‘Ben? I can’t believe you’re being difficult about this! I know you’ve still got a soft spot for me, but it’s time to let go, move on…This kind of behaviour is just childish.’

He opened his mouth to explain there was nothing difficult about not doing the physically impossible, but Megan didn’t give him a chance.

‘Everything always has to be on your terms, doesn’t it? You’d do just about anything to sabotage my new life, wouldn’t you?’

His voice was more of a growl than he’d intended when it emerged from his mouth. ‘I do hope you are not letting our daughter overhear this. She doesn’t need to witness any more arguments.’

Megan gave a heavy sigh. ‘That’s right. Change the subject, as always!’ Still, he got the distinct impression she had moved into the hallway as her voice suddenly got more echoey.

‘Megan, I’m at Whitehaven. This has nothing to do with sabotage and everything to do with being too far away to get there by four o’clock.’

He waited. He could almost see the pout on his ex’s face. And, as he found himself back by his boat, he noticed a similar expression on the woman standing there watching him. He abruptly turned again and carried on pacing. Not exactly the same expression. The lips were fuller, softer.

‘Fine! Well, if you’re too selfish to come and get her, I’ll just have to take her with me. I’m having supper with…a friend. I’ll drop her back at eight.’

And, with that, Megan ended the call. He was tempted to hurl his phone into the slate-grey waves. This was what that woman did to him-riled him until he couldn’t think straight, until he was tempted to do foolish things. And he never did foolish things.

He jabbed at a button to lock the keypad, then stuffed his phone back in his pocket. Then he marched back to his boat.

‘Thanks a lot for giving me some privacy,’ he said dryly as he got within a few feet of the glowering woman on the jetty.

She gave him what his grandmother had used to call an ‘old-fashioned look’ and waved the rope she was holding from side to side. Incredible! How did the woman manage to make a gesture sarcastic?

‘You didn’t give me much choice, did you?’ she said.

Ben ran his hands through his wind-tousled hair and made himself breathe out for a count of five. He had to remember that this wasn’t the woman he was angry with, not really. ‘Sorry.’

He’d expected the pout to make a reappearance, but instead her lips curved into the faintest of smiles. ‘Divorced?’

He nodded.

‘Me too,’ she said quietly. ‘That half of your conversation was giving me déjà vu. I bet I could fill in the blanks if I thought hard about it.’

Against his will, he gave half a smile back. ‘You’ve got kids?’

‘A boy,’ she said, her voice husky. When she caught him glancing up towards the house, eyebrows raised, she added, ‘He’s staying with his father while I move in down here.’ She turned away quickly and stood perfectly still, staring at the woods on the hillside for a few long seconds.

When she turned back to him, a smile stretched her face. ‘What do you know about the history of the boathouse?’

He played along. The same smile had been part of his wardrobe in the last two years. Thankfully, he was resorting to it less and less often. ‘As far as I know, it was built long before the house. Some people say it’s sixteenth century. And, of course, it featured prominently in the film A Summer Affair, but you know that already.’

The defiant stare vanished altogether and she now just looked a little sheepish as she stared at the glossy seaweed washed up on the rocks nearby. ‘Busted,’ she said, looking at him from beneath her long fringe. ‘It was a favourite when I was younger and when I saw the details of the house, I knew I had to view it.’ She turned to look back at the two-storey brick and wood structure. ‘I didn’t realise this place was real. I suppose I thought it was just fibreglass and papier mâché, or whatever they build that stuff out of…’

‘It’s real enough. I ought to…’ Ben looked at the rope in his hand ‘…get going.’

She nodded. ‘I’m going to explore.’

Ben stood for a few moments and watched her climb the steps up to a door on the upper level. It hadn’t been used for years. Laura hadn’t been steady enough on her feet to make the journey down the hill for quite some time before she’d died.

He climbed into the dinghy because it felt like a safe distance and carried on watching. The wooden floor could be beetle-infested, rotten. He’d just stay here a few moments to make sure the new owner didn’t go through it.

His hand hovered above the outboard motor. Any moment now, he’d be on his way. He readied his shoulder muscles and brushed his fingertips against the rubber pull on the end of the cord. The loosened painter was gripped lightly in his other hand.

The boathouse was on two levels. The bottom storey, level with the jetty, had large arched, panelled doors and had been used for storing small boats. The upper level was a single room with a balcony that stretched the width of the building. He was waiting for her to walk out on to it, spread her hands wide on the railing and lean forward to inhale the glorious, salty, slightly seaweedy air. Her glossy dark hair would swing forward and the wind would muss it gently.

A minute passed and she didn’t appear. He began to feel twitchy.

With a sigh, he climbed out of the boat and planted his boots on the solid concrete of the jetty. ‘Are you okay back there?’

No response. Just as he was readying his lungs to call again, she appeared back on the jetty and shrugged. ‘No key,’ she yelled back, looking unduly crestfallen.

All his alarm bells rang, told him to get the hell back in the boat and keep his nose out of it. Whitehaven wasn’t his responsibility any more. Only the message obviously hadn’t travelled the length of his arm to his fingertips, because he suddenly found himself retying the boat and walking back up the jetty to the steep flight of steps that climbed up to the boathouse door.

As he reached the bottom step, she turned and looked down at him, one hand on the metal railing, one hand bracing herself against the wall. Her thick, dark hair fell forward as she leaned towards him.

‘Do you know where the key is?’

With his fingernails, already dark-rimmed from the rich compost of the glasshouse plants, he scraped at a slightly protruding brick in the wall near the base of the stairs. At first, he thought he’d remembered it wrong, but after a couple of seconds the block of stone moved and came away in his hand. In the recess left behind, he could see the dull black glint of polished metal. Laura had told him about the secret nook-just in case.

He supposed he could have just told the woman about it, yelled the vital information from the safety of the dinghy. He needn’t get involved. Even now his lips remained closed and his mouth silent as he climbed the mossy stairs and pressed the key into the soft flesh of her palm.

There. Job done.

For a couple of seconds, they stayed like that. He pulled his hand away and rubbed it on the back of his jeans.