by Liz Fielding
‘She knows I love her,’ he protested. ‘I’ve given her everything she’s ever wanted. Ever asked for.’
‘Except yourself. She wants you, here, in her life. Not some Santa figure with a bottomless cheque book, but a father. She’s afraid that you’ve only come to close down the garage, tidy up the loose ends, and she’s desperately afraid that this time when you leave you’ll never come back.’
‘How can you know that?’ he demanded, not wanting to believe it.
‘Because I tested everyone. Not with tears or tantrums, I just withheld myself. Made nannies, governesses, teachers, even my grandfather prove that they weren’t going to go away and never come back, the way my parents had.’
‘I came back.’
‘How often? Once a year? Twice?’ She put her hands on his shoulders, forced him to look at her. ‘How much do you want to be a father?’ she demanded. ‘Final answer.’
‘Enough not to turn a blind eye to hot-wiring cars or making secret plans to meet up with boys.’
‘Right answer,’ she said, with a smile that made the lights seem dim. ‘Come on, let’s go and say hello.’
‘Hello?’ he said, staying put. ‘That’s it?’
‘It’s a start.’
‘But-’
Annie felt for him. She could see that he wanted to go over there and grab that boy by the throat, demand that he never come near his precious little girl.
‘Open your eyes, open your ears, George. Listen to what she’s telling you. She wants you to be part of her life but you’re going to have to accept that she’s a young woman.’
George tore his gaze from his daughter and looked at her advocate. Passionate. Caring.
‘You’re not talking about her,’ he said. ‘You’re talking about yourself.’
She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. It was obvious. When she was six years old her life had changed for ever. At sixteen she’d become a national icon and had never had the freedom to meet a boy in town. Test herself. Make mistakes.
She knew everything. And nothing. But it was the everything that was important.
‘Okay,’ he said, ‘let’s go and say hello.’
‘And?’ she said, still pushing him.
‘And what?’
‘And ask him if he likes Chinese food,’ she said.
He took a deep breath. ‘Let’s go and say hello. And ask him if he likes Chinese food.’
‘You ask him while I get the skates,’ she said, straightening, taking a step back. ‘What size do you take?’
‘Skates?’ He groaned. ‘Please tell me you’re kidding.’
‘I’ve only got a week. Less. I’m not missing out on a single opportunity.’
‘Couldn’t you just wait until you go home?’ he asked. ‘Get your personal assistant to call some Olympic champion to give you a twirl around the ice?’
‘I could,’ she agreed, ‘but I wouldn’t be that self-indulgent.’ He was being facetious, she knew. He’d briefly let down his guard and now he was using sarcasm to keep her at a distance. No deal. If he wanted her distant, he was going to have to let her go. ‘And, anyway, where would the fun be in that?’
‘You’re saying that you’d rather go out there and be pushed, shoved, fall over, make a fool of yourself in public?’
‘Exactly like everyone else,’ she said, ‘but I don’t need you to hold my hand. If you’d rather watch from the sidelines I’d quite understand.’
George growled with frustration.
She was an enigma. A woman of supreme confidence who was at home with the powerful and the most vulnerable. Touchingly innocent and yet old beyond her years. Clear-sighted when it came to other people’s problems, but lost in the maze of her own confusion.
On the surface she had everything. She had only to express a wish for it to be granted. Any wish except one. The privacy to be herself.
He regarded her-her eyes were shining with a look of anticipation that he’d seen before-and for a moment he forgot to breathe as he revised the number of impossible items on her wish list to two.
The second should have been tailor-made for a man who had made a life’s work of the no-strings-attached, mutually enjoyable sexual encounter. It was the perfect scenario. A beautiful woman who would, in the reverse of the Cinderella story, on the seventeenth of December change back into a princess.
But Annie had, from the first moment she’d turned that penetrating gaze full on him, set about turning his life upside down.
Within twenty-four hours of meeting her he was beginning to forge a shaky relationship with his daughter, was talking to his father and found himself thinking all kinds of impossible things both before and after breakfast.
