Praise for USA TODAY bestselling author Penny Jordan

“Women everywhere will find pieces of themselves in Jordan’s characters.”

—Publishers Weekly

“[Penny Jordan’s novels]…touch every emotion.”

—RT Book Reviews

PENNY JORDAN

has been writing for more than twenty-five years and has an outstanding record—more than 165 novels published. She says she hopes to go on writing until she has passed the 200 mark, and maybe even the 250 mark.

Although Penny was born in Preston, Lancashire, U.K., where she spent her childhood, she moved to Cheshire as a teenager and has continued to live there. She lives with a hairy Birman cat, Posh, who assists her with her writing.

Penny is a member and supporter of both the Romantic Novelists’ Association and Romance Writers of America—two organizations dedicated to providing support for both published and yet-to-be-published authors.

Her Christmas Fantasy

USA TODAY Bestselling Author

Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

Cover

Praise

About the Author

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EPILOGUE

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

LISA PAUSED HESITANTLY outside the shop, studying the very obviously designer-label and expensive outfits in the window doubtfully.

She had been given the address by a friend who had told her that the shop was one of the most exclusive ‘nearly new’ designer-clothes outlets in the city, where outfits could be picked up for less than a third of their original price.

Lisa was no fashion victim—normally she was quite happy with her small wardrobe of good-quality chain-store clothes—but Henry had seemed so anxious that she create a good impression on his family and their friends, and most particularly his mother, during their Christmas visit to his parents’ home in the north that Lisa had felt obliged to take the hints he had been dropping and add something rather more up-market to her wardrobe. Especially since Henry had already indicated that he wanted to put their relationship on a more formal basis, with an official announcement to his family of their plans to marry.

Lisa knew that many of her friends found Henry slightly stuffy and old-fashioned, but she liked those aspects of his personality. They indicated a reliability, a dependability in him which, so far as she was concerned, outweighed his admitted tendency to fuss and find fault over minor details.

When the more outspoken of her closest friends had asked her what she saw in him she’d told them quietly that she saw a dependable husband and a good father.

‘But what about romance?’ they had asked her. ‘What about falling desperately and passionately in love?’

Lisa had laughed, genuinely amused.

‘I’m not the type of woman who falls desperately or passionately in love,’ she had responded, ‘and nor do I want to be!’

‘But doesn’t it annoy you that Henry’s so chauvinistically old-fashioned?’ Her friends had persisted. ‘Look at the way he’s fussing over you meeting his parents and family—telling you how he wants you to dress.’

‘He’s just anxious for me to make a good impression,’ Lisa had argued back on Henry’s behalf. ‘He obviously values his parents’ opinion and—’

‘And he’s still tied to his mother’s apron strings,’ one of her friends had scoffed. ‘I know the type.’ She had paused a little before adding more seriously, ‘You know, don’t you, that he was on the point of becoming engaged to someone else shortly before he met you and that he broke off the relationship because he wasn’t sure that his family would approve of her? Apparently they’re very old-fashioned and strait-laced, and Janey had been living with someone else when she’d first met Henry—’

‘Yes, I do know,’ Lisa had retorted firmly. ‘But the reason that they broke up was not Janey’s past history but that Henry realised that they didn’t, simply didn’t have enough in common.’

‘And you and he do?’ her friend had asked drily.

‘We both want the same things out of life, yes,’ Lisa had asserted defensively.

And it was, after all, true. She might not have fallen deeply in love with Henry the night they were introduced by a mutual friend, but she had certainly liked him enough to accept his invitation to dinner, and their relationship had grown steadily from that date to the point where they both felt that their future lay together.

She might not be entirely comfortable with Henry’s insistence that she buy herself a new wardrobe in order to impress his wealthy parents and their circle of friends, but she could sympathise with the emotion which had led to him making such a suggestion.

Her own parents would, she knew, be slightly bemused by her choice of a husband; her mother was a gifted and acclaimed potter whose work was internationally praised, whilst her father’s stylish, modern furniture designs meant that he was constantly in demand, not just as a designer but as a lecturer as well.

Both her parents were currently in Japan, and were not due to return for another two months.

It would have been a lonely Christmas for her this year if Henry had not invited her to go north with him to the Yorkshire Dales to visit his parents, Lisa acknowledged.

He had already warned her that his parents might consider her work as a PA to the owner of a small, London-based antique business rather too bohemian and arty. Had she worked in industry, been a teacher or a nurse, they would have found it more acceptable.

‘In fact they’d probably prefer it if you didn’t work at all,’ he had told Lisa carefully when they had been discussing the subject.

‘Not work? But that’s—’ Hastily she had bitten back the words she had been about to say, responding mildly instead, ‘Most women these days expect to have a career.’

‘My mother doesn’t approve of married women working, especially when they have children,’ Henry had told her stiffly.

Firmly suppressing her instinctive response that his mother was very obviously rather out of touch with modern life, Lisa had said placatingly instead, ‘A lot of women tend to put their career on hold or work part-time when their children are young.’

She had hesitated outside the shop for long enough, she decided now, pushing open the door and walking in.

The young girl who came forward to help her explained that she was actually standing in for the owner of the shop, who had been called away unexpectedly.

The clothes on offer were unexpectedly wearable, Lisa acknowledged, and not too over-the-top as she had half dreaded. One outfit in particular caught her eye—a trouser suit in fine cream wool crêpe which comprised trousers, waistcoat and jacket.

‘It’s an Armani,’ the salesgirl enthused as Lisa picked it off the rail. ‘A real bargain… I was tempted to buy it myself,’ she admitted, ‘but it’s only a size ten and I take a twelve. It’s this season’s stock—a real bargain.’

‘This season’s.’ A small frown puckered Lisa’s forehead. Who on earth these days could afford to buy a designer outfit and then get rid of it within a few months of buying it—especially something like this in such a classical design that it wasn’t going to date?

‘If you like it, we’ve got several other things in from the same per…the same source,’ the girl was telling her. ‘Would you like to see them?’

Lisa paused and then smiled her agreement. She was beginning to enjoy this rather more than she had expected. The feel of the cream crêpe beneath her fingertips was sensuously luxurious. She had always loved fabrics, their textures, differing weights.

An hour later, her normally immaculate long bob of silky blonde hair slightly tousled from all her trying on, she grimaced ruefully at the pile of clothes that she had put to one side as impossible to resist.

What woman, having bought such a luxuriously expensive and elegantly wearable wardrobe, could bear to part with it after so short a period of time?

If she had been given free rein to choose from new herself, she could not have chosen better, Lisa recognised as she sighingly acknowledged that the buttermilk-coloured silk, wool and cashmere coat she had just tried on was an absolute must.

She was, she admitted ten minutes later as she took a deep breath and signed her credit-card bill, buying these clothes not so much for Henry and his family as for herself.

‘You’ve got an absolute bargain,’ the salesgirl told her unnecessarily as she carefully wrapped Lisa’s purchases in tissue-paper and put them into several large, glossy carrier bags.

‘I think these are the nicest things we’ve had in in a long time. Personally I don’t think I could have brought myself to part with them… That coat…’ She gave a small sigh and then told Lisa half enviously, ‘They fitted you perfectly as well. I envy you being so tall and slim.’

‘So tall.’ Lisa winced slightly. She wasn’t excessively tall, being five feet nine, but she was aware that with Henry being a rather stocky five feet ten or so he preferred her not to wear high-heeled shoes, and he had on occasion made rather irritated comments to her about her height.

