Her Christmas Fantasy & The Winter Bride (18 page)

‘
Me
having second thoughts… There's no way I could ever have second thoughts about the way I feel about you…about what I want with you…'

Lisa took a deep breath. There was something she had to tell him now, whilst they were both being so open and honest with one another.

‘I did,' she confessed. ‘
I
had second thoughts…the day we parted…' She looked anxiously up at him; his face was unreadable, grave, craven almost, as he watched her in silence.

‘I tried to tell you then,' she hurried on. ‘I tried to say that I had changed my mind, but you didn't seem to want to listen and I thought that perhaps you had changed yours and that—'

‘Changed your mind about what?' Oliver demanded hoarsely, cutting across her.

‘About…about wanting to make a commitment,' Lisa admitted, stammering slightly as she searched his face anxiously, looking for some indication as to how he felt about what she was saying, but she could see none. Her heart started to hammer nervously against her ribs. Had she said too much? Had she…? Determinedly she pushed her uncertainty away.

‘I knew then that it was just fear that had stopped me from telling you what I already knew… That I
did
love you and that I did want to be with you… I was even going to suggest that I went to New York with you.' She paused, laughing shakily. ‘When it came to it I just couldn't bear the thought of not being with you, but you seemed so preoccupied and distant that I thought—'

‘You were going to tell me that…?' Oliver interrupted her. ‘Oh, my God, Lisa… Lisa…'

Any response she might have made was muffled by the hard pressure of his mouth against hers as, ignoring her protests that he might hurt his injured arm, he gathered her up,
held her against his body and kissed her with all the hungry passion she had dreamed of in the time they had been apart. ‘Lisa, Lisa,
why
didn't you say something to me?' Oliver groaned when he had finally finished kissing her. ‘Why…?'

‘Because I didn't think you wanted to hear,' Lisa told him simply. ‘You were so distant and—'

‘I was trying to stop myself from pleading with you to change your mind and come with me,' Oliver told her grimly. ‘
That
was why I was quiet.'

‘Oh, Oliver…'

‘Oh, Lisa,' he mimicked. ‘How long do you suppose your mother will be gone?' he asked her as he bent his head to kiss her a second time.

‘I don't know, but she did say something about going to see an exhibition at the Tate,' Lisa mumbled through his kiss.

‘Mmm…' He was looking, Lisa noticed, towards the half-open bedroom door, and her own body started to react to the message she could read in his eyes as she followed his gaze.

‘We can't,' she protested without conviction. ‘What about your arm? And you still haven't told me about the accident,' she reminded him.

‘I will,' he promised her, and added wickedly, ‘They said at the hospital that I should get plenty of rest and that I shouldn't stand up for too long. They said that the best cure for me would be…' And he bent his head and whispered in Lisa's ear exactly what he had in mind for the two of them for the rest of the afternoon.

‘Tell me about the accident first,' Lisa insisted, blushing a little as she saw the look he gave her when he caught that betraying ‘first'.

‘Very well,' he agreed, adding ruefully, ‘Although, it doesn't make very good hearing.

‘I didn't find out until we were back in Yorkshire that you weren't marrying Henry, but once I did and I realised what I'd
done I broke all the rules and drove straight back here despite the fact that I hadn't had any sleep for going on three days and that I was jet-lagged into the bargain. Hardly a sensible or safety-conscious decision but…' He gave a small, self-deprecatory grimace. ‘I was hardly feeling either sensible or safety-conscious; after all, what else had I got left to lose? I'd already destroyed the most precious thing I had in my life.

‘Anyway…I must have started to doze off at the wheel; fortunately I'd already decided to stop at a motorway service station and I'd slowed down and pulled onto the approach road, and even more fortunately there was no other vehicle, no other person around to be involved in my self-imposed accident. The authorities told me that I was lucky my car was fitted with so many safety features…otherwise…'

‘No, don't,' Lisa begged him, shuddering as her imagination painted an all too vivid picture of just how differently things could have turned out.

‘Lisa, I know there is nothing I can say or do that can take away the memory of what I did; all I can do is promise you that it will never happen again and ask if you can forgive me.'

