Christmas Passions

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ONE

AVA was neither looking nor feeling her best. Chilled to the bone, her hair hanging around her face in semi-frozen rats’ tails, her hands and nose so numb they might just as well have been amputated, she huddled in the barn and watched Leo disappear into the swirling night.

“Wait here,” he’d told her. “I’ll go raise someone at the farmhouse and persuade them to take pity on us.”

The occasional stamp of hooves and warm animal smell told her there were horses in the stalls behind her. Somewhere beyond the paddock, on the other side of the fence, Leo’s Ford Expedition nestled nose-down and up to its rear axle in a snowdrift. And no more than fifteen miles away, her parents were waiting to welcome her to her first Christmas at home in over three years.

A horse barn, however well-kept, was no more part of the plan than finding her one-time idol Leo Ferrante waiting to meet her flight when it touched down six hours late at Skellington Airport. He was supposed to be wining and dining his lady-love, not stranded up to his knees in snow with her best friend.

Ava’s first reaction when she saw him towering head and shoulders over the sparse crowd at the arrivals concourse had been that he probably wouldn’t recognize her; her second, the fervent hope that he wouldn’t since, the last time they’d met, she’d been all of sixteen and so horribly ill-at-ease in her too tall, too skinny body that she’d given new meaning to the word “ungainly.” She liked to think she’d improved somewhat in the intervening twelve years and now commanded a presence so elegantly cosmopolitan that he’d look right past her in search of a more homely specimen.

He’d dashed any such hope by striding forward the second he caught sight of her, and pinning her in a smile that sent a remembered skewer of pain through her heart. “Ava, I’d have recognized you anywhere!”

Oh, terrific! she’d thought, crushing that belated and completely inappropriate stab of adolescent hero worship. He was Deenie’s lover—soon to be her fiancé, from everything she’d written in her latest letters—and Ava had come home for Christmas with her family, not to make a fool of herself by lusting after a man she couldn’t have.

So she’d smiled a lot during the thirty mile drive to Owen’s Lake, and made polite small talk, and congratulated herself on projecting the image of chic professional taking time out from her adventurous life overseas to make a flying visit home. Until they’d had to abandon his vehicle mid-journey, that was, and slog their way across a windblown paddock, and her once-elegant leather shoes had been reduced to frozen blocks encasing her feet.

Noticing the way she was floundering to keep up with him as he forged ahead, he’d clamped an arm around her shoulders and attempted to shield her with his body from the worst of the weather. The honed perfection of him beneath his sheepskin jacket had felt solid and safe and wonderful. His thigh brushing hers at each step had peeled away all her layers of acquired sophistication and left her palpitating with awareness of how deliciously masculine and strong he was: a world-class athlete-cum-movie idol dressed up as a small-town lawyer romancing the girl next door.

He had never kissed Ava, never held her hand. Never by so much as a word or a glance intimated that he had the slightest interest in anything she did. She’d been nothing to him but the other girl who lived six houses away on upscale Charles Owen Crescent; the one who sometimes came with her mother and father to his parents’ place when they hosted a summer barbecue around the pool, or an open house at Christmas. The one who, with her friend Deenie, used to giggle and blush and whisper behind her hand whenever he put in an appearance.

Cowering now in some stranger’s barn, it struck Ava as supremely unfair that, in less than an hour, he could compress all her accomplishments into a mere blot on her résumé, and reduce her once again to an unprepossessing heap of flesh beset by futile wanting.

“Don’t go there, Ava!” she admonished out loud, slamming shut the door on such traitorous nonsense. “Leo Ferrante has never been more off limits.”

A horse poked its head out of the nearest stall, gave a snuffling whinny, and regarded her reproachfully, as though to say, We’re trying to sleep in here, if you don’t mind!

“Sorry if I disturbed you, handsome,” she crooned, moving close enough to stroke the long, velvety nose. “If it makes you feel any better, I’ll be gone soon.”

“Don’t go making promises you can’t keep,” Leo advised her, letting himself into the barn just in time to overhear. “I’m afraid we’re stuck here for the duration.”

