Her Christmas Fantasy & The Winter Bride (3 page)

‘You'll call the police. I know,' he agreed drily. ‘Very well, since it's obvious I can't make you see reason… I won't forget how co-operative you've been,' he added, sending a small
shiver down her spine as she saw the look in his eyes. ‘Although I can understand why you're so loath to part with your borrowed finery.

‘The suit looks good on you,' he added unexpectedly as he turned towards the door, pausing to look at her before lifting his hand and outrageously tracing a line with the tip of his index finger all the way along the deep V of the neckline of the waistcoat just where the upper curves of her breasts, naked underneath it, pressed against the creamy fabric.

‘It's a bit tighter here on you than it was on Emma, though,' he told her. ‘She's probably only a 34B whereas you must be a 34C. Nice—especially worn the way you're wearing it now, without anything underneath it…'

Lisa swallowed back all of the agitated, defensive remarks that sprang to her lips, knowing that none of them could do anything to wipe out what he had just said to her, or the effect his words had had on her.

Why, she wondered wretchedly as he opened her front door and left her flat far more calmly than he had entered it, did her body have to react so…so…idiotically and erotically to his touch? Even without looking down she knew how betrayingly her nipples were still pressing against the fine fabric of her waistcoat—as they certainly hadn't been doing when he'd first arrived. As they had, in fact, only humiliatingly done when he had reached out and touched her with that lazily mocking fingertip which had had such a devastating effect on her senses.

It was because she was so overwrought, that was all, she tried to comfort herself half an hour later, the front door securely bolted as she hugged a comforting mug of freshly made coffee.

She would have to ring the shop, of course, and find out exactly what was going on, and if they asked her to return the
clothes then morally she would have no option other than to do so.

How dared he accuse her of trying to blackmail him…?
Her
. The coffee slopped out of the mug as her hands started to shake. As if she would ever…ever do any such thing. She felt desperately sorry for the unknown Emma. It was bad enough that he should have sold her clothes, but how would she feel, knowing that he had touched her, another woman, so…so…? No, in her view Emma was better off without him. Much better off.

How dared he touch her like that…as though…as though…? And he had known exactly what he was doing as well. She had seen it in those shockingly knowing steel-grey eyes as she'd read the message of male triumph and awareness that they'd been giving her. He had known that he was arousing her—had known it and had enjoyed knowing it.

Unlike her. She had hated it and she hated him. Emma was quite definitely better off without him and she certainly wasn't going to be the one to help him make up their quarrel by returning her clothes.

At least he was not likely to be able to carry out that subtle threat of future retribution against her—thank goodness.

L
ISA STOOD IN FRONT
of the guest-bedroom window of Henry's parents' large Victorian house looking out across the wintry countryside.

They had arrived considerably later than expected the previous evening, due, in the main, to the fact that Henry's car had been so badly damaged whilst parked in a client's car park that their departure had been delayed and they had had to use her small—much smaller—model, much to Henry's disgust.

They had arrived shortly after eleven o'clock, and whilst Henry had been greeted with a good deal of maternal anxiety and concern Lisa had received a considerably more frosty reception, Henry's mother giving her a chilly smile and presenting a cool cheek for her to kiss before commenting, ‘I'm afraid we couldn't put back supper any longer. You know what your father's like about meal times, Henry.'

‘It was Lisa's fault,' Henry had grumbled untruthfully, adding to Lisa, ‘You really should get a decent car, you know. Oh, and by the way, you need petrol.'

Lisa had gritted her teeth and smiled, reminding herself that she had already guessed from Henry's comments about his family that, as an only child and a son, he was the apple of his mother's eye.

Whilst Henry had been despatched to his father's study, Lisa had been quizzed by Henry's mother about her family and background. It had subtly been made plain to Lisa that
so far as Henry's mother was concerned the jury was still out on the subject of her suitability as Henry's intended wife.

Normally she would have enjoyed the chance to visit the Yorkshire Dales, Lisa acknowledged—especially at this time of the year. Last night she had been enchanted to discover that snow was expected on the high ground.

Henry had been less impressed. In fact, he had been in an edgy, difficult mood throughout the entire journey—and not just, Lisa suspected, because of the damage to his precious car.

It had struck her, over the previous weekend, when they'd been doing the last of their Christmas shopping together, that he was obviously having doubts about her ability to make the right impression on his parents. There had been several small lectures and clumsy hints on what his family would expect, and one particularly embarrassing moment when Alison had called round to the flat just as Henry had been explaining that he wasn't sure that the Armani trouser suit was going to be quite the thing for his parents' annual pre-Christmas supper party.

‘What century are Henry's parents living in?' Alison had exploded after Henry had left the room. ‘Honestly, Lisa, I can't—'

She had stopped when Lisa had shaken her head, changing the subject to ask instead, ‘Any more repercussions about the clothes you bought from Second Time Around, by the way?'

