Under the Boss’s Mistletoe

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Safe-that was what Jake had said he felt. Cassie knew exactly what he meant.

‘Tell me you love me, Cassie,’ he murmured against her hair, and she tipped back her head to smile at him, her eyes still shimmering with tears.

‘I love you,’ she said. And then they did kiss, a long, intoxicatingly sweet kiss that dissolved the hurt and the uncertainty and left them heady and breathless with happiness.

‘I love you,’ said Jake shakily at last. Somehow they had made it to the shelter of the dunes, and sank down onto the soft sand as they kissed and kissed again. ‘I love you, I love you,’ he said again between kisses. ‘I can’t tell you how much.’

Cassie drew a shivery sigh of sheer contentment and rested her head on his shoulder, her arms wound tightly around him as if she would never let him go. ‘What about the formula?’

‘Ah, the formula,’ he said with a wry smile. ‘I clung to that formula like a life raft! It seemed to make sense,’ he tried to explain. ‘It worked, or at least it did until I met you again. You don’t know what you did to me, Cassie. You turned my world upside down. I had constructed such a careful life, and suddenly everything was out of control.

‘You made me feel again, and I was torn. I wanted you, but I didn’t want you. You were part of the past I’d been running away from for so long. I thought if I could just hold onto my sensible, practical formula I’d be all right, but I can see now that it was just as much a fantasy as the fairy tale that you believe in.’

‘Yes, I’ve learnt that too,’ said Cassie, snuggling closer as they lay in the sand. ‘I held on to the fairy tale, just like you held on to the formula. I suppose I was always such a dreamer that it was natural for me to fantasise about the perfect relationship, the perfect wedding, the perfect everything.’

She ran her hand over his abdomen. Even through the leather, she could feel the muscled strength of him. ‘I don’t think you’re perfect, though.’

‘Oh?’ Jake pretended to sound hurt, and she softened the blow by leaning up on her elbow and smiling down at him as she dropped a kiss on his lips.

‘No, you’re not perfect. You’re impatient and practical and oh-so-sensible-or you were until you went out and bought yourself a motorbike just to make a point! When I dreamed of the man I would love, I never imagined someone like you, but it is you. I’ve learnt to love what’s in front of me, not a dream. Now I know that you love me back, well…’ She smiled, kissing him again. ‘I think this just might be the fairy tale after all!’

She settled back into the curve of his arm with a sigh of happiness. ‘I’ve been so wretched for the last three weeks,’ she told him. ‘Why did it take you so long to come?’

‘Because I thought you’d changed your mind after I’d gone,’ said Jake. ‘I thought you’d just been amusing yourself that weekend, and that you didn’t want to get any more involved. I thought you couldn’t even be bothered to tell me yourself. You just sent Natasha instead.’

Cassie wriggled uncomfortably. ‘I didn’t send her. I thought you would be happy to see her.’

‘Happy? Hah!’ Jake snorted. ‘There was one moment that day when I was wildly happy. The door bell rang and I convinced myself that it was you, that you’d told the contractors they could go to hell so that you could come up to London early and be with me.’

‘Well, I don’t know why you would think I would do that.’ Cassie pretended to grumble. ‘You never said a word. How was I to know you wanted to see me?’

‘I know, I was a fool. I should have begged you to come with me.’ Jake wound his fingers in the curls that were hopelessly tangled by wind and sand. ‘But, Cassie, I was terrified,’ he said. ‘I’d fallen wildly in love with you. That weekend, when we made love, it all happened so fast. I felt as if I was losing control when I was with you, nothing else mattered. I could feel myself slipping back, becoming the reckless boy I’d been before, not caring about anything except the moment.

‘It was as if everything I’d spent the last ten years working for had started to crumble,’ he tried to explain. ‘I thought I needed a day or two to get a grip of myself and decide what I really wanted.

‘And I realised that I wanted you,’ he told her. ‘When I got to London, everything was colourless without you. That life I’d fought to keep under control was still under control, but it was flat and meaningless too. So I knew I wanted you, but I wasn’t sure how to win you. You were always telling me how incompatible we were, and you clearly didn’t need me to have a good time.’

Jake paused. ‘There was a little bit of me, too, that was hung over from the past, a bit that didn’t feel as if I was good enough for you. You come from such a nice, happy, middle-class family, and when all was said and done I was still one of those Trevelyans with a father in prison.’

‘But you’re more than that,’ said Cassie. ‘Your family doesn’t matter. It’s you I love, and as for my family, well, they’re going to see a chief executive, not the wild boy who used to make trouble in the village. They like high achievers, remember? They’ll approve of you much more than they do of me!’

‘I hope so,’ said Jake. ‘I suppose I just lost my nerve in London. I told myself I had to take things carefully, so I planned to ask you out to dinner as soon as you got back and ask if you’d consider making that silly pretence of being engaged real. But Natasha turned up instead. She told me you’d admitted that it was just a pretence, and had sent back the ring to prove it.’

‘I didn’t think you’d be able to resist her,’ sighed Cassie. ‘She’s so beautiful.’

‘Well, yes, she is-but next to you she’s just a little colourless. I never laughed with her the way I laughed with you. We never talked, or argued, or lost our cool with each other. Natasha’s a nice person,’ said Jake. ‘But she was the last person I wanted to see that day. Once I’d got over my disappointment that she wasn’t you, we had a long talk. I think the fact that she was ready to have an affair with Rupert made her realise that we weren’t really right for each other. I hope she’ll find the right man one day, but it’s not me.’

‘Why didn’t you at least call me then?’ asked Cassie, thinking of the weeks they had wasted being miserable apart.

‘I was angry,’ said Jake. ‘With Natasha, with you, but mostly with myself-for letting myself fall in love with you, for throwing my whole life into disorder for someone who apparently didn’t care enough about me to tell me she couldn’t be bothered to carry on pretending. And then, when I did hear from you, it was just an impersonal email about the Hall!’

‘At least I didn’t sign it “regards”!’ sniffed Cassie, and he laughed as he hugged her closer.

‘I was trying to show you I cared as little as you did. God, I can laugh now, but at the time I was hurt and I was bitter. I was impossible to deal with for two weeks-my PA told me she was ready to shoot me, in the end-until I realised I couldn’t go on like that. I used to take myself off for long walks around the streets, and one day I passed a guy on a motorbike. It was just like the one I used to have in Portrevick, and that’s when I started to think about what you’d said about accepting the past and letting go of it at the same time.

‘I can take a risk, I thought, and I went out and bought a bike of my own. And then I took an even bigger risk. I thought you’d be back in London, so I went round to your office and Joss told me you were still here, so I got straight on my bike and drove all the way down here,’ he said, unzipping a pocket to pull out the ruby ring.

He shifted so that he was lying over Cassie, smiling down into her eyes. ‘I came to tell you that I love you and I need you, and that more than anything in the world I want you to take this ring back and say you’ll marry me. Will you, Cassie?’

Cassie’s smile trembled as she took the ring and slid it back onto her finger where it belonged. ‘Oh yes,’ she breathed, and her eyes shone as she put her arms around Jake’s neck to tug him down for a long, long kiss. ‘Oh yes, I will.’

The short winter afternoon was closing in, but it was only the first spots of rain that forced them to move at last. ‘Have you still got that wedding dress you wore for the photos?’ Jake asked as they brushed sand off each other.

‘I took it back to the shop the next day.’

‘Why don’t you go and buy it?’ he said. ‘We can get married at Christmas.’

‘Christmas!’ said Cassie, startled. ‘That’s only a month away!’

‘It’s enough time for the banns to be read.’

‘Just!’