She didn’t like what that implied. “And how long is the duration expected to last?”

He shrugged. “Until daylight, at the very least.”

“And you’re saying we have to spend the intervening time in here?” She stared in disbelief at their surroundings which, while unquestionably luxurious for horses, hardly amounted to much in the way of human comfort. “Wasn’t anyone home at the house?”

“Only the very nervous young mother of a colicky baby. Seems her husband’s off helping a neighbor with a sick animal, and even if she’d been willing to admit a couple of strangers past the front door, her guard dogs weren’t.”

“I’m sure if you’d explained—”

“I did.” He pulled off his gloves and touched his hand to her cheek, a lovely, too brief contact. “Not exactly the welcome home you were expecting, is it, Ava? But at least I persuaded her to phone your folks and let them know you’re safe.”

Actually, what she’d expected was taking a taxi from Skellington to the grand old house in Owen’s Lake where she’d been born, and finding her parents waiting to ply her with hugs, cocoa and questions. She’d envisioned the garden transformed into a fairyland by hundreds of coloured lights threaded among the trees and shrubs. She’d pictured the railing of the wraparound porch trimmed with pine branches held in place with red ribbons and silver bells.

She’d looked forward to the scent of wood smoke, and the warm reflection of flames flickering over the cool white marble fireplace in the living room, and the ceiling-high Noble Fir Christmas tree filling the big bay window.

She’d counted on having time to prepare herself to face the happy couple without betraying the envy eating holes in her heart. On being dressed to the nines in her smart Thai leather suit that was as soft and pale as whipped cream, or swaying into a room in the beaded silk dress she’d found in Hong Kong. In other words, she’d planned to be in command of herself and her situation, and look like a million dollars on the outside, regardless of how she might be feeling inside.

Instead, she was being forced to spend the night with Leo. In a stable. And looking like something no respecting dog would dream of dragging in.

It was enough to make her wish she’d accepted the marriage proposal offered through an intermediary by a grateful tribal chief whose son she’d nursed through a health crisis. At least he’d rated her on a par with his most prized water buffalo! From the way Leo was surveying her though, she might have been the bearded lady from a traveling sideshow!

“You don’t look so great,” he remarked, as if she hadn’t already figured that out for herself.

“Thanks, Leo,” she said, peeved. “I really needed to hear that!”

“What I mean is, you’re practically blue with cold. You’d better get out of those wet clothes.”

“And do what?” She tried to laugh—no easy task when her teeth were chattering like demented castanets. “Climb under a horse blanket and pray for deliverance?”

He didn’t even crack a smile. “There’s a tack room at the other end of the stable which we’re welcome to use, and yes, Ava, horse blankets and hay are going to be the best this hotel can offer.”

“And where will you spend the rest of the night?”

He raised his altogether stunning eyebrows, as though he couldn’t quite believe she’d asked such an idiotic question, and said, “With you, of course. Where else?”

Her heart should have sunk. Instead, it soared. When she was old and grey and lying on her deathbed, she’d be able to boast that, just once, she’d slept with Leo Ferrante. It almost made her present predicament worthwhile.

Almost. Thankfully, she wasn’t entirely bereft of common sense or decency. “If you think I’m going to strip for your entertainment, think again,” she said flatly.

“You might have lived in Africa for the last three years, but you’re still a nurse, Ava, and as such ought to know better than anyone the dangers of hypothermia.” He steered her firmly toward a door at the far end of the barn, thrust it open and shoved her into a room lined with horsey equipment. “I’m not suggesting you take off everything, but at least get rid of the wet shoes and stockings, and the coat. They’re not doing you any good, anyway, and you aren’t going to be much help to Deenie if you wind up in bed with pneumonia.”

“Why on earth does Deenie need my help? She’s the most self-reliant person I know.”

“Deenie,” he said succinctly, “is a mess right now and everyone is counting on you to deal with her. Whatever it is that’s bugging her isn’t something she’s prepared to talk about.”

