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But he couldn’t concentrate, and he ended up in the kitchen making yet more coffee at shortly before six in the morning. He put in some toast to blot it up a bit and give his stomach lining a rest, then sat at the table to eat it.
Not a good idea.
Little boys, he discovered, woke early, and he ended up with company.
Georgia, sleep-tousled, puffy-eyed and with a crease on one cheek, stumbled into the kitchen with Josh on her hip and came to an abrupt halt.
‘Ah. Sorry.’
Not as sorry as he was. She was wearing pyjamas, but they were soft and stretchy and the child’s weight on her hip had pulled the top askew and exposed an inviting expanse of soft, creamy flesh below her collar bone that drew his eyes like a magnet.
She followed the direction of his gaze and tugged it straight, colour flooding her cheeks, and he dragged his eyes away and jerked his head at the kettle.
‘It’s just boiled if you want tea?’
‘Um—please. And do you have any spare milk? Josh usually has some when he wakes up.’
‘Sure. I tell you what, why don’t I get out of your way while you do whatever you want to do in here? Just help yourself to whatever you need.’
He left the room with almost indecent haste, and Georgie put Josh down on the floor and let her breath ease out of her lungs on a sigh of relief. She’d forgotten just how good he looked, how sexy, with his hair rumpled and his jaw roughened with stubble.
And tired. He’d looked tired, she thought, as if he’d been up all night. Because of the kiss? Or the wind, hammering against the house until she thought the windows were coming in? Between the kiss and the wind, they’d made sure she hadn’t slept all night, and she’d only just crashed into oblivion when Josh had woken.
She hadn’t realised it was so early until she saw the kitchen clock, because the snow made it lighter, the moon reflecting off it with an eerie, cold light that seemed to seep through the curtains for the sole purpose of reminding her of the mess she was in.
Why had she let him kiss her?
‘Biscuit,’ Josh said, and she sighed. They had this conversation every day, but he never gave up trying.
‘No. You can have a drink of milk and a banana. There must be some bananas.’
She opened the pantry cupboard and found the fruit in a bowl. She pulled off a banana and peeled it and broke it into chunks for him, and left him kneeling up on a chair and eating it while she made some tea and warmed his milk in a little pan. She would have given it a couple of moments in the microwave, but she couldn’t find one. She’d have to ask about that.
She sat down with her tea next to Josh, in the place where Sebastian had been. He’d left half a slice of toast on the plate, with a neat bite out of it, and she couldn’t resist it. She should have finished her supper the night before instead of running out on him, and she was starving.
‘Me toast,’ Josh said, eyeing it hopefully, and she tore him off a chunk and ate the rest.
‘More.’
‘I’ll make you some in a minute. Let’s go and get dressed first.’
She took him upstairs, protesting all the way, and heard water running. Sebastian must be showering, she realised, and tried really, really hard not to think about that, about the times she’d joined him in the shower, getting in behind him and sliding her arms around his waist—
‘Right. Let’s get you dressed.’
‘Then toast?’
‘Then I have to get ready, and then you can have toast,’ she promised, but she dragged out the dressing and teeth cleaning and face washing as long as possible, then sat Josh on the bed with a book while she washed and dressed herself and tidied the room.
The sound of running water from Sebastian’s room had stopped, she realised as she tugged the bed straight. There was no sound at all, no drawers shutting or boards creaking. He must have finished in the shower and gone downstairs again. With any luck he was in the study, and if not, he could show her where the toaster was to save her scouring the kitchen for it.
She retrieved Josh from the bathroom where he was driving the nailbrush around on top of the washstand like a car.
‘Toast?’ she said, and he beamed and ran over to her, taking her outstretched hand. He chattered all the way down the stairs and into the kitchen, and she was suddenly really, really glad that he’d been with her in the car, that she hadn’t been stuck here with Sebastian on her own.
Not with all the fizzing emotions in her chest—
She found the bread, but there wasn’t a toaster and he wasn’t around. She was still standing there with the bread in her hand and contemplating going to find him when Sebastian came back into the room.
She waved the bread at him. ‘I can’t find the toaster.’
‘Ah. There’s a mesh gadget for that in the slot on the left of the Aga. Just stick the bread in it and put it under the cover, and then flip it. It only takes a few seconds each side so keep an eye on it.’