She was just on her way out of the shop when a car drew up outside, its owner double parking in flagrant disregard for the law.

He looked extremely irritable and ill-tempered, Lisa decided as she watched him stride towards the shop, and wondered idly who he was.

Not a prospective customer, even on behalf of a woman friend. No, he was quite definitely the type who, if he did buy clothes for a woman, would not need to exercise financial restraint by buying them second-hand.

Lisa was aware of his frown deepening as he glanced almost dismissively at her.

Well, she was equally unimpressed by him, she decided critically. Stunningly, almost overpoweringly male he might look, with that tall, broad-shouldered body and that hawkish, arrogant profile, but he was simply not her type.

She had no doubt that the more romantic of her friends would consider him ideal ‘swoon over’ material, with those frowning, overtly sexual, strongly drawn male features and his dominant masterful manner. But she merely thought him arrogantly over-confident. Look at the way he had dismissed her with the briefest of irritable glances, stalking past her. Even the silky gleam of his thick dark hair possessed a strong air of male sexuality.

He would be the kind of man who looked almost too hirsute with his clothes off, she decided unkindly, sternly suppressing the impish little demon of rebellion within her that immediately produced a very clear and highly erotic mental image of him thus unclad and, to her exasperation, not overly hirsute at all… In fact…

Stop it, she warned herself as she flagged down a cruising taxi and gave the driver the address of the friend who had recommended the shop to her.

She had promised her that she would call round and let her know how she had fared, but for some reason, once her purchases had been duly displayed and enviously approved, she discovered that Alison was more interested in hearing about the man she had passed in the street than discussing the likelihood of her forthcoming introduction to Henry’s parents going well.

‘He wasn’t my type at all,’ she declared firmly to Alison. ‘He was far too arrogant. I don’t imagine he would have the first idea of how to treat a modern woman—’

‘You mean that Henry does…?’ Alison asked drily, stopping Lisa in her tracks for a moment before she valiantly responded.

‘Of course he does.’

‘You just wait,’ Alison warned her. ‘The moment he gets that ring on your finger, he’s going to start nagging you to conform. He’ll want you to stop working, for a start. Look at the way he goes on about what a perfect mother his own mother was…how she devoted her life to his father and himself…’

‘I think it’s rather touching that he’s so devoted to her, so loyal and loving…’ Lisa defended.

‘Mmm… What’s he like in bed?’ Alison asked her curiously.

Even though Lisa was used to her friend’s forthrightness, she was a little taken aback by her question, caught too off guard to do anything other than answer honestly.

‘I…I don’t know… We…we haven’t… We don’t…’

‘You don’t know. Are you crazy? You’re planning to marry the man and you don’t know yet what he’s like in bed. How long have you two known one another?’

‘Almost eight months,’ Lisa replied slightly stiffly.

‘Mmm… Hardly the type to be overwhelmed by passion, then, is he, our Henry?’

‘Henry believes in old-fashioned courtship, that couples should get to know one another as…as people. He doesn’t…he doesn’t care for the modern approach to casual sex…’

‘Very laudable,’ Alison told her sardonically.

‘Look, the fact that we haven’t…that we don’t…that we haven’t been to bed together yet isn’t a problem for me,’ Lisa told her vehemently.

‘No? Then it should be,’ Alison returned forthrightly. ‘How on earth can you think of marrying a man when you don’t even know if the two of you are sexually compatible yet?’

‘Easily,’ Lisa replied promptly. ‘After all, our grandparents did.’

Alison rolled her eyes and mocked, ‘And you claim that you aren’t romantic.’

‘It takes more to build a good marriage than just sex,’ Lisa told her quietly. ‘I’m tired of men who take you out for dinner and then expect you to take them to bed as a thank-you… I want stability in a relationship, Alison. Someone I can rely on, depend on. Someone who respects and values me as a person… Yes, all right, Henry might be slightly old-fashioned and…and…’

‘Sexless?’ her friend came back, but Lisa shook her head and continued determinedly.

‘But he’s very loyal…very faithful…very trustworthy…and…’

‘If that’s what you’re looking for you’d be better off with a dog,’ Alison suggested critically, but Lisa wasn’t prepared to argue the matter any further.

‘I’m just not the type for excitement and passion,’ she told her friend. ‘I like stability. Marriage isn’t just for now, Alison; it’s for the future too. Look, I’d better go,’ she announced, glancing at her watch. ‘Henry’s taking me out for dinner this evening.’ As she got up and headed for the door, she added gratefully, ‘Thanks for recommending that shop to me.’

‘Yes, I’m really envious. You’ve got some lovely things and at a knock-down price. All current season’s stuff too… Lucky you.’

As she made her way home to her own flat Lisa was ruefully aware of how difficult her friends found it to understand her relationship with Henry, but then they had not had her upbringing and did not possess her desire—her craving in a sense—for emotional tranquillity, for roots and permanence.

Her parents were both by nature not just extremely artistic—and because of that at times wholly absorbed by their work—they were also gypsies, nomads, who enjoyed travelling and moving on. The thought of basing themselves somewhere permanently was anathema to them.

During her childhood Lisa couldn’t remember having spent a whole year at any one school; she knew her parents loved her, and she certainly loved them dearly, but she had a different nature from theirs.

All right, so she knew that it would be difficult persuading Henry to accept that there was no reason why she should not still pursue her career as well as being a mother, but she was sure that she would be able to make him understand that her work was important to her. At the moment Henry worked for a prestigious firm of insurance brokers, but they had both agreed that once they were married they would move out of London and into the country.

She let herself into her small flat and carefully carried her new purchases into her bedroom.

After she had had a shower she intended to try them all on again, if she had time before Henry arrived. However, when she replayed her answering-machine tape there was a message on it from Henry, cancelling their date because he had an important business dinner that he had to attend and reminding her that they still had to shop for suitable Christmas presents to take for his family.

She had already made several suggestions based on what Henry had told her about his family, and specifically his parents—a very pretty petit point antique footstool for his grandmother, some elegant tulip vases for his mother, who, he had told her, was a keen gardener. But Henry had pursed his lips and dismissed her ideas.

She had been tempted to suggest that it might be better if he chose their Christmas presents on his own, but she had warned herself that she was being unfair and even slightly petty. He, after all, knew their tastes far better than she did.

She had just put on her favourite of all the outfits she had bought—the cream wool crêpe trouser suit—when her doorbell rang.

Assuming that it must be Henry after all, she went automatically to open the door, and then stood staring in total shock as she realised that her visitor wasn’t Henry but the man she had last seen striding past her and storming into the dress agency as she’d left it.

‘Lisa Phillips?’ he demanded curtly as he stepped past her and into her hall.

Dumbly Lisa nodded her head, too taken aback by the unexpectedness of his arrival to think to question his right to walk uninvited into her home.

‘My name’s Oliver Davenport,’ he told her curtly, handing her a card, barely giving her time to glance at it before he continued, ‘I believe you purchased several items of clothing from Second Time Around earlier today.’

‘Er…yes,’ Lisa agreed. ‘But—’

‘Good. This shouldn’t take long then. Unfortunately the clothes that you bought should not have been put on sale. Technically, in fact, the shop sold them without the permission of their true owner, and in such circumstances, as with the innocent purchase of a stolen car or indeed any stolen goods, you have no legal right to—’

‘Just a minute,’ she interrupted him in disbelief. Completely taken aback by his unexpected arrival and his infuriatingly arrogant manner, Lisa could feel herself becoming thoroughly angry. ‘Are you accusing the shop of selling stolen clothes? Because if so it should be the police you are informing and not me.’