He sounded more like an exasperated father than a besotted lover. “It could be simply a matter of adjusting,” Ava said. “Exchanging the world of international ballet for small-town life can’t be easy for someone who always swore she’d never settle for the kind of domestic bliss the rest of us thrive on.”

Oh, great! She came across more like an aging aunt who’d buried four husbands, rather than a twenty-eight-year old who’d yet to exchange the single life for matrimony.

Not that he cared, one way or the other. Apparently tired of the subject, he shrugged and made for the door. “Whatever! Right now, I’m more interested in grabbing a couple of hours sleep. Why don’t you get rid of the wet clothes while I round up some hay for a mattress?”

What the devil was wrong with him, that he’d complain to Ava Sorensen of all people? There were no secrets between her and Deenie. From what he could tell, they’d been joined at the hip practically from birth and shared everything. Everything!

He hefted a bale of hay and grimaced at the painful twinge which shot through his lower back. For Pete’s sake, the stuff couldn’t weigh more than thirty pounds, and six months ago he could press nearly two hundred without breaking a sweat. Could run five miles and swing a golf club, too. Now, thanks to an out-of-control snowboarder using him as a braking device, he was limited to brisk walks, strengthening exercises, and spending too much time with Deenie who was cute and amusing. Yet despite plenty of opportunity and a certain amount of flirtatious bantering, they hadn’t come close to any sort of intimacy.

“A fine pair we’d make!” he’d said, making light of it the one time she’d told him she wouldn’t mind a little sex on the side to relieve the tedium. “Between my back spasms and your sore shoulder and ankle, we’d both likely wind up back in physiotherapy. We’re better off sticking to gin rummy and cribbage.”

He’d been relieved when she’d let the idea drop without further comment. Mightily so, in fact—which made him wonder if more than just his spine had been cracked in the accident. What if he’d suffered other injuries which had gone undetected? What if he’d lost interest in sex forever?

Cripes, talk about a guy’s life spinning out of control! He needed to put a halt to things, and fast, beginning with the insane hints flying around that he and Deenie were an ideal couple and should be making what her mother so unsubtly referred to as “plans.” There were no long-term plans for him and Deenie. They were friends, and that was all.

Shouldering the hay, he trudged back to the tack room and rapped on the door. “Are you decent in there, Ava?”

“As much as can be expected.”

He found her perched on a stool with her knees drawn up under her chin and her bare feet poking out from under the poncho she’d fashioned from a horse blanket. Her toes were straight and unscarred, with perfect nails painted the colour of cranberries, and he thought how much prettier they were than Deenie’s which had become almost deformed from years of dancing en pointe.

“You’re looking better already,” he said, spreading the hay on the floor and tossing a couple of blankets on top. “You want to hop down from there on your own, or do you want me to give you a hand?”

“I can manage,” she said hastily, which was just as well. If he couldn’t have lifted Deenie at five foot two, he didn’t have a prayer of playing hero to Ava who stood at least seven inches taller.

Clutching the poncho around her, she scurried across the cement floor and dropped down on the makeshift mattress, but not so swiftly that he didn’t get an eyeful of her legs. Long and tanned, they were as elegant as her narrow feet, with sweetly curved calves and finely turned ankles. She might have been too tall for ballet, as Deenie had said, but she’d be a knockout in a Las Vegas chorus line.

“Why didn’t Deenie come with you to meet me?” she said, glaring at him as if she’d caught him peeking up her skirt.

“She was planning to, but she begged off when we heard your flight had been delayed. Claims she’s had too many late nights recently. But she wants you to give her a call as soon as you’re up and about in the morning. She said something about getting together with you for lunch.”

He removed his jacket and pulled off his boots, which sent her scooting to the far corner of the mattress with fire in her eyes. What did she think—that he planned to get buck naked and flaunt himself at her? “Relax, Ava,” he said, choking back a laugh. “This is as far as it goes. I’ll even keep my socks on, just to make sure our feet don’t get too intimate.”

