Harlequin Romance December 2020 Box Set

by Susan Meier, Sophie Pembroke, Jessica Gilmore

  He’s got a lot on his mind, she told herself sternly. Ever since his suspected heart attack he’d been preoccupied, obviously worrying. Just like her.

  But even before then he just assumed you liked working at Hartbury’s, a nagging, alternative voice reminded her.

  She shook it away. Her father had his faults, but she loved him anyway. He was her only real family since her mother died when she was twelve. And if he’d rushed into another marriage, another family, just a couple of years later, she knew well enough why he’d done it.

  For me. He wanted to give me a family again.

  She’d never had the heart to tell him that, as the years had passed, she’d felt less a part of a family with Hannah and the girls than she’d felt when it was just the two of them. How could she when he was trying so hard? And then, by the time she’d accepted that she would never be a real part of Hannah’s family, she’d recognised that her dad already was. She’d lost her mother, and she couldn’t risk losing him too by walking away from that new family.

  Damon was still waiting for a response, she realised. What did he want to know? Her favourite part of the job…

  ‘I like doing the windows,’ she said slowly, thinking. Never having been asked before, she’d not really thought about the answer. ‘They’re fun and creative and I like seeing the kids’ faces when they spot them.’

  ‘But they’re not your favourites?’ A traffic light turned green and Damon instantly pressed the accelerator and sped forward over a brief patch of empty road, changing lanes at speed.

  ‘I… I think I like the social media side of it more, actually. I didn’t think I would—I mean, communicating with people has never exactly been my strong point.’ She shot him a wry smile, and his gaze darted from the road to meet hers for a moment. He didn’t contradict her, which she appreciated. Too often her family spoke over her, telling the story of her life as they saw it—or as they wanted to see it—rather than the one she was actually living. Being allowed to narrate her own life story was strangely liberating.

  Or maybe he was remembering that one night where they’d talked almost until morning. Stop thinking about it, Rachel. That was a long time ago, and it wasn’t as if it had led anywhere anyway.

  ‘What do you love about it?’ Damon swung the car around a corner into a darkened street between two much taller buildings. Rachel couldn’t help but wonder how he knew his way around the city so well by car. She was reasonable enough at finding her way via the Tube, or on foot, at least in areas she knew. But she’d never even tried to drive in the city. It didn’t seem to faze Damon, though.

  But then, nothing really did. Even when he was a newly turned eighteen-year-old hanging out in their university flat, mostly to avoid being at home with his parents as far as Rachel could tell. Even then he’d had more confidence, more charm, than Rachel had ever dreamt of.

  It was the kind of confidence she saw in some of her fellow students—usually the ones who had money, or whose family name and title went back generations. The sort of confidence you had to inherit.

  Heaven only knew where Damon had got it, coming from the same family as Celeste. The Doctors Hunter, she knew from one awkward holiday visit, were academics, not aristocracy. They were well off enough, for sure, with a London town house many would envy. But while they, and Celeste, were always confident in their academic knowledge and their ability to be right, none of them had any talent for small talk or winning people over by force of personality rather than facts.

  Apparently Damon had got all the charm in the family. And boy did he know how to use it. He’d brought enough university students back to their flat for her to be sure of that.

  ‘So?’ He swung the car into a tiny parking space between two SUVs without even setting off the parking sensors. ‘What is it you love about social media?’

  ‘Um…’ Rachel tried to find the words to explain it, but before she could talk her phone started ringing loudly in her bag. Fumbling, she pulled it out. ‘Celeste,’ she explained, showing him his sister’s name on the screen.

  ‘Where are you?’ Celeste asked, as soon as she answered. ‘We’re starting filming any minute!’

  ‘We’re here, we’re here.’ Rachel opened the car door, trying not to crash into the neighbouring car as she tumbled out. ‘We’ll be there any second now, I promise.’

  ‘Okay. Hurry!’