‘Not exactly. Look, I’m prepared to refund you the full amount of what you spent plus an extra hundred pounds for any inconvenience. So if you’ll just—’

‘That’s very generous of you,’ Lisa told him sarcastically. ‘But I bought these clothes for a specific purpose and I have no intention of selling them back to you. I bought them in good faith and—’

‘Look, I’ve just explained to you, those clothes should never have been sold in the first place,’ he cut across her harshly, giving her an impatiently angry look.

Lisa didn’t like the way he was filling her small hall, looming almost menacingly over her, but there was no way she was going to give in to him. Why should she?

‘If that’s true, then why hasn’t the shop been in touch with me?’ Lisa challenged him.

She could see that he didn’t like her question from the way his mouth tightened and hardened before he replied bitingly, ‘Probably because the idiotic woman who runs the place refuses to listen to reason.’

‘Really?’ Lisa asked him scathingly. ‘You seem to have a way with women. Has it ever occurred to you that a little less aggression and a good deal more persuasion might produce better results? Not that any amount of persuasion will change my mind,’ she added firmly. ‘I bought those clothes in good faith, and since the shop hasn’t seen fit to get in touch with me concerning their supposedly wrongful sale I don’t see why—’

‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ She was interrupted furiously. ‘Look, if you must know, the clothes belong to my cousin’s girlfriend. They had a quarrel—it’s a very volatile relationship. She walked out on him, vowing never to come back—they’d had an argument about her decision to go on holiday with a girlfriend, without him apparently—and in a fit of retaliatory anger he gave her clothes to the dress agency. It was an impulse…something he regretted virtually as soon as he’d done it, and when Emma rang him from Italy to make things up he asked me to help him get her things back before she comes home and discovers what he’s done.’

‘He asked you for help?’

There was very little doubt in Lisa’s mind about whose girlfriend the absent Emma actually was, and it wasn’t Oliver Davenport’s fictitious cousin.

The look he gave her in response to her question wasn’t very friendly, Lisa recognised; in fact it wasn’t very friendly at all, but even though, concealed beneath the sensual elegance of her newly acquired trousers, her knees were knocking slightly, she refused to give in to her natural apprehension.

It wasn’t like her to be so stubborn or so unsympathetic, but something about him just seemed to rub her up the wrong way and make her uncharacteristically antagonistic towards him.

It wasn’t just the fact that he was demanding that she part with her newly acquired wardrobe that was making her combative, she admitted; it was something about the man himself, something about his arrogance, his…his maleness that was setting her nerves slightly on edge, challenging her into a mode of behaviour that was really quite foreign to her.

She knew that Henry would have been shocked to see her displaying so much stubbornness and anger—she was a little bit shocked herself.

‘He was about to go away on business. Emma’s due back at the end of the week. He didn’t want her walking into the flat and discovering that half her clothes are missing…’

‘No, I’m sure you…he…’ Lisa corrected herself tauntingly ‘…doesn’t…’

She saw from the dark burn of angry colour etching his cheekbones that he wasn’t pleased by her deliberate ‘mistake’, nor the tone of voice she had delivered it in.

‘You have no legal claim over those clothes,’ he told her grimly. ‘The shop sold them without the owner’s permission.’

‘If that’s true, then it’s up to the shop to get in touch with me,’ Lisa pointed out. ‘After all, for all I know, you could want them for yourself…’ She paused. His temper was set on a hair-trigger already and although she doubted that he would actually physically harm her…

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she heard him breathe softly, as though he had read her mind.

Inexplicably she realised that she was blushing slightly as, for no logical reason at all, she remembered exactly what she had been thinking about him—and his body—earlier in the day. Just as well he hadn’t second guessed her private thoughts then!

‘So you’re not prepared to be reasonable about this?’

She be reasonable? Lisa could feel her own temper starting to rise.

‘Doesn’t it mean anything to you that you could be putting someone’s whole relationship at risk by your refusal?’

‘Me putting a relationship at risk?’ Lisa gasped at the unfairness of it. ‘If you ask me, I’m not the one who’s doing that. If your relationship is so important to you, you should have thought of that before you lost your temper and decided to punish your girlfriend by selling her clothes—’

‘Emma is not my girlfriend,’ he told her with ominous calm. ‘As I’ve already explained to you, I am simply acting as an intermediary in all of this for my cousin. But then I suppose it’s par for the course that you should think otherwise. It goes with all the rest of your illogical behaviour,’ he told her scathingly.

‘If you ask me,’ she told him, thoroughly incensed now, ‘I think that Emma…whoever’s girlfriend she is—yours or your cousin’s…is better off without you. What kind of man does something like that…? Those clothes were virtually new and—’

‘Exactly. New and expensive and paid for by my cousin, who is a rather jealous young man who objects to his girlfriend wearing the clothes he bought her to attract the attentions of other men…’

‘And because of that he stole them from her wardrobe and sold them? It sounds to me as though she’s better off without you…without him,’ Lisa corrected herself fiercely, her eyes showing her contempt of a man—any man—jealous or otherwise, who could behave in such a petty and revengeful way.

‘Well, I’m sorry,’ she continued, patently anything but. ‘But explaining to Emma just exactly what’s happened to her clothes is your problem and not mine. I bought them in good faith—’

‘And you’ll be able to buy some more with the money I’m willing to refund you for them, especially since… Oh, I get it,’ he said softly, his eyes suddenly narrowing.

‘You get what?’ Lisa demanded suspiciously, not liking the cynicism she could see in his eyes. ‘Those clothes were virtually brand-new, this season’s stock, and I’d be very lucky indeed to pick up anything else like them at such a bargain price, especially at this time of year, and—’

‘Oh, yes, I can see what you’re after. All right then, I don’t like blackmailers and I wouldn’t normally give in to someone who plainly thinks she’s onto a good thing, but I haven’t got time to waste negotiating with you. What would you guess was the full, brand-new value of the clothes you bought today?’

‘The full value?’ A small frown puckered Lisa’s forehead. She had no idea at all of what he was getting at. ‘I have no idea. I don’t normally buy exclusive designer-label clothes, especially not Armani…but I imagine it would have to be several thousand pounds…’

‘Several thousand pounds.’ A thin, dangerous smile curled his mouth, his eyes so coldly contemptuous that Lisa actually felt a small, icy shiver race down her spine.

‘Why don’t we settle for a round figure and make it five thousand pounds? I’ll write you a cheque for five thousand here and now and you’ll give me back Emma’s clothes.’

Lisa stared at him in disbelief.

‘But that’s crazy,’ she protested. ‘Why on earth should you pay me five thousand pounds when you could go out and buy a whole new wardrobe for her for that amount…?’ She shook her head in disbelief. ‘I don’t—’

‘Oh, come on,’ he interrupted her cuttingly. ‘Don’t give me that. You understand perfectly well. Even I understand how impossible and time-wasting an exercise it would be for me to go out and replace every single item with its exact replica…even if I knew what it was I was supposed to be buying. Don’t overplay your hand,’ he warned her. ‘All that mock innocence doesn’t suit you.’

Mock innocence!

As she suddenly recognised just what he was accusing her of, Lisa’s face flushed a brilliant, furious scarlet.

