Kiss Me Under the Mistletoe

by Fiona Harper

  He was speechless. For years he’d wanted to have free reign at Whitehaven. Now was his chance. He should be whooping with joy and dancing round the kitchen hugging someone—hugging Jas, of course.

  ‘You do that kind of thing, don’t you?’ She was looking at him strangely.

  Twice his head dipped in a nod. He’d started off in landscape gardening and when that had been going well, he’d trained as a landscape architect. The resulting design practice, with specialist teams to do the ground work when required, was one of the things that made his firm so successful. However, he didn’t seem to be able to articulate any of this to Louise.

  ‘Good. Perhaps we can chat another day—during work hours. I don’t expect you to give up your time to …’ A tiny frown creased her forehead and she stared at him for a couple of seconds, then her gaze dropped the plate in her hands. ‘Still want one?’

  The muffin was still warm when he picked it up and, when he bit into it, liquid raspberry jam burst out and added its acidity to the dense but moist texture of the muffin. Pure heaven. Louise just smiled. Oh, she knew she was good! She knew exactly how much her baking had reduced him to a salivating wreck. And she was enjoying it.

  Ben stood up very straight and resisted the urge to lick the sugar off his fingertips. Suddenly, this wasn’t just about cakes any more. But perhaps it had never been about cakes.

  Yup, he was pretty sure he was in big trouble. Because, despite all his efforts at logic, he was starting to think that, far from being the wrong kind of woman, Louise Thornton might suit him just fine.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Louise looked up as rain started to lash against the boathouse windows. She put the paintbrush that she’d been holding down and stood up to stretch her back. There was no electric light in the boathouse and the gathering clouds meant it was far too gloomy for decorating. The paint was off-white and it was difficult enough to do a second coat when the light was good.

  She pressed the lid back on the pot of paint and did what Gerry, one of the contractors, had shown her to do and wrapped the wet paintbrush in cling film. She stood back and surveyed her handiwork. The light reflected off the wet paint in patches, revealing that she hadn’t been as even as she’d thought with her strokes, but she still felt the warm glow of accomplishment.

  She walked over to one of the windows and peered out. Further off, the clouds were pale and bright, and moving quickly in the stiff breeze. This was only a shower. Give it ten minutes and she might be able to continue.

  Time for a tea break.

  She reached for the large metal flask she’d filled with scalding tea before she’d walked down here and poured herself a cup, then she remembered the solar-powered lantern she’d rescued from the boot of her car and pulled it from a box near the door. Its dull blue glow was no help in the painting and decorating stakes, but it added a little light to the corner of the small room.

  Louise took it over to the small desk that sat against the far wall, looking out over the river, and put the lantern on one side. She pulled a small, tarnished key from her jeans pocket and unlocked the small, central drawer, then eased it open and removed Laura’s diary.

  She’d brought it back here. However, she had plans to use the fireplace once she’d finished redecorating, and she was worried she’d scorch the precious book if she put it back behind the tiles. The desk had seemed like a good compromise.

  After retrieving her flask lid full of tea, she sat down and carefully parted the pages where she’d last left off.

  28th May, 1953

  I was doing so well, and then I dreamed of Dominic one night. Since then I haven’t been able to get him out of my thoughts, either sleeping or waking. I dreamed we were at Whitehaven, that somehow all the things keeping us apart had melted away.

  I was standing on the front lawn in the sunshine, looking out over the river, and he came up behind me and folded his arms around me, kissed me in the hollow of my neck. I closed my eyes and just drank it in, even though it was just a dream.

  We’ve never had that. The easy familiarity of that kind of affection. Even the stolen moments we had were played out in front of a film crew, and as much as we tried to disguise it, there was a tinge of desperation to every time we touched or kiss, knowing that time was short that we had to grab what we could while we had the chance.

  It was both beautiful and terrible that my subconscious conjured up what I could never have. Beautiful to experience it so vividly, but terrible that I have not been able to tuck the thought away in the past where it should stay.

  I keep going back to it, pulling it out from its hiding place, reliving it, embellishing it. Now it’s not just a moment, but a whole scene—a whole life—has begun to grow in that shadowy place. I imagine what our bedroom would look like, what meals we would eat in the kitchen, that our children are running down the lawn and building Indian forts in the woods.

  If I can’t have Dominic, at least I can have this.

  Maybe it’s because my stomach stays worryingly flat, that any nausea I have is just from forgetting to eat some days. Alex says he doesn’t mind, that I am enough for him. I wish I could respond in kind. I really want that baby, and I fear if it doesn’t come along that I will fall apart completely. It’s the only hope that keeps me going, keeps me giving the performance of my career in my own life.

  Louise closed the diary and loving fingered the leather cover. She’d hug it to herself, somehow trying to comfort the sad, lonely woman in its pages, but she was scared she’d mar it with paint if she did.

  She knew what that was like. That sense of encroaching loneliness that could not be completely kept at bay. Carefully, she placed the diary back in the drawer and locked it again.

  Had Laura found the happiness she’d craved? Had she been able to find peace? Suddenly, Louise really needed to know.

