Christmas Wishes, Mistletoe Kisses

CHAPTER TWO

‘THANK YOU,’ she said, then shook her long fringe so it covered her eyes a little more.

She slid the key into the lock and turned it. He’d half-expected the door to fall open, but it swung in a graceful arc, opening wide and welcoming them in. Well, welcoming her in. But his curiosity got the better of him and he couldn’t resist getting a glimpse.

‘Wow.’

He’d expected shelves and oars and tins of varnish. Decades-old grime clung to the windows, and the filmy grey light revealed a very different scene. A cane sofa and chairs huddled round a small Victorian fireplace, decorated with white and blue tiles. A small desk and chair occupied a corner in front of one of the arched windows.

She walked over to the desk and touched it reverently, leaving four little smudges in the thick dust, then pulled her fingers back and gently blew the dust off them with a sigh.

‘Did she come here often, do you know? Mrs Hastings?’ she said, still staring at the desk.

Why exactly he was still here, keeping guard like some sentry, he wasn’t sure. He should just go. He’d kept his promise to Laura. He wasn’t required. And yet…he couldn’t seem to make his feet move.

She turned to look at him and he shrugged. ‘Not when I knew her. She was too frail to manage the path down, but she talked of it fondly.’

She blinked and continued to stare at him, expressionless. He wasn’t normally the sort who had the urge to babble on, but most women didn’t leave huge gaping gaps in the conversation. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and kicked at the dust on the bare floorboards with the toe of his boot. Everything was too still.

‘Not really the sort of place to interest a woman like you, is it?’ he muttered, taking in the shabby furniture, the broken leg on the desk chair, held together with string. The place was nowhere near elegant enough to match her.

Her chin rose just a notch. ‘What makes you think you know anything about what sort of woman I am?’

Just like that, the sadness that seemed to cloak her hardened into a shell. Now the room wasn’t still any more. Every molecule in the air seemed to dance and shimmer and heat. She strode over to the large arched door in the centre of the opposite wall, unbolted it, threw the two door panels open and stepped out on to the wide balcony.

He was dismissed.

He took a step towards her and opened his mouth. Probably not a great idea, since during his last attempt at small talk he’d found a great muddy boot in it, but he couldn’t leave things like this-taut with tension, unresolved. Messy.

Her hands were spread wide as she rested them on the low wall and looked out over the river, just as he’d imagined. The hair hung halfway down her back, shining, untouchable. The wind didn’t dare tease even a strand out of place. He saw her back rise and fall as she let out a sigh.

‘I thought I’d asked you to get off my property.’ There was no anger in her tone now, just soul-deep weariness.

He turned and walked out of the boathouse and down the stairs to the jetty with even steps. She didn’t need him. She’d made that abundantly clear. But, as he climbed back into the dinghy, he couldn’t help feeling that part of his promise was still unfulfilled.

This time there were no interruptions as he untied the painter and started the motor. He turned the small boat round and set off in the direction of Lower Hadwell, a few minutes’ journey upstream and across the river.

When he passed the Anchor Stone that rose, proud and unmoving, out of the murky green waters, he risked a look back. She was still standing there on the balcony, her hands wide and her chin tilted up, refusing to acknowledge his existence.

Louise had been staring so long at the field of sheep on the other side of the river that the little white dots had blurred and melted together. She refused to unlock her gaze until the dark smudge in her peripheral vision motored out of sight.

Eventually, when it didn’t seem like defeat, she sighed and turned to rest her bottom on the railing of the balcony and stared back into the boathouse.

He couldn’t have known who he’d looked like standing there below her on the steps as he’d offered her the long black key. It had been one of her favourite scenes in A Summer Affair-when Jonathan came to see Charity in her boathouse sanctuary, the place where she hid from the horrors of her life. Not that anything really happened between them. It was the undercurrents, the unspoken passion, that made it one of the most romantic scenes in any film she’d ever seen.

He had looked at her with his warm brown eyes and, somehow, had offered her more than a key as he’d stood there. For the first time in years, she’d blushed, then hurried to hide the evidence with her hair.

And then he’d had to go and spoil that delicious feeling-the feeling that, maybe, not all men were utter rats-by reminding her of who she was.

