Christmas Wishes, Mistletoe Kisses

quiet side road.

She sat in the front passenger seat and fastened her seat belt without looking at him. Pretty soon they were whizzing through isolated country lanes in silence, the only hint they weren’t alone inside a big black bubble were the golden twigs and branches picked out by the headlights in front of them. The patterns the light made on the road and hedgerows shifted and twisted as they sped past. Every now and then, for a split-second, an odd tree stump or a gate would be illuminated and then it would be gone.

Louise breathed in the silence. After a few minutes she turned her head slightly to look at Ben. His hands gripped the wheel lightly, but she had no doubt he was in full control. All his concentration was focused on the road in front of them. He looked at it the same way he’d looked at her in the mirror that afternoon.

The air begun to pulse around her head and a familiar craving she’d thought she’d conquered started to clamour deep inside her-the heady rush of simply being noticed. Immediately, she twisted her head to look straight ahead and clamped her hands together in her lap. They were shaking.

Simple pleasures.

She had an idea that Ben Oliver was full of them.

It was taking every ounce of his will-power to keep his eyes on the road ahead. Having Louise Thornton in the front seat of his car was proving a distraction. And not an oh-my-goodness-there’s-a-celebrity-in-my-car kind of distraction. Unfortunately. He could have talked himself out of that one quite easily.

And it wasn’t even because she was the most stunning woman he’d ever laid eyes on. She was way out of his league, he knew that. The logic of this situation would catch up with him eventually.

At the start of the evening, she’d stood tall and still, and a casual onlooker would have thought her relaxed and confident. But, unfortunately, he’d discovered he could no longer regard Louise casually.

He’d noticed the way her gloved hands had hung on to the boundary rope as if it were a lifeline. He’d seen the panic in her eyes when she’d thought she’d have to face the crowd and might be recognised. He had the oddest feeling that the real Louise had shrunk small inside herself, hiding beneath the thick outer shell. How long had she been that way?

Then, as the evening had worn on, he’d seen her hands unclench from the rope and noticed the unconscious, affectionate gestures that flowed between mother and son. He’d heard her laugh when ketchup had dripped on to her chin from the hot dog, and listened to the soft intakes of breath with every bang and crackling shower of the fireworks.

And he didn’t want to notice these things about her. He didn’t want to know how warm and rich her laugh was, or how tender and gentle she was below the surface. He just wanted to see the surface alone-much in the same way he only saw the rippling surface of the river and never the rocks and currents beneath.

He would rather remember the bare facts-that her divorce was still raw and fresh, that the last thing he and Jas needed in their lives at the moment was another woman with too much baggage for him to shoulder.

He’d known that Megan had had ‘issues’ when he’d first met her, but they seemed inconsequential to the situations facing Louise. And she faced them with such dignity and poise…

There he went again, admiring her when he should be concentrating on other things.

A flash of movement across the road caused his foot to stamp instantly on the brake. All of the joke-telling and giggling from the back seat stopped.

‘It’s okay,’ he said, his heart pounding. ‘Only a rabbit-and he’s away up the hill by now.’

Jas and Jack returned to their knock-knock jokes and he put the car into gear. He pulled away gently, aware of the slim fingers that had flown to the dashboard and were now curling back into her lap.

Getting freaked out by a rabbit? What was happening to him? They darted in front of the car all the time and he never usually reacted this way. He pressed his foot on the accelerator, the car picked up speed and soon they were flying down the country lane as if nothing had happened. Ben concentrated on the road and pretended he didn’t know how to answer his own question.

The other occupants of the car fell into silence and it wasn’t long before he was pulling into the long drive that led to Whitehaven. Louise shifted in her seat, as if she was preparing to dart out of the door as soon as the wheels had stopped turning. Good. If she didn’t feel the need to linger in his presence, that was fine by him.

‘Can I have cake when I get in, Mum?’

Ben stifled a smile as he slowed the car and brought it to a halt outside the front porch. And then his tummy rumbled. It had fond memories of that cake.

‘Jack! It’s past your bedtime! Of course you’re not going to have-’

‘Cakes!’

They all turned and looked at Jas, whose eyes were wide and a hand was clamped over her mouth. Then she started to cry. Instantly, he was out of the car and opening the rear passenger door. ‘Jas? What is it?’

Jas’s lip trembled. ‘C-cakes. My class are doing a tea party for the old people in the village. Mum was going to help me make cakes this weekend, but she went away…’

Ben tried not to let the irritation show on his face. Megan could waltz off to Timbuktu for all he cared, but when her flaky ways affected Jas it was a different matter entirely.

‘I’m supposed to take them in on Tuesday morning or I won’t get any house points!’ Jas wailed. ‘Can you help me, Dad?’

‘Um…’There was nothing he’d like more, but he wasn’t sure Jas would be getting any house points for anything he tried to bake-‘tried’ being the operative word.

‘I can help.’

As one, he and Jas swivelled round to look at Louise and stared. Her face was expressionless. Had he really heard that right?

Ben turned back to Jas. ‘Can’t you do it on your own? I’ll supervise.’

There was a loud snort from the passenger seat. He ignored it.

Jas had the end-of-the-world expression on her face that was common to all eleven-year-olds in a crisis. ‘I don’t know. I can never get the beginning bit right when you have to mix the eggs and flour together.’

‘Eggs and sugar.’ Louise spoke quietly. In his experience, that tone was deceptive. He just might be in big trouble.

‘Yeah, eggs and sugar. That’s what I meant,’ Jas said absently.

Ben sighed. ‘Can’t we just buy some?’

Jas shook her head and started to cry again.

‘I can help.’ This time Louise’s tone was more insistent.

‘Home-made cakes?’

‘What do you think you were eating earlier? Scotch mist?’

Reality dropped away and Ben felt as if he were standing on nothing. ‘You made that cake?’ He could tell by the look on her face that he was probably sabotaging Jas’s only chance-which was a pity. He hadn’t meant his words to come out quite like that, but they’d escaped before his brain had had a chance to give them the once-over.

Louise glared at him. ‘No, the cake fairies left it on the doorstep.’

Okay. He’d deserved that.

Jas, who was wiping her eyes with her coat sleeve, piped up. ‘I thought that if Jack needed cakes for school you’d have just bought them at Harrods.’

It seemed his daughter had inherited his capacity for opening his mouth only to change feet.

Louise clamped a hand across her mouth and, just as he was expecting her to flounce out of the car, slamming the door, her eyes sparkled and she let out a raucous laugh.

Ben was floored. This wasn’t the shy giggle he’d seen earlier; it was a full-bellied chuckle. And it was pretty infectious. When the surprise had worn off, his mouth turned up at the corners and, pretty soon, all four of them were crying with laughter. Louise was clutching on to the door for support and Jack’s titter was so high-pitched it was starting to hurt his ears.

Still giggling, Louise managed a few words, even though she was a little short of breath. ‘Sometimes… sometimes…when I was really busy…I did get them at Harrods!’ That just set them all off again.

When they all managed to get back on the right side of sanity he felt as exhausted as if he’d done a cross-