Her Christmas Fantasy & The Winter Bride (12 page)

After all, wasn't the classic advice always to treat falling
in love too quickly and too passionately with caution and suspicion? Wasn't it an accepted rationale that good love—real love—needed time to grow and didn't just happen overnight?

As she watched Oliver silently releasing his anger on the wood, his jaw hardening a little bit more with each fierce blow of the axe, Lisa knew that she couldn't blame him for what he was feeling, but surely he could understand that it wasn't easy for her either? She was not programmed mentally for the kind of thing that had happened to her with him; she had not been prepared for it either, not…

‘There's no need for you to stay.'

Lisa stared at Oliver as she heard the harsh words, the cutting edge to his voice reminding her more of the man she had first met than the lover she had become familiar with over the last few precious days.

‘The wind's getting cold and you're shivering,' he added when she continued to stare mutely at him. ‘You might as well go back inside; I've nearly finished anyway.'

He meant that there was no need for her to stay outside and wait for him, Lisa realised, and not that she might as well leave him and start her return journey home, as she had first imagined.

The relief that filled her was only temporary, though. Didn't the fact that she had so easily made such a mistake merely confirm what her sense of caution was already trying to make her understand—that she didn't really
know
Oliver, that no matter how compatible they might be in bed out of it there were still some very large and very important gaps in their knowledge of each other?

Quietly she turned away from him and started to walk back towards the house. Behind her she heard the sound of the axe hitting a fresh piece of wood. She had almost reached the house when she heard Oliver calling her name.
Stopping, she turned to watch him warily as he came running towards her.

As he reached her he took hold of her, wrapping her in his arms, telling her fiercely, ‘God, Lisa, I'm such a… I'm sorry…the last thing I want us to do is fight, especially when we've got so little time left… Lisa?'

As she looked up at him he cupped her face in his hands, his thumbs caressing her skin, his hair tousled from the wind, his eyes dark with emotion.

Standing close to him like this, feeling the fierce beat of his heart and the heat of his body, breathing in the scent of him, unable to resist the temptation to lift her hand and rub away the streak of dried earth on his cheek, to feel already the beginning of the growth of his beard on his jaw which he had shaved only that morning, Lisa acknowledged that she might just as well have downed a double helping of some fatally irresistible aphrodisiac.

‘Lisa…'

His voice was lower now, huskier, more questioning, and she knew that the shudder she could feel going through him had nothing to do with the after-effects of the punishing force he had used to cut up the logs.

She
was the one who was responsible for that weakness, for that look in his eyes, that hardness in his body, and she knew that she was responding to it, as unable to deny him as he was her, her body nestling closer to his, her head lifting, her lips parting as he started to kiss her, tenderly at first and then with increasing passion.

‘I can't bear the thought of losing you,' he whispered to her minutes later, his voice husky and raw with emotion. ‘But you don't seem so concerned. What is it, Lisa…? Why won't—?'

‘It's too soon, Oliver, too early,' Lisa protested, interrupting him, knowing that if she didn't stand her ground now, if she
allowed her brain to be swayed not just by his emotions but by her own as well, it would be oh, so fatally easy, standing with him like this now, held in his arms, to believe that nothing but this mattered—it would be too late, and there would be no one but herself to blame if at some future date she discovered…

‘I could make you commit yourself to me,' Oliver warned her, his mood changing as his earlier impatience returned. ‘I could take you to bed now and show you…'

‘Yes, you could,' Lisa agreed painfully. ‘But can't you see, Oliver…? Please try to understand,' she begged him. ‘It isn't that I don't love you or want you; it's just that…this…this…us…isn't how I envisaged it would be for me. You're just not the kind of man I—'

‘You mean that I'm not Henry,' Oliver supplied harshly for her, his arms dropping back to his sides as he stepped back from her.

Lisa closed her eyes. Here we go again, she thought tiredly. She had meant one thing and Oliver had taken the words to mean something completely different—just as she had misunderstood him earlier when she had thought he was telling her to leave. And if they could misunderstand one another so easily what real chance did they have of developing the harmonious, placid relationship that she had always believed she needed? Some people enjoyed quarrels, fights, emotional highs and lows, but she just was not one of them.

‘I don't want to fight with you, Oliver,' she told him quietly now. ‘You must know that you have no possible reason to feel…to think that I want you to be Henry…'

‘Haven't I?' he demanded bitterly. ‘Why not? After all, you were prepared to marry him. Wanted to marry him… Wanted to so much in fact that you were prepared to let his mother browbeat and bully you and—'

‘That's not true,' Lisa interrupted him swiftly. ‘Look, Oliver, please,' she protested, spreading her hands in a gesture
of emotive pleading for his temperance and understanding. ‘Please… I can't talk. I don't want us to argue…not now, when everything has been so…perfect, so special and—'

‘So perfect and special in fact that you don't want to continue it,' Oliver cut across her bitterly.

‘You've given me the most wonderful Christmas I've ever had,' she whispered huskily, ‘in so many different ways, in all the best of ways. Please don't spoil that for me…for us…now. I need time, though, Oliver; we
both
need time. It's just…'

‘Just what?' he demanded, his eyes still ominously watchful and hard. ‘Just that you're still not quite sure…that a part of you still thinks that perhaps Henry—?'

‘No. Never,' Lisa insisted fiercely, adding more emotionally, ‘That's a horrible thing to say. Do you really think that if I had any doubts about…about wanting you, that I would have—?'

‘I didn't say that you don't prefer me in bed,' Oliver told her curtly, correctly guessing what she had been about to say, ‘but the implication was there none the less—in the very words you used to describe what you wanted from marriage the first time we discussed it, the fact that you've been so reluctant to accept what's happening between us…the fact that you don't seem to want me to meet your parents.'