‘It did hurt that you could think such a thing of me,' Lisa admitted quietly, ‘and that you could…could treat me in such a way, but I
do
understand. In a way both of us were responsible for what happened; both of us should have trusted the other and our love more. If we had had more mutual trust, more mutual faith in our love then… Oh, Oliver,' she finished, torn between laughter and tears as she clung onto him. ‘How could you possibly think I could even contemplate the idea of marrying anyone else, never mind Henry, after you…after the way you and I…?'

‘Even when mentally I was trying to hate you I was still loving you physically and emotionally,' Oliver told her huskily. ‘The moment I touched you… I never intended things to go
so far; I'd just meant to kiss you one last time, that was all, but once I had…'

‘Once you had what?' Lisa encouraged him, raising herself up on tiptoe to feather her lips teasingly against his.

‘Once I had…this,' Oliver responded, smothering a groan deep in his throat as he pulled her against him with his good arm and held her there, letting her feel the immediate and passionate response of his body to her as he kissed her.

 

‘We really ought to get up,' Lisa murmured sleepily, her words belying her actions as she snuggled closer to Oliver's side. ‘The day's almost gone and…'

‘Soon it will be bedtime. I know,' Oliver finished mock-wickedly for her. ‘It was very thoughtful of your mother to telephone and say that she'd decided to go and visit some friends this evening and to stay overnight with them…'

‘Mmm…very,' Lisa agreed, sighing leisurely as Oliver's hand cupped her breast.

‘Mmm…that feels nice,' she told him.

‘It certainly does,' Oliver agreed, and asked her softly, ‘And does this?' as he bent his head and started to kiss the soft curve of her throat.

‘I'm not sure… Perhaps if you did it for a bit longer,' Lisa suggested helpfully. ‘A lot longer,' she amended more huskily as his mouth started to drift with delicious intent towards her breast… ‘A lot,
lot
longer.'

‘H
OW DOES THAT LOOK?'

Lisa put her head to one side judiciously as she studied the huge Christmas tree that Oliver had just finished erecting in the hallway.

‘I think it needs moving a little to the left; it's leaning slightly,' she told him, and then laughed as she saw his pained expression.

‘No, darling, it's perfect,' she added with a happy sigh. They had been married for eight months, their wedding having preceded both Henry's and Piers'. Lisa's parents had both flown home for the wedding and Lisa and Oliver had flown out to Japan to spend three weeks with them in October.

Fergus had been disappointed when Lisa had handed in her notice, but she and Oliver were talking about the possibility of her setting up her own business in the north in partnership with Fergus. It seemed almost impossible to Lisa that it was almost twelve months since that fateful night when Oliver had found her stranded on the road and brought her home with him. Her smile deepened as she glanced down at the Armani suit she was wearing—a surprise gift from Oliver to mark the anniversary of the day they had initially met.

‘Happy?' Oliver asked her, bending his head to kiss her.

‘Mmm…how could I not be?' Lisa answered, snuggling closer to him. ‘Oh, Oliver, last Christmas was wonderful, special, something I'll never forget, but this Christmas is going
to be special too; I'm so glad that everyone's been able to come—your family and my parents.'

‘We're certainly going to have a houseful,' Oliver agreed, laughing.

He had raised his eyebrows slightly at first when Lisa had suggested to him that they invite all his own relatives and her parents to spend their Christmas with them, but Lisa's enthusiasm for the idea had soon won him over.

‘You really do love all this, don't you?' he commented now, indicating the large hallway festooned now for Christmas with the garlands and decorations that Lisa had spent hours making.

‘Yes, I do,' Lisa agreed, ‘but not anything like as much as I love you. Oh, Oliver,' she told him, her voice suddenly husky with emotion, ‘you've made me so happy. It's hard to imagine that twelve months ago we barely knew one another and that—I love you so much.'

‘Not half as much as I love you,' Oliver whispered back, his mouth feathering against hers and then hardening as he felt her happy response.

‘We still haven't put the star on the tree,' Lisa reminded Oliver through their kiss. ‘
You
are my star,' he told her tenderly, ‘and without you I'd be lost in the darkness of unhappiness. You light up my life, Lisa, and I never, ever want to be without you.'

