A Christmas Affair

by Carole Mortimer

  Damn the man, he—

  All reproach, all anger left her as she saw his dear, familiar figure coming towards her in the snow. She let out a glad cry of relief as she turned and ran to the door.

  He looked haggard, bowed, as she flung open the door to welcome him.

  But her joy turned to amazement as she re­alised he wasn't alone. Clinging limply to his arm, almost too weak and weary to put one foot in front of the other, it seemed, was a young girl.

  Cathy was just too stunned to move, and by the time she had forced some energy into her limbs the couple had reached the cottage door. And as they did so she realised it wasn't a child that clung to Dominic at all, but an exquisitely beautiful woman.

  'What—?'

  'I hope you've got the fire lit so that the two of us can thaw out,' Dominic rasped without preamble as he strode inside, the woman fol­lowing in his wake giving Cathy a feeble smile as she entered the cottage.

  Cathy followed them dazedly as Dominic went through to the lounge, arriving just in time to see him helping the exhausted woman on to the sofa. 'What—?'

  'She's been in her car all night, somehow managing to keep warm by wrapping herself in a car blanket,' Dominic turned to her briefly to explain, his expression grim. 'She's lucky she didn't die of hypothermia.'

  'Dominic!' Cathy scolded as the woman seemed to become even more pale—if that were possible; she looked exhausted with the cold and from the trek to the cottage.

  He straightened, standing back, with his hands thrust into his trouser pockets. 'What on earth possessed you to be out on the road in that weather?' he snapped, his eyes narrowed.

  Whatever conversation the two of them had had before they reached here, it obviously hadn't covered that subject, and, looking at the other woman as she reclined so exhaustedly on the sofa, Cathy didn't find that so difficult to understand.

  'What on earth possessed us to be out on the road in that weather?' Cathy returned im­patiently, going down on her haunches beside the woman, uncaring that she was probably bringing Dominic's wrath down on her own head now. After all, she was the reason they had been driving in this area at all. 'A hot drink would be the best thing, I think,' she told the other woman gently.

  'Thank you.' The woman smiled weakly, her eyes the clear deep blue of pansies, the exquis­itely lovely face framed by thick, dark hair that tucked neatly beneath her jawline.

  And yet there was a vulnerability about her that seemed to owe nothing to the conditions under which she had been found, a purple bruising beneath her eyes that increased her fragility, a hollowness to the pale cheeks that spoke of deep unhappiness, hands that were far too slender moving restlessly at her sides.

  'I don't even know your name,' Cathy spoke her thoughts out loud, all the time knowing that she knew much more about this woman than was perhaps wanted.

  'Ann,' the woman supplied huskily. 'Ann Freeman.'

  Cathy nodded as she straightened. 'Just rest, Ann, and I'll get you some tea.'

  'Make mine a coffee,' Dominic rasped, his expression still distant.

  Cathy gave him an impatient look as she left the room; he wasn't being very sympathetic to the other woman's plight. It couldn't have been easy sitting in a car all night wondering if you were going to see the morning. But then Dominic was probably exhausted himself, she excused with a slight blush to her cheeks; neither of them had slept much during the night, and then he had been for that long trudge in the snow this morning.

  But he was a forbidding sight, standing so unyieldingly across the room as she came back with the tray of tea and coffee.

  Ann sat up to take her cup, looking a little better now, the heat from the fire having put some colour back in her cheeks. But the haunted expression still remained in her eyes. 'If I could use the telephone—'

  'There isn't one,' Cathy told her regretfully, instantly wishing she hadn't had to be so neg­ative as the other woman paled again. She glanced with sympathy at the wedding band on the left hand. 'Your family will be worried about you.'

  'Yes,' the other woman acknowledged dis­tractedly, glancing out of the window at the heavy grey sky. 'I felt sure there would be a telephone here…'

  Cathy shook her head. 'It's only a holiday cottage, you see.'

  Ann turned back anxiously. 'Do you think we will be here long?'

  'We both have other places to go too, you know,' Dominic rasped.

  'Dominic!' Cathy turned to him in horrified outrage; what on earth was wrong with the man, that he should treat Ann in this way?

