Kiss Me Under the Mistletoe

by Fiona Harper

  I’ve taken a break from filming. The doctor thinks the rest will help me fall pregnant.

  ‘No stress, Mrs Wallis,’ he says. He’s the only person I know who uses my married name. Everyone else just sees me as Laura Hastings. Apart from Dominic—who sees me as just Laura. And she’s a very different creature from her movie star namesake. Very different indeed.

  I thought it would get better, the ache inside, but if anything it’s got worse. I didn’t count on the way it would gnaw away at me, or the guilt that would magnify it.

  I know nothing happened between us, not really. I’d have had to kiss Dominic anyway—it was my job. Alex knows that and he doesn’t care. But I do feel horribly guilty. For loving a man who is not my husband. Especially as I now realise I never loved Alex properly, not the way I do Dominic. I mistook flattery, affirmation, a sense of security, for love. I needed Alex. To give me things I should have found inside myself.

  I hope he’s happy with me. He seems to be. Because now I realise I could have short-changed him badly by agreeing to be his wife. I should have waited. And maybe, if I had, fate would have found a way to give me Dominic.

  Louise stopped reading and wiped a tear from her eye. She’d never thought about it before, but that was exactly the same reason she’d married Toby. Not for who he was, but for all the things he could bring her. That was selfish, wasn’t it? She’d never loved him the way Laura loved Dominic, not even right at the start. She’d been too worried about not being good enough for him, of letting him down. Which made her seem humble, self-effacing, but those things had just been a smokescreen for being self-absorbed. It had all been about her.

  She gently closed the diary. No more tonight. It was too sad. And it was stirring up things she didn’t want to think about. Things that made her start to wonder if her divorce was a black and white matter, that maybe she’d contributed to the downhill spiral of her marriage …

  Perhaps she’d watch a DVD instead. She got up and walked over to the pile of cases near the television. Under one of Jack’s kids’ films, she found one that arrived in the post a couple of weeks ago that she’d forgotten about. A film that had been an impulse buy while she’d been browsing for books on Whitehaven and Georgian architecture.

  A Summer Affair.

  Feeling almost guilty, she slid it into the DVD player and returned to the sofa and zipped past the trailers to where the film started. Laura had been so beautiful when she’d been younger. Her ice-blonde hair, pale skin and blue eyes looked fabulous in gaudy nineteen-fifties Technicolor ®.

  The on-screen chemistry between Laura and Dominic was sizzling hot. She’d always thought that, but now she knew the story behind the story, every touch, every kiss had a bittersweet quality to it. She sighed and settled down to watch, a chenille cushion hugged to her chest.

  There was a scene halfway through the film, just after lovers had started to act on their feelings for each other that had been filmed on the balcony of the boathouse. A picnic was set out on a little table with a red and white checked cloth. The sun was shining, and shy, heated glances were flying between hero and heroine.

  Louise sighed. That was what love should be like, she mused as she covered her mouth with a hand to stifle a yawn—overly bright and colourful, the sun always shining. The zing of electricity in the air. And the way he looked at her—as if he could see right through her and into her soul. As if he wanted to drown in her. That was what love should be like.

  But it hadn’t worked for Laura, and it wouldn’t work for Louise.

  What a pity love was only like that in corny old movies, she thought, as the Richard pulled Charity into the shadowy interior of the boathouse and wrapped her in his arms.

  Louise’s eyes were closed. A gentle summer breeze warmed her skin and she could hear the waves half-heartedly lapping against the jetty below the balcony. She let out a long, therapeutic sigh, stretched her legs and opened her eyelids.

  The sky was the colour of cornflowers and the sun a glaring dot of white gold high above.

  ‘Perfect timing.’ The male voice was warm and lazy, and accompanied by the dull pop of a cork exiting a wine bottle. ‘I thought you were going to sleep all afternoon.’

  She shook her head and stood up. The chequered red and white cloth on the small table fluttered, lifted by the warm air curling in and out of the boathouse balcony. Self-consciously, she reached for the wine glass he offered her and dipped her head to hide behind the curtain of her hair.

