Christmas Nights

by Penny Jordan

  ‘Because I didn’t think you wanted to hear,’ Lisa told him simply. ‘You were so distant and—’

  ‘I was trying to stop myself from pleading with you to change your mind and come with me,’ Oliver told her grimly. ‘That was why I was quiet.’

  ‘Oh, Oliver…’

  ‘Oh, Lisa,’ he mimicked. ‘How long do you suppose your mother will be gone?’ he asked her as he bent his head to kiss her a second time.

  ‘I don’t know, but she did say something about going to see an exhibition at the Tate,’ Lisa mumbled through his kiss.

  ‘Mmm…’ He was looking, Lisa noticed, towards the half-open bedroom door, and her own body started to react to the message she could read in his eyes as she followed his gaze.

  ‘We can’t,’ she protested without conviction. ‘What about your arm? And you still haven’t told me about the accident,’ she reminded him.

  ‘I will,’ he promised her, and added wickedly, ‘They said at the hospital that I should get plenty of rest and that I shouldn’t stand up for too long. They said that the best cure for me would be…’ And he bent his head and whispered in Lisa’s ear exactly what he had in mind for the two of them for the rest of the afternoon.

  ‘Tell me about the accident first,’ Lisa insisted, blushing a little as she saw the look he gave her when he caught that betraying ‘first’.

  ‘Very well,’ he agreed, adding ruefully, ‘Although, it doesn’t make very good hearing.

  ‘I didn’t find out until we were back in Yorkshire that you weren’t marrying Henry, but once I did and I realised what I’d done I broke all the rules and drove straight back here despite the fact that I hadn’t had any sleep for going on three days and that I was jet-lagged into the bargain. Hardly a sensible or safety-conscious decision but…’ He gave a small, self-deprecatory grimace. ‘I was hardly feeling either sensible or safety-conscious; after all, what else had I got left to lose? I’d already destroyed the most precious thing I had in my life.

  ‘Anyway… I must have started to doze off at the wheel; fortunately I’d already decided to stop at a motorway service station and I’d slowed down and pulled onto the approach road, and even more fortunately there was no other vehicle, no other person around to be involved in my self-imposed accident. The authorities told me that I was lucky my car was fitted with so many safety features… otherwise…’

  ‘No, don’t,’ Lisa begged him, shuddering as her imagination painted an all too vivid picture of just how differently things could have turned out.

  ‘Lisa, I know there is nothing I can say or do that can take away the memory of what I did; all I can do is promise you that it will never happen again and ask if you can forgive me.’

  ‘It did hurt that you could think such a thing of me,’ Lisa admitted quietly, ‘and that you could… could treat me in such a way, but I do understand. In a way both of us were responsible for what happened; both of us should have trusted the other and our love more. If we had had more mutual trust, more mutual faith in our love then… Oh, Oliver,’ she finished, torn between laughter and tears as she clung onto him. ‘How could you possibly think I could even contemplate the idea of marrying anyone else, never mind Henry, after you… after the way you and I…?’

  ‘Even when mentally I was trying to hate you I was still loving you physically and emotionally,’ Oliver told her huskily. ‘The moment I touched you… I never intended things to go so far; I’d just meant to kiss you one last time, that was all, but once I had…’

  ‘Once you had what?’ Lisa encouraged him, raising herself up on tiptoe to feather her lips teasingly against his.

  ‘Once I had… this,’ Oliver responded, smothering a groan deep in his throat as he pulled her against him with his good arm and held her there, letting her feel the immediate and passionate response of his body to her as he kissed her.

  ‘We really ought to get up,’ Lisa murmured sleepily, her words belying her actions as she snuggled closer to Oliver’s side. ‘The day’s almost gone and…’

  ‘Soon it will be bedtime. I know,’ Oliver finished mock-wickedly for her. ‘It was very thoughtful of your mother to telephone and say that she’d decided to go and visit some friends this evening and to stay overnight with them…’

  ‘Mmm… very,’ Lisa agreed, sighing leisurely as Oliver’s hand cupped her breast.

  ‘Mmm… that feels nice,’ she told him.

  ‘It certainly does,’ Oliver agreed, and asked her softly, ‘And does this?’ as he bent his head and started to kiss the soft curve of her throat.