‘Get out… Get out of my flat right now,’ she demanded shakily. ‘Otherwise I’m going to call the police. How dare you accuse me of…of…?’ She couldn’t even say the word, she felt such a sense of outrage and disgust.

‘I wouldn’t give you those clothes now if you offered to pay me ten thousand…twenty thousand,’ she told him passionately. ‘You deserve to lose Emma… In fact, I think I’m probably doing her a favour by letting her see just what kind of a man you are. I suppose you thought that just because you bought her clothes for her you had a right to…to take them back… If I were her… If I were her…’

‘Yes? If you were her, what?’ he goaded her, just as furious as she was herself, Lisa recognised as she saw the small pulse beating fiercely in his jaw and the banked-down fury in his eyes.

‘I wouldn’t have let you buy them for me in the first place,’ she threw emotionally at him, adding, ‘I’d rather—’

‘Rather what?’ he challenged her, his voice dropping suddenly and becoming dangerously, sensually soft as he raked her from head to foot in such a sexually predatory and searching way that it left her virtually shaking, trembling, her body overreacting wildly to the male sexuality in the way he was looking at her, the sensual challenge in the way his eyes deliberately stripped her of her clothes, leaving her body vulnerable…exposed…naked.

‘You’d rather what?’ he repeated triumphantly. ‘Go naked?’

Lisa couldn’t speak; she was too shocked, too outraged, too aware of her feminine vulnerability to the blazing heat of his sexuality to risk saying anything.

‘But then in actual fact, according to you—since you refuse to believe the truth and accept that I am acting for my cousin and not for myself—you are wearing clothes that I have chosen…bought…’ he added softly, his glance slipping suggestively over her body for a second time, but this time more slowly, more lingeringly…more…more seductively, Lisa recognised as she felt herself responding helplessly to the sheer force of the magnetic spell he seemed to have cast over her.

From somewhere she managed to find the strength to break free. Stepping back from him, putting a safer distance between them, averting her eyes and her over-flushed face from his powerful gaze, she demanded huskily, ‘I want you to leave. Now. Otherwise…’

‘You’ll call the police. I know,’ he agreed drily. ‘Very well, since it’s obvious I can’t make you see reason… I won’t forget how co-operative you’ve been,’ he added, sending a small shiver down her spine as she saw the look in his eyes. ‘Although I can understand why you’re so loath to part with your borrowed finery.

‘The suit looks good on you,’ he added unexpectedly as he turned towards the door, pausing to look at her before lifting his hand and outrageously tracing a line with the tip of his index finger all the way along the deep V of the neckline of the waistcoat just where the upper curves of her breasts, naked underneath it, pressed against the creamy fabric.

‘It’s a bit tighter here on you than it was on Emma, though,’ he told her. ‘She’s probably only a 34B whereas you must be a 34C. Nice—especially worn the way you’re wearing it now, without anything underneath it…’

Lisa swallowed back all of the agitated, defensive remarks that sprang to her lips, knowing that none of them could do anything to wipe out what he had just said to her, or the effect his words had had on her.

Why, she wondered wretchedly as he opened her front door and left her flat far more calmly than he had entered it, did her body have to react so…so…idiotically and erotically to his touch? Even without looking down she knew how betrayingly her nipples were still pressing against the fine fabric of her waistcoat—as they certainly hadn’t been doing when he’d first arrived. As they had, in fact, only humiliatingly done when he had reached out and touched her with that lazily mocking fingertip which had had such a devastating effect on her senses.

It was because she was so overwrought, that was all, she tried to comfort herself half an hour later, the front door securely bolted as she hugged a comforting mug of freshly made coffee.

She would have to ring the shop, of course, and find out exactly what was going on, and if they asked her to return the clothes then morally she would have no option other than to do so.

How dared he accuse her of trying to blackmail him…? Her. The coffee slopped out of the mug as her hands started to shake. As if she would ever…ever do any such thing. She felt desperately sorry for the unknown Emma. It was bad enough that he should have sold her clothes, but how would she feel, knowing that he had touched her, another woman, so…so…? No, in her view Emma was better off without him. Much better off.

How dared he touch her like that…as though…as though…? And he had known exactly what he was doing as well. She had seen it in those shockingly knowing steel-grey eyes as she’d read the message of male triumph and awareness that they’d been giving her. He had known that he was arousing her—had known it and had enjoyed knowing it.

Unlike her. She had hated it and she hated him. Emma was quite definitely better off without him and she certainly wasn’t going to be the one to help him make up their quarrel by returning her clothes.

At least he was not likely to be able to carry out that subtle threat of future retribution against her—thank goodness.

CHAPTER TWO

LISA STOOD IN FRONT of the guest-bedroom window of Henry’s parents’ large Victorian house looking out across the wintry countryside.

They had arrived considerably later than expected the previous evening, due, in the main, to the fact that Henry’s car had been so badly damaged whilst parked in a client’s car park that their departure had been delayed and they had had to use her small—much smaller—model, much to Henry’s disgust.

They had arrived shortly after eleven o’clock, and whilst Henry had been greeted with a good deal of maternal anxiety and concern Lisa had received a considerably more frosty reception, Henry’s mother giving her a chilly smile and presenting a cool cheek for her to kiss before commenting, ‘I’m afraid we couldn’t put back supper any longer. You know what your father’s like about meal times, Henry.’

‘It was Lisa’s fault,’ Henry had grumbled untruthfully, adding to Lisa, ‘You really should get a decent car, you know. Oh, and by the way, you need petrol.’

Lisa had gritted her teeth and smiled, reminding herself that she had already guessed from Henry’s comments about his family that, as an only child and a son, he was the apple of his mother’s eye.

Whilst Henry had been despatched to his father’s study, Lisa had been quizzed by Henry’s mother about her family and background. It had subtly been made plain to Lisa that so far as Henry’s mother was concerned the jury was still out on the subject of her suitability as Henry’s intended wife.

Normally she would have enjoyed the chance to visit the Yorkshire Dales, Lisa acknowledged—especially at this time of the year. Last night she had been enchanted to discover that snow was expected on the high ground.

Henry had been less impressed. In fact, he had been in an edgy, difficult mood throughout the entire journey—and not just, Lisa suspected, because of the damage to his precious car.

It had struck her, over the previous weekend, when they’d been doing the last of their Christmas shopping together, that he was obviously having doubts about her ability to make the right impression on his parents. There had been several small lectures and clumsy hints on what his family would expect, and one particularly embarrassing moment when Alison had called round to the flat just as Henry had been explaining that he wasn’t sure that the Armani trouser suit was going to be quite the thing for his parents’ annual pre-Christmas supper party.

‘What century are Henry’s parents living in?’ Alison had exploded after Henry had left the room. ‘Honestly, Lisa, I can’t—’

She had stopped when Lisa had shaken her head, changing the subject to ask instead, ‘Any more repercussions about the clothes you bought from Second Time Around, by the way?’

Lisa had told Alison all about her run-in with Oliver Davenport, asking her friend’s advice as to what she ought to do.

‘Ring the shop and find out what they’ve got to say,’ had been Alison’s prompt response.

‘I’ve already done that,’ Lisa had told her. ‘And there was just a message on the answering machine saying that the owner has had to close the shop down indefinitely because her father has been taken seriously ill.’

‘Well, if you want my opinion, you bought those clothes in all good faith, and I feel that their original owner deserves to know exactly what kind of miserable rat her boyfriend is… I mean…selling her clothes… It’s…it’s… Well, I’d certainly never forgive any man who tried to pull that one on me. I think you did exactly the right thing in refusing to give them back,’ Alison had said comfortingly.

