CHAPTER EIGHT
GEORGE followed his daughter down the path to the area where the farmer and his son were harvesting the trees.
The boy, seventeen or eighteen, brawny, good-looking, smiled as he looked up and caught sight of Xandra.
‘Can I help?’ he asked.
‘I need a tree,’ she said, with the cool, assessing look that women had been giving men since Adam encountered Eve in the Garden of Eden. ‘A big one,’ she added, turning away to inspect trees that had already been dug up and netted.
It was a move calculated to draw the boy closer and he followed as if on a string. It was like watching the rerun of an old movie, he thought. She was younger than her mother had been when she’d looked at him like that, but she already had the moves down pat.
‘With roots or without?’ the boy asked.
‘Without,’ he replied for her, stepping forward to make his presence felt.
‘With,’ Xandra countered, not even bothering to look at him. ‘I want to plant it in the garden after Christmas.’
‘Okay. If you’d like to choose one I’ll dig it up for you.’
‘What’s wrong with those?’ George said, nodding at the trees that were ready to go.
‘I want to choose my own,’ Xandra said.
‘And it’s best to get it as fresh as possible,’ the boy added. Wanting to flex his muscles for a pretty girl. ‘I’ll get a decent root ball with it and wrap it in sacking for you. That’ll give it a better chance.’
‘Thanks,’ she said before turning, finally, to acknowledge his presence. ‘Where’s Annie?’ she asked, realising that he was on his own.
‘She hurt her ankle getting out of the Land Rover. I left her in the shop with her foot up.’ Then, in an effort to move things along, he indicated a nicely shaped tree and said, ‘What about that one?’
‘It’s not tall enough.’
Clearly whichever tree he’d chosen was going to be rejected but he pressed on. ‘It’ll be at least two feet taller once it’s out of the ground and in a pot.’
He looked at the boy, who was smart enough to agree with him. ‘It’s a lovely tree,’ he added, but if he hoped to curry favour he was talking to the wrong man. He’d been eighteen once, and this was his daughter.
Xandra shrugged. ‘Okay. But I want one for outside as well. A really
About to ask her who was going to put it up, he stopped himself, aware that the boy, if he had anything about him, would leap in with an offer to do it for her.
She’d had sixteen years without him to put up a tree for her. Maybe one really big one would make a bit of a dent in the overdraft.
‘No more than ten feet from the ground,’ he told the boy and, when she would have objected, ‘I won’t be able to carry anything bigger than that on the roof of the Land Rover.’ Even that would be a push.
Then, beating down the urge to grab her by the arm, drag her back to the shop where he could keep her within sight, he said, ‘Don’t take too long about choosing it. I want to get Annie back into the warm,’ he said, turning to go back to her.
‘Is she badly hurt?’ She sounded concerned.
‘She’s putting a brave face on it,’ he said, rubbing the flat of his palm over his jaw, where he could still feel the warm touch of her fingers, despite the chill.
It had been the same last night. After leaving her he’d taken a shower, shaved, anything to distance himself from the touch of her hand that had burned like a brand on his arm. Somehow he doubted that even a cold shower would have saved him from the pink bunny.
Now he’d kissed her again, just to shut her up for a moment, he told himself, but this time she’d kissed him back. Yet still he was left with the extraordinary sense that for her it was all brand-new.
How crazy was that? She had to be in her mid-twenties at least.
Xandra hesitated, but only for a moment, before turning to the boy. ‘Okay, I’m going to trust you to choose the big tree-’
‘I know just the one,’ he said eagerly. ‘A real beauty. You’ll love it.’ And Xandra bestowed a gracious smile on him before, just a touch of colour darkening her cheekbones, she quickly turned away and swept off up the path.
For a moment they both stood and watched her, each lost for a moment in his own thoughts.
The boy was only seeing Christmas coming early.
His thoughts were darker as he remembered the moment when, not much older than the youth at his side, she’d been put in his arms, the realisation that she was his little girl. The shattering need to protect her. Make her life perfect.
Remembering the beautiful little girl with dark curls who’d run not to him, but to his father for hugs. Who had called Penny’s second husband-living in the house he’d paid for-‘daddy’.
Annie looked up as he followed Xandra into the chalet.
‘Did you find what you were looking for?’ she asked, her eyes narrowing as she looked at him.
‘I think I can safely guarantee that our trees will be the best that money can buy.’
She still had her left foot propped up and, ignoring the empty chairs, he picked it up, sat down and placed it on his knee, leaving his hand on the curve between ankle and foot.
It was a slender foot, a slender ankle and there wasn’t the slightest sign of a swelling.
‘Trees?’ she asked.
‘A six-footer for inside the house. Something rather more stately for outside.’
‘Oh, trees
‘I’m working on it,’ she said, picking up one of the decorations, then putting it back.
‘How’s your ankle?’ George asked, reclaiming Annie’s attention.
‘Fine, really,’ she assured him, not quite meeting his gaze, adding to his certainty that she had faked the injury. But why?
Could it be that she saw the garage as a sanctuary? Wanted to stay on?
‘It was nothing that hot chocolate and a mince pie couldn’t cure,’ she assured him, making a move to put it down, but he kept his hand firmly in place.
‘Best to keep it up for as long as possible,’ he said.
She took her time about answering him, dabbing at the crumbs on the plate in front of her and sucking them off her finger before, finally, lifting her lashes with a look that went straight to his gut.
Was it deliberate? Did she know what she was doing?
Usually, when he looked at a woman, when she looked back, they both knew exactly what they wanted, but Annie wasn’t like any woman he’d ever met.
She left him floundering.
‘So,’ he said quickly, glad he was wearing loose overalls over his trousers so that she couldn’t see the disturbing effect she had on him, ‘what’s your plan for today?’
Her lips parted over perfect teeth but, before she could tell him, Xandra said, ‘She’s staying with us until after the weekend. Gran asked her,’ she added, glaring at him, daring him to offer an argument.
But if his mother had already asked her to stay, why would she-?
Oh. Right.
She’d seen an opportunity to throw him and Xandra together and, instead of seizing the moment, he’d gone in with both feet and made a complete cobblers of it.
‘Not that she’d be able to go gallivanting all over the place sightseeing with a dodgy ankle,’ she added.
‘Honestly,’ Annie said, looking at him, her eyes offering him her assurance that if he was unhappy she’d make her excuses and leave, ‘it’s not that bad.’