  ‘Don’t do that. Not with me.’

  She froze, anticipation and vulnerability sending both hot and cold bolts through her simultaneously. He stepped forward and brushed the hair away from her face. His thumb was warm and slightly rough on the skin of her cheek. The tips of his fingers threaded through her hair until he held her head in his hand. She couldn’t help leaning into it, letting him support her.

  Slowly, he tipped her head until she was looking him in the eyes.

  ‘You don’t have to hide from me.’

  Oh, she would have given anything to believe that was true. Tears sprung to her eyes and clung to her lashes. Even in the bright sunshine, she could see his pupils growing, become darker and darker. But it wasn’t just desire she could see there. Deep in the blackness were the answers to all the questions she’d ever wanted to ask.

  Yes, the eyes said. Yes, you are good enough. Yes, you deserve to be loved like this.

  One tear escaped, pulled by gravity, and raced away down her cheek. She couldn’t move, not even to swipe it away. It carried on running as he continued to stare at her, his expression full of texture and depth, until it trailed down her neck.

  A question flickered across her face—she felt it as surely as the salty river air.

  Do you?

  He didn’t move a muscle, except to stroke the skin of her temple with the edge of his thumb. The eyes held the answer once again. Yes.

  Something inside her, something that had been clenched tight and hard for years, unfurled. And Ben Oliver stepped back into the cool darkness of the boathouse, pulling her with him and repeated his answer over and over again with his lips on hers.

  Louise woke up with a gasp, her eyes wide. The fire was little more than burnished embers and the film had ended. A blank blue screen bathed the room in an eerie light.

  She pressed a hand to her pounding chest. Just a dream. It had only been a dream. Calm down, you daft woman. Is this how pathetic you’ve become? A man shows you just a little bit of concern and neighbourly decency and your subconscious decides he’s the love of your life? Just how starved of affection have you been?

  Well, her subconscious could just think again. Starving or not, this was one meal she was going to refuse. All her brain had done was jumble up the events and people of her day with the events and characters of the late-night film. A simple crossing of wires, that was all. In the morning, when she was coherent again, she’d make sure everything was rerouted back the right way.

  She straightened the stiff arm she’d been lying on and was rewarded with a click. Serves you right for falling asleep in front of the telly, she told herself. Although love should be like falling in love in a cheesy old movie, it wasn’t. And it never would be. The sooner the logical side of her brain caught up with that fact, the better.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  At three-thirty the following afternoon, Louise still wasn’t sure of she’d won the battle with her subconscious. She pressed the doorbell on the Olivers’ cottage door and tried to work out where all the butterflies in her stomach had migrated from. Wherever it was, it seemed they were making themselves at home.

  There was a click and the door started to open. Louise stopped breathing.

  The blonde-haired woman who answered frowned slightly. ‘Yes?’

  Louise swallowed. ‘I’m … er … here to help Jasmine. Mr Oliver is expecting me.’

  The woman nodded, opened the door wide and Louise stepped inside and followed her into a funky, modern kitchen with
glossy red cabinets and a black granite work surfaces. Not exactly what she’d pictured Ben Oliver would have chosen but, then again, maybe he hadn’t chosen it. Maybe the now ex-Mrs Oliver had had something to do with it.

  Right there was a good reason to stamp on all the butterflies waltzing inside her. Both she and Ben had too much history, too much baggage.

  ‘Hey!’ Jasmine was sitting on a cushioned stool next to a breakfast bar with a glass counter. She jumped off and walked towards Louise, her hands in her pockets. A blush stained her cheeks and she looked at the floor as she came closer.

  Louise smiled. It didn’t seem that long ago that she’d been all awkward gestures and blushes herself. ‘Hey, yourself. Ready to bake?’

  Jas nodded. ‘Is Jack with you?’

  Louise shook her head. ‘He’s gone to football and then to a friend’s for tea.’

  ‘More cake for me, then!’ Jas said and giggled.

  ‘Is … um …’ Louise glanced at the anonymous woman, who was standing in the doorway, staring at her with undisguised curiosity. ‘Is everyone joining in?’