Louise stood up, brushed the dirt off her bottom and walked back into the little sitting room. Of course, she wasn’t interested in hooking up with anyone just now, so she didn’t know why she’d got so upset with the gardener. Slowly, she closed and fastened the balcony doors, then exited the boathouse, locking the door and returning the key to its hiding place.

The light was starting to fade and she hurried back up the steep hill, careful to retrace her steps and not get lost, mulling things over as she went. No, it wasn’t that she was developing a fancy for slightly scruffy men in waxed overcoats; it was just that, for a moment, she’d believed there was a possibility of something more in her future. Something she’d always yearned for, and now believed was only real between the covers of a novel or in the darkness of a cinema.

She shook her hair out of her face to shoo away the sense of disappointment. The gardener had done her a favour. He’d reminded her that her life wasn’t a fairy tale-she snorted out loud at the very thought, scaring a small bird out of a bush. She was probably just feeling emotional because she wouldn’t see Jack for two weeks. Toby had kicked up a stink, but had finally agreed that, once she was settled at Whitehaven, their son could live with her and go to the local school. She and Jack would be together again at last.

Toby had been difficult every step of the way about the divorce. Surprising that he would lavish so much time and energy on her, really. If he’d only thought to pay her that much attention in the last five years, they might not be in this mess at the moment.

She pulled her coat more tightly around her as she reached the clearing just in front of the house. The river seemed grey and troubled at the foot of the hill and dark woolly clouds were lying in ambush to the west. She ignored the dark speck travelling upstream, even though the noise of an outboard motor hummed on the fringes of her consciousness.

Not one stick of furniture occupied the pale, grand entrance hall to Whitehaven but, as Louise crossed the threshold, she smiled. Only two rooms on the ground floor, two bedrooms and one bathroom had been in a liveable state when she’d bought the house. All they needed was a lick of paint and a good scrub so she could move into them. The furniture would arrive on Wednesday but, until then, she had an inflatable mattress and a sleeping bag in the bedroom, a squashy, slightly threadbare floral sofa she’d found in a local junk shop for the living room, and a couple of suitcases to keep her going.

She’d let Toby keep all the furniture, disappointing him completely. He’d been itching for a fight about something, but she just wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. Let him be the one waiting for an emotional response of some kind for a change. She didn’t want his furniture, anyway. Nothing that was a link to her old life. Nothing but Jack.

None of that ultra-modern, minimalist designer stuff would fit here, anyway. She smiled again. She fitted here. Whitehaven wasn’t the first property she’d owned, but it was the first place she’d felt comfortable in since she’d left the shabby maisonette she’d shared with her father and siblings. She knew-just as surely as the first time she’d slid her foot into an exquisitely crafted designer shoe-that this was a perfect fit. She and this house understood each other.

The kitchen clock showed it was twenty past eight. Ben sat at the old oak table, a lukewarm cup of instant coffee between his palms, and attempted to concentrate on the sports section of the paper instead of the second hand of the clock.

Megan had never been like this when they’d been married. Yes, she’d been a little self-absorbed at times, but she’d never shown this flagrant disregard for other people’s schedules, or boundaries, or…feelings. He wasn’t sure he liked the version of Megan that she’d ‘found’. Or this new boyfriend of hers that he wasn’t supposed to know about.

Twenty minutes later, just as his fingers were really itching to pick up the phone and yell at someone, he heard a car door slam. Jas bounced in through the back door and, before he could ask if her mother was going to make an appearance-and an apology-tyres squealed in the lane and an engine revved then faded.

‘Nice dinner?’ he asked, flicking a page of the paper over and trying not to think about the gallon of beef casserole still sitting in the oven, slowly going cold. Eating a portion on his own hadn’t had the comfort factor that a casserole, by rights, ought to have.

Jas shrugged her shoulders as he looked up.

‘Just dinner, you know…’ she said. And, since she was eleven-going-on-seventeen, he supposed that was as verbose as she was going to get.

‘Have you done your homework?’

‘Mostly.’

This was quality conversation, this was. But he was better off sticking to neutral subjects while he was feeling like this. In the last couple of years as a single dad, he’d learned that transitions-picking up and dropping off times-were difficult, and it was his job to smooth the ripples, create stability. Being steady, normal, was what was required.

‘Define mostly,’ he said, smoothing the paper closed and standing up.