He pulled the thing out and handed it to her, then headed into the boot room.
‘I’m just going to check the lane,’ he said. ‘See how bad it is.’
‘Really? It’s almost dark still.’
Except it wasn’t, of course, because of the eerie light from the snow and the fact that she’d dallied around for so long getting ready.
Even though she’d resisted putting make-up on...
The door shut behind him, and she put the bread between the two hinged flaps of mesh, laid it on the hotplate and put the cover down. Delicious smells wafted out in moments, and she flipped it and gave it another moment and then buttered the toast while the kettle boiled again.
It smelt so good she made a pile of it, unable to resist sinking her teeth into a bit while she worked, and all the time she wondered how he was getting on and what he’d found at the end of the drive.
* * *
Sheesh.
He stood inside the gates—well inside, as he couldn’t actually get near them without a shovel and a few hours of solid graft—and stared in shock at the lane beyond.
He was already up to his knees in snow and it was getting deeper with every step. Beyond the gates, the snow reached to head height at either side of the entrance. It only dipped opposite the gates because the snow had had somewhere to go.
Straight across the entrance, through the bars of the gates and right up the drive.
There was at least a foot everywhere, but it wasn’t smooth and level. It was sculpted, like sand in the Sahara, swirls and peaks and troughs in shades of brilliant white and cold bluey-purple in the light of dawn.
Beautiful, fascinating—and deadly. If he hadn’t been here they could have been trapped inside the car, buried alive in the snow, slowly and gradually suffocating in the freezing temperatures—
He shut off that line of thought and concentrated on the here and now. It wasn’t good.
In a freewheeling part of his brain that he hadn’t even consulted he realised Georgie wouldn’t even be able to get away if they landed a helicopter in the field opposite, despite the fact that it was virtually bare of snow now, because the snow in the lane was so deep they’d never cross it. Not that he’d really contemplated hiring a helicopter on Christmas Eve to take her and Josh away and bring his family back, but even if he had...
And the snow wasn’t going anywhere soon. Although the wind had finally died away, it was cold. Bitterly, desperately cold, the change from the previous few days sudden and shocking, and he shrugged down inside his coat with a humourless laugh.
He hadn’t needed a cold shower. He should have just come out here. Naked. That might have done the trick. The shower certainly hadn’t.
He gave the lane one last disparaging look and waded back to the house, walking in to the smell of toast and the sound of laughter, and for a moment he felt his heart lift.
Crazy. Stupid. She left you.
But even so, he’d still have her there for another twenty-four hours at least. More, probably, and nobody was going to worry about this tiny little lane given that it was as bad elsewhere in the county as it was here. He’d already known it, he’d seen it on the news, and only wild optimism had sent him down the drive to check...
He swept the snow which had fallen in through the doorway back out into the courtyard, shut the door, stamped the snow off his boots and put them on the rack, hung up his coat and went back into the kitchen.
She’d made a pot of tea and was sitting at the table with Josh and a pile of hot buttered toast, playing peeka-bo behind a slice of toast. Josh, his face smeared with butter and crumbs, was giggling deliciously and Sebastian felt his heart squeeze.
‘Smells good,’ he said, rubbing his hands together to warm them, and Georgie looked up and searched his face.
‘And the answer is?’ she asked, the laughter fading in her eyes, and he shook his head.
‘We’re going nowhere. The lane’s full to head height.’
‘Head height?’ she gasped, and her eyes looked shocked. As if she was imagining being out there with Josh, trapped in the car, seeing what he’d seen in his mind’s eye?
‘Hey, it’s all right, I was here,’ he said softly, reading her mind, and she looked up at him again and their eyes locked.
‘But what if...?’
‘No what ifs. Don’t go there, George.’ He certainly wasn’t going there again. Once was enough. He took a mug out of the cupboard. ‘Any more tea in the pot?’
‘Mmm. And I made you more toast. I wasn’t sure if you’d want it but I made it anyway because we interrupted your breakfast.’
He dropped into the chair opposite her and reached for a slice. ‘That’s fine, I could do with more,’ he said, and sank his teeth into it, suddenly hungry.
Hungry for all sorts of things.
Her warmth. Her laughter.