  ‘Oh, no.’ Jas shook her head. ‘Just you and me.’ She scowled at the woman, who took the hint and sloped away. ‘Don’t mind Julie. First of all, her nose is out of joint that she can’t stay and snoop on a famous person, but most of all she’s probably worried she won’t get as much child-minding money if you’re looking after me.’

  ‘Your dad’s not here?’

  ‘Nah. He doesn’t finish work until five o’clock and probably won’t be home until six. She looks after me until then most days.’

  Louise wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed. Relieved, she told herself quickly. It was much better to be relieved. Still, that didn’t explain the black hole that had opened up inside her tummy that the butterflies were now being sucked into.

  Even before Ben’s key had turned in the lock, the most amazing smells hit his nostrils: warm butter and cinnamon, sugar and vanilla. He’d been on a site visit most of the day and lunch had merely been a fleeting fantasy as he’d tried to explain to his client, in the most polite way possible, that his ideas for a visionary garden were actually going to be a blot on the landscape. His stomach rumbled, and he ordered it to get a grip.

  He didn’t want any cake. He didn’t want to be hungry for anything at all.

  He found Julie sulking in the sitting room reading a magazine. She really wasn’t the greatest substitute for the regular child-minder, but at least she’d been amenable to relocating to the cottage today so Jas could cook. With Louise.

  His stomach gave up growling and did something more akin to a backflip.

  Get a grip, Ben.

  It meant nothing. It would always mean nothing. He’d just not been on a date for a while, that was all. He nodded to himself as he made his way to the kitchen. That was it, he was sure. Lack of female company had left him a little hypersensitive to having a woman around. Especially a woman as beautiful as Louise Thornton. It was just his testosterone talking.

  But did it have to yell quite so loudly?

  His hand was almost on the kitchen door, but he snatched it back and veered off in the direction of his study. He closed the door firmly behind him and let out a long breath. Work would distract him. And he needed to update his files on today’s project and come up with something that fulfilled his client’s brief to be ‘ground-breaking’ and ‘organic’ without being hideously ugly.

  Instead of turning his computer on he reached for a large sketch-pad and a soft pencil. All his best ideas came when he did the designing the old-fashioned way. Somehow, just holding a pencil and having a creamy sheet of cartridge paper beneath it made him want to fill it with shapes and shading and curves, to change the blankness of the bare paper into something that came alive.

  He threw the pencil and pad down on his desk, took off his jacket and hung it over the back of his chair, then sat down and set to work, his empty stomach momentarily forgotten.

  Half an hour later, he stood back and surveyed his handiwork.

  Great, just great. Best ideas? What a laugh.

  He squinted at the drawing and then turned the pad ninety degrees. A long, low groan escaped from his mouth and he ran his hands over his face. He had a wedge-shaped paved area, a semi-circular lawn finished off with a small round water feature at the far side. In other words, the aerial view of the garden loosely resembled a giant cupcake with a cherry on top. Why, when he’d been thinking of lawns and borders, had he come up with this?

  Best thing to do was admit defeat. He should just go into the kitchen, say hello and then leave again, proving to himself he was just working himself up about nothing. And maybe this evening he would call his pal Luke and get him to set him up with one of his wife’s friends. Gaby had been trying to matchmake for more than a year now. Perhaps he should just put her out of her misery?

  Ben grinned, but it turned into a grimace. The truth was he didn’t really want to go out on a date with anyone. Nobody he’d met in the last couple of years had been anything more than pleasant company for an evening. No one had been the sort of woman he could envisage fitting into his and Jas’s lives. Even Camilla.

  Camilla had been stylish and intelligent and funny, but there’d just been no spark—even though he’d done his utmost to get something to ignite. For a while now, he’d just thought it would be better to wait until Jas was older. She deserved love and stability after all she been subjected to because of his and Megan’s mistakes, not a string of unsuitable girlfriends being tramped through the house. Not that he’d actually brought any of them home, anyway.

  Unsuitable. That was a good word.