‘You never, ever will,' Lisa promised him.

‘Hey, come on, you two, break it up,' Piers demanded, coming into the hallway carrying a basket of logs for the fire. ‘You're married now—remember?'

‘Yes, we're married,' Oliver agreed, giving Lisa a look that made her laugh and blush slightly at the same time, as he picked up the star waiting to be placed at the top of the tree—the final touch to a Christmas that would be all the
things that Christmas should be, that Christmas and every day
would
be for her from now on. Oliver
was
her Christmas, all her special times, her life, her love.

Lynne Graham

‘A
RISE…YOU'RE ACTUALLY
asking
us for a
rise
?' Claudia looked at the younger woman with shocked and incredulous eyes, much as if the girl had asked for a half-share in the house. ‘I think we're more than generous as it is. You have your salary as well as free board and lodging, and do please remember that we're keeping
two
of you!'

Although Angie was severely embarrassed by that response, she forced herself to continue. ‘I often work six days a week and I baby-sit several nights as well…'

Her persistence fired angry colour in the elegant brunette's cheeks. ‘I can't believe that we're even having this conversation. You do some housework and you mind the children. Why shouldn't you baby-sit? You have to sit in every night to look after Jake…surely you're not expecting us to pay extra for what you'd be doing anyway? I don't know how you can be so ungrateful after all we've done for you—'

‘I'm just finding it very hard to make ends meet,' Angie slotted in tightly, a deep sense of humiliation creeping over her.

‘Well, I'm sure I don't know what you're doing with your salary when you have all your bills paid for you,' her employer retorted very drily. ‘What I do know is that my husband, George, will be extremely shocked when I tell him about this demand of yours.'

‘It wasn't a demand,' Angie countered tensely. ‘It was a request.'

‘Request refused, then,' Claudia told her sharply as she stalked to the kitchen door. ‘I'm very annoyed about this and
very
disappointed in you, Angie. You have a really cushy job here. Gosh, I wish someone would pay
me
to stay home and fill the dishwasher! We treat you and Jake like part of our family. We kept you on when you were pregnant…and let me assure you that not one of our friends would even have
considered
retaining a pregnant and unmarried au pair in their home!'

Angie said nothing. There was nothing more to say unless she was prepared to risk Claudia's explosive temper and the threat of dismissal. No au pair worked the hours Angie did. But then she wasn't an au pair even though Claudia persisted in calling her one. She might have come to the Dickson family in that guise, accepting the equivalent of pocket money in place of a salary, but slowly and surely her hours had crept up until she was doing the full-time job of a housekeeper and childminder. At the time she had been so grateful to still have a roof over her head that she had made no objection.

But then she had been very naive when she was pregnant. She had seen the Dicksons as a temporary staging post, had fondly imagined that once she had her baby she would be able to move on to better-paid employment and build up her life again. But piece by piece that confidence had faded once she appreciated the cost of child care and the even greater cost of renting accommodation in a city as expensive as London. Ultimately it had come down to a choice between continuing to work for the Dicksons and moving out to live on welfare.

‘We'll say no more about this,' Claudia murmured graciously from the doorway, well aware that silence meant that she had won. ‘Do you think you could start putting the children in the bath now? It is half past six, and they're so dreadfully noisy when they get over-tired.'

By the time Angie had got the children to bed it was well
after eight, and George and Claudia had long since gone out to dine. Six-year-old Sophia and the four-year-old twins, Benedict and Oscar, were lovely children—very rich in material possessions but pretty much starved of parental attention. Their father was a circuit judge, regularly away from home, and their mother a high-powered businesswoman, who only rarely left her office before seven in the evening.

They had a spacious, beautifully furnished home and a Porsche and a Range Rover, but Claudia was so mean with money that she had had a pay meter installed on the gas fire in Angie's room over the attached garage. Since the room had no central heating, and had originally been cheaply converted only for the purpose of storage space, it was freezing cold in winter.

The doorbell shrilled while Angie was ensuring that the only part of her son exposed to that chilly air was the crown of his dark, curly head. She tucked the duvet round Jake in a rush and hurtled through the door that connected with the bedroom corridor to race downstairs before the bell could go again and wake Sophia, who was a very light sleeper.