‘No. No further repercussions,’ Lisa had told her in response to her latest question. ‘Which I find surprising. I suppose I did overreact a little bit, but when he virtually accused me of trying to blackmail him into paying almost more for them than they had originally cost…’

Her voice had quivered with remembered indignation as she recalled how shocked and insulted she had felt to be confronted with such a contemptuous assessment of her character.

‘You overreacting—and to a man… Now that’s something I would like to see,’ Alison had told her.

‘Who are you discussing?’ Henry had asked, coming back into the room.

‘Oh, no one special,’ Lisa had told him, hastily and untruthfully, hoping that he wouldn’t question the sudden surge of hot, guilty colour flooding her face as she remembered the shocking unexpectedness and intimacy of the way Oliver Davenport had reached out and touched her, and her even more shocking and intimate reaction to his touch.

The whole incident was something that was best forgotten she told herself firmly now as she craned her neck to watch a shepherd manoeuvring his flock on the distant hillside. She felt very sorry for Emma, of course, in the loss of her clothes, but hopefully it would teach Oliver Davenport not to behave so arrogantly in future. It was certainly a lesson he needed to learn.

Lisa glanced at her watch.

Henry’s mother had announced last night that they sat down for breakfast at eight o’clock sharp, the implication being that she suspected that Lisa lived too decadent and lazy a lifestyle to manage to get up early enough to join them.

She couldn’t have been more wrong, Lisa acknowledged. She was normally a very early riser.

The build-up to Christmas, and most especially the week before it, was normally one of her favourite times of the year. Her parents might live a rather unconventional lifestyle by Henry’s parents’ standards, but wherever they had lived when she’d been a child they had always made a point of following as many Christmas traditions as they could—buying and dressing a specially chosen Christmas tree, cooking certain favourite Christmas treats, shopping for presents and wrapping them. But Lisa had always yearned for the trappings of a real British Christmas. She had been looking forward to seeing such a traditional scenario of events taking place in Henry’s childhood home, but it had become apparent to her the previous evening that Henry’s parents, and more specifically Henry’s mother, did not view Christmas in the same way she did herself.

‘The whole thing has become so dreadfully commercialised that I simply don’t see the point nowadays,’ she had commented when Lisa had been describing the fun she had had shopping for gifts for the several small and not so small children who featured on her Christmas present list.

Her father in particular delighted in receiving anything toy-like, and had a special weakness for magic tricks. Lisa had posted her gifts to her parents to Japan weeks ago, and had, in turn, received hers from them. She had brought the presents north with her, intending to add them to the pile she had assumed would accumulate beneath the Christmas tree, which in her imagination she had visualised as tall and wonderfully bushy, dominating the large hallway that Henry had described to her, warmed by the firelight of its open hearth and scenting the whole room with the delicious aroma of fresh pine needles.

Alas for her imaginings. Henry’s mother did not, apparently, like real Christmas trees. They caused too much mess with their needles. And as for an open fire! They had had that boarded up years ago, she had informed Lisa, adding that it had caused far too much mess and nuisance.

So much for her hazy thoughts of establishing the beginnings of their own family traditions, her plans of one day telling her own children how she and their father had spent their first Christmas together, going out to choose the family Christmas tree.

‘You’re far too romantic and impractical,’ Henry had criticised her. ‘I agree with Mother. Real Christmas trees are nothing but a nuisance.’

As she turned away from the window Lisa was uncomfortably aware not only of Henry’s mother’s reluctance to accept her, but also of her own unexpectedly rebellious feeling that Henry was letting her down in not being more supportive of her.

She hadn’t spent one full day with Henry’s family yet, and already she was beginning to regret the extended length of their Christmas stay with them.

Reluctantly she walked towards the bedroom door. It was ten to eight, and the last thing she wanted to do now was arrive late for breakfast.

‘Off-white wool… Don’t you think that’s rather impractical?’ Henry’s mother asked Lisa critically.

Taking a deep breath and counting to ten, Lisa forced herself to smile as she responded politely to Mary Hanford’s criticism.

‘Perhaps a little, but then—’

‘I never wear cream or white. I think they can be so draining to the pale English complexion,’ her prospective mother-in-law continued. ‘Navy is always so much more serviceable, I think.’

Lisa had arrived downstairs half an hour ago, all her offers to help with the preparation of the pre-Christmas buffet supper having been firmly refused.

So much for creating the right impression on Henry’s parents with her new clothes, Lisa reflected wryly, wishing that Alison was with her to appreciate the ironic humour of the situation.

She could, of course, have shared the joke with Henry, but somehow she doubted that he would have found it funny… He had, no doubt, inherited his sense of humour, or rather his lack of it, from his mother, she decided sourly, and was immediately ashamed of her own mean-spiritedness.

Of course, it was only natural that Henry’s mother should be slightly distant with her. Naturally she was protective of Henry—he was her only son, her only child…

He was also a man of thirty-one, a sharp inner voice reminded Lisa, and surely capable of making his own mind up about who he wanted to marry? Or was he?

It hadn’t escaped Lisa’s notice during the day how Henry consistently and illuminatingly agreed with whatever opinion his mother chose to voice, but she dismissed the tiny niggling doubts that were beginning to undermine her confidence in her belief that she and Henry had a future together as natural uncertainties raised by seeing him in an unfamiliar setting and with people, moreover, who knew him far better than she did.

In the hallway the grandfather clock chimed the hour. In a few minutes the Hanfords’ supper guests would be arriving.

Henry had already explained to her that his family had lived in the area for several generations and that they had a large extended family, most of whom would be at the supper party, along with a handful of his parents’ friends.

Lisa was slightly apprehensive, aware that she would be very much on show, which was one of the reasons why she had chosen to wear the cream trouser suit.

Henry, however, hadn’t been any more approving of her outfit than his mother, telling her severely that he thought that a skirt would have been more appropriate than trousers.

Lisa had no doubt that Oliver Davenport would have been both highly amused and contemptuous of her failure to achieve the desired effect with her acquired plumage.

Oliver Davenport. Now what on earth was she doing thinking about such a disagreeable subject, such a contentious person, when by rights she ought to be concentrating on the evening ahead of her?

‘Ah, Lisa, there you are!’ she heard Henry exclaiming. ‘Everyone will be arriving soon, and Mother likes us all to be in the hall to welcome them when they do.

‘I see you didn’t change after all,’ he added, frowning at her.

‘An Armani suit is a perfectly acceptable outfit to wear for a supper party, Henry,’ Lisa pointed out mildly, and couldn’t help adding a touch more robustly, ‘And, to be honest, I think I would have felt rather cold in a skirt. Your parents—’

‘Mother doesn’t think an overheated house is healthy,’ Henry interrupted her quickly—so quickly that Lisa suspected that she wasn’t the first person to comment on the chilliness of his parents’ house.

‘I expect I’m feeling the cold because we’re so much further north here,’ she offered diplomatically as she followed him into the hallway.

Cars could be heard pulling up outside, their doors opening and closing.

‘That’s good!’ Henry exclaimed. ‘Mother likes everyone to be on time.’

Mother would, Lisa thought rebelliously, but wisely she kept the words to herself.

Henry’s aunt and her family were the first to arrive. A smaller, quieter edition of her elder sister, she was, nevertheless, far warmer in her manner towards Lisa than Henry’s mother had been, and Lisa didn’t miss the looks exchanged by her three teenage children as they were subjected to Mary Hanford’s critical inspection.