Lisa had told Alison all about her run-in with Oliver Davenport, asking her friend's advice as to what she ought to do.

‘Ring the shop and find out what they've got to say,' had been Alison's prompt response.

‘I've already done that,' Lisa had told her. ‘And there was just a message on the answering machine saying that the
owner has had to close the shop down indefinitely because her father has been taken seriously ill.'

‘Well, if you want my opinion, you bought those clothes in all good faith, and I feel that their original owner deserves to know exactly what kind of miserable rat her boyfriend is… I mean…selling her clothes… It's…it's… Well, I'd certainly never forgive any man who tried to pull that one on me. I think you did exactly the right thing in refusing to give them back,' Alison had said comfortingly.

‘No. No further repercussions,' Lisa had told her in response to her latest question. ‘Which I find surprising. I suppose I did overreact a little bit, but when he virtually accused me of trying to blackmail him into paying almost more for them than they had originally cost…'

Her voice had quivered with remembered indignation as she recalled how shocked and insulted she had felt to be confronted with such a contemptuous assessment of her character.

‘You overreacting—and to a man… Now that's something I
would
like to see,' Alison had told her.

‘Who are you discussing?' Henry had asked, coming back into the room.

‘Oh, no one special,' Lisa had told him, hastily and untruthfully, hoping that he wouldn't question the sudden surge of hot, guilty colour flooding her face as she remembered the shocking unexpectedness and intimacy of the way Oliver Davenport had reached out and touched her, and her even more shocking and intimate reaction to his touch.

The whole incident was something that was best forgotten she told herself firmly now as she craned her neck to watch a shepherd manoeuvring his flock on the distant hillside. She felt very sorry for Emma, of course, in the loss of her clothes, but hopefully it would teach Oliver Davenport not to behave so arrogantly in future. It was certainly a lesson he needed to learn.

Lisa glanced at her watch.

Henry's mother had announced last night that they sat down for breakfast at eight o'clock sharp, the implication being that she suspected that Lisa lived too decadent and lazy a lifestyle to manage to get up early enough to join them.

She couldn't have been more wrong, Lisa acknowledged. She was normally a very early riser.

The build-up to Christmas, and most especially the week before it, was normally one of her favourite times of the year. Her parents might live a rather unconventional lifestyle by Henry's parents' standards, but wherever they had lived when she'd been a child they had always made a point of following as many Christmas traditions as they could—buying and dressing a specially chosen Christmas tree, cooking certain favourite Christmas treats, shopping for presents and wrapping them. But Lisa had always yearned for the trappings of a real British Christmas. She had been looking forward to seeing such a traditional scenario of events taking place in Henry's childhood home, but it had become apparent to her the previous evening that Henry's parents, and more specifically Henry's mother, did not view Christmas in the same way she did herself.

‘The whole thing has become so dreadfully commercialised that I simply don't see the point nowadays,' she had commented when Lisa had been describing the fun she had had shopping for gifts for the several small and
not
so small children who featured on her Christmas present list.

Her father in particular delighted in receiving anything toy-like, and had a special weakness for magic tricks. Lisa had posted her gifts to her parents to Japan weeks ago, and had, in turn, received hers from them. She had brought the presents north with her, intending to add them to the pile she had assumed would accumulate beneath the Christmas tree, which in her imagination she had visualised as tall and wonderfully
bushy, dominating the large hallway that Henry had described to her, warmed by the firelight of its open hearth and scenting the whole room with the delicious aroma of fresh pine needles.

Alas for her imaginings. Henry's mother did not, apparently, like real Christmas trees. They caused too much mess with their needles. And as for an open fire! They had had that boarded up years ago, she had informed Lisa, adding that it had caused far too much mess and nuisance.

So much for her hazy thoughts of establishing the beginnings of their own family traditions, her plans of one day telling her own children how she and their father had spent their first Christmas together, going out to choose the family Christmas tree.

‘You're far too romantic and impractical,' Henry had criticised her. ‘I agree with Mother. Real Christmas trees are nothing but a nuisance.'

As she turned away from the window Lisa was uncomfortably aware not only of Henry's mother's reluctance to accept her, but also of her own unexpectedly rebellious feeling that Henry was letting her down in not being more supportive of her.

She hadn't spent one full day with Henry's family yet, and already she was beginning to regret the extended length of their Christmas stay with them.

Reluctantly she walked towards the bedroom door. It was ten to eight, and the last thing she wanted to do now was arrive late for breakfast.

 

‘Off-white wool… Don't you think that's rather impractical?' Henry's mother asked Lisa critically.

Taking a deep breath and counting to ten, Lisa forced herself to smile as she responded politely to Mary Hanford's criticism.