Thrusting back the wild tangle of platinum pale hair that had flown round her anxious face, she pressed the intercom. ‘Who is it?' she asked breathlessly.

‘Angie…?'

In severe shock, Angie fell back from the intercom. Like sand on silk, and splinteringly, shatteringly sexy, the voice had a husky Greek accent that roughened every vowel sound. It had been over two years since she had heard that masculine drawl and recognition filled her with sheer, blind panic.

The doorbell went again in a short, impatient burst.

‘Please don't do that…you'll wake the children!' Angie gasped into the intercom.

‘Angie…open the door,' Leo drawled flatly.

‘I—I
can't
…I'm not allowed to open it when I'm alone in
the house at night,' Angie muttered with feverish relief in telling the truth. ‘I don't know what you want or how you found me, and I don't care. Just go away!'

In answer, Leo hit the doorbell again.

With a groan of frustration, Angie flew out into the porch, wrenched back the curtains, undid the bolts and the chain and dragged open the front door.

‘Thank you,' Leo responded with icy precision.

Poleaxed by his very presence, Angie gaped at him, her pulse thudding wildly at the foot of her throat. ‘You still can't come in…'

A winged ebony brow lifted with hauteur. ‘Don't be ridiculous.'

Involuntarily, Angie gazed up into eyes the colour of a wild and stormy night, and a shiver of shaken reaction ran through her. Leo Demetrios in the flesh. He was standing close enough to touch on the Dicksons' doorstep, six feet three inches of daunting sophistication and devastating masculinity. Broad shoulders filled out his superbly cut dinner jacket, perfectly tailored black trousers accentuating lean hips and long, long legs. The overhead security light delineated every carved angle of his savagely handsome features and glinted over his thick blue-black hair, but she still couldn't believe that he was really, genuinely there in front of her.

‘You can't come in,' she said again, running damp palms down over her faded jeans.

‘Angie…I wanna drink…I'm thirsty,' Sophia mumbled sleepily from the stairs.

Angie jumped and spun round to rush back into the dimly lit hall. ‘Go back to bed and I'll bring you one up…'

Leo stepped into the porch and quietly closed the door. Angie turned again, giving him a dismayed and pleading look, but she didn't want to speak to him and alert the sleepy Sophia to the presence of a forbidden visitor. Biting her lip in frantic
frustration, she left him there and sped into the kitchen to pour a glass of water and took it upstairs. Claudia and George had only gone out for a quick meal and they might be on their way back even now. They would be absolutely outraged if they found her entertaining a strange man in their home.

Her thoughts in complete turmoil as she struggled to understand why Leo should have sought her out, she settled Sophia and started hurriedly down the stairs again. Mercifully, Leo was still standing in the hall. She wouldn't have been surprised to find him installed on one of the leather sofas in the drawing room. People ran out red carpets when Leo condescended to visit; they didn't keep him on the doorstep or leave him to hover in the hall. His hugely successful global electronics empire generated immense wealth, and he wielded formidable power and influence in the business world.

Belatedly encountering Leo's raking and uninhibited scrutiny of her slender but shapely figure, Angie faltered on the last step of the stairs. His spectacular dark, deep-set eyes smouldered as they skimmed up from the surprisingly full thrust of her breasts to strike her own eyes in direct collision. She ran out of breath and mobility simultaneously, throat closing over, heart pounding so suffocatingly fast behind her ribcage that she felt dizzy.

‘I won't keep you long,' Leo informed her with a sardonic smile.

‘What are you doing here?' Angie practically whispered, struggling to surmount that momentary loss of concentration and finding it almost impossible until a stark current of foreboding assailed her and her bright blue eyes widened in sudden dismay. ‘Are you here because of my father? Is he ill or something?'

Leo frowned. ‘To my knowledge, Brown is in good health.'

Angie flushed brick-red, utterly mortified by the spurt of
fear that had prompted her foolish enquiry. She perfectly understood Leo's brief look of disconcertion. No doubt it would be a cold day in hell before Leo Demetrios stooped to act as a messenger boy for one of his grandfather's servants!