  ‘You can tell me later.’ Damon nonchalantly clicked the button to lock the car, and strolled towards the entrance as if there were no rush at all. Rachel couldn’t help but watch him go.

  Wow, but he’d grown up well. He’d been gorgeous at eighteen, but these days he was something else. Broad at the shoulder, narrow at the waist and strong, muscular legs, she could tell, even through his suit trousers. The lamplight flickered on his dark hair. He looked like the final scene of a movie, walking away like that.

  ‘Come on,’ he called back over his shoulder, and Rachel hurried to catch up.

  She wasn’t wasting time on that daydream any longer. She had her own plodding plans to follow.

  One step at a time.

  * * *

  Well, this was hideous.

  Damon loved his sister, really he did, but that didn’t make him blind to her many, many flaws. Most obviously right now, an inability to back down from an argument when she was convinced she was right.

  The fact that she was always, always right hadn’t made this trait any easier to bear during his childhood years and, right now, it didn’t look as if it was making the situation easier for media darling Theo Montgomery, who had the bad luck to be hosting the Christmas Cracker Cranium Quiz.

  ‘All I’m saying is that the answer you have on that card is incomplete and gives the audience an incorrect view about Christmas traditions,’ Celeste said, her arms folded across the sparkly Christmas jumper Damon was certain had been foisted on her by the wardrobe department. He’d definitely never seen his big sister wear anything so…seasonal before. Or anything that wasn’t black or white, for that matter. Celeste lived in monochrome. Colour, it seemed, was too distracting from her aims of being right, being clever, and climbing the academic ladder at the London university where she, and both their parents, worked.

  Beside him in the audience, Rachel was visibly cringing, as if she were trying to disappear into her knitted dress. He couldn’t blame her. This was excruciating.

  He’d known it was going to go badly from the moment they’d arrived. Celeste had been waiting for them, just inside the building, wearing that incongruous sweater over her black jeans and tapping her foot impatiently.

  ‘What took you so long?’ she’d asked, grabbing Rachel’s arm and pulling her into step with her. ‘Let me guess, Damon was flirting with your stepsisters?’

  He couldn’t see Rachel’s face to gauge her reaction to that, but he imagined she was smiling. After all, that was what he did, wasn’t it? Flirt with pretty women in an irresponsible manner that resulted in him being late. If she were asked, he reckoned Celeste would say that was a reasonable assassination of his character.

  But to his surprise, Rachel had defended him. ‘Actually, it was my fault. I had to fix a window display before we left.’

  She didn’t mention that he’d then insisted on looking at all of them, and that that was what had actually made them late. He’d wondered why, but had put it down to Rachel just being nice like that.

  Now, watching Celeste and Theo go at it again over the correct pronunciation of the answer to what was only question five of a half-hour show, he figured she just hadn’t wanted to rile Celeste up any more than necessary. Not that it seemed to have helped.

  ‘Isn’t this supposed to be a “light-hearted, intellectual festive quiz”?’ Rachel asked, leaning close to whisper in his ear. Her hair smelled like something Christmassy although he couldn’t quite put his finger on exactly what. Something spicy, thou
gh. He liked it.

  ‘That’s what she told Mum and Dad at Sunday lunch the other week,’ he murmured back. ‘Of course, that didn’t make them any more enamoured with the idea of her doing it.’ They’d never really approved of any of Celeste’s TV, radio or podcast appearances, not even the classics-for-the-masses documentary ones. Not academic enough for them, apparently. Much like Damon himself.

  Maybe he and Celeste could have bonded over it, if she hadn’t still been a thousand times closer to being their perfect child than he could ever hope to be.

  Not that he wanted to be any more.

  ‘This does not feel light-hearted.’ Even in her whispered tone, he could hear how heartfelt that was. Rachel, he remembered, didn’t like conflict. Presumably that was why she let her stepsisters walk all over her the way they seemed to. He couldn’t imagine why else she wouldn’t take a stand against their petty meanness.