Her little boy, so like her, so mischievous and delightful, a part of her. What did that feel like? To have someone to love, someone who was part of you?
He looked quickly away and turned on the television to give himself something to do.
So much for his defences. They were in tatters, strewn around him like an old timber barn after a hurricane, and she and her child had walked straight through them as if they’d never even existed.
Maybe they hadn’t. Maybe they’d just never been tested before, but they were being tested now, with bells on.
Jingle bells.
She was watching the screen, looking at the pictures of snow sent in by viewers of the local breakfast news programme. Not just them, then—not by a long way. And tomorrow was Christmas Day.
‘There’s no chance we’ll be out of here by tomorrow, is there?’ she said flatly.
Had she read his mind? Probably, as easily as he’d read hers. They’d always been good at it. Except at the end—
‘I think it’s very unlikely. I’m sorry. Your parents will be disappointed.’ She nodded. Josh was playing on the floor now, driving a piece of toast around like a car, and she met Sebastian’s eyes, worrying her lip again in that way of hers.
‘They will be disappointed,’ she said softly, lowering her voice. ‘So will yours. Was it just them coming?’
‘No. My brothers were coming up from London—well, Surrey. I expect they’ll spend it together now. They live pretty close to each other. What about your family? Was it just your parents, or was Jack going to be there?’
‘No, just them. Jack’s got his own family now.’ She sighed. ‘I really wanted this Christmas to be special. Josh was too small to understand his first Christmas, and last year—well, it just didn’t happen really, without David. It seemed wrong, and he was still too young to understand it, so we just spent it very quietly with my parents. But this year...’
‘This year he’s old enough, and you’ve moved on,’ he murmured.
She nodded. ‘Yes. Yes, I have, and he is, and it was going to be so lovely—’
She broke off and swallowed her disappointment, and he couldn’t leave her like that. Her, or a little boy who’d lost his father. He had no idea how his own first Christmases had been spent. He didn’t even know the religion of his real parents, their nationality, their age. Nothing. Just a void. And he couldn’t bear the thought that Josh would have a void where Christmas should have been. He’d make sure that didn’t happen if it killed him.
He took a deep breath, buried his misgivings and smiled at her.
‘Well, we’ll just have to make sure it is lovely,’ he said. ‘Heaven knows we’ve got enough food, and I’ve got all the decorations and there’s a tree outside waiting to come in, if I can find it under the snow. And we can’t do anything else. My family aren’t going to be able to get here, and you can’t get away, so why don’t we just go for it? Give Josh a Christmas to remember.’
She stared at him, taking in his words, registering just what it must be costing him to make the offer—although she might have known he would. The old Sebastian, the one she loved, wouldn’t have hesitated. The new one—well, she was beginning to realise she didn’t know him at all, but he might not be as bad as she’d feared.
‘That would be lovely,’ she said softly, her eyes welling. ‘Thank you. I know you don’t—’
He lifted his hand, silencing her. ‘Let it go, George. Let’s just take it at face value, have a bit of fun and give Josh his Christmas—no strings, no harking on the past, no recriminations. And no repeats of last night. Can we do that?’
Could they? She wasn’t sure, but she wanted to try.
She felt the tears welling faster now, and pressed her lips together as she smiled at him. ‘Yes. Yes, we can do that. Thank you.’
He returned her smile a little wryly, and got to his feet.
‘So—want to help me decorate the house?’
* * *
He gave them a guided tour of the ground floor.
Josh loved it. There were so many places to hide, so much to explore. And Georgie—well, she loved it in a different way, a bitter-sweet, this-could-have-been-ours way that made her heart ache.
No what ifs.
His words echoed in her head, and she put the thoughts out of her mind and concentrated on what he’d done to the house.
A lot.
‘Oh, wow!’ she said, laughing in surprise when they went into the dining room. ‘That’s a pretty big table.’
‘It extends, too,’ he said, his mouth twitching, and she felt her eyes widen.
‘Really?’ She went to the far end and sat down. ‘Can you hear me?’
His smile was wry with old memories. ‘Just about. Probably not with the extra leaves in.’
Their eyes held for just a beat too long, and she felt a whole whirlpool of emotions swirling in her chest. She got up and came towards him, running her fingers slowly over the gleaming wood, avoiding his eyes while she got herself back under control. ‘Did you get the grand piano for the music room?’ she asked lightly, and looked up in time to catch a flicker of something strange in his eyes.
