Scrooge and the Single Girl

“A little.” Jilly was already scooting down, reaching for the afghan.

Will helped her, tucking it in around her. “Better?”

“Mmm-hmm.” She was thinking that she could feel his body’s warmth. Then he rolled away from her and stood.

“You’re leaving?” Jilly hoped she didn’t sound as forlorn as she felt.

“I was just going to get another blanket. But if you want to be left alone…” Will trailed off.

“I’d rather have company, actually.”

Pure self-indulgence, Bravo, Will was thinking as he got the spare afghan. She was fine. So what was he doing, lying on her bed with her, rambling on about himself? Just what she needed, after having the misfortune to be snowed in with him—a chance to hear his long, sad story: Nightmare Christmases I Have Known.

He should go, he thought, as he returned to the bed and stretched out next to her.

But he didn’t….

Scrooge and the Single Girl

Christine Rimmer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

In loving memory of

the house my mother was born in, a house

we filled with our family memories,

the house we always called the

Old House.

CHRISTINE RIMMER

came to her profession the long way around. Before settling down to write about the magic of romance, she’d been an actress, a salesclerk, a janitor, a model, a phone sales representative, a teacher, a waitress, a playwright and an office manager. She insists she never had a problem keeping a job—she was merely gaining “life experience” for her future as a novelist. Christine is grateful not only for the joy she finds in writing, but for what waits when the day’s work is through: a man she loves, who loves her right back, and the privilege of watching their children grow and change day to day. She lives with her family in Oklahoma.

THE BRAVOS:

HEROES, HEROINES AND THEIR STORIES

THE NINE-MONTH MARRIAGE (SSE#1148)

—Cash Bravo and Abby Heller

MARRIAGE BY NECESSITY (SSE #1161)

—Nate Bravo and Megan Kane

PRACTICALLY MARRIED (SSE #1174)

—Zach Bravo and Tess DeMarley

MARRIED BY ACCIDENT (SSE #1250)

—Melinda Bravo and Cole Yuma

THE MILLIONAIRE SHE MARRIED (SSE #1322)

—Jenna Bravo and Mack McGarrity

THE M.D. SHE HAD TO MARRY (SSE #1345)

—Lacey Bravo and Logan Severance

THE MARRIAGE AGREEMENT (SSE #1412)

—Marsh Bravo and Tory Winningham

THE BRAVO BILLIONAIRE (single title)

—Jonas Bravo and Emma Hewitt

MARRIAGE: OVERBOARD

—Gwen Bravo McMillan and Rafe McMillan

(Weekly Serial at www.eHarlequin.com)

THE MARRIAGE CONSPIRACY (SSE #1423)

—Dekker (Smith) Bravo and Joleen Tilly

HIS EXECUTIVE SWEETHEART (SSE #1485)

—Aaron Bravo and Celia Tuttle

MERCURY RISING (SSE #1496)

—Cade Bravo and Jane Elliott

SCROOGE AND THE SINGLE GIRL (SSE #1509)

—Will Bravo and Jilly (Jillian) Diamond

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Epilogue

Chapter One

Jillian Diamond left Sacramento at a little after two on that cold, clear Sunday afternoon in late December. She was barely out of town before the sky began to darken.

In the foothills, a light snow was falling. The fluffy flakes blew down, swirling in the gray sky, melting the instant they hit the windshield.

Jilly cast a quick glance at the seat beside her. “Voilà, Missy. Snow.”

Miss Demeanor, a small calico cat with one mangled ear and an ordinarily pleasant disposition, glared at her mistress through the screened door of the carrier that held her prisoner. Missy did not enjoy traveling.

Jilly faced the road again and continued, as if Missy cared, “Snow is good, you know that. Snow is part of the plan.”

The plan was this: Take one creative, contented single woman, add Christmas in an idyllic setting, mix well and come up with…a column. Or maybe an article, something suitable for the slicks. Options, at this point, were wide open.