  'No, no, it's all right,' Ann excused him tautly, giving Dominic a nervous glance. 'I'm being insensitive.'

  'Not at all,' Cathy assured her, shooting Dominic another censorious glare—to which he appeared totally impervious as he met her gaze unflinchingly! 'We've had a lot more time to get used to the idea that until someone ac­tually finds us here our friends and families are pretty much in the dark about our whereabouts.'

  Dominic still looked at the other woman with narrowed eyes, his hands in his pockets pulling the material of his trousers tautly across his thighs. 'You still haven't explained what you were doing out in a snowstorm on Christmas Eve.'

  Anne frowned at his persistence, her throat moving convulsively. 'I—'

  'How about some breakfast?' Cathy inter­rupted brightly. 'We're pretty limited, I'm afraid.' Even more so now that there were three of them! 'But I'm sure I can rustle something up.'

  'I'll help you—'

  'No, stay where you are,' she cut in firmly as the other woman would have stood up. 'Dominic can help me,' she added firmly with a determined look in his direction, waiting pointedly beside the door for him to leave with her.

  With a shrug of his shoulders he preceded her from the room, and Cathy waited only long enough for them to reach the relative privacy of the kitchen before turning on him.

  'What on earth do you think you're doing?' she demanded, her eyes glowing with anger. 'The poor woman is half frozen to death, des­perately worried about her family, and yet you're treating her like—like some sort of criminal!' she realised with a frown.

  His expression was coldly remote. 'Why would a married woman be wandering about in a snowstorm on Christmas Eve?'

  'I don't know,' Cathy dismissed impatiently. 'Any number of reasons, one would imagine. It's really none of our business, is it?'

  He gave a terse acknowledgement of his head. 'I don't like mysteries.'

  'Oh, for heaven's sake, Dominic!' She moved agitatedly about the kitchen, preparing them all some breakfast. 'Her reasons are probably as innocent as ours.'

  His eyes narrowed, but for all that he was still unsmiling, Cathy could tell his mood had changed. 'Can you still believe that after last night?'

  The flush in her cheeks burnt hotly. In truth, the night she had spent in his arms had been pushed to the back of her mind during the last fifteen minutes. How that was possible, even during that strange exchange with Ann Freeman, she didn't know! She had spent the night in this man's arms. and knew him as in­timately as he undoubtedly knew her.

  Not that it was this man in whose arms she had spent the night. Last night she had known a Dominic she had never seen before. And from the look of him now, from his coldness since his return, it didn't seem very likely she would ever see him again.

  'Last night just—happened,' she said awk­wardly, her face slightly averted.

  'Did it?'

  She looked up at him sharply, her cheeks still flushed. 'You surely don't think that I—'

  His mouth twisted. 'You could hardly have arranged for the lousy weather that stranded us here.'

  'Then what—'

  He straightened. 'Forget it, Cathy,' he dis­missed tersely. 'Let's all have that breakfast, then maybe we'll feel better.'

  She had never known food improve his mood before, and this morning proved no exception. The three of them consumed the strange fare in silence, a thoughtful one on Ann's part, awkward on Cathy's, and coldly reserved on Dominic's. Cathy
was relieved when it was over, even more so when Dominic tersely ex­cused himself, muttering something about col­lecting firewood.

  Ann looked slightly less fragile after eating and drinking something, insisting on helping this time as Cathy cleared away.

  'I really am sorry to have just—landed myself on you in this way,' she grimaced, wiping the dishes as Cathy washed them.

  'Don't be silly,' Cathy protested, knowing Dominic's terseness was what had prompted the apology. Really, his behaviour was dis­graceful; the poor woman would probably have frozen to death if he hadn't found her when he had and brought her back here, and now he was treating her like some interloper! No wonder Ann felt uncomfortable! 'I'm just glad Dominic found you,' she added with sincerity.

  'So am I,' Ann said ruefully. 'But I'm sure your husband—'

  'Oh, Dominic and I aren't married,' Cathy instantly denied. 'I'm his personal assistant. At least, I was,' she amended awkwardly, a blush rising to her cheeks as she realised she was bab­bling. 'I no longer work for Dominic, but until yesterday I was his PA,' she insisted firmly, knowing her explanation still left a lot of ques­tions unanswered—such as what the two of them were doing together at all yesterday!

