Gorgeous Reads for Christmas (Choc Lit)

by Sue Moorcroft

  Ross caught up with Casey halfway down Queen’s Road. ‘She didn’t mean anything, Case. Darcie’s cool.’

  ‘She hates me,’ she sniffed, touching delicate fingertips to the black make-up around her eyes.

  He halted her with a hand on her arm. For once, she didn’t shake him off. ‘She doesn’t hate you,’ he contradicted, softly, noticing the delicacy of the bones in her arm, the way her hair blew over his hand in the breeze. ‘She’s like loads of oldies – gets hung up on things that don’t matter. She’ll realise you didn’t mean to scratch the table.’

  ‘I did.’ Casey started off down the hill again.

  He had to run to catch up. ‘What? Why?’ he demanded, stupefied.

  Head down so that her hair veiled her face, Casey’s voice was tight and high. ‘Because she talked to me as if I was shit.’

  Ross hurried beside her, trying to process the information, to comprehend the bitterness that would make Casey’s action acceptable. Or, at least, understandable. Casey was completely silent as they waited to cross the junction.

  Then, before Ross could decide on what to say, Ben appeared from the corner shop. ‘Hey, Ross. Hey, Casey, did you get that phone off your mate?’

  And Casey seemed to forget her tears. She reached in a pocket of her bag. ‘You interested at eighty quid?’

  Ben whistled and pulled an unhappy face. ‘Crap. Eighty?’

  Ross looked at him sympathetically. He hated to see Ben in bother like this. ‘Lot of dosh, eh?’

  Ben had paled beneath his freckles.

  Casey closed the zip of her bag with an angry tug. ‘You don’t have to have it! Just go admit to your oldies that you’ve lost your phone, they’ll buy you a new one. Middle-class parents and all that. Maybe they’ve got it insured.’

  Casey stared across the road while Ben fidgeted miserably.

  Ross wondered whether if he put his arm round Casey casually, now, she’d let him, or whether she’d still push him off even with Ben there. She probably would, he decided. She wasn’t strong enough on tact not to make him look a dork in front of mates.

  ‘Let’s see the phone,’ Ben sighed. ‘My parents said that if I lost this one I’d have to do work around the house till it was paid for. That’ll be months.’

  Slowly, Casey opened the zip again. Fishing inside, she came out with a black iPhone. ‘How are you going to explain that you’ve changed your number?’

  Ben’s expression lightened. ‘I thought I’d scratch this micro card so it won’t work, act all disappointed and bewildered, then they’ll just get me another.’

  Casey nodded. ‘No need to knacker up a decent one, then.’ Delving back into her bag she brought out a different card. ‘This is an old one of mine that doesn’t work.’ Deftly she made the change, then passed over the phone.

  ‘Just like your old one,’ Ross commented, to cheer Ben up.

  ‘Except the screen isn’t scratched and you can read the buttons,’ Ben observed. ‘My parents might notice.’

  ‘Well, it’s reconditioned,’ Ross pointed out, reasonably. ‘If you don’t want it, just give it back. Casey’s mate will understand.’

  Ben turned the phone over and over. ‘Even with the money left over from my birthday, I’ve only got seventy-five. My parents took my holiday money to change it into euros.’

  ‘Not enough,’ said Casey.

  Ross saw Ben’s wretched expression. He knew Ben hated being in trouble with his parents because they grounded him for, like, absolutely ever over the slightest little thing. And he was going on holiday with Ben’s family in a few days, he could do without them grinding on about the lost phone all the time.

  ‘I’ll put the fiver in for you till you can pay me back,’ he offered.

  Ben’s face lit up. ‘Thanks, Ross.’

  Casey put out her hand for the money.

  ‘I want to show you something. Can you come out with me for a walk?’

  Darcie jumped. She’d been half-asleep over tedious spreadsheets on her laptop and hadn’t heard Ross come in. She blinked, sleepily.

  Ross's chin jutted determinedly. ‘Only take half an hour.’

  She stretched and rubbed her eyes. ‘OK. What’s going on?’

  ‘I just want to show you something.’