‘Perhaps a little, but then—'

‘I never wear cream or white. I think they can be so draining to the pale English complexion,' her prospective mother-in-law continued. ‘Navy is always so much more serviceable, I think.'

Lisa had arrived downstairs half an hour ago, all her offers to help with the preparation of the pre-Christmas buffet supper having been firmly refused.

So much for creating the right impression on Henry's parents with her new clothes, Lisa reflected wryly, wishing that Alison was with her to appreciate the ironic humour of the situation.

She could, of course, have shared the joke with Henry, but somehow she doubted that he would have found it funny… He had, no doubt, inherited his sense of humour, or rather his lack of it, from his mother, she decided sourly, and was immediately ashamed of her own mean-spiritedness.

Of course, it was only natural that Henry's mother should be slightly distant with her. Naturally she was protective of Henry—he was her only son, her only child…

He was also a man of thirty-one, a sharp inner voice reminded Lisa, and surely capable of making his own mind up about who he wanted to marry? Or was he?

It hadn't escaped Lisa's notice during the day how Henry consistently and illuminatingly agreed with whatever opinion his mother chose to voice, but she dismissed the tiny niggling doubts that were beginning to undermine her confidence in her belief that she and Henry had a future together as natural uncertainties raised by seeing him in an unfamiliar setting and with people, moreover, who knew him far better than she did.

In the hallway the grandfather clock chimed the hour. In a few minutes the Hanfords' supper guests would be arriving.

Henry had already explained to her that his family had
lived in the area for several generations and that they had a large extended family, most of whom would be at the supper party, along with a handful of his parents' friends.

Lisa was slightly apprehensive, aware that she would be very much on show, which was one of the reasons why she had chosen to wear the cream trouser suit.

Henry, however, hadn't been any more approving of her outfit than his mother, telling her severely that he thought that a skirt would have been more appropriate than trousers.

Lisa had no doubt that Oliver Davenport would have been both highly amused and contemptuous of her failure to achieve the desired effect with her acquired plumage.

Oliver Davenport. Now what on earth was she doing thinking about such a disagreeable subject, such a contentious person, when by rights she ought to be concentrating on the evening ahead of her?

‘Ah, Lisa, there you are!' she heard Henry exclaiming. ‘Everyone will be arriving soon, and Mother likes us all to be in the hall to welcome them when they do.

‘I see you didn't change after all,' he added, frowning at her.

‘An Armani suit is a perfectly acceptable outfit to wear for a supper party, Henry,' Lisa pointed out mildly, and couldn't help adding a touch more robustly, ‘And, to be honest, I think I would have felt rather cold in a skirt. Your parents—'

‘Mother doesn't think an overheated house is healthy,' Henry interrupted her quickly—so quickly that Lisa suspected that she wasn't the first person to comment on the chilliness of his parents' house.

‘I expect I'm feeling the cold because we're so much further north here,' she offered diplomatically as she followed him into the hallway.

Cars could be heard pulling up outside, their doors opening and closing.

‘That's good!' Henry exclaimed. ‘Mother likes everyone to be on time.'

Mother would, Lisa thought rebelliously, but wisely she kept the words to herself.

Henry's aunt and her family were the first to arrive. A smaller, quieter edition of her elder sister, she was, nevertheless, far warmer in her manner towards Lisa than Henry's mother had been, and Lisa didn't miss the looks exchanged by her three teenage children as they were subjected to Mary Hanford's critical inspection.

Fifteen minutes later the hallway was virtually full, and Lisa was beginning to lose track of just who everyone was. The doorbell rang again and Henry went to answer it. As Lisa turned to look at the newcomers her heart suddenly stood still and then gave a single shocked bound followed by a flurry of too fast, disbelieving, nervous beats.

Oliver Davenport! What on earth was he doing here? He couldn't have followed her here to pursue his demand for her to return Emma's clothes, could he?

At the thought of what Henry's mother was likely to say if Oliver Davenport caused the same kind of scene here in public as he had staged in the privacy of her own flat, Lisa closed her eyes in helpless dismay, and then heard Henry saying tensely to her, ‘Lisa, I'd like to introduce you to one of my parents' neighbours. Oliver—'

‘Lisa and I already know one another.'

Lisa's eyes widened in bemused incomprehension.

Oliver Davenport was a neighbour of Henry's parents! And what did he mean by implying that they knew one another…by saying her name in that grossly deceptive, softly sensual way, which seemed to imply that he…that she…?

‘You do? You never said anything about knowing Oliver to me, Lisa,' Henry said almost hectoringly.

But before Lisa could make any attempt to defend herself
or explain, Oliver Davenport was doing it for her, addressing Henry in a tone that left Lisa in no doubt as to just what kind of opinion the other man had of her husband-to-be, as he announced cuttingly, ‘No doubt she had more important things on her mind. Or perhaps she simply didn't think it was important…'