Jas dropped the envelope of assorted junk she was clutching to her chest on to the table and threw her coat over the back of a chair. ‘Two more maths questions-and before you say anything-’

Ben closed his mouth.

‘-it doesn’t have to be in until Thursday. Can I just do it tomorrow? Please, Dad?’

She stared at him with those big brown eyes and blinked, just once. She looked so cute with her wavy blonde hair not quite sitting right in its shoulder-length style. His memory rewound a handful of years and he could hear her begging for just one more push on the swing.

‘Okay. Tomorrow it is.’

‘Thanks, Dad.’ Jas skirted the table and gave him a hug by just throwing her arms around him and squeezing, then she lifted a brightly coloured magazine out of the pile of junk on the table. ‘Recreational reading,’ she said, brandishing it and attempting to escape before he could inspect it more closely.

He wasn’t so old that his reflexes had gone into retirement. The magazine was out of her fingers and in front of his face before she’d fully disentangled herself from the hug.

‘What’s this trash?’

Jas made a feeble attempt at snatching it back. ‘It was Mum’s. She’d finished it and she said I could have it.’

Ben frowned. Buzz magazine. He’d never read it himself, but he knew enough from the bright slogans on the cover that it was the lowest form of celebrity gossip rag. The lead story seemed to be ‘Celebrity Cellulite’. Nice. What was Megan thinking of giving Jasmine a publication like this? Didn’t his ex know how impressionable young girls were at Jas’s age?

‘I don’t think this is appropriate.’

Jas rolled her eyes. ‘It’s interesting. All my friends read it.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘All of them?’

The nod that followed couldn’t have convinced even Jas herself.

‘That’s what I thought,’ he said. ‘I mean, there’s no substance in here. It’s just rubbish…’He flicked through the pages, hoping his daughter would see what he saw. ‘It’s the worst kind of gossip. I-’

But then he stopped flicking idly through the pages, his whole frame frozen. His mouth worked while his brain searched for an appropriate sound. Getting a grip on himself, he carefully placed the magazine down on the table and stood, arms braced either side of it, as he stared again at the grainy photographs.

‘Told you it was interesting,’ Jas said with a smirk.

‘But that’s…’

Jas turned so she was side by side with him and leaned against his bunched-up arm muscles, looking down at the magazine too. ‘Louise Thornton,’ she informed him in an astoundingly matter-of-fact voice. ‘Mum thinks she’s a waste of space. Most people do.’

‘Louise who?’ he whispered hoarsely.

Jas punched him on the arm. ‘Da-ad! You’re stuck in the Stone Age! You know…She married Tobias Thornton-the actor.’

Who?

‘We watched him in that action movie last weekend. The one with the bomb on the private jet?’

Oh. Him.

The picture was dull and not very clear-the product of a telephoto lens the size of a space shuttle, no doubt. But there was no doubting the fierce glare in those eyes as she squared up to the paparazzo, her son clutched protectively to her, his face hidden. He’d been on the receiving end of that very same look just a few hours ago and it still gave him the shivers thinking about it.

‘And she’s famous?’ he asked Jas, trying to sound as uninvolved as he actually was, but less involved than he felt.

Jas nodded. ‘Well, famous for being married to somebody famous. That’s all.’

Married. He should shut the magazine right now and condemn it to the recycling bin. Only…she’d said she was divorced. And, in the few moments that she’d let her icy guard down, he’d known she was telling the truth. The gaudy headline splashed across the top of the feature seemed to confirm his gut instinct: ‘Louise’s private hell since split!’

He took one last look at her image and felt a twinge of sympathy. Going through a divorce was bad enough, but having every spat reported for the world to see? More like a public execution than a private hell. No wonder she’d freaked out when she’d found some strange man in her greenhouse.

He closed the magazine and looked at Jas. ‘Sorry, Jas. I think these sorts of magazines are a gross invasion of privacy. I’d rather you didn’t read it.’

She chewed her lip and her fingers twitched. He could tell she was torn between doing the right thing and insatiable curiosity. Thankfully, when she gave him a rueful smile and a one-shouldered shrug he knew he’d been doing an okay job of counteracting all the psycho-babble her mother had been subjecting her to since their separation.

He grinned. ‘Good girl.’