And accepting one irrefutable truth.
If he made love to Annie, he would never be able to let her go.
But she wasn’t Annie Rowland. She was Lady Roseanne Napier and, no matter what her eyes were telling him, they both knew that she could never stay.
‘Well?’ she demanded impatiently.
‘Have you ever been on ice skates?’ he asked.
‘No, but they’re all doing it,’ she said, turning to look at the figures moving with varying stages of competence across the ice. ‘How hard can it be?’
‘They all had someone to hold their hand when they did it for the first time.’
Skating he could do. Holding her hand, knowing that he would have to let go, would be harder, but a few days of being ordinary would be his gift to her. Something for her to look back on with pleasure. For him to remember for ever.
She looked back at him, hesitated.
‘What are you waiting for?’ he asked. ‘Let’s go and get those boots. Just don’t complain to me when you can’t move in the morning.’
‘What about Xandra?’ she asked. ‘That boy?’
He glanced at them, sitting on the bench talking, laughing.
‘They can take care of the bags.’
Annie felt the pain a lot sooner than the next morning. She’d spent more time in close contact with the ice than gliding across it-would have spent more but for George-and had been laughing too much to waste time or breath complaining about it.
George was laughing too as he lifted her back onto her feet for the umpteenth time. ‘Hold onto my shoulders,’ he said as he steadied her, hands on her waist, then grabbed her more tightly as her feet began to slide from beneath her again. Too late. They both went down.
‘Have you had enough of this?’ he asked, his smile fading as, ignoring the skaters swirling around them, he focused his entire attention on giving her exactly what she wanted. ‘Or do you want to give it one more try?’
One more, a hundred times more wouldn’t be enough, Annie knew. She wanted a lifetime of George Saxon’s strong arms about her, holding her, supporting her. A lifetime of him laughing at her, with her.
‘Aren’t we supposed to be shopping for lights?’ she said, looking away.
Xandra and her new boyfriend were leaning on the rail watching them. ‘Pathetic,’ she called out, laughing at the pair of them. ‘Give it up.’
‘She might have a point,’ Annie said, turning back to George.
‘She hasn’t the first idea,’ he said, his expression intent, his lips kissing close. And neither of them were talking about ice skating.
While the skaters whirled around them, in their small space on the ice the world seemed to stand still as they drank in each other. Every moment.
‘Come on,’ Xandra called. ‘Dan knows a great place to buy lights.’
Annie scrambled to her feet and, for the first time since she’d stepped onto the ice, her feet were doing what they were supposed to as she glided gracefully to the edge of the rink with George a heartbeat behind her.
‘Dan?’ he said.
‘Dan Cartwright.’ The boy stuck out his hand. ‘We met this morning, sir. At the farm.’
‘I remember,’ George said, taking it.
The boy didn’t actually wince but he swallowed
hard.
‘I’m Annie,’ she said, holding out her own hand so that George was forced to relinquish his grip. ‘Shall we go and look at these lights?’
The tree lights were just the start. They piled icicle lights for the eaves, curtain lights for the walls, rope lights for the fence into their trolley. And then Annie spotted a life-size reindeer-driven sleigh with Santa himself at the reins and refused to leave without it.
‘We won’t be able to get it into the car,’ George protested.
‘Dan’s got a motorbike,’ Xandra said. ‘He’s got a spare helmet so I could go home on the back of that.’
‘No,’ he replied without hesitation. ‘You can’t.’
‘In fact,’ she said, carrying on as if he hadn’t spoken, ‘when I go to Maybridge High I’ll need some transport. You had a motorbike, didn’t you?’
Yes, he’d had a bike, but that was different. She was a…‘If you want to go to Maybridge High I’ll drive you there myself,’ he snapped back.
There was a pause, no longer than a heartbeat, while the reality of what he’d said sank in.
He would drive her. Be here. Change his life for her…
‘Oh, please!’ She rolled her eyes. ‘How pathetic would I look? Besides, Dan said he’d teach me to ride.’