And no, this was not to be your usual desperate, club-hopping singleton’s Christmas, not your ho-hum lonely career girl wandering aimlessly in a coupled-up world, with humor. Not your predictable tale of meaningless sexual encounters with guys who have it all—except for a heart. That was only what Jilly’s editor at the Sacramento Press-Telegram had asked for in the first place.

Jilly had told him no way. “Listen, Frank. I don’t care if half the time it seems to me that that’s my life, exactly. It’s not going in the Press-Telegram for everyone I know—not to mention two hundred and fifty thousand strangers—to read about.” She’d shot back a counter-proposal: the happy single girl’s Christmas. That is, Jillian and her cat and a Christmas tree, perfectly content all on their own, in some quiet, scenic, isolated place.

Frank had had the bad taste to stifle a yawn. “On second thought, never mind.”

So fine. Jilly decided she would do it on spec and sell it next year.

Which was why she and Missy were all packed up in her 4Runner, heading toward a certain secluded old house high in the Sierras, on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe.

And the weather was cooperating nicely. Because, of course, for Christmas with the contented single girl, there should be snow, and it should be drifting attractively down outside a big picture window.

Too bad Jilly got going on this project a little late, thus necessitating settling for a setting a tad less than ideal. Most likely, there wouldn’t be any picture windows in this particular house. But Jilly was okay with that. She’d have mountains and pine trees and lovely, sparkly white snow. For the rest, she’d make do. She fed a Christmas CD into the stereo, pumped up the volume good and high and sang right along with Boyz II Men.

“Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow….”

Which it did. The snow came down harder. Thicker. It was starting to stick, too. Jilly turned on the wipers and slid in another Christmas CD.

By the time she reached Echo Summit, she found herself driving through a true snowstorm. But the Chains Required signs weren’t up yet. Traffic was still moving right along. And she had four-wheel drive, so she was doing all right. Night was falling. Her headlights, set on auto, switched themselves on.

It was after she left the highway, not too far beyond Tahoe Village, that things started to get scary. But not too scary. She was handling it. At first.

Caitlin Bravo, a stunning and frequently overbearing woman on the far side of fifty, owned the house Jilly was looking for. Caitlin had provided detailed instructions for finding the place. There were a number of small, twisting mountain roads to navigate, but Jilly had it all mapped out. It should have been a piece of cake.

It would have been a piece of cake. In daylight, minus the blizzard.

Jilly turned off the Christmas music and tried the radio, but almost ran herself off the road in her effort to tune in the weather and drive at the same time. And really, she’d gone a little past the point where a weather report would do her much good. The view out her windshield told her more than she wanted to know. She should have checked the forecast a little earlier—like before she left Sacramento. It was a problem she had and she knew it. Sometimes she’d forget to look into important details in her enthusiasm to get going on a project that enticed her.

“So shoot me,” she muttered as she switched off the radio. She focused all her concentration on the snakelike, narrow road as it materialized before her in the glare of her low beams. She was deep in the forest now, pines and firs looming thick and shadowed on either side of the road.

She missed a turn and didn’t realize it until five or six miles later. Slowing to a crawl so she wouldn’t miss it again, she backtracked, searching. She found it. And then missed the next one, had to backtrack, found the turn at last, felt her flagging spirits lifting—only to realize she’d missed another one.

On the seat beside her, Missy was not pleased. Irritated whines had begun to issue from the cat carrier.

“Missy honey, I am doing the best I can, all right?”

The cat only meowed back at her, a petulant sort of sound.

“I’ll get us there, I promise you. And then it’s a nice, big bowl of Fancy Feast for my favorite girl.”

Missy said nothing. Just as well. Jilly needed all her attention focused on the next turn—which, for once, she actually found the first time around. She drove on, winding her way up and down the sides of mountains.

At last, at a few minutes after six, a good hour past the time she should have reached it, she found the rutted, snow-drifted dirt driveway that led to her destination. Her stomach growled. She thought of the bags of groceries in back. They contained ingredients for a number of gourmet meals. Gourmet, after all, had seemed the best way to go for this project.