  Louise Thornton was totally unsuitable, no matter how mouth-watering her cakes might be. Okay, she wasn’t the airhead the tabloids made her out to be, but her life was full of turmoil, and that was the last thing he and Jas needed at the moment. He’d do well to remember that.

  He pushed open the kitchen door and found exactly what he’d feared—turmoil. He blinked at the two females giggling on the other side of the room as a puff of icing sugar billowed up from a glass bowl and settled on them like microscopic snow. ‘Not that way …’ Louise was saying. ‘Gently!’

  Jas was laughing so hard she inhaled some of the icing sugar and started to cough and sneeze at the same time. Louise, who was starting to cough herself, started to pat Jas on the back. Neither of them had any idea he was there.

  He looked around the room. On every available space there were cake tins and wire racks, assorted cake ingredients and almost-clean mixing bowls with finger marks in them. Megan would have had a fit if she’d have seen her precious kitchen like this. It looked wonderful.

  ‘Dad!’ Jas spotted him, pulled away from Louise and ran over to him.

  ‘Jasmine.’ He tried very hard to keep a straight face. Someone had to bring some sanity into the proceedings.

  ‘Come and see what we’ve made!’

  Before he could argue, she slipped a sticky hand into his and pulled him across the kitchen to where a row of cooling racks stood, with various cakes, all in different stages of decoration. Louise was there, standing straight and tall. She’d been laughing a moment ago, but now her eyes were watchful and her mouth was clamped shut. He saw her gaze sweep around the kitchen.

  ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘We kind of got carried away.’

  He wanted to say something grown-up, sensible, but not one word that fit the bill entered his head. He was too distracted by the smudge of icing sugar on Louise’s nose.

  She blinked at him. ‘What?’

  ‘You’ve got—’

  Ben leaned forward, meaning to brush it away, but she stepped back and went cross-eyed trying to see what he was looking at. Then she rubbed at her nose with the heel of her hand, which only served to add a drop of jam to the proceedings.

  He stayed where he was. She could sort out herself out. It was better that way.

  Louise was staring at him. Slowly, she walked over t
o the double oven and checked her reflection in the glass door. He handed her a piece of kitchen towel and she took it, without looking at him, and dabbed at her face. When she stood up again, she was blushing.

  It was so unlike her normal, armour-plated façade that he couldn’t help but smile. ‘Much better.’

  She blushed harder and smiled back. ‘Good,’ she said quietly.

  Only, he wasn’t sure if it was better. There was something rather appealing about an icing-sugar covered, vanilla-smelling Louise Thornton in his kitchen. She seemed … real. Not unapproachably beautiful or spikily vulnerable. Just real.

  ‘It’s time we started clearing up, Jas.’ Louise reached for a tin and headed for the dishwasher.

  Ben waited for the whining to start, but Jas just nodded and started closing up bags of flour and putting egg cartons back into the fridge. He shook his head, then decided to put the kettle on—mainly to distract him from the rows of cupcakes, sitting silently on the counter, just waiting for someone to notice them. Saliva started to collect in his mouth and he found himself swallowing three times in a row.

  He turned round to offer Louise a cup of tea and found her standing right behind him, a plate full of cakes in her hand. He swallowed once again.

  ‘Would you like one?’

  Now, if it had been Jas doing the offering, he would have immediately responded with, what do you want? However, Jas was earning her halo washing up the wooden spoons. He looked at Louise and just nodded.

  ‘Raspberry and lemon muffins, jam doughnut muffins or iced fairy cakes?’

  His eye fell on something golden-yellow and covered in sugar.

  She smiled. ‘Jam doughnut muffin it is, then.’ She looked down at the cakes for a few seconds then up into his face. ‘Actually, I’m trying to butter you up.’

  She was? ‘You are?’

  Louise nodded. ‘I watched that film that was made at Whitehaven last night …’ her eyes glazed over and she seemed adrift for a few seconds before she caught herself and carried on. ‘The garden … well, it looked lovely and I wondered if you’d consider, um, taking on the job of landscaping it properly for me.’