Fifteen minutes later the hallway was virtually full, and Lisa was beginning to lose track of just who everyone was. The doorbell rang again and Henry went to answer it. As Lisa turned to look at the newcomers her heart suddenly stood still and then gave a single shocked bound followed by a flurry of too fast, disbelieving, nervous beats.

Oliver Davenport! What on earth was he doing here? He couldn’t have followed her here to pursue his demand for her to return Emma’s clothes, could he?

At the thought of what Henry’s mother was likely to say if Oliver Davenport caused the same kind of scene here in public as he had staged in the privacy of her own flat, Lisa closed her eyes in helpless dismay, and then heard Henry saying tensely to her, ‘Lisa, I’d like to introduce you to one of my parents’ neighbours. Oliver—’

‘Lisa and I already know one another.’

Lisa’s eyes widened in bemused incomprehension.

Oliver Davenport was a neighbour of Henry’s parents! And what did he mean by implying that they knew one another…by saying her name in that grossly deceptive, softly sensual way, which seemed to imply that he…that she…?

‘You do? You never said anything about knowing Oliver to me, Lisa,’ Henry said almost hectoringly.

But before Lisa could make any attempt to defend herself or explain, Oliver Davenport was doing it for her, addressing Henry in a tone that left Lisa in no doubt as to just what kind of opinion the other man had of her husband-to-be, as he announced cuttingly, ‘No doubt she had more important things on her mind. Or perhaps she simply didn’t think it was important…’

‘I…I…I didn’t realise you two knew one another,’ was the only response Lisa could come up with, and she saw from Henry’s face that it was not really one that satisfied him.

She nibbled worriedly at her bottom lip, cast Oliver Davenport a bitter look and then was forced to listen helplessly whilst Oliver, who still quite obviously bore her a grudge over the clothes, commented judiciously, ‘I like the outfit… It suits you… But then I thought so the first time I saw you wearing it, didn’t I?’

Lisa knew that she was blushing. Blushing…? She was turning a vivid and unconcealable shade of deep scarlet, she acknowledged miserably as she saw the suspicious look that Henry was giving her and recognised from the narrow, pursed-lip glare that Henry’s mother must have also overheard Oliver’s comment.

‘Oliver, let me get you a drink,’ Henry’s father offered, thankfully coming up to usher him away, but not before Oliver managed to murmur softly to Lisa,

‘Saved by the cavalry…’

‘How on earth do you come to know Oliver Davenport?’ Henry demanded angrily as soon as Oliver was out of earshot. ‘I don’t know him,’ Lisa admitted wearily. ‘At least not—’

‘What do you mean? Of course you know him…and well enough for him to be able to comment on your clothes…’

‘He’s… Henry…this isn’t the time for me to explain…’ Lisa told him quietly.

‘So there is something to explain, then.’ Henry was refusing to be appeased. ‘Where did you meet him? In London, I suppose. His business might be based up here at the Hall, but he still spends quite a considerable amount of time in London… His cousin works for him down there—’

‘His cousin…?’ Lisa couldn’t quite keep the note of nervous apprehension out of her voice.

‘Yes, Piers Davenport, Oliver’s cousin. He’s several years younger than Oliver and he lives in London with his girlfriend—some model or other…Emily…or Emma…I can’t remember which…’

‘Emma,’ Lisa supplied hollowly.

So Oliver hadn’t been lying, after all, when he had told her that he was acting on behalf of his cousin. She glanced uneasily over her shoulder, remembering just exactly how scathingly she had denounced him, practically accusing him of being a liar and worse.

No wonder he had given her that look this evening which had said that he hadn’t finished with her and that he fully intended to make her pay for her angry insults, to exact retribution on her.

Apprehensively she wondered exactly what form that silently promised retribution was going to take. What was he going to do? Reveal to Henry and his parents that she had bought her clothes second-hand? She could just imagine how Mary Hanford would react to that information. At the thought of her impending humiliation, Lisa felt her stomach muscles tighten defensively.

It wasn’t all her fault. Hers had been a natural enough mistake to make, she reminded herself. Alison had agreed with her. And Oliver had to share some of the blame for her error himself. If he had only been a little more conciliatory in his manner towards her, a little less arrogant in demanding that she return the clothes back to him…

‘I do wish you had told me that you knew Oliver,’ Henry was continuing fussily. ‘Especially in view of his position locally.’

‘What position locally?’ Lisa asked him warily, but she suspected she could guess the answer. To judge from Mary Hanford’s deferential manner towards him, Oliver Davenport was quite obviously someone of importance in the area. Her heart started to sink even further as Henry explained in a hushed, almost awed voice.

‘Oliver is an extremely wealthy man. He owns and runs one of the north of England’s largest financial consultancy businesses and he recently took over another firm based in London, giving him a countrywide network. But why are you asking me? Surely if you know him you must—?’

‘I don’t know him,’ Lisa protested tiredly. ‘Henry, there’s something I have to tell you.’ She took a deep breath. There was nothing else for it; she was going to have to tell Henry the truth.

‘But you evidently do know him,’ Henry protested, ignoring her and cutting across what she was trying to say. ‘And rather well by the sound of it… Lisa, what exactly’s going on?’

Henry could look remarkably like his mother when he pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes like that, Lisa decided. She suddenly had a mental image of the children they might have together—little replicas of their grandmother. Quickly she banished the unwelcome vision.

‘Henry, nothing is going on. If you would just let me explain—’ Lisa began.

But once again she was interrupted, this time by Henry’s mother, who bore down on them, placing a proprietorial hand on Henry’s arm as she told him, ‘Henry, dear, Aunt Elspeth wants to talk to you. She’s over there by the French windows. She’s brought her god-daughter with her. You remember Louise. You used to play together when you were children—such a sweet girl…’

To Lisa’s chagrin, Henry was borne off by his mother, leaving her standing alone, nursing an unwanted glass of too sweet sherry.

What should have been the happiest Christmas Eve of her adult life was turning out to be anything but, she admitted gloomily as she watched a petite, doe-eyed brunette, presumably Aunt Elspeth’s god-daughter, simpering up at a Henry who was quite plainly wallowing in her dewy-eyed, fascinated attention.

It was a good thirty minutes before Henry returned to her side, during which time she had had ample opportunity to watch Oliver’s progress amongst the guests and to wonder why on earth he had accepted the Hanfords’ invitation, since he was quite obviously both bored and irritated by the almost fawning attention of Henry’s mother.

He really was the most arrogantly supercilious man she had ever had the misfortune to meet, Lisa decided critically as he caught her watching him and lifted one derogatory, darkly interrogative eyebrow in her direction.

Flushing, she turned away, but not, she noticed, before Henry’s mother had seen the brief, silent exchange between them.

‘You still haven’t explained to us just how you come to know… You really should have told us that you know Oliver,’ she told Lisa, arriving at her side virtually at the same time as Henry, so that Lisa was once again prevented from explaining to him what had happened.

What was it about some people that made everything they said sound like either a reproach or a criticism? Lisa wondered grimly, but before she could answer she heard Mary Hanford adding, in an unfamiliar, almost arch and flattering voice, ‘Ah, Oliver, we were just talking about you.’

‘Really.’

He was looking at them contemptuously, as though they were creatures from another planet—some kind of subspecies provided for his entertainment, Lisa decided resentfully as he looked from Mary to Henry and then to her.