Too bad what she longed for right now was some Dinty Moore chili, or maybe a big can of—

Jilly let out a startled cry and stomped on the brake as a doe leapt from the cover of the trees and directly into her path.

Luckily, she managed to stop before she hit it. And then it did what a deer always does. It froze directly in front of her vehicle and stared into the beams of her headlights, an expression of total surprise and dumb-animal disbelief in those big, sweet, bulging brown eyes.

Jilly rolled down her window, stuck her head out into the freezing storm and yelled, “Go on, you! Get out of here! Get lost before I make a jacket out of you!”

The doe blinked and took off, disappearing into the leafless bushes and pine trees at the other side of the driveway. Jilly pulled her head back inside, rolled up the window and brushed the snow out of her hair. Then she drove on, straining to see, the snow hitting the windshield so hard and thick, there was nothing but whiteness three feet beyond her front bumper.

The driveway was very long. Or at least, it seemed that way in the dark, with near-zero visibility. Jilly rolled along with great care, hunched over the steering wheel, peering into the wall of white in front of her, trying not to run into a pine tree or another startled deer.

Okay, truth. She was getting worried. She could end up snowed in up here in the middle of nowhere, with nobody but Missy to turn to. “Oh, not good,” she murmured under her breath. “Not good at all….”

But then she reminded herself that she did have her cell phone, that people knew where the old house was and knew she was headed there. She would be all right. She could call for help and get it eventually if it turned out she really needed it.

However, on the subject of the house, where was it? What if she’d somehow managed to miss it? What would happen if she—

And right then she saw it.

“Oh, thank you,” she cried. “Thank you, thank you, thank you, God!”

Not twenty feet ahead, the driveway opened out into a clearing. And in the middle of the clearing she could make out the looming shadow of the old house, with its high-pitched roof and long, deep porches. Smoke trailed up from the chimney-pipe and the golden light inside shone like a beacon through the swirling, blinding—

Wait a minute.

The golden light inside?

The house was supposed to be unoccupied.

Jilly reached the clearing. She pulled in beside the vehicle already parked there. Then she turned off the engine and sat for a moment, staring at the lighted house as snow gathered on the windshield, obscuring her view. Who could be in there? What in the world was going on?

About then she turned her head and looked through her side window at the other car. The window was fogging up. She rubbed at it with her open palm and peered closer.

“Omigod.”

It was Will Bravo’s car. She was sure of it. It was a very distinctive car, the Mercedes Benz version of a sport utility vehicle. Silver in color. What did they call it? A G-Class, she thought.

Will Bravo’s car.

Jilly shivered. Will was Caitlin’s middle son. The only one of Caitlin’s three sons who remained a bachelor, the other two having married Jilly’s two dearest friends, Jane Elliott and Celia Tuttle.

Will Bravo’s car….

Everything was starting to make way too much sense. “Caitlin, how could you?” Jilly whispered under her breath. She felt tricked. Used. Thoroughly manipulated.

She grabbed her purse from the floor in front of the passenger seat and fumbled through it until she came up with her phone. She’d stored Caitlin’s number, just in case she might need it. She punched it up. But when she put the phone to her ear, instead of ringing at the other end, all she got was static.

Jilly yanked the device away from her ear and glared at it. Terrific. So much for being able to count on her cell.

Missy meowed.

Jilly shoved the phone back in her purse, stuck her arm over the seat and got her coat and hat. She pulled on the coat and jammed the hat on her head. Then she hooked her purse over one shoulder, grabbed the cat carrier, leaned on her door and climbed out into the raging storm.

Chapter Two

Will Bravo was just about to sit down to his solitary dinner of franks and beans, with a copy of Crime and Punishment for company, when someone knocked on the kitchen door.

What the…?

His grandmother’s cabin was off the beaten path in every way. To get there, you had to have directions. Even when the weather was good, nobody ever just dropped in. Which was why he was here in the first place. He wanted to be left alone.

Whoever it was knocked some more.