  Up on set, Theo made a joke that made the other contestants laugh nervously. Celeste just glowered at him some more.

  He’d known that Theo and his sister were going to clash from the moment they’d entered the studio. Celeste might have fancy make-up on and her hair done in artful curls in a way she’d never bother to do herself, but underneath she was still the girl he’d grown up with. The big sister who could never let anything lie, could never move on from a fight without him admitting that she’d been right all along. The one who wrote long, persuasive essays then read them out to their parents to convince them to do things her way.

  So when Theo had swept over to introduce himself, TV-star smile in place, all easy friendliness and ‘let’s all just get along and have some fun’ vibes, Damon had known that he and Celeste were going to hate each other. True to form, from the moment he’d shaken Theo’s hand, Celeste had been glaring at the presenter.

  He could almost hear her thoughts: Too suave, too smooth, only here because of his face and his name—because who didn’t know that Theo Montgomery was one of those Montgomerys?—and doesn’t know anything about the subjects we’ll be answering questions on.

  If there was anything Celeste hated more than people thinking she was wrong, it was people who thought they were right when actually they just didn’t understand the argument. Sometimes, they didn’t even know they were arguing in the first place, but, in the Hunter family, everything was either a competition or an argument. Often both.

  He suspected Theo had foreseen the potential clash too because he’d turned the charm up another couple of notches. A bad move because, as Damon could have predicted, it only made his sister bristle more. Celeste hated people who were all style and no substance.

  Damon assumed his sister tolerated him because he was family. Or maybe because Rachel had told her she had to. Sometimes he thought Celeste’s friendship with Rachel was the only thing that had stopped his sister turning into their parents years ago.

  The bristling between Theo and Celeste had now apparently turned into televised warfare. Damon had no idea how anybody was going to edit this to make it a ‘light-hearted festive quiz’ to air in the weeks before Christmas. He was just very glad it wasn’t his job.

  The director called for a break after the latest set of questions, and the whole studio audience gave a sigh of relief. Damon suspected that someone would be talking to his sister right now about appropriate quiz-show behaviour.

  He’d have done it himself, but at that moment he spotted a young woman with a clipboard making her way along the rows of the audience, talking to people as she went—and those audience members getting up and walking out of the studio.

  Hmm. Was that because of Celeste or something else?

  ‘Hang on,’ he said to Rachel, and vaulted over the empty front-row seats to accost the girl with the clipboard. If there was something else more interesting going on somewhere, he wanted in.

  Or, more specifically, out of this passive-aggressive rerun of all his worst childhood dinners.

  And if he was getting out, he was taking Rachel with him.

  * * *

  Damon returned, smiling broadly, accompanied by a besotted-looking production assistant with a clipboard. The poor girl had spent barely three minutes in his company and she already looked half in love.

  It was somewhat reassuring to know he had that effect on everybody, not just Rachel.

  Right now, however, she was starting to worry he’d lost his mind.

  ‘They want us to…what?’ Rachel frowned, running his words through her mind again. They still didn’t make any sense.

  ‘Bring in the new year with a bang!’ Damon said, beaming.

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘On the…’ she checked the date dial on her watch to make sure she wasn’t imagining things ‘…first of December?’

  ‘Apparently so!’ Damon was still grinning at the idea, so Rachel turned to the girl with the clipboard for some sort of explanation.

  ‘We’re filming our New Year’s Eve countdown and party show a few doors down,’ the assistant said. ‘But there’s some sort of problem on the Tube, and half our booked partygoers haven’t shown up, so we’re recruiting volunteers from other studio audiences right now.’

  Rachel blinked. ‘Wait. Is this the countdown show that goes out live on New Year’s Eve? You know, the one that, well, counts down to midnight?’

  The girl’s pupils slid sideways as she broke eye contact. ‘We never actually say it’s live.’