‘You've got it all wrong,' she protested. ‘My feelings…my doubts,' she amended when he snorted derisively over her use of the word ‘feelings', ‘they…they don't have anything to do with you. It isn't because I don't…because I don't care; in fact—'

‘Oh, no,' Oliver told her cynically, not allowing her to finish what she was saying.

‘It's me…not you,' Lisa told him. ‘I've always been so cautious, so…so sensible… This…this falling in love with you—well, it's just so out of character for me and I'm afraid.'

‘You're afraid of what?' he demanded.

The wind had picked up and was flattening his T-shirt against his body, but, unlike her, he seemed impervious to the cold and Lisa had to resist the temptation to creep closer to him and beg him to wrap his arms protectively around her to hold her and warm her.

‘I don't know,' she answered, lifting her eyes to meet his as she added, ‘I'm just afraid.'

How could she tell him without adding to his anger that a good part of what she feared was that he might fall out of love with her as quickly as he had fallen in love with her? He was quite obviously in no mood to understand her vulnerability and fear and she knew that he would take her comment as an indication that she did not fully trust him, an excuse or a refusal to commit herself to him completely.

‘Please don't let's quarrel,' she repeated, reaching out her hand to touch his arm. His skin felt warm, the muscles taut beneath her touch, and the sensation of his flesh beneath her own even in this lightest of touches overwhelmed her with such an intense wave of desire that she had to bite down hard on her bottom lip to prevent herself crying out her need to him.

They were still standing outside, and through the windows she could see the tree that he had decorated for her, the magic he had created for her.

‘Oh, Oliver,' she whispered shakily.

‘Let's go inside,' he responded gruffly. ‘You're getting cold and I'm… You're right,' he added rawly. ‘We shouldn't be spoiling what little time we've got left.'

‘It is still Christmas, isn't it?' Lisa asked him semi-pleadingly as he turned to open the door for her.

‘Yes, it's still Christmas,' he agreed, but there was a look in his eyes that made her heart ache and warned her that Christmas could not be made to last for ever—like their love?

Was
that
why she doubted it—him? Because it seemed too perfect, too wonderful…too precious to be real?

 

They said their private goodbyes very early in the morning in the bedroom they had shared for the last four nights, and for Lisa the desolation which swept over her at the thought that for the next two nights to come she would not be sleeping within the protection of his arms, next to the warmth and intimacy of his body, only confirmed what in her heart of hearts she already knew.

It was already too late for her to protest that it was too soon for them to fall in love, too late to cling to the sensible guidelines that she had laid down for herself to live her life by: the sensible, cautious, pain-free guidelines which in reality had been submerged and obliterated days ago—from the first time that Oliver had kissed her, if she was honest—and there were tears in her eyes as she clung to him and kissed him.

What was she doing? she asked herself helplessly. What did guidelines, common sense, caution or even potential future heartache matter when they had this, when they had one another; when by simply opening her mouth and speaking honestly and from her heart she could tell Oliver what she was feeling and that she had changed her mind, that the last thing she wanted was to be apart from him?

‘Oliver…' she began huskily.

But he shook his head and placed his fingertips over her mouth and told her softly, ‘It's all right—I know. And I do understand. You're quite right—we do need time apart to think things through clearly. I've been guilty of trying to bully you, to coerce you into committing yourself to me too soon. Love—real love—doesn't disappear or vanish when two people aren't physically together; if anything, it strengthens and grows.

‘I didn't mean to put pressure on you, Lisa, to rush you. We
both have lives, commitments, career responsibilities to deal with. The weather has given us a special opportunity to be together, to discover one another, but the snow, like Christmas, can't last for ever.

‘If I'd managed to get you to come to New York with me as I wanted, I probably wouldn't have got a stroke of work done,' he told her wryly. ‘And a successful conclusion to these negotiations is vitally important for the future of the business—not just for me personally but for everyone else who is involved in it as well. Oh, and by the way, don't worry about not taking your car now; I'll make arrangements to have it picked up and returned to you later. I don't want you driving with the roads like this.'

Oliver had already told her about a large American corporation's desire to buy out part of his business, leaving him free to concentrate on the aspects of it he preferred and giving him the option to work from home.

‘If Piers goes ahead and marries Emma, as he's planning, he's going to need the security of knowing he has a good financial future ahead of him. Naturally the Americans want to get the business as cheaply as they can.' He had started to frown slightly, and Lisa guessed that his thoughts were not so much on her and their relationship but on the heavy responsibility that lay ahead of him.

Her throat ached with pain; she desperately wanted to reach out to him and be taken in his arms, to tell him that she had made a mistake, that she didn't want to let him go even for a few short days. But how could she now after what he had said?

Suddenly, illuminatingly, she realised that what she had feared was not loving him but losing him. The space that she had told herself she needed—they both needed—had simply been a trick her brain had played on her, a coping mechanism to help her deal with the pain of being without his love.

Quietly she bowed her head. ‘Thank you,' Lisa whispered to him as tears blurred her eyes.

 

‘Are you sure there's nothing else you want…a book or…?'

Lisa shook her head. ‘You've already bought me all these magazines,' she reminded Oliver huskily, indicating the pile of glossies that he had insisted on buying for her when they'd reached the station and which he was still carrying for her, together with her case, as he walked her along the platform to where the train was waiting.

She had tried to protest when he had insisted on buying her a first-class ticket but he had refused to listen, shaking his head and telling her, ‘That damned independence of yours. Can't you at least let me do something for you, even if it's only to ensure that you travel home in some degree of comfort?'

She had, of course, given in then. How could she not have done so? How could she have refused not just his generosity but, she sensed, from the expression in his eyes at least, his desire to protect and cherish her as well?