  ‘I’m not sure… Perhaps if you did it for a bit longer,’ Lisa suggested helpfully. ‘A lot longer,’ she amended more huskily as his mouth started to drift with delicious intent towards her breast… ‘A lot, lot longer.’

  EPILOGUE

  ‘HOW DOES THAT LOOK?’

  Lisa put her head to one side judiciously as she studied the huge Christmas tree that Oliver had just finished erecting in the hallway.

  ‘I think it needs moving a little to the left; it’s leaning slightly,’ she told him, and then laughed as she saw his pained expression.

  ‘No, darling, it’s perfect,’ she added with a happy sigh. They had been married for eight months, their wedding having preceded both Henry’s and Piers’. Lisa’s parents had both flown home for the wedding and Lisa and Oliver had flown out to Japan to spend three weeks with them in October.

  Fergus had been disappointed when Lisa had handed in her notice, but she and Oliver were talking about the possibility of her setting up her own business in the north in partnership with Fergus. It seemed almost impossible to Lisa that it was almost twelve months since that fateful night when Oliver had found her stranded on the road and brought her home with him. Her smile deepened as she glanced down at the Armani suit she was wearing—a surprise gift from Oliver to mark the anniversary of the day they had initially met.

  ‘Happy?’ Oliver asked her, bending his head to kiss her.

  ‘Mmm… how could I not be?’ Lisa answered, snuggling closer to him. ‘Oh, Oliver, last Christmas was wonderful, special, something I’ll never forget, but this Christmas is going to be special too; I’m so glad that everyone’s been able to come—your family and my parents.’

  ‘We’re certainly going to have a houseful,’ Oliver agreed, laughing.

  He had raised his eyebrows slightly at first when Lisa had suggested to him that they invite all his own relatives and her parents to spend their Christmas with them, but Lisa’s enthusiasm for the idea had soon won him over.

  ‘You really do love all this, don’t you?’ he commented now, indicating the large hallway festooned now for Christmas with the garlands and decorations that Lisa had spent hours making.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ Lisa agreed, ‘but not anything like as much as I love you. Oh, Oliver,’ she told him, her voice suddenly husky with emotion, ‘you’ve made me so happy. It’s hard to imagine that twelve months ago we barely knew one another and that—I love you so much.’

  ‘Not half as much as I love you,’ Oliver whispered back, his mouth feathering against hers and then hardening as he felt her happy response.

  ‘We still haven’t put the star on the tree,’ Lisa reminded Oliver through their kiss.

  ‘You are my star,’ he told her tenderly, ‘and without you I’d be lost in the darkness of unhappiness. You light up my life, Lisa, and I never, ever want to be without you.’

  ‘You never, ever will,’ Lisa promised him.

  ‘Hey, come on, you two, break it up,’ Piers demanded, coming into the hallway carrying a basket of logs for the fire. ‘You’re married now—remember?’

  ‘Yes, we’re married,’ Oliver agreed, giving Lisa a look that made her laugh and blush slightly at the same time, as he picked up the star waiting to be placed at the top of the tree—the final touch to a Christmas that would be all the things that Christmas should be, that Christmas and every day would be for her from now on.

  Oliver was her C
hristmas, all her special times, her life, her love.

  FIGGY PUDDING

  Penny Jordan

  Dear Reader,

  To me, there is no more magical and traditional time of the year than Christmas—perhaps because, as a Sagittarian, a small part of me has always retained my childhood wonder in the specialness of Christmas: its bright shining warmth in the darkest time of the year, a time to celebrate the triumph of hope over adversity and of love over pain.

  These are all emotions that are strongly expressed in this story, with its heroine who is my favourite type of woman—strong, gutsy, determined to stand true to what she believes in and yet at the same time endearingly vulnerable. My hero in this story also embodies, I believe, the very best of traditional male values, ‘magicked’ by a special sprinkling of that extra ingredient that makes a man the man!