‘I’ve never been on a motorbike,’ Annie cut in before he could respond. ‘Why don’t I go with Dan?’ Then, ‘Actually, I’d love a lesson too.’
‘No one is going on the back of Dan’s bike!’ he exploded. ‘And if anyone is going to teach anyone to ride anything, it will be me!’
‘Brilliant,’ Xandra said, then, just as he realised that he’d been stitched up like a kipper, she nudged him with her shoulder and said, ‘Thanks, Dad.’
Dad…
He looked at Annie. She had her hand to her mouth, confirmation that he hadn’t misheard, hadn’t got it wrong, but something amazing had just happened and he had to swallow twice before he could manage, ‘We could come and pick up the sleigh tomorrow in the four-wheel drive.’
‘Great. I can get my hair cut at the same time.’
‘Whatever you want, Annie,’ he replied, and meant it. ‘Now, shall we get out of here and pick up some food? Dan? Chinese?’
‘Well?’ Annie asked, giving a twirl so that George, who’d been waiting for her in a coffee shop opposite the hairdresser, could fully appreciate the stylish elfin cut that now framed her face. ‘What do you think?’
‘It doesn’t matter what I think,’ he replied. ‘The question is, are you happy?’
‘Absolutely,’ she said. ‘I love it. Even better, no one in there even suggested I looked like…anyone else.’
‘A result, then. Although when you reappear in public sporting your new look, they might just wonder.’
‘They might wonder, but I’ve got the pictures to prove I’m in Bab el Sama,’ she said, indicating a newspaper left by one of the café’s patrons. ‘Actually, that’s the one downside. Poor Lydia doesn’t get a choice in the matter. She’s going to have to have her hair cut whether she wants to or not.’
‘It goes with the job, but if it worries you buy her a wig for Christmas,’ he suggested.
‘You’re not just a pretty face,’ she said, slipping her arm in his. ‘Now, let’s take a look at this Christmas market.’
‘Really? What happened to hating Christmas?’
‘Not this Christmas,’ she said as they wandered amongst the little stalls decorated with lights and fake snow, admiring the handmade gifts and decorations. ‘The new memories I’ve made will make this a Christmas I will always cherish.’
‘That makes two of us,’ he said.
They drank gingerbread lattes to warm themselves, tasted tiny samples of every kind of food, bought some of it, then stopped at a stall selling silly seasonal headgear.
‘I have to have one of those,’ Annie said and George picked up an angel headband which he settled carefully on her head.
‘Uh-uh. The angel is on holiday.’ She pulled it off and replaced it with one bearing sprigs of mistletoe that lit up and flashed enticingly. ‘Let’s give this one a test run,’ she teased, closing her eyes and tilting her face to invite a kiss.
His cold lips barely brushed her cheek and, about to pull it off, ask the stallholder if he had something a little more effective, something in George’s eyes stopped her. Not the warning to behave that she anticipated, but the mute appeal of a man for whom one more kiss would be one too many. An admission that while he’d walked away from temptation it had not been easy. That he was on a knife-edge.
‘Perfect!’ she exclaimed brightly as she turned swiftly away to check the rest of the stall. ‘This for you, I think,’ she said, choosing a Santa hat. She wanted to put it on him, just as he’d put on the angel headband. Pull it down over his ears, cradle his dear face, kiss him so thoroughly that he’d fall.
Yesterday she might have done. Yesterday he’d been this sexy, gorgeous man who’d turned her on, lit her up like the Christmas tree in the square. Today, with one look, she knew that one kiss was never going to be enough. Understood what he’d known instinctively. That walking away after anything more would tear her in two.
So she simply handed him the hat and left him to pay for it, stepping quickly away to look at a stall selling handmade jewellery. Giving them both space to take a breath, put back the smiles, continue as if the world hadn’t just shifted on its axis.
She chose a pair of pretty snowman earrings for Xandra, a snowflake brooch for Hetty, a holly tie-tack for George’s father and had them put in little gift bags. Just something to thank them for accepting her as she was-no trappings, just ordinary Annie.
