Christmas Wishes, Mistletoe Kisses

by Fiona Harper

  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.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  BEN didn’t want to turn round. He’d told himself he wouldn’t respond this time. After all, he’d had enough of high-maintenance women. But…

  She stood on the lawn, watching him, her hair whipped across her face by another surly gust of wind. Once again, her eyes held him captive. Not for their dark perfection, but because something deep inside them seemed to be pleading with him. His friends had told him he was a sucker for a lady in distress, and he’d always denied it, but he had the awful feeling they might just be right.

  She tugged a strand of chocolate-brown hair out of her mouth. ‘The garden. It does need looking after. You’re right. It would be a shame to…’

  Once again, the eyes pleaded. He should have a sign made, reading ‘sucker,’ and just slap it on his forehead.

  He’d do it. But not for her—for Laura. Just until he was sure this new owner was going to care for the place properly. And then he’d pass it on to one of his landscaping teams and charge her handsomely for the privilege. After all, he reminded himself, life was complicated enough already without looking after somebody else’s garden.

  Louise watched him go. She kept watching until long after his tall frame disappeared round the side of the house into a tangle of grass and shrubs and trees that were now, technically, her back garden. Not that she’d had the courage to explore it fully yet.

  She forced herself to turn away and look back at the greenhouse.

  Was she mad? Quite possibly.

  In all seriousness, she’d just given a man she knew nothing about permission to invade her territory on a regular basis. Yet…there’d been something so preposterously truthful about his story and so refreshingly straightforward about his manner that she’d swallowed it whole. Next time she’d have to frisk him for a long-lens camera and a dictaphone, just in case.

  She’d left the greenhouse door open. Slowly, she closed the distance to the heavy Victorian glazed door, with its beautiful brass handle and peeling off-white paint. On a whim, she stepped inside before she closed the door and stood for a few moments in the warm dampness. It smelled good in here, of earth and still air, but very real. She liked real.

  The assorted plants lining the shelves by the windows really were quite exquisite. She’d never seen anything like them. Venus fly-traps sat next to frilly, sticky-looking things in shades of pink and purple. Then there were ones with large waxy leaves and bulbous pitchers the colour of ripe bruises. She walked over to the little plant that the gardener—Ben?—was that his name?—had saved. A thin green flute rose vertically, widening at the top with a frilly bit on top that looked a bit like a lid.

  She felt an affinity with this little plant, recently uprooted, thin, fragile. Now in a foreign climate, reaching hungrily heavenwards with an appetite that might never be satisfied. She reached out and touched the damp soil at its base. It did feel good. She pulled her hand away, but didn’t wipe it on the back of her jeans.

  Near the door were the stubby brown plants that had started to hibernate. Just like her. All those years with Toby now seemed like a time half-asleep. Her mind wandered to a photo of a famous actress that had graced the pages of all the gossip magazines a few years ago. She’d been caught whooping for joy when the papers finalising her divorce had arrived. Since then she’d lost twenty pounds, received two Oscars and had been seen with a string of hot-looking younger men.

  Shouldn’t this be the time when she blossomed, came into her own? But it wasn’t happening. She still felt dead inside.

  Abruptly, she exited the greenhouse, closed the door behind her and marched back down the path to her new home. Once the house was sorted, she’d feel better. Only a few more days until the furniture arrived. Until then she could visit Dartmouth, the bustling town just a bit further down the river, and visit some of the art galleries she’d seen advertised. And she could find out what Jack would need when he started at the local school after the half-term holiday.

  Yes, she’d definitely feel better when Jack could come here permanently. That was why she was feeling all at sixes and sevens. And he couldn’t live here with a bedroom full of dust and cobwebs. He’d be here on the twenty-seventh of October—less than two weeks away. She clapped her hands together and smiled as she took a detour round the back of the house and entered through the back door. She had work to do.

  Almost a fortnight later, Louise was putting the finishing touches to Jack’s room. She looked at her watch. It was almost one o’clock, but she couldn’t even contemplate eating anything. Only five more hours and Jack would be here. Her eyes filled with tears as she fluffed the duvet and smoothed it out, making sure it was perfect—not bunched up in the corners or with an empty bit flapping at one end.

  It looked so cosy when she had finished that she flumped down on top of the blue and white checked cover and buried her head in the pillow.

  Three weeks had been too long to go without seeing her son. She sighed. It had been the longest they had ever been apart. Toby had used to moan that she didn’t travel with him any more, and maybe that had been part of the reason their marriage had crumbled. Even strong relationships were put under pressure when the couple spent weeks at a time apart. But how could she leave Jack? He was everything. He always would be everything.

  It wouldn’t have been fair to uproot him and ask him to change schools before the half-term break. She snuggled even further into the pillow, wishing it smelled of more than just clean laundry.