Will went over and pulled open the door, and Jillian Diamond blew in on a huge gust of snow-laden wind. She was wearing a red wool hat, a big shearling coat, faded overalls, lace-up boots and a red-and-green striped sweater with a row of red reindeer embroidered on the turtleneck collar. In her left hand, she clutched an animal carrier from which suspicious meowing sounds were issuing.

Will couldn’t believe this. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Now, wasn’t that going to be fun to explain? Jilly thought. She caught the door and pushed it shut, then set Missy’s carrier on the warped linoleum floor, sliding her purse off her shoulder and dropping it next to her unhappy cat.

“I asked you what you’re doing here,” Will demanded for the second time.

She didn’t know where to start, so she countered provokingly, “I could ask you the same question.”

He studied her for a moment, his head tipped sideways. And then he folded his big arms across his broad chest and informed her, “I’m here every year from the twenty-second or twenty-third until the day after New Year’s.”

Jilly swiped her hat off her head and beat it against her leg to shake off the snow. “Well, sorry. I honestly didn’t know.”

He grunted. “You could have asked anyone. My mother—” Oh my, Jilly thought, surprise, surprise. “—my brothers. Even, more than likely, your two best friends.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah. Really.”

“Well, this may come as a rude shock to you, but asking if you were going to be here never even occurred to me.” Yeah, okay. Maybe it should have occurred to her. Given what she knew about Caitlin Bravo, it all seemed achingly obvious now. But that was called hindsight and it and $3.49 would get you a venti latte at Starbuck’s.

He was glaring at her, as if he suspected her of all kinds of awful things, as if he didn’t believe a word she had said. She didn’t even want to look at him.

So she didn’t. She looked away, and found herself staring at the single place-setting and the thick hard-bound book waiting on the ancient drop-leaf table about three feet from the door. Delicious comfort food smells issued from the pot on the stove.

“Answer my question,” he growled at her. “What are you doing here?”

From the carrier, Missy meowed plaintively. “Look,” Jilly said with a sigh. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you. I swear I didn’t have a clue that you were going to be here.”

He made a low scoffing sound. Jilly could see it all, right there in his gorgeous, lagoon-blue eyes. He thought she was after him. He believed she had known that he was staying here, that she’d followed him up here to the middle of nowhere to try and hook up with him.

She threw up both hands. “Think what you want to think. The deal is, though I truly hate to put you out, it’s very bad out there. I’m stuck here for the night and we both know it.”

He did more scowling and glaring. Then at last he gave in and muttered grudgingly, “You’re right. You’re going nowhere tonight.”

Oh, thank you so much for admitting the obvious, she thought. She said, “Right now, I need to get a few things in from my car.” Missy meowed again. “Like a litter box and some cat food, for starters.”

“All right. That’s reasonable.” Various coats and wool scarves hung on a line of wooden pegs beside the door. He grabbed a hooded down jacket. “Let’s go.”

Nothing would have given her more pleasure than to tell him she didn’t need his help. But there was her pride—and then there were her suitcases, the cat supplies and the various exotic lettuces and veggies and the hormone-free fresh turkey she’d brought to roast for her happy single-girl’s Christmas feast. And what about that bottle of good pinot grigio she’d bought to enjoy with her Christmas dinner, not to mention the pricey champagne she’d bought to toast the New Year? No way she was leaving them outside to freeze. If she trekked everything in alone, it would take two trips, maybe three. And it really was cold out there.

“Thank you,” she said tightly as she stuck her hat back on her head.

Outside, even under the protection provided by the porch, the icy wind seemed to cut the frozen night like the blade of a bitterly sharp knife. Once they moved off the porch and into the open clearing, it got worse. They struggled against the wind, getting beaten in the face with freezing snow, finding no shelter as they passed beneath the single bare maple tree between the vehicles and the cars. It wasn’t really all that far; it only felt like a hundred miles.

When they reached the cars at last, she went around to the rear of her Toyota and lifted the hatch. She passed him a twenty-pound bag of cat litter and another bag containing cat food and a plastic litter box. He managed to handle all that with one arm, so she also gave him the smaller of her two suitcases—it had her pjs in it, and a change of underwear, all she’d need for one night. Then, after giving him a backhanded wave meant to dismiss him, she turned to the bags of groceries and started going through them, consolidating the food items that had to go inside.