‘Yes,’ Mary continued, undeterred. ‘I was just asking Lisa how she comes to know you…’

‘Well, I think that’s probably best left for Lisa herself to explain to you,’ he responded smoothly. ‘I should hate to embarrass her by making any unwelcome revelations…’

Lisa glared angrily at him.

‘That suit looks good on you,’ he added softly.

‘So you’ve already said,’ she reminded him through gritted teeth, all too aware of Henry’s and his mother’s silently suspicious watchfulness at her side.

‘Yes,’ Oliver continued, as though she hadn’t spoken. ‘You can always tell when a woman’s wearing an outfit bought by a man for his lover.’ As he spoke he reached out and touched her jacket-clad arm—a brief touch, nothing more, but it made the hot colour burn in Lisa’s face, and she was not at all surprised to hear Henry’s mother’s outraged indrawn breath or to see the fury in Henry’s eyes.

This was retribution with a vengeance. This wasn’t just victory, she acknowledged helplessly; it was total annihilation.

‘Have you worn any of the other things yet?’ he added casually.

‘Lisa…’ she heard Henry demanding ominously at her side, but she couldn’t answer him. She was too mortified, too furiously angry to dare to risk saying anything whilst Oliver Davenport was still standing there listening.

To her relief, he didn’t linger long. Aunt Elspeth’s god-daughter, the same one who had so determinedly flirted with Henry half an hour earlier, came up and very professionally broke up their quartet, insisting that Oliver had promised to get her a fresh drink.

He was barely out of earshot before Henry was insisting, ‘I want to know what’s going on, Lisa… What was all that about your clothes…?’

‘I think we know exactly what’s going on, Henry,’ Lisa heard his mother answering coolly for him as she gave Lisa a look of virulent hostility edged with triumph. So much for pretending to welcome her into the family, Lisa thought tiredly.

‘I can see what you’re both thinking,’ she announced. ‘But you are wrong.’

‘Wrong? How can we be wrong when Oliver more or less announced openly that the pair of you have been lovers?’ Mary intoned.

‘He did not announce that we had been lovers,’ Lisa defended herself. ‘And if you would just let me explain—’

‘Henry, it’s almost time for supper. You know how hopeless your father is at getting people organised. I’m going to need you to help me…’

‘Henry, we need to talk.’ Lisa tried to override his mother, but Henry was already turning away from her and going obediently to his mother’s side.

If they married it would always be like this, Lisa suddenly recognised on a wave of helpless anger. He would always place his mother’s needs and wants above her own, and presumably above those of their children. They would always come a very poor second best to his loyalty to his mother. Was that really what she wanted for herself…for her children?

Lisa knew it wasn’t.

It was as though the scales had suddenly fallen from her eyes, as though she were looking at a picture of exactly how and what her life with Henry would be—and she didn’t like it. She didn’t like it one little bit.

In the handful of seconds it took her to recognise the fact, she knew irrevocably that she couldn’t marry him, but she still owed him an explanation of what had happened, and from her own point of view. For the sake of her pride and self-respect she wanted to make sure that he and his precious mother knew exactly how she had come to meet Oliver and exactly how he had manipulated them into believing his deliberately skewed view of the situation.

Still seething with anger against Oliver, she refused Henry’s father’s offer of another drink and some supper. She would choke rather than eat any of Mary Hanford’s food, she decided angrily.

Just the thought of the kind of life she would have had as Henry’s wife made her shudder and acknowledge that she had had a lucky escape, but knowing that did not lessen her overwhelming fury at the man who had accidently brought it about.

How would she have been feeling right now had she been deeply in love with Henry and he with her? Instead of stalking angrily around the Hanfords’ drawing room like an angry tigress, she would probably have been upstairs in her bedroom sobbing her heart out.

Some Christmas this was going to be.

She had been so looking forward to being here, to being part of the family, to sharing the simple, traditional pleasures of Christmas with the man she intended to marry, and now it was all spoiled, ruined… And why? Why? Because Oliver Davenport was too arrogant, too proud…too…too devious and hateful to allow someone whom he obviously saw as way, way beneath him to get the better of him.

Well, she didn’t care. She didn’t care what he did or what he said. He could tell the whole room, the whole house, the whole world that she had bought her clothes second-hand and that they had belonged to his cousin’s girlfriend for all she cared now. In fact, she almost wished he would. That way at least she would be vindicated. That way she could walk away from here…from Henry and his precious mother…with her head held high.

‘An outfit bought by a man for his lover…’ How dared he…? Oh, how dared he…? She was, she suddenly realised, almost audibly grinding her teeth. Hastily she stopped. Dental fees were notoriously, hideously expensive.

She couldn’t leave matters as they were, she decided fiercely. She would have to say something to Oliver Davenport—even if it was to challenge him over the implications he had made.

She got her chance ten minutes later, when she saw Oliver leaving the drawing room alone.

Quickly, before she could change her mind, she followed him. As he heard her footsteps crossing the hallway, he stopped and turned round.

‘Ah, the blushing bride-to-be and her borrowed raiment,’ he commented sardonically.

‘I bought in good faith my second-hand raiment,’ Lisa corrected him bitingly, adding, ‘You do realise what impression you gave Henry and his mother back there, don’t you?’ she challenged him, adding scornfully before he could answer, ‘Of course you knew. You knew perfectly well what you were doing, what you were implying…’

‘Did I?’ he responded calmly.

‘Yes, you did,’ Lisa responded, her anger intensifying. ‘You knew they would assume that you meant that you and I had been lovers…that you had bought my clothes—’

‘Surely Henry knows you far better than that?’ Oliver interrupted her smoothly. ‘After all, according to the local grapevine, the pair of you are intending to marry—’

‘Of course Henry knows me…’ Lisa began, and then stopped, her face flushing in angry mortification. But it was too late.

Swift as a hawk to the lure, her tormentor responded softly, ‘Ah, I see. It’s because he knows you so well that he made the unfortunate and mistaken assumption that—’

‘No… He doesn’t… I don’t…’ Lisa tried to fight back gamely, but it was still too late, and infuriatingly she knew it and, even worse, so did Oliver.

He wasn’t smirking precisely—he was far too arrogant for that, Lisa decided bitterly—but there was certainly mockery in his eyes, and if she hadn’t known better she could almost have sworn that his mouth was about to curl into a smile. But how could it? She was sure that he was incapable of doing anything so human. He was the kind of man who just didn’t know what human emotions were, she decided savagely—who had no idea what it meant to suffer insecurity or…or any of the things that made people like herself feel so vulnerable.

‘Have you any idea what you’ve done?’ she challenged him, changing tack, her voice shaking under the weight of her suppressed emotion. ‘I came here—’

‘I know why you came here,’ he interrupted her with unexpected sternness. ‘You came to be looked over as a potential wife for Mary Hanford’s precious son.

‘Where’s your pride?’ he demanded scornfully. ‘However, a potential bride is all you will ever be. Mary Hanford knows quite well who she wants Henry to marry, and I’m afraid it isn’t going to be you…’

‘Not now,’ Lisa agreed shortly. ‘Not—’

‘Not ever,’ Oliver told her. ‘Mary won’t allow Henry to marry any woman who she thinks might have the slightest chance of threatening her own superior position in Henry’s life. His wife will not only have to take second place to her but to covertly acknowledge and accept that fact before she’s allowed to marry him. And besides, the two of you are so obviously unsuited to one another that the whole thing’s almost a farce. You’re far too emotionally turbulent and uncontrolled for Henry… He wouldn’t have a clue how to handle you…’

Lisa couldn’t believe her ears.