  ‘Come on, Rach, you didn’t really think all those celebrities they have on had nothing better to do on New Year’s Eve than hang out in a TV studio with the ordinary people, did you?’ Damon asked.

  It could have sounded cruel, mocking, and maybe from someone else it would. But Damon, standing just about far enough behind the production assistant that she couldn’t see his face, followed up his words by widening his eyes, shrugging, and mouthing, ‘Me neither.’

  Rachel stifled a laugh. ‘Well, obviously not. So what would we have to do, exactly?’

  The production assistant—the access card on the lanyard around her neck said her name was Amy—shrugged. ‘Just, well, you know. Party. Dance. Have fun.’ She looked Rachel up and down, and she could feel her taking in her oversized knit dress, her mostly make-up-free face, and her curls with a clear headband shoved in them to keep them out of her face. ‘Do you think you can manage that?’

  No.

  Partying wasn’t exactly her sort of thing. Even at university she and Celeste had been more the ‘cups of tea and watching a movie on a Friday night’ sort of students. In fact, the only parties she remembered them going to were ones Damon had somehow got them invited to during his regular visits.

  Like the one where we lost Celeste and spent all night together looking for her… Not thinking about it.

  The point was, she wanted to party. Even at university she’d wanted to get out there and meet new people. She just hadn’t had—still didn’t have—the confidence to try, and staying in with Celeste had been more comfortable and less stressful all round.

  She should stay and support Celeste now in this show, however excruciating it was to watch her battling with the host. Somewhere in the back of her mind, though, a long-silenced voice was screaming at her to go. To have fun. To dance and party with Damon, just as she’d wanted to at eighteen.

  Rachel ignored the voice, as usual. It wasn’t in the plan.

  Damon, however, had other ideas.

  ‘Of course she can!’ he said, gleefully. Grabbing her hand, he tugged her around the row of seats he’d vaulted over, then wrapped an arm around her shoulder to hold her close against him. ‘You should have seen this one party at university! Trust me, she’s an animal!’

  Amy the production assistant looked understandably dubious. Damon gave Rachel’s shoulder a little shake, and she forced a smile. ‘I’d love to help with the New Year countdown show,�
�� she said.

  It felt as if the words were coming from another person’s mouth. Or as if she were a puppet, controlled by Damon, saying something she’d never imagined saying in real life. If she’d ever let Damon drag her along to such a thing she’d have always made it clear it wasn’t her idea so if it went horribly wrong she could duck out of any responsibility, or anyone thinking she’d believed for a moment she could do it in the first place.

  But no, something had made her actually say what she wanted to do, and take responsibility for it.

  She had a suspicion it was the way Damon was pressed up against her side, the fresh scent of his aftershave filling her every breath, and her whole body tingling with awareness of his closeness. Clearly his proximity had messed with her neural network, the part that made thoughts into words. It was the only explanation.

  ‘Well, great,’ Amy said, marking down another tally on her clipboard to add to the others from the audience. Then she paused, and looked up at Rachel again. ‘Um… I don’t suppose you have something more…partyish you could wear, do you? I mean, I can see if anyone’s free in hair and make-up to help with that, but I’m not sure whether wardrobe will have anything…appropriate.’

  She meant in the right size, Rachel realised. Most of the shows filmed here seemed to feature those perfect size-six women, and Rachel was happy to admit she wasn’t that.

  She was short, curvy and healthy. Normally, that was enough for her. But here and now…she looked around the rest of the audience, queuing to take part in the New Year party—probably as an escape from the festive quiz show from hell. They all seemed to have dressed up rather more for the occasion than she’d thought to. Her usual policy was to wear clothes that enabled her to fade into the background. After all, if no one was going to notice her, it didn’t much matter what she wore.

  But if she was going to be on TV—actually on TV, not just sitting in the audience next to Damon, who would draw everyone’s attention anyway—then suddenly her comfy old jumper dress and leggings didn’t feel entirely appropriate. Especially not for what was supposed to be the party of the year.