Will hadn’t budged. “What the hell are you doing?” he yelled at her over the howling of the wind.

“Just go on inside!” she shouted back.

But of course, he didn’t. What was it about some men? Congenitally incapable of following instructions.

“I asked you what the hell you’re doing!”

So she told him. “Perishables!”

He didn’t say anything after that. Just stood there, looking at her, eyes narrowed, mouth turned down at the corners, ice collecting in his bronze eyebrows, his ears and that handsome blade of a nose turning Rudolph-red.

Jilly turned back to her bags of groceries. It didn’t take all that long to get everything that wouldn’t hold up in a freezing car down to four plastic bags—one of them being the turkey. She hefted the bags out of the car and shut the hatch.

“Here,” Will shouted. “Give me—”

“No,” she hollered back. “I’ve got the rest. Let’s go.”

He gave her another of those dark, mean looks he was so good at. Now what? He was peeved because she wouldn’t let him carry the heaviest load? Was there no end to reasons for this man to be mad at her?

She turned her back on him and started for the porch. He was right behind her when she got to the front door. She set down the bags in her right hand to reach for the knob—and his hand came around and grabbed it first. She resisted the urge to glare at him over her shoulder. He pushed the door inward. She picked up her bags again and stepped inside.

It only took a few minutes to set up Missy’s comfort station in a corner of the bathroom, which was right off the kitchen. She let the cat out of the carrier as she dished up the Fancy Feast and filled a water bowl.

Once Missy was taken care of, Jilly joined her in the bathroom, shutting the door on Will, who was standing by the ancient drop-leaf kitchen table, staring bleakly at the bags of groceries.

Jilly used the facilities and washed her hands. When she entered the kitchen again, he’d moved her grocery bags to the long counter beside the darling, classic-looking round-sided Frigidaire. “What is this turkey doing in here?” he demanded.

“The rumba?” she suggested cheerfully.

He opened the Frigidaire and began stashing her lettuce and vegetables inside. “You know what I mean. You could have left it in your car.”

“No way. If I’d wanted a frozen turkey, I would have bought one. That’s a free-range, all-natural fresh turkey and it’s going to stay that way.”

He grumbled something under his breath. She couldn’t make it out and decided it was probably better if she didn’t try. He moved stuff around on one of the shelves in the fridge, then he picked up the turkey, stuck it inside and shut the door. “All right. Your cat is taken care of and the food’s put away. I’m going to eat now. It’s only franks and beans, but you’re welcome to join me.”

Oh, how she longed to hold her head high and refuse. But Jilly really loved franks and beans. As far as she was concerned, franks and beans ranked right up there with Dinty Moore chili. With Kraft mac and cheese. With bacon burgers. With her hands-down favorite of all time: Cheez Doodles.

And speaking of Cheez Doodles, she had several bags of them stowed out in the 4Runner. She should have thought to bring some along when they were lugging everything else inside.

“Do you want the food or not?” her ungracious host inquired darkly.

“Yes,” she said. “I do.”

He got down a plate, dug a fork out of a drawer. “Milk?”

“Yes, please.” She found a glass in a cupboard and poured it for herself. Then they sat down, put their paper napkins in their laps and dug in.

Oh, it was heaven. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was. With effort, she restrained herself from making ecstatic groaning noises. At that moment, eating the hot, lovely food, she could almost be grateful that she’d found Will Bravo here, that she hadn’t arrived to find it all dark and deserted, had to start the fire herself and worry about being all alone out here in this creaky old house while a blizzard raged outside and her cell phone was on the blink.

But then she looked up and caught him glaring at her and all her good will evaporated.

He said, “Now tell me. Why are you here?”

She shoved in another mouthful of beans, chewed them and swallowed. Then she gulped a little milk. Let him wait, she was thinking. It’s not going to kill him. Outside, the wind wailed.