  Curious, Darcie pulled on trainers and zipped up a green fleece to follow him through the dull evening streets, downhill, past the shop still open and shedding a pool of yellow light, across Peterborough Road at the traffic lights, and then uphill at the other side. She had no trouble working out that they were heading for the drab beige brick streets of Blossom End, where the front doors were painted one colour per court and inadequate car parks ranged around the fort-like outer walls.

  Reaching the fringes of the estate, Ross led the way across a car park then halted in one of the wide entranceways into the estate.

  He put his hand on Darcie’s shoulder to pull her close and share his eyeline across an irregularly shaped patch of green to a point where a row of houses overlapped another. One house stood out from its neighbours like a troll at a fairy’s birthday party. The front garden was a mass of thigh-high grass doing a bad job of hiding a fridge, a pram, parts of a moped and a miscellany of stuff too rusted to be identifiable. A small area of the house's outside wall was charred. The net curtains matched only in their uniform colour of tobacco-brown, and one window was boarded over.

  Ross’s hair flickered against Darcie’s temple, their heads close together. ‘Hear that?’

  She didn’t have to ask what he meant. A woman’s voice carried to them from within the house, muffled and indistinct but obviously scaling the heights of anger, yelling out hatred and frustration and pain.

  ‘I wanted you to see how Casey lives,’ Ross muttered, jamming his hands in his pockets.

  Darcie stared at the ugly house. Neglect emanated from it like a curse.

  Chapter Five

  Jake had quite enjoyed spending the last few days with Kelly. When Kelly had offered him her sofa it had been for a two-week visit but – with a couple of big sighs – she’d extended the invitation to cover him getting over the awful ignominy of being sacked. It was a bit of a squash and his duvet slid off the sofa whenever he turned over in his sleep, but he could put up with it. They’d talked a lot and watched all of the Die Hard movies in her tiny pink brick apartment on an estate that hadn’t existed five years ago, a five minute walk from the older, tree-filled, red-brick and render part of town where they used to live with their parents, and Darcie still lived.

  He felt a bit guilty that he’d stayed away from Bettsbrough for so long, although Kelly hadn't complained. Bettsbrough was OK, a typical market town, very English; pretty enough with the farm fields round and the river running at the edge, stately red-brick Victorian buildings gracing the town centre.

  Kelly had visited him twice in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and teased him about him having too much of a good time at SpaGrimmlausch, to make the trip home. He’d agreed that that must be it.

  He hadn’t told her that her best friend had laid her long artistic hands on his heart and left a scar, still waiting to heal.

  There had been an otherworldliness in hooking up with Darcie. How had that giggling, annoying little kid from school grown up into such a beautiful, creative, intelligent woman that he felt himself getting tight and heavy every time he saw her? He wished he could get over the crushing knowledge that he’d allowed himself to get emotionally naked with her, just for her to stick with Dean. As if she’d tried Jake out and found Dean better. As if that night had meant so little. She wasn’t to have known, of course, that he’d been fighting feelings for her for a while; fighting because she’d been an item with Dean for nearly a year and he wasn’t normally the guy that got involved in other people’s relationships. Life was complicated enough. But that night – that night – there had been a spontaneous party at his old place, an attic flat overlooking North Park, in town. Kelly had been promoted at work; the local paper had run a gr
eat piece on Darcie and her cottage industry; and Jake, who had been going through a host of interviews, had been offered three jobs, all in one week. SpaGrimmlausch had been the joker, the job he’d applied for without thinking he had a chance. Would he ever have taken it if things had worked out differently with Darcie …?

  The party had begun as a collection of friends eating takeaway Chinese food and drinking wine. Dean, perhaps because he wasn’t one of those being patted on the back for their various achievements, had gone home early on the pretext of a headache. A couple of people had declared heavy days to wake up to and had caught a lift with him. Kelly wanted to impress a guy from work she’d brought with her, and had gone off to catch a late showing French film at the local cinema. They drifted away until only he and Darcie, caught up in an absorbing discussion about the meaning of life or the rules of scrabble, or something, remained.

  He’d been entranced by her expressive face, the way she leaned her head back as time passed, making her slender throat an almost irresistible destination for his mouth. And he’d suddenly said, ‘Is Dean “the one”, Darcie?’