  'I see.' The other woman nodded, obviously not 'seeing' at all. 'I'm sorry if my assumption embarrassed you.'

  'Oh, it didn't,' Cathy dismissed with a sigh, knowing it would probably have angered Dominic into a quick denial if he had heard it. Married, indeed. He would have walked through a blizzard to get help for them first! 'And you mustn't mind Dominic,' she excused him lightly. 'This is an awful time for any of us to be stranded like this, and Dominic's temper is a little frayed.'

  The woman's control, fragile at best, sud­denly seemed to break, and she buried her face in her hands as she began to sob.

  'Hey, come on,' Cathy cajoled, her arms going instinctively about the other woman's shoulders as she continued to cry. 'It can't be as bad as all that.'

  'It's worse,' Ann choked. 'Oh, God, I've be­haved so badly!'

  Cathy patted her back soothingly. 'I can't believe you've done anything that serious—'

  The other woman pulled back slightly. 'Walking out on my husband and children on Christmas Eve, having my two babies wake up this morning to find Mummy isn't there to cel­ebrate with them—that isn't serious?' she chal­lenged self-disgustedly.

  Cathy swallowed hard, taken aback by the vehement outburst.

  What on earth had possessed this woman to behave in such a way? Had it been out of de­fiance? Desperation? What?

  Whatever the reason, Ann obviously bitterly regretted it. But it was too late to change things now, and to a child there could be no excuse for a parent's being missing on this morning of all mornings. And both women knew that as they stood in that cold, unwelcoming kitchen with the wind howling outside.

  'I'm sure you had your reasons,' Cathy pla­cated her unconvincingly, her mind buzzing with what those reasons could possibly be. Whatever they were, Ann seemed to have made the mad flight alone. Unless there had been someone else involved and his desertion was what had brought Ann to her senses. Too late, it would appear. But it was no good specu­lating on the whys and wherefores of the situ­ation; it couldn't help or change anything.

  'Yes, I had my reasons,' Ann acknowledged harshly. 'Somehow they no longer seem im­portant.' She shook her head, her eyes brimful with fresh tears.

  'Ann—'

  'It doesn't help, you see.' She spoke almost to herself. 'Knowing the reasons doesn't help at all,' she choked.

  'Ann, you—'

  'Because all I can see, all I can imagine,' the other woman drew in a ragged breath, 'are the faces of my two little girls this morning as they bravely try to show their daddy they don't mind that I'm not there because they know his heart is breaking!'

  A movement across the room caught Cathy's attention, and she looked up just in time to see Dominic staring at Ann with such a look of vehement dislike that it made her gasp out loud.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  'KEEP your voice down, Dominic, she'll hear you,' Cathy hissed furiously.

  'I don't give a damn whether she does or not,' Dominic rasped as he continued to pace restlessly up and down the kitchen.

  With the thought of keeping the tearful Ann as far away from Dominic as possible, Cathy had persuaded the other woman she might feel a little better after a lie-down and possibly a sleep.

  Ann did look exhausted, and Cathy was sure that tiredness was only adding to the other woman's already emotional state, but the sug­gestion had been made as much to get Ann away from Dominic's obvious fury as anything else.

  The other woman was resting in the sitting-room now, as far as Cathy was aware, never­theless, this was a small cottage, the walls quite thin, and Dominic was, typically, making no effort to lower his voice.

  He was absolutely disgusted with what he had overheard of the other woman's story. In fact, Cathy had the distinct impression that if he had known of the circumstances of Ann's being stranded in the snow before bringing her back here he might have been sorely tempted to leave her in the snow to take her chances!

  The fierceness of his reaction was com­pletely unlike him. He was a gentle man given to few extremes of emotion, and his anger now was all the more awesome because of that.

  'Do you have any idea how her children must be feeling right now?' His eyes glittered dark green with fury.

  'I have a pretty good idea.' Cathy nodded heavily, thinking of those two tiny woebegone faces among the glitter that was Christmas. The children had to be relatively young; Ann couldn't be much older than her own twenty-six years.

