Under the Boss’s Mistletoe

around his neck and kiss him.

‘Right here,’ she said.

CHAPTER TEN

‘I’VE got to go back to London this afternoon,’ said Jake the next morning as they lay in bed. Realising how reluctant he was to go sent him teetering perilously on the edge of that sheer drop again, though, and he shied away from the thought. He smoothed the curls back from Cassie’s face. ‘Do you want a lift?’

Keep it light, he told himself. Offering a lift back to London wasn’t the same as suggesting that she move in with him, have his baby or anything that smacked remotely of commitment. It was just saving a train fare.

‘I can’t,’ sighed Cassie. ‘I promised to meet one of the contractors tomorrow to talk about electrics. Now that the hall is done, we need to start work on the kitchens and bathrooms. There’s still a long way to go before we can open as a venue. I really need to stay another couple of days.’

Jake was horrified by how disappointed he was at the prospect of three nights without her, but perhaps a few days apart wasn’t a bad thing. It would give him a chance to get himself under control and start thinking clearly again. He wasn’t himself when Cassie was right there, warm, soft and desperately distracting. It was too easy to lose control, too easy to forget what he risked by letting go of his careful, ordered life.

So when Cassie said that she would be back in London on Wednesday he made himself hold back. He didn’t offer to meet her at the station, take her out to dinner or take her back to his apartment to see how she looked amongst his furniture, the way he really wanted to do. ‘Give me a ring when you’re back,’ was all he said.

Right. Not ‘I’ll miss you’. Not ‘I love you’. Not even ‘I’ll call you’, thought Cassie. But what had she expected? Jake was a careful man nowadays. He might have made love to her with a heart-stopping tenderness and passion, but he wasn’t about to rush into a relationship with her.

And quite right too, Cassie reminded herself. She had decided that the here and now was enough for her, and it was obviously enough for Jake as well. So she smiled as she kissed him goodbye after lunch and waved him off to London.

She ought to be happy, she thought as she went back inside and began the dreary task of taking down the Christmas decorations. She had had the most wonderful weekend. OK, so Jake hadn’t said that he wanted to see her again, but he hadn’t said that he didn’t want to, either. He couldn’t have made love to her like that if he didn’t feel anything, could he?

They had all the photos they needed for the article, so there was no real need for him to come down to Portrevick again. But he might need her to be his fiancee again in London. It would look suspicious if they broke off their supposed engagement just yet. They had agreed that they would keep the pretence going until after Christmas, and that was still weeks away, Cassie reassured herself. It was only the beginning of November. Anything could happen in that time.

Just because Jake hadn’t talked about the future didn’t mean they couldn’t have one.

Still, Cassie couldn’t help feeling bereft now that he had gone. She wandered disconsolately around the great hall, taking down the fairy lights and dismantling the table she had laid so carefully the day before.

When the bell jangled, she hurried to open the massive front door, relieved at the distraction. She hoped it would be Tina, who had promised to come and give her a lift back to the village. A good chat with her old friend was just what she needed. But when she threw the door open wide, the smile was wiped from her face. It wasn’t Tina who stood there.

It was Natasha.

‘Oh!’

Natasha smiled a little hesitantly. ‘Hi,’ she said.

‘I’m afraid Jake isn’t here,’ said Cassie, unable to think of any other reason Natasha would be here on her own. ‘He’s gone back to London.’

‘Actually, it was you I was hoping to see. Have you got a moment?’

The last person Cassie wanted to talk to right then was Natasha, but she couldn’t think of a polite way to refuse. ‘Sure,’ she said reluctantly, and stood back. ‘Come in.’

Gracefully, Natasha stepped into the hall. Swathed in a fabulous cream cashmere pashmina, she stood looking beautiful and making everything around her seem faintly shabby in comparison.

Including Cassie.

There was an awkward silence. ‘Would you like some tea?’ Cassie found herself asking to her own disgust.

‘That would be nice, thank you.’

‘We’ll go to the kitchen. It’s warmer there.’

Cursing her mother’s training, which meant that you always had to be polite whatever the cost, Cassie led the way to the kitchen.

Natasha sat at the table, unwinding her pashmina to reveal an exquisite pale-blue jumper, also cashmere by the look of it, and Cassie sighed as she filled the kettle. If she tried to wear a top that colour, she would spill something down it and ruin it two seconds after she had put it on, but Natasha looked as if she had stepped out of the pages of a magazine.

Switching on the kettle, she turned and leant back against the worktop and folded her arms. ‘What did you want to talk to me about?’

‘About Jake,’ said Natasha.

Cassie stiffened. ‘What about him?’

‘I just wanted to know…how he is.’ Natasha moistened her lips. ‘I’d hoped to see him at the ball the other night, but I couldn’t find him.’

Cassie thought about what Jake had been doing while Natasha had been looking for him, and her toes curled. ‘He’s fine,’ she said shortly.

‘I see,’ whispered Natasha, and to Cassie’s horror the green eyes filled with tears. ‘I’d hoped…I’d hoped…’

‘That he’d be pining for you?’

‘Yes.’ She nodded miserably. ‘I’ve been such a fool,’ she burst out. ‘Rupert-he was like a madness. I’ve always been so sensible, and to be pursued like that by someone so glamorous and so exciting, well, I was flattered. You know what Rupert’s like.’

‘Yes, I know,’ said Cassie. ‘But I know what Jake is like too, and so should you. He’s worth a thousand Ruperts, and he deserved better than being left without warning-and for Rupert of all people! You must have known how humiliating that would be for him,’ she said accusingly.

Natasha bit her lip. ‘I can see that now, of course I can, but at the time I wasn’t thinking clearly.’

Dropping her head into her hands, she clutched her perfectly straight blonde hair with her perfectly manicured fingers. ‘It sounds crazy now, but I just lost my head. I was tired of being clever and careful and doing the right thing all the time. Rupert was such fun and so seductive. Being with him seemed like my only chance to do something wild and spontaneous. It was like my own little rebellion.’

‘A little self-indulgent, don’t you think?’ said Cassie, unmoved. ‘Couldn’t you have found a way to have fun and be spontaneous that didn’t involve hurting Jake?’

‘I never meant to hurt him, you must believe that!’ Natasha lifted her head to look at Cassie with imploring green eyes. ‘We never had a very demonstrative relationship. I suppose other people would have looked at us and thought we were cool, but I didn’t appreciate what I had. I thought I wanted something different, but then I didn’t like it. The truth is that I’m not a rebel. I’m conventional. I’m careful. I like a plan, just like Jake. With Rupert, I never know where we’re going to be or what we’ll be doing, and I hate it!

‘I miss Jake,’ she said on a sob, and the tears spilled over at last. ‘When I’m with him, I feel so safe. We had so much in common. We were perfect together, but I treated him so badly, and now I don’t know if he’ll ever forgive me.’

Cassie poured boiling water onto two tea bags. Her face felt tight. Her heart felt tight. ‘Why have you come to me?’ she asked coolly, squeezing the bags with a spoon before fishing them out.