  Since my own home is old and traditional, a cosy cottage nestling in the countryside, it is the traditional things in life in which I tend to take most pleasure. The Figgy Pudding recipe on which this story is based is as traditional as Christmas itself—although my heroine, Heaven, has added her own special extra ingredients! In bygone centuries every member of the household would have taken a turn in stirring the rich fruity pudding mixture, uniting them all in its preparation. I hope that in reading this story you will share this special sense of Christmas as it unites us all in spirit and in love, no matter how much we may be divided in other ways.

  Penny Jordan

  (Letter from the original version of this story)

  PENNY JORDAN’S

  FIGGY PUDDING

  (Makes two large puddings)

  This is a traditional English recipe.

  110g/1 cup chopped almonds

  110g/ ¾cup chopped figs

  450g/3 cups raisins

  225g/½ lb currants

  225g/1½ cups sultanas

  110g/ ¾ cup mixed peel

  110g/ ¾ cup chopped glacé cherries

  110g/ ¾ cup plain flour

  2 tsp ground mixed spice

  2 tsp ground cinnamon

  1 tsp ground nutmeg

  225g/1¼ cups firmly packed brown sugar

  225g/ ½ lb shredded suet or vegetarian suet

  225g/4 cups fresh white breadcrumbs

  225g/ ½ lb grated apple (about 2 medium apples)

  1 large grated carrot

  Juice and grated zest of 2 large lemons

  2 tbsp molasses

  4 large eggs, beaten

  225 ml/1 cup Guinness or milk

  4 tbsp rum or brandy

  Combine the chopped almonds, figs, raisins, currants, sultanas, mixed peel and cherries. Add the sifted flour, spices, sugar, suet and breadcrumbs and mix thoroughly. Add the grated apple, carrot, lemon juice and zest and molasses and mix again. Stir in the beaten eggs, followed by the Guinness (or milk) and rum (or brandy). Spoon into two buttered casseroles (2½ pint capacity each) and cover with a double layer of waxed paper. Leave overnight to mature. Cover the casseroles with a double layer of foil, pleated down the centre and tied securely with string. Steam for 8 hours, checking regularly to see that the pan hasn’t boiled dry. Remove and set aside to cool. Cover with fresh waxed paper and foil, then store somewhere cool and dark, ideally for 4 to 6 weeks. When ready to be eaten, steam the puddings for an additional 3 hours before turning out into serving dishes. Warm a ladleful of brandy, set alight and pour over the puddings.

  PROLOGUE

  ‘MMM… well, I suppose he’s all right,’ Christabel announced as she looked critically at her less than one-week-old cousin as he lay contentedly in his mother’s arms.

  In four weeks’ time it would be Christmas and Heaven and Jon would be going up to the Scottish Borders to spend the Christmas season in their home there, but right now they were still in London where Jon was enjoying showing off his newborn son to his sister, her two daughters and their doting stepfather.

  ‘What I don’t understand, though,’ young Christabel continued seriously, ‘is why you’ve called him Figgy.’

  Over the dark downy head of Charles Christopher Hugo, nicknamed ‘Figgy’, Heaven grinned at her husband.

  ‘Well, it’s a long story,’ she began ‘and let’s just say that figgy pudding is a very special Christmas treat and “Figgy” here—’

  ‘I think you’d better stop there,’ Jon warned her ruefully, but his niece, picking up on the very interesting adult messages passing between her uncle and her new aunt, decided she wanted to hear more.

  She had just reached the age where adult secrets, adult conversations were beginning to make her curious.

  ‘Tell me,’ she demanded imperiously. ‘I like stories…’

  Heaven laughed into Jon’s eyes. In his mother’s arms Figgy continued to sleep despite his father’s attempts to make him wake up.

  ‘Well,’ Heaven began importantly, ‘just as figgy pudding is a pudding with a difference, so too is this a story with a difference, and it all began like this…’

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘YOU’RE really going to go ahead and do it, then—take the job, despite… everything?’

  Looking up from the pudding mixture she was stirring, Heaven Matthews grimaced at her best friend and nodded emphatically, confirming, ‘Yep, Janet, I’m really going to go ahead and do it.’

  ‘Well, I can understand why,’ Janet Viners acknowledged. ‘Anyone would, and after the way Harold Lewis treated you—after what he did to you—he certainly deserves to receive a taste of his own medicine!’