Jas’s smile grew and changed. ‘Since I’ve earned a gold star, can I have fifteen pounds for a trip to the theatre with school?’

Ben looked heavenward. What was it with women and money? Any good deed seemed to need a reward-preferably in the form of shoes. Perhaps he should be glad that at least this was something educational. The shoes would come later. Oh, he had no doubt the shoes would come later. ‘Give me a second while I find my wallet. What are you going to see, again?’

‘The Taming of the Shrew.’

Ben nodded approvingly while he searched the kitchen worktops for his battered leather wallet. He hunted through the junk drawer. Where had he put the darn thing when he’d come in this evening? ‘Jas, I’ll come and give you the cash when I’ve found my wallet, okay?’ he said, slamming the drawer in an effort to get it to close in spite of the disturbed odds and ends inside.

‘Cool.’

‘And Jas…?’

She turned at the doorway to the lounge.

‘This Louise Thornton woman. Do you think she’s a waste of space?’

She looked up at the corner of the ceiling and then back at him. ‘Mum says any woman who puts up with that kind of…rubbish…and puts a man’s happiness before her own is TSTL.’

TSTL.

‘Too stupid to live,’ Jas elaborated, knowing, as she always seemed to, when he needed a bit of help with her strange preteen speak.

The sounds of the television in the adjoining room accompanied his search for the wallet for the next ten minutes. He checked his coat, the car, the kitchen again…Just as he was racking his brain and replaying the day in his head, it struck him. He knew exactly where he’d left his wallet. He could see it so clearly in his mind’s eye, he could almost reach out and touch it.

A rough wooden bench, long rays of the afternoon sun slanting through uneven Victorian glass. A black, soft leather square with cards and ancient till receipts poking out of it sitting next to a plant pot containing a rather spectacular nepenthes.

He sat back down on a chair and frowned. His wallet had been too bulky in the back pocket of his jeans and he’d taken it out and put it on one of the shelves in the greenhouse this afternoon. And then, with all the scowling and marching back down to the boat, he’d forgotten it.

He blew out a breath. If it had been just the cards and the few notes that were in there, he might have just left it. There was no way his face was going to be welcome back at Whitehaven any time this century. But the wallet contained one of his favourite photos of Jas and him together, taken in a time when she’d had ringlets and no front teeth and when he didn’t seem to have permanent frown lines etched on his forehead.

There was nothing for it. He was going to have to go back.

Ben knocked on the door twice. Hard enough to be heard, but not so forcefully that he seemed impatient. And then he waited. The clear, pale skies of yesterday were gone and a foggy dampness dulled every colour on the riverbank. He turned his collar up as the mist rallied and became drizzle.

He raised his fist to knock again, but was distracted by a hint of movement in his peripheral vision. He turned quickly and stared at the study window, just to the right of the porch. Everything was still.

He grimaced and shoved his hands in his pockets. At least he and Louise Thornton were both singing from the same hymn sheet. Neither of them were pleased he was here.

Knowing she was probably hovering in the hallway, he knocked again, just loud enough to make a dull noise against the glossy wooden doors.

‘Hello? I’m sorry for the intrusion-’He’d been going to say Mrs Thornton, but it seemed odd to use her name when she hadn’t revealed it to him herself.

‘I really didn’t want to disturb you again,’ he called out as he pressed his ear to the door, trying to detect a hint of movement inside, ‘but I left something behind and I-’

There was a soft click as the door opened enough for him to see half of her face. She didn’t have the heels on today-not that he ever noticed women’s shoes-and, instead of being almost level with him, she was looking up at him, her face hard and unreadable.

‘I left my wallet in the greenhouse,’ he said with an attempt at a self-deprecating smile.

She just stared.

He should have looked away, ended the awkwardness, but she had the most amazing eyes. Well, eye-he could only see one at present. It wasn’t the make-up, because this morning there was none of that black stuff. It wasn’t even the hazel and olive-green of her irises, which reminded him of the changing colours of autumn leaves. No, it was the sense that, even though she seemed to be doing her best to shield herself, he recognised something in them. Not a familiarity or a similarity to anybody else. More like a reflection of something inside himself.

He shook his head and stared at his boots. This was not the time to descend into poetry. He had come here for one reason and one reason only.