  She’d paused, an arrested expression stealing over her features. Then her eyebrows lifted, as if making a discovery. ‘He can’t be, or I’d know, wouldn’t I?’

  ‘So you’re with him because …?’

  The eyebrows plunged as she struggled to analyse her wine hazed feelings. ‘I like him,’ she decided, finally. ‘I enjoy his company.’ She nodded, as if agreeing with herself. Then she pulled a face. ‘When he’s not being high maintenance.’ Finally, she shrugged. ‘It’s not as if there’s anyone else.’

  And so he'd given in to his urge, moving in slowly, gently, giving her time to repel his advances if she wanted to, and touched his lips to hers. ‘There’s me.’

  She hadn’t pushed him away. Her light brown eyes had grown larger. ‘Seriously?’

  He’d let his lips travel across her cheek, brushing her ear, her neck, every hair on his body rising as he explained that he had feelings for her, the kind he was finding it hard to ignore. Unexpected feelings. He’d just been watching her laughing with Kelly one day, and – literally – felt himself falling. ‘It’s bloody disconcerting,’ he’d said.

  And she’d lifted her hand and run her long fingers through his hair. ‘I know. It happened for me ages ago. I just didn’t think you thought of me like that.’

  He hadn’t asked for details. Just pulled her into his arms and, not much later, into his bed, buzzing with heat and excitement and the sensation of something amazing happening.

  Until the next day. When she’d told him that she hadn’t ended things with Dean. ‘I found that I care too much,’ she'd begun, as if expecting him to completely understand her caprice.

  Instead, his shock and hurt had poured out in a couple of venomous sentences halted only by her flying coffee cup. And that was when he'd turned and walked away, ignoring her hurt, surprised eyes. He was the injured party, right? He'd returned home and accepted the job at SpaGrimmlausch. Efficiently, he'd given up his flat, sold his car, put his furniture in store, and gone, without speaking to Darcie again, putting some ocean and a couple of countries between them.

  He hadn’t seen her again until last Saturday night, when she’d looked amazing in a dress that had shown a lot of her long legs, taking her defiantly over six feet in her spike heels. He’d enjoyed watching her stalk and wiggle her way through the evening like a sexy heron. Enjoyed watching her dance. Talk. Laugh. Wearing her hair up had made her look taller than ever and set him on fire. He'd longed to pull her against him and set his mouth to the soft skin of her nape.

  Or haul her up toe to toe and tell her just how out of order she'd been when he’d put aside what he considered his justifiable sense of injury to ring her when Kelly had told the terrible news about her mum and dad. He'd been ready to fly home and ... well, do something to help her. He was hazy on what, as Dean had still been in the picture. But the point was he'd been ready to abandon his brand new job for her.

  And she'd dismissed him in a few snapping words.

  He knew from Kelly that Darcie dated only casually since Dean. At the party, the urge to chance his arm with her again had grown to the realms of overwhelming, but it had clashed with his wounded pride, making him prickly, sarcastic and way too blunt. Guarding against the hurt blazing inside him had made what he wanted to say come out wrong. And then he’d been staring after Darcie’s rigid back.

  He gazed, now, at the sitting room ceiling, listening to his sister moving around upstairs. As she had to get to her job in an advertising and promotions agency in Peterborough he was careful to leave the bathroom and kitchen at her disposal during her morning routine. All he had to get up for, after all, was to face the sexy heron, bound to jab at him with her long spiky beak when she heard his news.

  Jake left his car in the car park and walked up to the workshops so that Darcie had no chance to see him arrive. He’d timed his visit for lunchtime, hoping that she might be more approachable if she was due to take a break.

  It seemed as if his strategy was sound because she was just taking a step back to bend a critical gaze on a completed lampshade of cream and amber glass as he stepped into her workshop. She glanced up, and froze.

  ‘Can we talk?’ He glanced back out at the blue sky. ‘It’s a fabulous day. How about a walk to the Boatman, on the embankment?’