She bit her lip and blushed a little, and he wondered if she had any idea how charmed he was by everything about her. Comparisons were odious, he knew, but he couldn’t help thinking that if Deenie had been the one forced to bunk down in a stable for the night, especially after being in transit for over eighteen hours, she’d have raised hell and put a lid on it. Could be that’s why she and Ava had remained such close friends all these years: the old “opposites attract” syndrome.

“You’re nothing like Deenie, you know,” he said, crouching next to her.

“I’ve always known that, Leo,” she replied coolly. “And I stopped trying to be, years ago.”

“Good.” He spread another blanket over her, took a couple for himself, and stretched out. “The world’s not big enough for two like her.”

“She is special. I’ve always known that, as well.”

Her eyes, big and beautiful and grey as summer thunderclouds, all at once had such a bereft look to them that he knew a crazy urge to fold her in his arms and tell her she was special, too, and that she shouldn’t assume what he’d said about Deenie was necessarily a compliment.

Leaping up to turn off the overhead light before he did or said something really stupid, he felt his way back to the makeshift bed and made a point of stuffing a wad of blanket between him and her. “I think anyone who meets her recognizes she’s different and always has been. According to her mother, she was still in diapers when she decided she was going to be a prima ballerina, and she’s never once deviated from the path of that ambition which, by itself, makes her something of a rarity.”

“Exactly,” Ava said, her voice flowing over him in the dark like sweet, heavy ice wine. “So tell me, Leo, how is it that two months around you was enough to persuade her to give up the adulation of sold-out audiences in Europe and settle down in sleepy old Owen’s Lake?”

CHAPTER TWO

SNOW batting against the paned window marked the silence ticking by as he tried to come up with an answer. “I guess,” he finally said, “it began with our both being sidelined by injuries that kept us away from our regular routines. We were housebound former neighbors who met at the physiotherapy clinic one morning, gravitated towards each other by mutual sympathy and boredom, and…one thing led to another.”

“You make it sound as if you drifted together by default,” Ava accused.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he said, wishing she hadn’t managed to pinpoint matters quite so accurately. “Deenie’s a lovely, intelligent woman and I’d have gone stir crazy if she hadn’t been around to keep me entertained. But I’d be lying if I said our…relationship left me deafened by violins or dazzled by stars. I’m not programmed to react like that. I don’t know any lawyers who are.”

The hay rustled softly as she shifted to a more comfortable position. Or was it her silky underwear sighing against her skin—a possibility which sent heat prickling down his torso to threaten areas best left undisturbed.

“You might not be a romantic, Leo,” Ava said, “but Deenie is, which brings me back to my original question. What made her decide to stay in Owen’s Lake?”

“I think,” he said, striving to maintain a lofty perspective despite the lecherous urgings of his body, “her injuries made her face up to the fact that her performing career isn’t going to last indefinitely. You were a dancer yourself when you were younger, Ava, albeit an amateur. You know how much punishment your body took. Multiply that a thousand times and you get a pretty good idea of the wear and tear on Deenie, both physically and emotionally. She knows that although she’ll probably make a full recovery this time, she’ll be forced into retirement much sooner than most women—probably within the next five years. So she’s trying to compromise.”

“That doesn’t sound like the Deenie I know.”

“What can I say? People change. Maybe being a prima ballerina isn’t enough to satisfy her anymore. Maybe she wants to have something else to turn to when her dancing days are over.”

“And she’s convinced she’ll find that ‘something’ with you?”

Cripes, the question suggested the notion that he and Deenie were on the brink of marriage had spread farther than he feared! “I certainly wouldn’t go that far,” he said neutrally, “even though her family does seem to think we’re a match made in heaven.”

Ava turned toward him. He could tell because her breath sifted over his face, fragrant as sun-warmed peaches. It brought to mind the lush, smooth texture of her lips and left him wondering if she’d taste as sweet as she smelled. Even as a teenager, she’d had a mouth that begged to be kissed and from the little he’d seen, time had only added to its appeal.

“From everything she’s told me, Deenie seems to think so, too.”