‘If you give me permission to retrieve it, I’ll be out of your hair as soon as possible. I promise.’

She looked him up and down and then the door inched wider. ‘Wait here and I’ll get the key.’

A couple of minutes passed and Ben stepped out of the porch and on to the gravel drive, the crunch underneath his boots deafening in the still of the autumn morning. Louise Thornton reappeared just as he’d managed to find himself a spot where the pebbles didn’t shift underneath him. Her long dark hair was scooped back into a ponytail, but the ever-present fringe left her face half-hidden. In her jeans and a pullover she should have looked like any other of the young mothers who stood outside the school gates.

He followed her up the hill, round the house to the top lawn. When she moved, her actions were small, precise, as if she didn’t want to be accused of taking up too much space. Megan and all her friends had reached an age where their body language spoke of a certain confidence, a certain comfort in their own skin. This woman lacked that, despite her high-gloss lifestyle and multi-million-pound bank account.

Once again he felt an unwelcome twinge. He fought the urge to catch up with her, to tell her that it would get better one day, that there was life after divorce. But, since he wasn’t exactly a glowing example of a man with an active social life, he thought it was better if he kept his mouth shut.

She unlocked the greenhouse door, then stood well back, giving him plenty of room to pass through. She didn’t stay outside, though. He heard her footsteps on the tiled floor of the greenhouse behind him and, when he looked over his shoulder, she was watching him suspiciously.

The wallet was right where he’d remembered it was, tucked slightly out of sight next to a glossy carnivorous plant, groaning under the weight of its purple and green pitchers. He picked it up, jammed it into his jacket pocket, then stooped to pick up the saracenia that had been a casualty of yesterday’s meeting. He’d forgotten all about it after Louise Thornton had appeared.

Carefully, he placed it back on the shelf and pressed the soggy compost down with his fingertips. Despite his ministrations, the slender pitchers pointed at an odd angle. He would have to bring a cane from home and…

No. There would be no canes from home. Not any more.

He stepped back and indicated the listing plant. ‘This needs a cane. There might be one around here somewhere-’Down the other end was a likely place. He started to walk in that direction, checking behind pots and peering under the bench as he went.

‘Why should you care?’

That kind of question didn’t even warrant turning round to answer it. He carried on searching. ‘It’s a beautiful plant. It would be a shame to leave it to die.’

Once again he heard footsteps. Just a handful, enough for her to have stepped further into the greenhouse. He found what he was looking for-a small green cane-hidden between the windowsill and a row of pots. He picked it up, careful not to send anything else flying, and turned to find her fingering the delicate cream and purple foliage of the ailing saracenia.

‘Then you really are a gardener?’

He moved past her, retrieved a roll of garden wire from a hook near the door and returned to the plant, unwinding a length as he walked. ‘You think I like to play in the dirt for fun?’

She remained silent, watching him fashion a loop of wire wide enough to help the plant stand up without pinching it to the cane. When he’d finished, and the little plant was straining heavenwards once again, she took a few steps backwards.

‘In my experience, most men are like big kids, anyway. So, yes, you may well be playing in the dirt for fun.’ There was a dry humour behind her words that took the edge off them.

His lips didn’t actually curve but there was a hint of a smile in his voice when he answered. ‘It is fun. The earth feels good beneath my fingertips.’ She raised an eyebrow, clearly unconvinced. He’d bet she’d never had dirt underneath her fingernails in her life. And he’d bet her life was poorer for it.

‘Gardening gives you a sense of achievement.’ He fiddled with the stake and wire loop around the saracenia until it was just so. ‘You can’t control the plants. You just tend them, give them what they need until they become what they should.’

She broke eye contact and let her gaze wander over the plants nearest to her. ‘These don’t look like they’re becoming much. Aren’t you a very good gardener?’

He fought back the urge to laugh out loud. ‘They’re in their dormant phase. They’ll perk up again, when the conditions are right.’ He stood looking at her for a few seconds as she stared out into the gardens. ‘Well, I’ve got what I came for. I’ll be out of your hair now-as promised. I did say I was one not to break a promise, didn’t I?’

He took a few long strides past her, breathed out and opened the greenhouse door. He was halfway across the lawn before she shouted after him.

‘Then promise to come again.’