She didn’t buy anything for George.
She’d already given him her heart.
‘All done?’ he asked, joining her, and she nodded but, as they were leaving, she spotted the same angels that had been on sale at the Christmas tree farm and stopped. ‘I have to have one of those,’ she said.
‘You’re really getting into the Christmas thing,’ he said, taking the bag while she paid for the angel.
She shook her head. ‘It’s for the tree at King’s Lacey. A discordant note of simplicity amongst the ornate designer perfection to remind me…’ She faltered and, when he didn’t press her, she said, ‘Let’s go home.’
George gave the reindeer a final tug to test the fixing, making sure that it was secure.
‘Switch it on,’ he called down. ‘Let’s see if it works.’ He was leaving it as long as possible before he was forced to climb down. He felt safer up here on the roof, as far from Annie as he could get.
He’d known a week would be hard, he just hadn’t realised how hard. How hard he’d fallen.
He’d never believed in love at first sight and yet from the first moment he’d set eyes on her it had been there, a magnetic pull. Each day, hour, minute he spent in her company was drawing him closer to her. And the nearer he got, the harder it was going to be to break away.
She understood, he knew. Had been careful to keep her distance since that moment at the market when she’d lifted her face for a kiss-he’d kissed her before without invitation, after all-and he hadn’t been able to do it. Not kiss her and let her go.
She’d urged him to get involved with the renovation of Xandra’s car, build on the new start they’d made-not that he’d needed much encouragement. The moment when she’d called him ‘Dad’ had been a turning point. There was a long way to go, but he was here for the long haul and he’d spent a lot of time on the phone to Chicago, reorganising his life. But that had still left a lot of time to be together.
Time when she got into trouble trying to cook and needed a taster and he’d stayed to help.
Time around the table when, even when they weren’t alone, somehow there was a silent connection, something that grew stronger each day.
Time for quiet moments by the fire when his mother and Xandra were at the hospital. Not saying much. Not touching. Just looking up and seeing her cu
rled up in the chair opposite. Being together.
Perfect moments that had felt like coming home.
‘Xandra should do the official switch on,’ she called back. ‘It was all her idea.’
‘This is just a test run. She can do it properly later, when it’s dark.’
‘Okay…’ She put her hand on the switch, then said, ‘It gives me great pleasure to light up the Saxon family home this Christmas. God bless it and all who live in it.’
She threw the switch and the lights came on, twinkling faintly in the bright winter sunlight.
‘It’s going to look fabulous when it gets dark,’ Annie said, shading her eyes as she looked up at him. ‘You’ve done an amazing job with Santa. He looks as if he’s just touched down on the roof.’
There was no putting it off and he climbed down the scaffold tower. ‘I suspect I’ve broken at least half a dozen town planning laws,’ he said. ‘It’ll be a distraction for passing motorists and in all probability an air traffic hazard. And, as for cheering up my father when he gets home, he’ll undoubtedly have a relapse at the prospect of the electricity bill when he sees it.’
‘Phooey.’
He looked at her. ‘Phooey? What kind of language is that for the daughter of a marquess?’
‘Completely inappropriate,’ she admitted, looking right back at him, and they both knew that he was reminding her that time was running out. ‘Annie Rowland, on the other hand, can say phooey as much as she wants. So…Phooey,’ she said, clinging to these final hours. Then, turning back to the house, ‘Besides, you won’t be able to see it from the road. Well, apart from Santa up there on the roof. And the rest of the lights are energy efficient, so a very merry eco-friendly Christmas to you.’
‘I’ll bet you don’t have one of those on the roof of your stately home,’ he said a touch desperately. Reminding himself that she wasn’t Annie Rowland, that this was a little fantasy she was living. When the metaphorical clock struck midnight she would turn back into Lady Rose and drive off in a limo with chauffeur and bodyguard in attendance, return to the waiting Viscount and the life she was born to.