  She looked wary. Her hair was pulled back, her sleeves rolled up; she wore faded green trainers and jeans. Somehow, she looked even hotter than she had on Saturday. ‘Why?’

  He smiled. ‘Because I have something to tell you that you’re probably going to hate, but it’s going to happen anyway, so I’m looking to make it happen with as little stress as possible. And even if I'm high on your shitlist, we need to put stuff behind us.’

  She watched him for several seconds without smiling back. Then, ‘OK.’ In a few decisive movements she grabbed up a denim jacket, a bag, and a bunch of keys, and waved him outside, where the sunshine had a lemony early summer glow, although clouds were assembling over Bettsbrough. Whilst she locked up her workshop, he gazed in the other direction, over the fields rolling away from the town, lush green and electric yellow. Birds sang loudly from nearby May trees blossoming dark pink against the sky.

  There was no need to discuss the route. They both knew the footpath that would lead them to the river and where to cross to the Boatman pub. Darcie paced beside him until, as if they were still kids, they climbed a barred gate into a cornfield and followed the hedgerow until they could push through the spiky hawthorn onto the river bank, and follow the flow to the place where a fat, black pipe emerged from one river bank and buried itself in the other.

  ‘I’ve never known what the pipe carries,’ Jake said, to break the silence. ‘I’m not sure I want to.’

  Half-circlets of spikes like the Statue of Liberty’s crown guarded each end of the pipe, as if that would keep anyone off, and they stepped carefully over. In the middle of the pipe, Jake halted to watch the water. They’d perched there a hundred times when they were in their teens – probably with Kelly between them to stop them arguing. He wondered when he would officially be too old to act like a teenager. Below, the water hurried away, olive green and spangled by the sun. If either of them fell they’d be lucky to get out of the river face up. The banks were perpendicular, a faller would have to fight the current long enough to scramble out downstream in the brief moment where the bank dipped to the water before the nearby weir’s powerful undertow began to drag.

  Jake had survived the ride once, at sixteen, when he’d pulled it off by exerting all his strength and using every drop of the adrenalin produced by blind, bloody helpmeMum panic to get out as he battled the weir’s deadly pull.

  He shook the memory off, and glanced at Darcie. A Darcie devoid of animation. Staring into the gloomy water she looked as if a decent gust of wind might topple her down to meet it.

  ‘Don’t jump.’ he begged flatly. ‘I don’t w
ant to be a hero.’

  For the first time, her eyes flickered with the ghost of a smile. ‘Don’t worry, you’re not.’

  ‘Look,’ he said, gently. ‘I can tell you’re not pleased to see me. I’m sorry I was an arse on Saturday. I don’t suppose you’ll believe me if I say that I didn’t mean to upset you. We’ll put it in our past with all the other stuff, shall we? Because I’m going to be in Bettsbrough for at least two months and we’ll run into one another. I don’t want you to get frosty every time we meet because I don’t want Kel to feel awkward.’

  She shrugged. ‘We can make it so we don’t meet that often.’

  He hesitated, then turned on the curved surface and climbed over the other row of spikes, glancing back to make sure that Darcie didn’t need help. She didn’t. He waited until they both had their feet firmly on the bank where the cow parsley was frothing into bloom. ‘Actually, we can’t. We’ll meet most days, probably.’ And then, when her eyebrows shot up, ‘Auntie Chrissy wants to take a couple of months off to satisfy her inner hippy and travel across Europe with some friends in a minibus. I’ve agreed to run the gallery shop for her, while she does.’

  Chapter Six

  Darcie stared at him for a full ten seconds. Her lips were parted in shock, her eyebrows curved into fierce little crooks. ‘That’s all I need.’

  It surprised a laugh out of him. ‘I didn’t accept her offer just to piss you off. It gives me breathing space. She’s been yearning to go on the trip but didn’t want to lose the gallery shop, because she loves working there and she can’t expect Fiona to work seven days a week for two months to cover. It seemed like a Godsend to her when I turned up. Her friends have been preparing for the trip for months, so all she has to do is pack up and go. She leaves on Sunday week and I’m going to do her job and housesit for her while I decide what to do next, and when she comes home she can just slot back into her old life without having lost anything.’