‘And?’ she said, still pushing him.
‘And what?’
‘And ask him if he likes Chinese food,’ she said.
He took a deep breath. ‘Let’s go and say hello. And ask him if he likes Chinese food.’
‘You ask him while I get the skates,’ she said, straightening, taking a step back. ‘What size do you take?’
‘Skates?’ He groaned. ‘Please tell me you’re kidding.’
‘I’ve only got a week. Less. I’m not missing out on a single opportunity.’
‘Couldn’t you just wait until you go home?’ he asked. ‘Get your personal assistant to call some Olympic champion to give you a twirl around the ice?’
‘I could,’ she agreed, ‘but I wouldn’t be that self-indulgent.’ He was being facetious, she knew. He’d briefly let down his guard and now he was using sarcasm to keep her at a distance. No deal. If he wanted her distant, he was going to have to let her go. ‘And, anyway, where would the fun be in that?’
‘You’re saying that you’d rather go out there and be pushed, shoved, fall over, make a fool of yourself in public?’
‘Exactly like everyone else,’ she said, ‘but I don’t need you to hold my hand. If you’d rather watch from the sidelines I’d quite understand.’
George growled with frustration.
She was an enigma. A woman of supreme confidence who was at home with the powerful and the most vulnerable. Touchingly innocent and yet old beyond her years. Clear-sighted when it came to other people’s problems, but lost in the maze of her own confusion.
On the surface she had everything. She had only to express a wish for it to be granted. Any wish except one. The privacy to be herself.
He regarded her-her eyes were shining with a look of anticipation that he’d seen before-and for a moment he forgot to breathe as he revised the number of impossible items on her wish list to two.
The second should have been tailor-made for a man who had made a life’s work of the no-strings-attached, mutually enjoyable sexual encounter. It was the perfect scenario. A beautiful woman who would, in the reverse of the Cinderella story, on the seventeenth of December change back into a princess.
But Annie had, from the first moment she’d turned that penetrating gaze full on him, set about turning his life upside down.
Within twenty-four hours of meeting her he was beginning to forge a shaky relationship with his daughter, was talking to his father and found himself thinking all kinds of impossible things both before and after breakfast.
And accepting one irrefutable truth.
If he made love to Annie, he would never be able to let her go.
But she wasn’t Annie Rowland. She was Lady Roseanne Napier and, no matter what her eyes were telling him, they both knew that she could never stay.
‘Well?’ she demanded impatiently.
‘Have you ever been on ice skates?’ he asked.
‘No, but they’re all doing it,’ she said, turning to look at the figures moving with varying stages of competence across the ice. ‘How hard can it be?’
‘They all had someone to hold their hand when they did it for the first time.’
Skating he could do. Holding her hand, knowing that he would have to let go, would be harder, but a few days of being ordinary would be his gift to her. Something for her to look back on with pleasure. For him to remember for ever.
She looked back at him, hesitated.
‘What are you waiting for?’ he asked. ‘Let’s go and get those boots. Just don’t complain to me when you can’t move in the morning.’
‘What about Xandra?’ she asked. ‘That boy?’
He glanced at them, sitting on the bench talking, laughing.
‘They can take care of the bags.’
Annie felt the pain a lot sooner than the next morning. She’d spent more time in close contact with the ice than gliding across it-would have spent more but for George-and had been laughing too much to waste time or breath complaining about it.
George was laughing too as he lifted her back onto her feet for the umpteenth time. ‘Hold onto my shoulders,’ he said as he steadied her, hands on her waist, then grabbed her more tightly as her feet began to slide from beneath her again. Too late. They both went down.
‘Have you had enough of this?’ he asked, his smile fading as, ignoring the skaters swirling around them, he focused his entire attention on giving her exactly what she wanted. ‘Or do you want to give it one more try?’
One more, a hundred times more wouldn’t be enough, Annie knew. She wanted a lifetime of George Saxon’s strong arms about her, holding her, supporting her. A lifetime of him laughing at her, with her.
‘Aren’t we supposed to be shopping for lights?’ she said, looking away.
Xandra and her new boyfriend were leaning on the rail watching them. ‘Pathetic,’ she called out, laughing at the pair of them. ‘Give it up.’
‘She might have a point,’ Annie said, turning back to George.
‘She hasn’t the first idea,’ he said, his expression intent, his lips kissing close. And neither of them were talking about ice skating.
While the skaters whirled around them, in their small space on the ice the world seemed to stand still as they drank in each other. Every moment.
‘Come on,’ Xandra called. ‘Dan knows a great place to buy lights.’
Annie scrambled to her feet and, for the first time since she’d stepped onto the ice, her feet were doing what they were supposed to as she glided gracefully to the edge of the rink with George a heartbeat behind her.
‘Dan?’ he said.
‘Dan Cartwright.’ The boy stuck out his hand. ‘We met this morning, sir. At the farm.’
‘I remember,’ George said, taking it.
The boy didn’t actually wince but he swallowed hard.
‘I’m Annie,’ she said, holding out her own hand so that George was forced to relinquish his grip. ‘Shall we go and look at these lights?’
The tree lights were just the start. They piled icicle lights for the eaves, curtain lights for the walls, rope lights for the fence into their trolley. And then Annie spotted a life-size reindeer-driven sleigh with Santa himself at the reins and refused to leave without it.
‘We won’t be able to get it into the car,’ George protested.
‘Dan’s got a motorbike,’ Xandra said. ‘He’s got a spare helmet so I could go home on the back of that.’
‘No,’ he replied without hesitation. ‘You can’t.’
‘In fact,’ she said, carrying on as if he hadn’t spoken, ‘when I go to Maybridge High I’ll need some transport. You had a motorbike, didn’t you?’
Yes, he’d had a bike, but that was different. She was a…‘If you want to go to Maybridge High I’ll drive you there myself,’ he snapped back.
There was a pause, no longer than a heartbeat, while the reality of what he’d said sank in.
He would drive her. Be here. Change his life for her…
‘Oh,
‘I’ve never been on a motorbike,’ Annie cut in before he could respond. ‘Why don’t I go with Dan?’ Then, ‘Actually, I’d love a lesson too.’
‘No one is going on the back of Dan’s bike!’ he exploded. ‘And if anyone is going to teach anyone to ride anything, it will be me!’
‘Brilliant,’ Xandra said, then, just as he realised that he’d been stitched up like a kipper, she nudged him with her shoulder and said, ‘Thanks, Dad.’
He looked at Annie. She had her hand to her mouth, confirmation that he hadn’t misheard, hadn’t got it wrong, but something amazing had just happened and he had to swallow twice before he could manage, ‘We could come