He shook his head. ‘No. It seemed pointless. I don’t play the piano, but I do listen to music in there sometimes. It’s my study now. I prefer it to the library, the view’s better. Come and see the sitting room—the old one, in the Tudor part. I think it’s probably where I’ll put the tree.’
‘Not in the hall?’
He shrugged. ‘What’s the point? I’m never in the hall, I just walk through it. And I thought, over Christmas, we might want to sit somewhere warm and cosy and less like a barn than the drawing room. It’s huge, if you remember, and a bit unfriendly. It’ll be better in the summer.’
She nodded. It was huge, but it was stunningly elegant and ornate in a restrained way, and it had a long sash window that slid up inside the wall so you could walk out through it onto the terrace. She’d loved it, but she could see his point.
In winter, the little sitting room—which was still twice the size of her main reception room—would be much more appropriate. Next to the kitchen in the same area of the house, it was beamed and somehow much less formal than its Georgian counterpart, and it had a ginormous inglenook fireplace big enough to stand inside.
He pushed open the door, and she went in and sighed longingly.
‘Oh, this looks really cosy.’ Huge, squashy sofas bracketed the inglenook, and there were logs in the old iron dog grate waiting to be lit. She could just imagine curling up there in the corner of a sofa with a book, with a dog leaning on her knees and Josh driving his toy cars around on the floor.
Dreaming again.
‘Where are you going to put the tree?’
‘In this corner. There’s a power socket for the lights, and it’s out of the way.’
‘How big is it?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Eight foot?’
Her eyes widened. ‘Will it fit under the beams?’
He grinned and shrugged again. ‘Probably. I can always trim it. Only one way to find out.’
‘Finding out’ turned out to be a bit of a mission. It was in the courtyard, close to the coach house, but the snow was deep except by the back door where it had all fallen in earlier.
‘A shovel would make this a lot easier,’ he said, standing at the door in his boots and eyeing the snow with disgust.
‘I thought you had a shovel in the car?’
‘I do. Look at the coach-house.’
‘Ah.’ Snow was banked up in front of the doors, and digging it out without a shovel wasn’t really practical.
‘I should have thought of that last night,’ he said, but of course he hadn’t, and nor had she, because they’d had quite enough to think about already.
She didn’t want to think about last night.
She picked Josh up and stood in the kitchen watching through the window as Sebastian ploughed his way through the snow to a huge, shapeless lump in the corner by the coach-house door. He plunged his arm into the snow, grabbed something and shook, and a conical shape gradually appeared.
‘Mummy, what ’Bastian doing?’
‘He’s finding the Christmas tree. It’s buried under the snow—look, there it is!’
‘Oh..!’ He watched, spellbound, as the tree emerged from its snowy shroud and Sebastian hauled it out of the corner and hoisted it into the air.
She went to the boot room door.
‘Can I help you get it in?’
‘I doubt it. I should stand back, this is going to be wet and messy.’
She moved out of the way, and he dragged it through the doorway, shedding snow and needles and other debris all over the place. Then he emerged from underneath it, propped it in the corner and grinned at them both.
‘Well, that’s the easy bit done,’ he said. There was a leaf in his hair, in amongst the sprinkles of snow, and she had to stuff her hand in her pocket to stop from reaching out and picking it off.
‘What’s the hard bit?’ she said, trying to concentrate.
‘Getting it to stay upright in the stand, and finding the right side.’
She chuckled, still eyeing the leaf. ‘I can remember one year my mother cut so much off the tree trying to even it up she threw it out onto the compost heap and bought an artificial one.’
He laughed and turned his back on the tree and met her eyes with a smile. ‘Well, that won’t happen here. There’s no way I can find the secateurs, and the compost heap’s far too far away.’
‘Well, let’s hope it’s a good tree, then,’ she said drily. ‘How about coffee while it drip-dries? And then, talking of my mother, I really should phone her and tell her what’s happening.’
‘Do that now, although I expect she’s worked it out. The news is full of it. The entire country’s ground to a halt, so at least we’re not alone. And at least you’re both safe. There are plenty of people who’ve been stuck on the motorways overnight.’
‘Really?’