In an awkward invitation and sudden revolt against Claudia's rigid rules, she pressed open the door of the little TV room. ‘We can talk in here,' she said stiffly, striving desperately for an air of normality.

But oh, dear heaven, that was an impossible challenge with Jake enjoying the sleep of the innocent upstairs and Leo behaving like a coldly polite stranger. Maybe he was afraid that if he was friendly she might throw herself at him again, Angie thought in sudden, cringing horror. Her colour fluctuating wildly, she dropped her head, but cruelly humiliating memories still bombarded her like guided missiles finding an easy target.

She had been foolishly obsessed with Leo for more years than she now cared to recall. And she had not been the sort of dreaming teenager who sat around simply hoping for a miracle to occur. At nineteen, she had plotted and planned like crazy to get her chance with Leo. She had broken every rule in the book to catch him. She had forgotten who he was and who she was in the chase. And, at the end of the day, she had got very much what she had asked for—Leo had dumped her so hard and fast, her head had spun.

The silence pounded and pulsed.

Nervously, Angie glanced up to find Leo watching her again. Involuntarily, she was entrapped, pulses quickening, skin dampening. Colour drenched her complexion. She ran a nervous hand through the long hair falling round her face, and moved her head to toss it back out of her way. Leo's gaze followed the rippling motion of that cascade of pale, shining strands, increasing her self-consciousness. Then dense black
lashes veiled his burnished dark eyes, and his beautifully shaped, sensual mouth hardened again.

‘How did you find out where I lived?' Angie asked in a jerky rush, because the silence was unbearable. She did not have his nerves of steel and self-discipline.

‘My grandfather asked me to trace you—'

Her fine brows pleated.
‘Wallace?'
she broke in incredulously, referring to his English grandfather whose daughter had married Leo's father, a Greek shipping magnate.

‘I'm here only to pass on an invitation,' Leo imparted smoothly. ‘Wallace would like you to spend Christmas with him.'

‘Christmas?' Angie parroted weakly.

‘He wants to become acquainted with his great-grandson.'

That final, shattering announcement left Angie gaping at him in even deeper shock. Her knees threatening to give way, she groped her passage down into an armchair. Leo
knew
she had been pregnant? Leo
knew
that she now had a child? She had never dreamt that Wallace Neville might share that secret with his grandson.

And now Wallace actually wanted to
meet
Jake? Yet Wallace had forcefully urged her to terminate her pregnancy over two years ago. The news that the butler's daughter had been impregnated by one of his grandsons had so appalled him, he had been apoplectic with rage. An unapologetic snob with a horror of scandal, he had been eager to facilitate Angie's departure from Deveraux Court that very same day.

‘Old men feel their mortality.' Leo's dark eyes rested unreadably on her stunningly beautiful face. ‘And, frankly, curiosity seems to be killing him. Obviously it will be in your best interests to grovel gratefully in the face of his generosity.'

‘Grovel?' Angie echoed in complete bewilderment.

Leo's appraisal became grim, his mouth twisting. ‘I know
about the deal you made with Wallace, Angie. I know the
whole
story.'

Angie stiffened in disbelief, lashes dropping low on fiercely anxious eyes. ‘I haven't a clue what you're talking about.'

‘You know very well what I'm talking about,' Leo countered steadily.

Her slim fingers closed together and clenched. She studied the carpet until it blurred, her stomach churning with sick apprehension.

‘The thefts, Angie,' Leo supplied without remorse. ‘Wallace caught you in the act and you confessed.'

Her head flew up, anguish and resentment mingling in her stricken face. ‘He promised that he would never tell anyone!'

She wanted to die right there and then. Wallace had promised, Wallace had promised faithfully—and by ‘anyone' Angie had meant specifically
Leo.
She could not bear the knowledge that Leo thought she had been the thief, responsible for stealing several small but valuable
objets d'art
from Deveraux Court where her father and stepmother both worked and lived.

‘Angie, nothing disappeared after your departure. That fact rather spoke for itself. Wallace had little hope of keeping the identity of the culprit under wraps.'

‘So my father must know as well,' she mumbled, mortified pain clogging up her vocal cords as she made that final leap in understanding.

‘I've never discussed the matter with him,' Leo retorted crisply.