  'You can't have,' Dominic dismissed harshly, his face etched with tiredness and anger. 'Not really, not unless you've experienced that type of loss for yourself.'

  And suddenly Cathy knew that Dominic had.

  She knew that Dominic's parents had both died when he was eight, and from his reaction now she would say it was probably around Christmastime when it had happened. The cir­cumstances of that loss weren't known to her, but she could see now that, whatever they were, it was this that had soured Christmas for him.

  He had gone to live with a maiden aunt, but it didn't appear to have been a close relation­ship, and Cathy could imagine a little boy with curly dark hair and pain-filled green eyes hard­ening his heart to the world, but especially to Christmas. If what she suspected was true it was no wonder he had chosen to continue turning his back on Christmas even when he was an adult. And she had always assumed it was because he was too busy making his millions to bother with the occasion.

  There were so many things, with hindsight, that she could have done to make it different for him, ways she could have slowly changed his disillusionment with Christmas if she had only known at least part of the reason behind it. But she had been too busy thinking of him in the terms of a 'bah, humbug' Scrooge that she hadn't taken the trouble to get to the bottom of why he was the way he was. And she loved him. How off-putting his attitude must have been all these years to people who only knew him as Dominic Reynolds, the busi­nessman. She could have wept for him.

  But, logically, she knew that wasn't going to solve anything now.

  'Dominic, whatever Ann's reasons for doing what she did, we can't judge her on them,' she pointed out gently. 'We're all stuck here to­gether until help comes, and we have to make the best of it,' she encouraged.

  His mouth was tight. 'Then the quicker we get out of here, the better!'

  If things had been fraught before, Cathy could see they were going to be virtually im­possible now. She was going to have to act as a buffer between Dominic and Ann; heaven knew the poor woman was already suffering enough without Dominic's anger descending on her.

  But that was much easier decided than ac­complished. Ann was so lost in her own misery that for the most part Cathy was sure she didn't even notice Dominic's glowering behaviour on the occasions when they were all together—oc­casions which Cathy, through sheer desper­ation, kept
to a minimum by whatever means she could! It was like walking through a mine­field, expecting the explosion at any moment, but praying it wouldn't come. But Cathy knew it was only a matter of time before it did; Dominic wasn't known for his reticence.

  After they had dined more frugally than ever that evening, on the food that had seemed so plentiful yesterday but which now seemed to be dwindling fast, Cathy surreptitiously watched Dominic as he sat and drank his way single-handedly through a bottle of wine as she tidied away the debris from their meal.

  In spite of the fact that she knew he rarely touched alcohol, the wine didn't seem to be having any effect on him, it was true, but from the grim expression on his face he didn't look as if he intended stopping at the one bottle. And although Cathy had never seen Dominic drunk—in fact, she had more than once wished he would lighten up enough to show such a human weakness—she didn't think here and now, especially under the circumstances, would be a very good idea.

  'Haven't you had enough?' she prompted lightly as, sure enough, he began to open a second bottle.

  'Join me,' he invited abruptly, continuing to open the bottle.

  'I don't think so.' She shook her head. 'And I don't think you should have any more, either,' she added softly.

  His brows rose arrogantly. 'I'm not driving,' he derided.

  Cathy drew in a controlling breath. 'Shouldn't we try and keep as much of the al­cohol as we can, possibly for medicinal pur­poses if nothing else? After all, we don't have any idea how long we're going to be here.'

  The thought of that was enough to make him pour out a glass of wine from the new bottle and drink it down in one swallow before pouring himself another glassful.

  'Dominic!' She frowned her agitation with his behaviour.

  He gave her a cynical smile. 'It is Christmas, Cathy,' he reminded mockingly.

  'I had noticed.' They had come a long way from the joy she had found yesterday evening in his thoughtful gift of the tiny Christmas tree!

  'Then you shouldn't begrudge me a little Christmas cheer.' He raised his glass in a toast before drinking some of the wine without even a grimace, despite the fact that she had never known him to drink red wine at all, and even white wine only in small quantities; he was going to be roaring drunk before too long. Just what they needed!