a corner and forget—
‘There you go then, guv. Have a good Christmas.’
‘And you,’ he said, closing the door quietly behind the man and staring numbly towards the breakfast room. What the hell was going on? It must be Kate—no one else had a key, and the place was like Fort Knox. She must have dropped in with Megan and a friend to check on the house—but it didn’t sound as if they were checking anything. It sounded as if they were having fun.
Oh, Lord, please, not today…
He limped over to the door and pushed it gently open, and then stood transfixed.
Chaos. Complete, utter chaos.
Two children were sitting on the floor by the fire in a welter of greenery, carefully tying berries to some rather battered branches that looked as if they had come off the conifer hedge at the back of the country club, but it was the woman standing on the table who held his attention.
Tall, slender, with rather wild fair hair escaping from a ponytail and jeans that had definitely seen better days, she was reaching up and twisting another of the branches into the heavy iron hoop over the refectory table, festooning the light fitting with a makeshift attempt at a Christmas decoration which did nothing to improve it.
He’d never seen her before. He would have recognised her, he was sure, if he had. So who the hell—?
His mouth tightened, but then she bent over, giving him an unrestricted view of her neat, shapely bottom as the old jeans pulled across it, and he felt a sudden, unwelcome and utterly unexpected tug of need.
‘It’s such a shame Jake isn’t going to be here, because we’re making it so pretty,’ the little girl was saying.
‘Why does he go away?’ the boy asked.
‘I don’t know,’ the woman replied, her voice soft and melodious. ‘I can’t imagine.’
‘Didn’t Kate say?’
Kate. Of course, she’d be at the bottom of this, he thought, and he could have wrung her neck for her abysmal timing.
Well, if he had two good hands…which at the moment, of course, he didn’t.
‘He goes skiing.’
‘I hate skiing,’ the boy said. ‘That woman in the kindergarten was horrible. She smelt funny. Here, I’ve finished this one.’
And he scrambled to his feet and turned round, then caught sight of Jake and froze.
‘Well, come on then, give it to me,’ the woman said, waving her hand behind her to try and locate it.
‘Um…Mum…’
‘Darling, give me the branch, I can’t stand here for ever—’
She turned towards her son, followed the direction of his gaze and her eyes flew wide. ‘Oh—!’
‘Mummy, do I need more berries or is that enough?’ the little girl asked, but Jake hardly heard her because the woman’s eyes were locked on his and the shock and desperation in them blinded his senses to anything else.
‘Kitty, hush, darling,’ she said softly and, dropping down, she slid off the edge of the table and came towards him with a haphazard attempt at a smile. ‘Um…I imagine you’re Jake Forrester?’ she asked, her voice a little uneven, and he hardened himself against her undoubted appeal and the desperate eyes.
‘Well, there you have the advantage over me,’ he murmured drily, ‘because I have no idea who you are, or why I should come home and find you smothering my house in bits of dead vegetation in my absence—’
Her eyes fluttered briefly closed and colour flooded her cheeks. ‘I can explain—’
‘Don’t bother. I’m not interested. Just get all that—tat out of here, clear the place up and then leave.’
He turned on his heel—not a good idea, with his knee screaming in protest, but the pain just fuelled the fire of his anger and he stalked into the study, picked up the phone and rang Kate.
‘Millie?’
‘So that’s her name.’
‘Jake?’ Kate shrieked, and he could hear her collecting herself at the other end of the line. ‘What are you doing home?’
‘There was an avalanche. I got in the way. And I seem to have guests. Would you care to elaborate?’
‘Oh, Jake, I’m so sorry, I can explain—’
‘Excellent. Feel free. You’ve got ten seconds, so make it good.’ He settled back in the chair with a wince, listening as Kate sucked in her breath and gave her pitch her best shot.
‘She’s a friend. Her ex has gone to Thailand, he won’t pay the maintenance and she lost her job so she lost her house and her sister kicked her out yesterday.’
‘Tough. She’s packing now, so I suggest you find some other sucker to put her and her kids up so I can lie and be sore in peace. And don’t imagine for a moment that you’ve heard the end of this.’
He stabbed the off button and threw the phone down on his desk, then glanced up to see the woman—Millie, apparently—transfixed in the doorway, her face still flaming.
‘Please don’t take it out on Kate. She was only trying to help us.’
He stifled a contemptuous snort and met her eyes challengingly, too sore in every way to moderate his sarcasm. ‘You’re not doing so well, are you? You don’t seem to be able to keep anything. Your husband, your job, your house—even your sister doesn’t want you. I wonder why? I wonder what it is about you that makes everyone want to get rid of you?’
She stepped back as if she’d been struck, the colour draining from her face, and he felt a twinge of guilt but suppressed it ruthlessly.
‘We’ll be out of here in half an hour. I just need to pack our things. What do you want me to do with the sheets?’
Sheets? He was throwing her out and she was worrying about the sheets?
‘Just leave them. I wouldn’t want to hold you up.’
She straightened her spine and took another step back, and he could see her legs shaking. ‘Right. Um…fine.’
And she spun round and walked briskly away in the direction of the breakfast room, leaving him to his guilt. He sighed and sagged back against the chair, a wave of pain swamping him for a moment. When he opened his eyes, the boy was there.
‘I’m really sorry,’ he said, his little chin up, just like his mother’s, his eyes huge in a thin, pale face. ‘Please don’t be angry with Mummy. She was just trying to make a nice Christmas for us. She thought we were going to stay with Auntie Laura, but Uncle Andy didn’t want us there because he said the baby kept him awake—’
There was a baby, too? Dear God, it went from bad to worse, but that wasn’t the end of it.
‘—and the dog smells and he got on the sofa, and that made him really mad. I heard them fighting. And then Mummy said we were going to see Kate, and she said we ought to come here because you were a nice man and you wouldn’t mind and what harm could we do because the house was hundreds of years old and had survived and anyway you liked children or you wouldn’t have done the playroom in the attic.’
He finally ran out of breath and Jake stared at him.
Kate thought he was that nice? Kate was dreaming.
But the boy’s wounded eyes called to something deep inside him, and Jake couldn’t ignore it. Couldn’t kick them all out into the cold just before Christmas. Even he wasn’t that much of a bastard.
But it wasn’t just old Ebenezer Scrooge who had ghosts, and the last thing he needed was a houseful of children over Christmas, Jake thought