just so, and white lights only because her mother abhorred the coloured ones, with neatly ribboned and bowed gifts nestled beneath it.
A sharp contrast to the fern they had left behind in their flat, Meg thought wistfully, with its home-made decorations and paper chains, and enough tinsel and multicoloured lights draped around it to illuminate a tree four times its size.
‘I’m just in the kitchen helping Mr Cole, darling.’ She bent to kiss her son lightly on top of his ebony head. ‘Just call if you need me.’
It wasn’t too difficult to locate the kitchen in this three-up three-down cottage. The door to the room opposite the sitting-room was open, revealing a small formal dining-room, meaning the closed door at the end of the hallway had to be the kitchen.
But even without that process of elimination, the sound of pots banging and the smell of food cooking would have told her exactly where she could find Jed Cole.
Jed Cole.
He really was something of an enigma. Even without that American accent he so obviously didn’t belong here. He was too big, or else the cottage was too small for him. Besides, the décor and furniture in the cottage were both well-worn and faded, and even if she didn’t buy expensive clothing herself Meg knew a cashmere sweater when she saw one, and the faded denims had an expensive label on the back pocket, the shoes he had put on after taking off the heavy boots made from soft black leather.
‘So tell me,’ she said brightly as she entered the kitchen to find him putting steaks, two of them, under the grill. ‘Which do you think you would have opted for if I hadn’t stopped laughing when I did—the shaking or the slap?’
Jed eyed her mockingly from beneath heavy dark brows as he leant back against one of the kitchen units, arms folded across the width of his chest as he looked down at her. ‘Actually, I’d got around to thinking that kissing you might do the trick,’ he drawled ruefully.
Embarrassed colour instantly stained her cheeks. So much for her attempt at humour.
‘But on second thoughts,’ he added hardly, ‘I decided that I’m not into kissing teenage mothers, no matter what the provocation!’
Meg’s eyes widened at this description of her. ‘Just how old do you think I am?’
He gave her a considering look. ‘Obviously old enough to legally be the mother of the—Scott,’ he amended harshly. ‘Just, probably.’
She put her hands on her hips as she eyed him incredulously. ‘For your information, Mr Cole, I’m twenty-seven years old,’ she snapped. ‘And I most certainly did not offer you any provocation.’ The wings of colour in her cheeks seemed to burn now.
His eyes narrowed at the slight emphasis she put on the ‘you’, that steely blue gaze easily holding hers for several long seconds, until finally he gave a shrug and moved away. ‘Make the salad, why don’t you?’ he instructed tersely before checking the steaks under the grill. ‘Nothing ever looks as bad with a hot meal inside you.’
‘Does that apply to you or to me?’ Meg returned ruefully as she moved to take the makings of a salad out of the cooler box in the fridge.
‘Both of us!’ he came back tersely before turning away to look at the fries.
Meg continued to look at him for several seconds. This really wasn’t an ideal situation, for any of them. Jed Cole had just been sitting here in the cottage minding his own business, looking forward to his steak dinner no doubt, and now he had a woman and her young son to feed too.
She moved to look out of the kitchen window, the light reflected outside showing her that the gusting wind was blowing the snow into deep drifts.
‘Is there really no way we can get away from here tonight?’
She only realized she had spoken the words out loud when Jed Cole slammed a knife down on the worktop. ‘No way and no how,’ he rasped with controlled violence. ‘Now if you want to eat tonight, I suggest you make the damn salad.’
Meg had turned as he’d slammed down the utensil, eyeing him warily now as she started to prepare the salad.
‘And stop looking at me like that,’ he added impatiently.
She straightened. ‘Like what?’
‘Like a mouse expecting to be mauled by that bear Scott originally thought that I was!’ He sighed his exasperation. ‘Compared to my usual demeanour I’m behaving like a goddamned pussycat, okay?’
Meg bit on her top lip as it twitched with laughter. At the moment he looked as Scott used to when he’d gone through ‘the terrible twos’, totally disgruntled at not being able to get his own way.
‘Okay,’ she agreed mildly. ‘Do you want dressing on this salad?’
‘Do I want…’ He closed his eyes, drawing in a controlling breath before opening them again to glare at her. ‘Who the hell are you, Meg Hamilton? And what warped quirk of fate,’ he rasped before she could reply, ‘landed you on my doorstep?’
‘Actually it was the side of the cottage,’ she corrected softly as she mixed a mustard dressing together. ‘But we won’t argue the details just now,’ she dismissed brightly.
‘We’ll save that until later, huh?’ he muttered, a grudging respect now in those deep blue eyes as he looked at her consideringly. ‘What was with your mother earlier? She seemed more concerned with her eating arrangements than whether or not you and Scott were okay.’
The kitchen, small at best, with barely enough room for the two of them to move around it, suddenly didn’t even seem big enough for that, with no room for her to hide, to avoid the piercing intrusion of Jed Cole’s gaze.
Because he was right. Not once during that brief conversation had her mother bothered to ask why Meg and Scott had been delayed, merely commenting that her sister had managed to get there, also from London, because she had sensibly come by train.
It simply hadn’t been worth the effort of explaining that, unlike Sonia, who had probably got all her Christmas presents for the family in one elegant designer-label bag after being gift-wrapped by the store they were bought from, Meg had all Scott’s Father Christmas presents to bring too. Gifts lovingly bought and wrapped by Meg herself, this being the first Christmas that Scott, aged three and a half, had really appreciated and looked forward to. She had even gone to the expense of hiring a car so that she could transport the things here.
The car that was now crumpled into the side of the cottage.
She would have to call the hire company in the morning and explain what had happened, sincerely hoping that the insurance would cover the costs of the damage.
She managed to give Jed Cole a casual shrug as he stood waiting for an answer to his questions. ‘Mothers are like that,’ she evaded. ‘Feeding their family is of high priority.’
Which might have been true of her mother if she did the cooking herself, but ever since Meg had been born, probably before that too, Mrs Sykes—Bessie—had presided over the Hamilton kitchen. But as Jed Cole would never meet her mother, let alone eat a meal in the Hamilton household, he didn’t need to know that.
‘I’m sure your mother is the same,’ she dismissed.
There was a slight softening of his expression. ‘For as long as I can remember my mother has always had enough extra food in the house to feed a family of ten, and often has, and if she hadn’t she’d send my dad out to kill a cow.’
‘She sounds nice,’ Meg murmured wistfully, almost able to imagine the warm kitchen and the motherly figure there caring for her family.
‘She is.’ Jed nodded. ‘So’s my dad. And my two younger brothers. And their wives, and the numerous offspring they’ve produced.’
Meg gave him a considering look. ‘So why aren’t you there for Christmas, instead of—well, here, alone?’
His