  Toby had agreed—thank goodness—to let Jack live with her, even though they had joint custody. Her ex was away filming so often that it wouldn’t have been fair to Jack to leave him at her former home in Gloucestershire with just a nanny for company. Even Toby had seen the sense in that.

  So Jack would be with his father on school holidays and alternate weekends. And, just to appease Toby and make sure that he didn’t change his mind, she’d consented to let him take Jack to stay in their—make that Toby’s—London flat for the half-term week.

  But tonight Jack would be coming to Whitehaven. He’d be here.

  She turned to lie on her back and stared at the ceiling. She wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. Mostly she just ached.

  Minutes, maybe even half an hour, drifted past as Louise hugged herself and watched the light on the freshly painted ceiling change as the October wind
bullied the clouds across the sky. Eventually, she dragged herself off the bed and sloped towards the window.

  Something shiny glinted in the bushes and instantly her back was pressed against the wall, every muscle tense. After five seconds, she made herself breathe out. Nosing very carefully round the architrave, so only half of an eye and the side of her face would be visible from outside, she searched for another flash of light.

  No-good, money-grabbing photographers! And trust one to turn up on the day Jack was due here. If she caught the…amoeba, she’d slap a lawsuit on him so fast his digital camera would fry.

  In her effort to remain hidden, she only had a partial view of the front lawn. She remained motionless for some time, until her left leg started to cramp and twitch and then, only when she was very sure nobody was in her line of sight, did she lean out a little further.

  Another glint! There!

  Once again, she found herself flattened against the wall. But this time she let out a groan and slapped herself on the forehead. It wasn’t a telephoto lens but a big shiny spade that had reflected the light. Ben the gardener-guy’s spade. It was Sunday afternoon and he was here. Just as he’d been for the previous two weeks. Only she’d forgotten he’d be here today in all her excitement about Jack coming.

  Not that she ever really saw him arrive when he came. At some point in the afternoon, she’d become aware that he was around. She’d hear him whistling as he walked up to the top lawn, or hear the hum of a mower in the distance.

  So why had she felt the need to slam herself against the wall and pretend she wasn’t here? This was stupid.

  She stopped leaning against the wall and drew herself upright. There. Then she walked primly across the room and out of the door. No one was hiding. She was just walking around inside her own house, as she was perfectly entitled to do. Okay, she’d chosen a path across the room that had meant she couldn’t have been seen from the window, but that didn’t mean anything. It had simply been the most direct route. Sort of.

  She found herself in the kitchen. It was in serious need of updating, with pine cabinets that had darkened to an almost offensive orange, but it had a fantastic flagstone floor and always seemed warm—probably because, in the now defunct chimney breast, there was an Aga. It looked lovely and spoke of families gathered in the kitchen sharing overflowing Sunday lunches, but she had no idea how to work it.

  Well, that wasn’t strictly true. She knew how to boil the kettle. And, at this present moment, that seemed like a shockingly good idea. She filled the battered old thick-bottomed kettle with water, lifted the heavy lid on the Aga hotplate and left the kettle to boil.

  She hoped Jack would love it here as much as she did. What was she going to do if he decided he didn’t like living in the depths of the countryside, far away from the flash mansion she’d shared with Toby? It was the only place he’d ever known as home. Well, that and the London flat. And the villa in Beverly Hills. Whitehaven was charming, but it lacked the gloss of her former houses.

  She’d been getting what she needed out of the cupboards while she’d been thinking, and now discovered that she’d placed two teabags in two mugs. Something she’d done regularly in the early days after her split with Toby, but hadn’t done for months now.

  Her first instinct was to put the teabag and mug back in the cupboard, but that urge was hijacked by another one.

  She might as well make one for Ben. She gave a short hollow laugh. It would be the nearest thing to payment she’d given him for all his hard work. The lawns were looking fabulous and, little by little, the shrubs and borders close to the house were starting to lose their wild look.

  It wasn’t that she hadn’t intended to pay him. Just that she’d been heartily avoiding the issue. She’d acted like such a diva that first week, and she didn’t know how to undo that all-important first impression. As if summoned up by her thoughts, she heard the crunch of footsteps outside. A moment later Ben passed the kitchen window, probably on his way up to the greenhouses.

  A cup of tea seemed like a poor effort at a truce, but it was all she had in her arsenal at the moment. Boiling water lifted and swirled the teabag in the cup. Louise hesitated. Sugar, or no sugar?

  On an instinct, she put one level spoon in the cup and stirred. He looked like a man who liked a bit of sweetness.

  Another laugh that was almost a snort broke the silence. Well, she’d better have a personality change on the way past the herbaceous border, then. Especially if she was truly on a peace mission. At the moment she was the dictionary definition for the absolute opposite of ‘sweetness’. Meet Louise Thornton, sour old prune.