“Don’t read too much into what she’s told you, then,” he replied, irritated as much by his reaction to her proximity as by her probing questions. “I’m a thirty-seven-year-old lawyer who’s handled enough divorce cases to know that if people were more realistic about what makes a relationship work, and less prone to fantasizing, I might not have quite such a fat bank account but I’d have a hell of a lot more free time to devote to other pursuits.”

Ava, dogged to a fault, wasn’t about to get sidetracked. “I’m not interested in a run-down of your financial assets, Leo. Deenie and I are as close as sisters and I don’t want to see her hurt. So what I’m waiting to hear you say is that you’re not leading her on, and that you share a clear understanding of how things really stand between you. Can you give me those assurances?”

A hollow gloom descended on him, one with which he’d become all too familiar in recent weeks. Usually it attacked first thing in the morning, filling him with a sense of foreboding before he was awake enough to wrestle it into submission with pragmatic reason.

It stemmed, he’d told himself, from the frustration of enforced idleness; to the knowledge that while he followed doctor’s orders, his partners in the Skellington law firm were doing double duty picking up the slack created by his putting in half days only at the office. But Ava’s continued cross-examination bared a truth he’d been unwilling to face. The real cause of his discontent sprang not from professional frustration, but from the uneasy suspicion that he’d somehow lost control of his private life.

“Well, Leo? That wasn’t such a difficult question surely, so what’s taking you so long to answer?”

“If you must know,” he snapped, feeling like the cornered rat he undoubtedly was, “I’m tired of other people assuming they have the right to poke their noses into matters which are none of their concern.”

“I see. Well now that you’ve got that off your chest, let me ask you this. What do you want from the immediate future, Leo?”

“To get back to work full time. To be on top of my case load. To return to normal, for Pete’s sake!”

“Does ‘normal’ include making time for Deenie?”

“Cripes, Ava!” he exploded. “You never used to be such a pain in the butt, so where’s all this coming from now? Are you jealous because she’s got a man to keep her company, and you haven’t?”

The question sliced through the night like a blade and he knew from the utter silence which greeted it that he’d drawn blood. “Oh, jeez!” he muttered. “Ava, I’m sorry. I had no right to say that.”

Her breathing flitted across to him, jerky and uneven. “No, you hadn’t.”

“Are you crying?”

“No,” she said, her voice swimming in tears.

Awkwardly, he reached for her, planning to give her shoulder a comforting, brotherly pat. But he misjudged the distance between them and instead made contact with her hair. It looped around his fingers like damp strands of silk and snagged in the metal band of his watch.

“Oh, hell,” he said softly. “Don’t try to pull away, Ava. We’re all knotted up.”

It should have been a non-incident; would have been if she hadn’t ignored his request and, in trying to disentangle herself, moved her head in such a way that her mouth blundered against his.

He didn’t exactly kiss her. He just sort of…let his lips rest against hers while he worked with his free hand to unsnarl her hair.

She’d spent the better part of two days in a plane. She should have reeked of stale aircraft food and recycled air. Instead, she tasted delicious. Peaches again.

“Your perfume is driving me wild,” he said against her mouth.

A tremor raced over her. She brought her hand up to cover his, to push it and him away. “Please don’t—!” she began.

“I won’t,” he said.

But he did. This time, he kissed her, and no two ways about it. He cupped her head and took advantage of her gasp of shock to trace his tongue over the silken inner lining of her lips. And just for a nanosecond, she responded, curving her body to fit against his and angling her mouth to give him greater access.

Big mistake! The violins and stars he’d denied experiencing with Deenie made a belated appearance, seeming not to care that they’d shown up for a woman he hadn’t seen in years, and there was no telling what he might have tried next if Ava hadn’t come to her senses. Which she did with a vengeance, by hauling off and cracking her palm across his cheek at the same time that she reared back and yanked her hair free from his watchband.

“You had no right to do that!” she spat.

“I know,” he said, prepared to shoulder the blame. “I’m sorry.”

But he wasn’t. He was dazzled. Dazed. Exhilarated.