  Of course, she could go back up to the house and get on the Internet and find out within five minutes, but somehow that seemed like cheating. Reading it in Laura’s own words, making the journey with her, was somehow important.

  She drained the last of her tea and put the lid back on her flask. While she’d been reading the wind had done its job and cleared the skies. She would just have to be patient. Laura would reveal her secrets in due time, and until then Louise had a boathouse to decorate.

  She tipped her head on one side and surveyed the drying paint on the other wall.

  Yep. That was a shocking attempt at a second coat.

  The next couple of weeks disappeared in a frenzy of activity. The builders and decorators stepped up their schedules, determined to be finished well before Christmas, and the landscaping began in the garden. Louise just took herself off down to the boathouse, slowly continuing her restoration job. It wasn’t as slick and professional as the work in the main house, but she liked its slightly rustic, haphazard style. It was all hers.

  When it was finished, she was going to get a sofa or a daybed to put in here, along with a couple of comfy chairs and a rug. In the summer, it might even be nice to sleep down here, close to the river, where she could hear the gentle waves licking against the jetty when high tide was up.

  But as her project neared completion, she began to feel restless. Even more so, when, up at the main house, the flurry of vans and men in work boots diminished to just a few painters and a sole carpenter.

  For a couple of months, making Whitehaven a welcoming home for her and Jack had been her priority. What was she going to do when it was finished? She couldn’t just sit around all day and stare at the wallpaper, no matter how nice it was.

  Around her, everyone else moved with purpose. Aside from the contractors, Jack was busy studying and fitting in at school. Ben was overseeing the landscaping of the more formal gardens near to the house. From the plans he’d shown her, she knew he was very good at what he did. Even, Laura, whose presence Louise felt through the diary, had excelled at something. She’d been one of the leading British actresses of her day.

&nbs
p; But what was Louise good at? What was she for?

  She’d been a successful model once, but her body had expanded and her looks no longer held the glow of youth many clients preferred. She liked baking, but it was hardly a life’s calling.

  It was odd, she thought, as she passed the main lawn and headed up round the side of the house—just to walk, to take in the transformation just a lick of paint and some deftly applied plaster had made to Whitehaven’s exterior—she wasn’t used to having nothing to do.

  For most of her life she’d been running at full speed. First keeping her family together, and then being the wife of a Hollywood actor and all the extra drama and patience such a role involved. And then she’d been a mother. Unlike many of her contemporaries, she hadn’t hired a nanny, preferring to be hands-on with Jack herself as much as she could. Even though she’d wished it otherwise sometimes, after sleepless nights and harried shopping trips, she just hadn’t been able to leave Jack with a stranger and waltz off on her own. That was what she’d done to her father, and she’d always, always regretted it.

  She reached the top lawn, where the greenhouse was, and walked past it. There was a bench leaning against the wall of the garden and she paused and sat down on it, breathing in the chilly air and soaking up the meagre warmth of the frosted winter sun.

  As she sat there she thought about her life with Toby.

  She’d thought he’d needed her, but that hadn’t been true, had it? She’d just been convenient to have around, to put up with, while he found his fun elsewhere.

  But she’d made it easy for him, she realised. She’d walked into that relationship and taken on the only role she knew how to play: carer, giver. Just as she’d had to be a grown-up well before her time at home, she’d had to be the grown-up in her relationship with Toby too, and she’d fallen into looking after him the way she had her father and her brothers and sisters.

  However, where her family had needed her love and indulgence to get them through tough times, by the time she’d met him Toby really hadn’t needed another person indulging him. She’d done it anyway, hadn’t she? Because she hadn’t known how to be any other way. It was all so clear to her now. Why hadn’t she been able to see this before?

  She’d helped Toby take her for granted.

  Of course, that didn’t mean she deserved what he did to her, but maybe, if she’d been a little stronger, asked more of him, things might have been different. That should make her sad, but it didn’t. It just made her puzzled.

  She got up and wandered in the direction of the old stable block, not too far from the kitchen door. Now there was a real project, something she could really get her teeth into. Horses obviously hadn’t been at Whitehaven for decades, because this building would need more than just a lick of paint and a little remedial plastering to see it right. Louise got quite excited at the thought, until she realised she already had a house with more rooms than she could use, and that, really, this would just be a great way of stalling, of filling in the time so she didn’t have to think about the one question that had been hounding her since she’d walked out the door of Toby’s house and had never looked back.

  What on earth was she going to do with the rest of her life?

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  December, so far, had been incredibly mild, but a cold snap was coming. He could feel it in the slicing wind that raced every now and then up and down the river. Ben hunched his shoulders up to try and escape the draught snaking down the back of his neck as he steered the little dinghy through the sharp, steely waves.

  Jas moved into the stern with him and he held up an arm for her to snuggle under. He smiled down at her and she buried her head further into his side. His lips were still curved when he returned his attention to the river. It didn’t matter if the weather was cold enough to freeze the Dart solid, the fact that he’d managed to create a living thing so wonderful would always melt his heart.