  ‘Oh, he will,’ Heaven said fervently, the stern look on her small, heart-shaped, vivacious face not really masking the pain Janet knew she was still suffering from the traumatic events which had so catastrophically affected her life. ‘He quite definitely will,’ Heaven averred, adding quietly, ‘Revenge, so they say, is a dish best eaten cold. We shall see. In this instance the proof of the pudding will quite definitely be in the eating—his eating, not mine. He always was a greedy pig, and not just for food.’

  The smile which had brought into prominence the pretty dimples on either side of her generously curved mouth had faded again and as she watched her Janet reflected sadly on how much the last months had sapped her friend’s normal joie de vivre and how rarely she had heard the infectious happy laughter that had always been such a wonderful part of Heaven’s personality. The fact that she was the kind of person—woman—who was loved and valued by all those who knew her only made what had happened to her seem all the more unbelievable, all the more unpalatable—if Janet was to follow Heaven’s humorous habit of using food metaphors and clichés in a tongue-in-cheek fashion to illustrate her conversation and to underline and emphasise her passionate love of good food.

  Not that you would ever know it from her enviably slender figure, Janet acknowledged wistfully as she contrasted her own much plumper frame with Heaven’s delicate sylph-like figure.

  Even when they had been at school together Heaven had been determined that one day when she was grown up she was going to be famous for her cooking.

  Some months ago when Janet had reminded her of that childhood dream Heaven had given her a bitter smile and said painfully, ‘Well, I was nearly right, wasn’t I? Only instead of becoming famous what I’ve become is infamous… infamous, notorious and unemployable…’ And her strikingly beautiful dark blue eyes had filled with painful tears which, true to character, she had dashed impatiently away. The last thing that Heaven was was the kind of person who wallowed in self-pity, despite the fact that right now she had every reason to feel sorry for herself, Janet acknowledged, reflecting on the events of the last eighteen months.

  A promising career totally ruined, her life turned upside down by the media interest the whole affair had created, and as if that wasn’t bad enough poor Heaven had also had to live with the fact that no matter how often she protested her innocence there would always be those who were going to disbelieve her.

  ‘Who’s going to want to employ me as a private cook now?’
she had demanded bitterly some months earlier, when Janet had called round to find her friend busily trying to compose an ad for the classified pages of certain magazines.

  ‘Even if my name wasn’t recognised then sooner or later my face would be. I doubt there’s a hostess in London who hasn’t heard about the cook who tried to steal her employer’s husband.’

  ‘Are you really sure you’re doing the right thing?’ Janet tried now to counsel her friend gently. Perhaps because Heaven was so petite, too naively inclined to believe the best of everyone and she herself was so much taller, so much more wary, despite the fact that they were both the same age—twenty-three—Janet had always been inclined to be protective of Heaven.

  They were standing in the kitchen of a pretty Georgian town house in Chelsea. Heaven’s father had inherited it from his great-aunt who had in turn inherited it from her parents, so there was a good deal of family history attached to it. Too much for the house to be sold, and since there was no way that Heaven’s parents were going to uproot themselves from the comfortable Shropshire village to which they had retired her father had suggested that Heaven should live there rent-free until she could restore some sort of order to her shattered life.

  ‘After all,’ Janet continued, ‘you’re starting to build up quite a nice little business for yourself and—’

  ‘Selling puddings through the classified ads and at country fairs,’ Heaven interrupted her in self-contempt. ‘Janet, I’m a trained cordon bleu cook. Making home puddings…’

  ‘It’s a living,’ Janet reminded her gently.

  ‘It’s an existence,’ Heaven corrected her. ‘If Dad wasn’t allowing me to live here rent-free…’

  ‘Have you thought of looking for work abroad, somewhere…?’

  ‘Where no one knows me?’ Heaven supplied for her, shaking her head. ‘Perhaps I should, but I haven’t. This is where I want to work, Janet. Here… London… my home… the place where I should be able to work, where I would be able to work if it wasn’t for that rat Harold.’ Angry tears filled her eyes. Determinedly she blinked them away. ‘I was just beginning to make a proper name for myself. I would have made a name for myself if that creep hadn’t gone and destroyed everything I’d worked for and…’