‘Oh, yeah. It’s bad. Go on, ring her, and I’ll make the coffee,’ he offered, so she picked up the phone and dialled the number, and the moment she said, ‘Hi, Mum,’ Josh was clamouring for the phone.
‘Want G’annie! Me phone!’
‘Oh, Mum, just have a quick word with him, can you, and then I’ll fill you in.’
‘Are you stuck there? We thought you must be. It’s dreadful here.’
‘Oh, yes. Well and truly—OK, Josh, you can talk to Grannie now.’
She handed over the phone to the pleading child, and he beamed and started chatting. And because he was two, he just said the things that mattered to him.
‘G’annie, ’Bastian got a big tree!’
Oh, no! Why hadn’t she thought of that? She held out her hand for the phone. ‘OK, darling, let Mummy have the phone now. You’ve said hello to Grannie.’
But he was having none of it, and ran off. ‘We got snow, and we stuck,’ he went on, oblivious. ‘And we having a ’venture, and ’Bastian got biscuits—’
Biscuits. That was the way forward.
She grabbed the packet off the table and waved them at him. ‘Come and sit down and give me the phone and you can have biscuits,’ she said, and wrestled the receiver off him.
‘Hi. Sorry about that. He’s a bit excited. Anyway, Mum, I’m really just ringing to say we’re stuck here for the foreseeable. The lane is head high, apparently, and there’s just no way out, so we aren’t going to be able to get to you until it’s cleared, and I very much doubt it’ll be today—’
‘Did he say Sebastian?’
Oh, rats. Trust her to cut to the chase. ‘Uh—yeah. He did.’
‘As in Sebastian Corder? At Easton Court? Is that where you are?’
‘Uh—yeah.’ Her brain dried up, and she ground to a halt, but it didn’t matter because her mother had plenty to say and no hesitation in saying it.
‘I can’t believe you didn’t tell me last night! Are you all right? Of all the places to be stuck—is he OK with you? And you said “they”—is there someone else there? His family? A woman? Not a woman—oh, darling, do be careful—’
‘Mum, it’s fine—’
‘How can it be fine? Georgia, he broke your heart!’
‘I think it was pretty mutual,’ she said softly. ‘Look, Mum, I know it’s not what you want to hear, but we’re OK, and we’re alive, which is the main thing, and he’s being really generous and it’s fine. And there’s nobody else here, just us. His family were coming today. Don’t stress. Nothing’s going to happen.’
Nothing more than the kiss they’d already exchanged, but they’d promised each other no repeats...
‘You can’t just tell me not to stress, I’m your mother. That’s what we do! And he’s—’ Her mother broke off and floundered for a moment, lost for a definition.
‘What?’ Georgie prompted softly. ‘An old friend? And at least we know he’s not a serial killer.’
‘He doesn’t need to be. There’s more than one way to hurt someone.’
And didn’t she know that. ‘Mum, it’s fine. I’m a big girl now. I can manage. Look, I have to go, he’s made coffee for us and then we’re going to decorate the tree. I’ll give you a ring as soon as I know what’s happening with the snow, OK? And give Dad a hug from us and tell him we’ll see him soon. I’ll ring you tomorrow.’
She hung up before her mother could say any more, and turned to find Sebastian watching her thoughtfully across the table.
‘I take it she’s not impressed.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘You’d think you were holding us hostage, the fuss she’s making.’
‘She’s your mother. She’s bound to stress.’
‘That’s exactly what she said.’ She sat down at the table with a plonk and gave a frustrated little laugh. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘About your mother, who you have no control over, or the weather, for which ditto?’ He smiled wryly and pushed the biscuits towards her.
‘Here, have one of these before your son finishes them all, and let’s go and tackle this tree.’
CHAPTER FIVE
EASIER SAID THAN DONE.
It took the best part of an hour to wrestle the tree into the room and get it in the right position, and by the end of it he was hot, cross and had a nice bruise on his finger from pinching it in the clamp.
‘Look on the bright side,’ Georgie said, standing back to study it critically. ‘At least it’s a nice soft fir and not a prickly old spruce. And it fitted under the beam.’
He stuck his head out from underneath it and gave her a look. ‘Just don’t tell me to turn it round again,’ he growled, and she smiled sweetly and widened her eyes.