  This was one of those perfect snapshot moments that would live in his memory forever. Everything on the river seemed to be in shades of grey and silver—the waves, the reflection of the pearly sky. And, directly in front of him on the hill, perched on the hill like a queen on her throne, was the bright white house he was heading towards. In their waterproof coats—his dark green and Jas’s vibrant purple—they were the only blobs of colour on the river spoiling the effect.

  ‘Do you think it’s going to snow, Dad?’

  He pursed his lips, thinking. ‘I don’t know. It would be nice, though, wouldn’t it? The last time we had a white Christmas I was younger than you.’ He hugged Jas to him, then released her as they neared the jetty below Louise’s boathouse. ‘We’ll have to wait and see.’

  After tying up the dinghy, he stood for a moment and stared up the hill. The house was hidden by the curve of the land and by the trees, but he knew which direction it was.

  There were ugly gashes in the earth near the house which his team had created in the midst of doing the hard landscaping. It would look a mess when he approached the front lawn. But, in his experience, things often had to get a lot messier before they were transformed into something beautiful. In the spring, the digging and paving would be finished and they’d be able to plant. Come summer Whitehaven’s garden would be transformed. And, over the years, it would mature into something unique and stunning.

  Unique and stunning …

  How easy it was for his thoughts to turn to Louise.

  Recently Jas had taken to showing him any photographs of her she found in the Sunday papers or magazines. Most of them weren’t current, as she hadn’t really been anywhere to be photographed recently.

  ‘Ready, Jas?’

  Jas, who had been throwing stones into the water, nodded and ran off up the hill. Ben tucked his hands into his pockets and strolled after her. As he walked, the image from the article in one of the Sunday magazines filled his head. Tobias Thornton had given an extensive interview about his new life with a blonde actress whose name Ben was struggling to remember. Of course, there had been photos of Louise and Toby in their glory days.

  He punched his hands deeper into his pockets. What did it mean if he admitted to himself that the photos had made him feel sick? He couldn’t figure out why; they were fairly innocuous shots of the then Mr and Mrs Thornton on the red carpet somewhere. The body language had been convincing—he’d had an arm around her waist and she’d hooked a hand around his neck. They’d been smiling.

  Ben kicked a stone on the path and watched it hit a tree trunk then roll down the hill out of sight. And then he thought about her eyes. There had been a deadness there, just a hint. Most people, if they’d noticed it at all, would have just assumed it was because it had been the five-hundredth photo they’d posed for that evening. Not him.

  That same soul-deep weariness had been in her eyes the day he’d first met her, and no one had been watching her then. He had a good mind to track her ex down and give him a piece of his mind for putting it there.

  Ben stopped in his tracks. What he really wanted to do was teach Tobias Thornton a lesson. When had he suddenly got so primitive? He never wanted to hit people. It just wasn’t him. Not even Megan’s new man.

  Probably because he kind of felt sorry for the guy …

  Slowly, he started walking again, then picked up speed because he realised he couldn’t see Jas any more. He called out, and a few moments later saw a flash of purple in between the trees up ahead.

  His heart rate doubled. Would she be up there on the lawn, strolling as Jack played? Or would she be waiting from him in the kitchen, the kettle blowing steam? He could easily have sent a guy to care for the carnivorous plants in the greenhouses, but he’d kept on coming on Sundays anyway, hoping she wouldn’t ask why.

  Sunday was now officially his favourite day of the week. And he had a feeling that Louise knew the plants were just an excuse. Each week they spent more and more of his visit talking, walking round the grounds. He’d never drunk so much tea in his life. But if those gi
ant mugs kept him leaning against the rustic kitchen counters while she hummed and pottered round the kitchen, stopping every now and then to smile at him, how could he complain?

  At that moment the trees parted and he saw her. It felt as if every molecule of blood had drained from his body. She was chasing both Jack and Jasmine, who were running round in circles, and when she saw him, she stopped, brushed the hair from her face and waved.

  Normally, he didn’t have any problem speaking his mind. He was never rude or insensitive, but he just called things as he saw them. So why, when all he could think about was asking her out to dinner, or seeing if they could spend some time alone—just the two of them—did the syllables never leave his lips?

  He was now within shouting distance. Hands that had been cold and stiff were now clammy in his pockets and he took them out and did a half-wave with one hand. Louise smiled and his insides jumped up and down for joy. The warm laughter in her eyes erased any form of sensible greeting.

  Just admit it, Ben. You’ve got it bad.

  He was here.

  She waved, just to seem friendly. And, of course, if she didn’t smile too it would look funny, so she did. Only she didn’t seem to be able to control how wide, how sparkling it was.

  He took long strides across the lawn, minding the gouges of red earth at the edges. Something to do with re-establishing the rose garden, she’d been told. The details were a little fuzzy at present. He gave a little wave, but his face remained serious.

  She didn’t care. She liked it when he looked serious. His jaw would tense sometimes when he was in this kind of mood and his eyes became dark. She allowed herself a little sigh before he got close enough to see the exaggerated rise and fall of her chest.

  She was playing with fire, she knew. But there was nothing wrong with fire if you kept your distance, let it warm you but not scorch you. And that was what she intended to do. To keep her distance from Ben Oliver—romantically, at least. But it had been so long since she’d felt this alive.