  When Louise arrived at the greenhouse, she realised she had a problem. Two hands and two cups of tea meant that she had no spare limbs to open the door, or even knock on it. But it had seemed stupid to leave her mug of tea in the kitchen. By the time she’d delivered Ben’s, discussed payment with him and walked back to the house, it would have been stone cold.

  She peered inside the greenhouse and tried to spot him. The structure was long and thin—almost thirty feet in length and tucked up against the north side of the walled garden to catch as much sun as possible. Down the centre was the tiled path with wrought iron grating for the underfloor heating system. The side nearest the wall of windows was lined with benches and shelves, all full of plants, but on the other side large palms and ferns were planted in the soil at floor level.

  Halfway down the greenhouse a leg was sticking out amongst the dark glossy leaves. She banged the door with her foot. The leg, which had been wavering up and down in its function as a counterbalance, went still.

  She held her breath and tried to decide what kind of face she should wear. Not the suspicious glare he’d received on their first meeting, that was for sure. But grinning inanely didn’t seem fitting either. In the end, she didn’t have a chance to decide between ‘calm indifference’ and ‘professional friendliness’ because the leg was suddenly joined by the rest of him as he jumped back on to the path, rubbing his hands together to rid them of loose dirt, and looked in her direction.

  She held up his cup of tea and then, when his face had broken into a broad grin, she breathed out. He was obviously really thirsty because he practically ran to the door and swung it wide. She thrust the mug towards him, ignoring the plop of hot liquid that landed on her hand as she did so.

  He took it from her, smiled again and took a big gulp. ‘Fantastic. Just how I like it. Thanks.’

  Louise took a little sip out of her own chunky white mug. ‘No problem. It’s the least I can do.’

  Ben leaned back against one of the shelves and took another long slurp of tea. He seemed completely at ease here. She tried to copy his stance, making sure she was a good five feet away from him, but she couldn’t work out what to do with her legs and stood up straight again.

  ‘Um…about payment…’

  Ben raised his eyebrows.

  ‘I can’t let you go on doing all this for nothing.’

  He shrugged. ‘It started as a labour of love. I’m just sorry I haven’t been able to do more.’

  He wasn’t making this easy. All she wanted to do was to work out what the going rate was and write him a cheque. She didn’t want him to be nice. Men who were nice normally had a hidden agenda.

  She put her mug down on the only spare bit of space on the shelf nearest her and drew herself taller. Only he didn’t make that easy either. Her five-foot-eight wasn’t too far away from his six-foot-plus height, but however much she straightened her spine, drew her neck longer, she still felt small beside him. But this was no time for weakness. She was the boss. She was in charge.

  ‘Well, if you could just let me know how much you’d routinely charge for this sort of job…’

  He drained his mug and looked at her with a more serious light in his eyes. ‘I can’t say any of my ‘routine’ work resembles this in the slightest.’

  Louise crossed one booted foot in front of the other and a corner of her mouth r
ose. Oh, this was his game. Make it seem like he nobly didn’t want anything, but sting her with an exorbitant price when it came to the crunch. And, if he played this game well, she was probably supposed to be shaking his hand and thanking him profusely for being so generous when the moment came.

  She folded her arms, but only had to unfold them as he handed her back the empty mug.

  ‘There’s no rush for money. I’ll send you a bill if you’re really desperate for one, though.’ He smiled, and it had none of the sharkish tendencies she’d expected after a conversation like that. ‘Thanks for the tea.’ And then he turned his back on her and returned his attention to a large plant with floppy leaves.

  If there was one thing Louise didn’t like, it was being ignored. It had been Toby’s favourite way of avoiding anything he didn’t want to talk about. All she’d had to do was utter the words, ‘You’re late. Where have you been?’ and the shutters had come down, the paper had been opened and the television switched on. Nobody liked to be rendered invisible. She coughed and Ben looked up.

  ‘No rush?’ She’d promised herself she wouldn’t be pushed around by any man again—ever. Okay, in her mind she’d meant significant others, but suddenly it felt important to stand her ground, to have this conversation on her terms. ‘I’d much prefer it if we could talk figures now.’

  He straightened again. ‘Fine. It’s just that I know you’ve just moved in, Mrs Thornton—’ The pause was just long enough to indicate that he hadn’t meant to say that. For the first time in their conversation he broke eye contact. ‘I thought you might like a little more time to get settled.’

  Louise felt her features harden. ‘Why are you being so nice to me?’

  Ben looked for all the world as if he hadn’t a clue what she was talking about. Boy, he was good. She’d almost fallen for that straight-talking, man of the earth and sky nonsense. He knew who she was, and he wanted something from her. Maybe not money, but something. People always did.