‘You, of course, would,’ she challenged him with acid sweetness, too carried away by her anger and the heat of the moment to realise what she was doing, the challenge she was issuing him, the risks she was taking.

Then it was too late and he was cutting the ground from beneath her feet and making a shock as icy-cold as the snow melting on the tops of the Yorkshire hills that were his home run down her spine as he told her silkily, ‘Certainly,’ and then added before she could draw breath to speak, ‘And, for openers, there are two things I most certainly would do that Henry obviously has not.’

‘Oh, yes, and what exactly would they be?’ Lisa demanded furiously.

‘Well, I certainly wouldn’t have the kind of relationship with you—or with any woman who I had the slightest degree of mild affection for, never mind being on the point of contemplating marrying—which would necessitate you feeling that you had to conceal anything about yourself from me, or that you needed to impress my family and friends with borrowed plumes, with the contents of another woman’s wardrobe. And the second…’ he continued, ignoring Lisa’s quick, indrawn breath of mingled chagrin and rage.

He paused and looked at her whilst Lisa, driven well beyond the point of no return by the whole farce of her ruined Christmas in general and his part in it in particular, prompted wildly, ‘Yes, the second is…?’

‘This,’ he told her softly, taking the breath from her lungs, the strength from her muscles and, along with them, the will-power from her brain as he stepped forward and took her in his arms and then bent his head and kissed her as Henry had never kissed her in all the eight months of their relationship—as no man had ever kissed her in the whole history of her admittedly modest sexual experience, she recognised dizzily as his mouth moved with unbelievable, unbeatable, unbearable sensual expertise on hers.

Ordinary mortal men did not kiss like this. Ordinary mortal men did not behave like this. Ordinary mortal men did not have the power, did not cup one’s face with such tender mastery. They did not look deep into your eyes whilst they caressed your mouth with their own. They did not compel you, by some mastery you could not understand, to look back at them. They did not, by some unspoken command, cause you to open your mouth beneath theirs on a whispered ecstatic sigh of pure female pleasure. They did not lift their mouths from yours and look from your eyes to your half-parted lips and then back to your eyes again, their own warming in a smile of complicit understanding before starting to kiss you all over again.

Film stars in impossibly extravagant and highly acclaimed, Oscar-winning romantic movies might mimic such behaviour. Heroes in stomach-churning, body-aching, romantically sensual novels might sweep their heroines off their feet with similar embraces. God-like creatures from Greek mythology might come down to earth and wantonly seduce frolicking nymphs with such devastating experience and sensuality, but mere mortal men…? Never!

Lisa gave a small, blissful sigh and closed her eyes, only to open them again as she heard Henry exclaiming wrathfully, ‘Lisa…what on earth do you think you’re doing?’

Guiltily she watched him approaching as Oliver released her.

‘Henry, I can explain,’ she told him urgently, but he obviously didn’t intend to let her speak.

Ignoring Oliver’s quiet voice mocking, ‘To Henry, maybe, but to Mary, never,’ she flushed defensively as his taunting comment was borne out by Henry’s furious declaration.

‘Mother was right about you all along. She warned me that you weren’t—’

‘Henry, you don’t understand.’ She managed to interrupt him, turning to appeal to Oliver, who was standing watching them in contemptuous amusement.

‘Tell him what really happened… Tell him…’

‘Do you really expect me to give you my help?’ he goaded her softly. ‘I don’t recall you being similarly sympathetic when I asked you for yours.’

Whilst Lisa stood and stared at him in disbelief he started to walk towards the door, pausing only to tell Henry, ‘Your mother is quite right, Henry. She wouldn’t be the right wife for you at all… If I were you I should heed her advice—now, before it’s too late.’

‘Henry,’ Lisa began to protest, but she could see from the way that he was refusing to meet her eyes that she had lost what little chance she might have had of persuading him to listen to her.

‘It’s too late now for us to change our plans for Christmas,’ he told her stiffly, still avoiding looking directly at her. ‘It is, after all, Christmas Eve, and we can hardly ask you to… However, once we return to London I feel that it would be as well if we didn’t see one another any more…’

Lisa could scarcely believe her ears. Was this really the man she had thought she loved, or had at least liked and admired enough to be her husband…the man she had wanted as the father of her children? This pompous, stuffy creature who preferred to take his mother’s advice on whom he should and should not marry than to listen to her, the woman he had proclaimed he loved?

Only he had not—not really, had he? Lisa made herself admit honestly. Neither of them had really truly been in love. Oh, they had liked one another well enough. But liking wasn’t love, and if she was honest with herself there was a strong chord of relief mixed up in the turbulent anger and resentment churning her insides.

Stay here now, over Christmas, after what had happened…? No way.

Without trusting herself to speak to Henry, she turned on her heel and headed for the stairs and her bedroom, where she threw open the wardrobe doors and started to remove her clothes—her borrowed clothes, not her clothes, she acknowledged grimly as she opened her suitcase; they hadn’t been hers when she had bought them and they certainly weren’t hers now.

Eyeing them with loathing, her attention was momentarily distracted by the damp chilliness of her bedroom. Thank goodness they had driven north in her car. At least she wasn’t going to have the added humiliation of depending on Henry to get her back to London.

The temperature seemed to have dropped since she had left the bedroom earlier, even taking into account Mary Hanford’s parsimony.

There had been another warning of snow on high ground locally earlier in the evening, and Lisa had been enchanted by it, wondering out loud if they might actually have a white Christmas—a long-held childhood wish of hers which she had so far never had fulfilled. Mary Hanford had been scornful of her excitement.

As she gathered up her belongings Lisa suddenly paused; the clothes she had bought with such pleasure and which she had held onto with such determination lay on the bed in an untidy heap.

Beautiful though they were, she suddenly felt that she knew now that she could never wear them. They were tainted. Some things were just not meant to be, she decided regretfully as she stroked the silk fabric of one of the shirts with tender fingers.

She might have paid for them, bought them in all good faith, but somehow she had never actually felt as though they were hers.

But it was her borrowed clothes, like the borrowed persona she had perhaps unwittingly tried to assume to impress Henry’s family, which had proved her downfall, and she was, she decided firmly, better off without both of them.

Ten minutes later, wearing her own jeans, she lifted the carefully folded clothes into her suitcase. Once the Christmas holiday was over she would telephone the dress agency and explain that she no longer had any use for the clothes. Hopefully they would be prepared to take them back and refund most, if not all of her money.

It was too late to regret now that she had not accepted Alison’s suggestion that she join her and some other friends on a Christmas holiday and skiing trip to Colorado. Christmas was going to be very lonely for her alone in her flat with all her friends and her parents away. A sadly wistful smile curved the generous softness of her mouth as she contemplated how very different from her rosy daydreams the reality of her Christmas was going to be.

‘You’re going to the north of England—Yorkshire. I know it has a reputation for being much colder up there than it is here in London, but that doesn’t mean you’ll get snow,’ Alison had warned her, adding more gently, ‘Don’t invest too much in this visit to Henry’s family, Lisa. I know how important it is to you but things don’t always work out the way you plan. The Yorkshire Dales are a beautiful part of the world, but people are still people and—well, let’s face it, from what Henry has said about his family, especially his mother, it’s obvious that she’s inclined to be a little on the possessive side.’

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