Under the Boss’s Mistletoe

‘And for the draw,’ said Victoria. ‘First prize is a weekend in Paris as a break from the stress of planning a wedding, but the others sound worth winning too. Everyone here tonight is in with a chance.’

‘Paris sounds lovely,’ Cassie said wistfully, imagining strolling around Montmartre hand in hand with Jake. Then she caught herself up. What was she thinking? They weren’t lovers. There would be no one to see them in Paris. Why would they be holding hands?

She forced a smile. ‘Not that I ever win anything. Oh, I take that back,’ she said. ‘I once won a jar of pickled onions in the tombola at the village fete.’

Victoria laughed. ‘Well, it looks as if you’ve won yourself a gorgeous guy,’ she said with a meaningful glance at Jake, who was talking to Kevin about a new sports channel.

‘Yes,’ said Cassie, stifling a little sigh.

‘Isn’t it the best feeling when you find the right guy?’

Cassie looked at Jake, deep in blokey conversation with Kevin. She remembered the feel of his hand holding hers, the devastating sureness of his lips. ‘Yes,’ she said in a hollow voice.

‘I’d almost given up on men,’ Victoria confided. ‘I thought it was never going to happen for me. Then I walked into work one day, and there he was! The moment I saw him, I knew he was the one.’

She showed Cassie her engagement ring. ‘Every time I look at it, I feel so happy I want to cry,’ she said.

Kevin obviously caught the end of her sentence as he broke off his conversation with Jake. ‘Oh no, not the “I’m so happy I could cry” line again?’ he said, rolling his eyes, but he put his arm around Victoria and pulled her close. ‘Do you get that one?’ he asked Jake.

‘Not yet,’ said Jake.

There was a tiny pause, when it suddenly seemed glaringly obvious that they weren’t touching with the easy affection Kevin and Victoria showed, but then he slid his hand beneath Cassie’s hair and rested it at the nape of her neck.

‘You don’t want to cry, do you?’

Actually, right then, Cassie did. Her throat had tightened painfully, watching Victoria and Kevin so obviously in love, and now the warm, comforting weight of Jake’s hand on her neck only made her eyes sting with tears. She blinked them firmly away and mustered a smile. ‘I probably would cry with happiness if I had a lovely ring like Victoria’s!’ She pretended to joke.

‘Hasn’t he bought you a ring yet?’ Victoria tutted.

‘We haven’t been engaged very long.’ Cassie excused him, and then sucked in a breath as Jake caressed the nape of her neck.

‘Besides,’ he said. ‘I’m waiting to find something really special for her.’

The more couples they talked to, the more wistful Cassie felt. The others were all so happy, so much in love, so excited about their weddings; the happier they were together, the more conscious she was that she and Jake were just pretending.

‘Doesn’t it make you feel a bit sad?’ she asked him when they found themselves alone for a moment.

‘Sad? No. Why?’

‘Oh, I suppose I’m just envious,’ she said with sigh. ‘Everyone else here is in love, and we’re just promoting the Hall.’

Over Jake’s shoulder, she could see a couple laughing together. Unaware that anyone was watching them, the girl hugged her fiance’s arm and lifted her face naturally for his kiss. They looked so comfortable together that Cassie’s heart twisted and she jerked her eyes back to Jake.

‘It must be even worse for you,’ she said, and he lifted his brows.

‘For me?’

‘You might have been here with Natasha,’ Cassie said. ‘It’s never easy, seeing everyone else all loved up when your own relationship has just fallen apart.’

And she ought to know, she thought glumly. Her relationships had a nasty habit of crashing and burning after a few weeks, and she had almost given up on meeting someone she could fall in love with, someone who would love her back.

‘I can’t imagine Natasha here,’ said Jake, looking around him with a derisive expression. ‘We didn’t have that kind of relationship. If we had decided to get married, she wouldn’t have had much time for all of this.’

‘All of what?’

‘All this lovey-dovey stuff isn’t a good basis for a strong marriage.’

He had given her that line before, Cassie remembered. She didn’t buy it any more this time round. ‘I would have thought love was the only real basis for a marriage,’ she said.

‘I don’t agree with you,’ said Jake coolly. ‘Love is too random. It’s a hit and miss affair, and even if you do get a hit it soon runs out of steam. How many times have you seen friends wild for their new partner, only to end up complaining about how they never put the top back on the toothpaste barely weeks later?’

All too often in her own case, thought Cassie.

‘It doesn’t always run out of steam,’ she said. ‘Sometimes it gets stronger. OK, the red-hot passion may not last, but it can change into something better, something that will last. When you love someone completely, you accept their little quirks as part of who they are. You certainly don’t throw away a good relationship because they squeeze the toothpaste in the middle instead of rolling up the ends neatly!’

‘Are you talking from your own experience?’ asked Jake, and she lifted her chin.

‘Not personally, no,’ she said with dignity. ‘But I’ve seen plenty of other relationships where both partners learn to compromise because they love each other. It can work.’

‘Not often enough.’ Jake shook his head. ‘Marriage is too serious a business to be left to love,’ he said. ‘It should be about shared interests, shared goals, about practicalities and the things that can’t change. If you can add in sexual attraction as well, then you’ve got yourself a winning formula.’

‘You can’t reduce love to a formula, Jake.’

‘What else is it?’

‘It’s-it’s finding someone who makes your heart beat faster. Someone who makes your senses tingle.’

Hang on, that sounded alarmingly like the way Jake made her feel, Cassie realised uncomfortably.

‘Someone who makes the sun shine brighter.’ She hurried on into unfamiliar territory. Jake didn’t do that, did he?

‘That’s just chemical attraction,’ said Jake dismissively.

‘It isn’t chemistry that makes someone the first person you want to talk to in the morning and the last person you want to see at night,’ Cassie said hotly. ‘The person who believes in you, however bad things are, who will take you in their arms and make you feel that you’ve found a safe harbour.’

Her voice cracked a little. She had never found that person, but she wasn’t giving up on the belief that he was out there somewhere, whatever Jake Trevelyan said. ‘It’s got nothing to do with chemistry,’ she said, recovering.

‘And how long does that feeling last?’ Jake countered. He gestured around the room with his head. ‘How many of these loving couples are going to feel like that a year from now, let alone in ten years, twenty years? Relying on how you feel is too random a way to choose a partner for life. Call it a formula, if you like, but if you’re interested in the long haul you’re better off sticking to what you know works.’

‘The formula didn’t work for you and Natasha, though, did it?’ Cassie retorted without thinking.

There was a short, not entirely pleasant silence. ‘No,’ Jake said just as she opened her mouth to apologise. ‘The formula isn’t foolproof, sure. But if you find someone who fits your specifications I’d say your chances of a successful marriage are much greater than investing all your happiness in someone you don’t really know.’

‘Well,’ said Cassie, draining her glass of champagne defiantly. ‘I couldn’t disagree with you more. It looks as if we’re completely incompatible on that front, anyway. It’s just as well we’re not really getting married!’

‘Just as well,’ Jake agreed dryly.

At the front of the room, a microphone was spluttering into life. The editor of Wedding Belles was up on the little stage, making a speech and announcing the winners of the prize draw to much ooh-ing and aah-ing from the crowd. The happy couple who had won the trip to Paris was called up and had their photo taken, beaming from ear to ear.

It gave Cassie a chance to get a grip. There was a time, when they’d been chatting to other couples, when it had felt quite normal being with Jake. It had felt more than normal, in fact. It had felt strangely right to have him at