Read the book: «Kiss Me Under the Mistletoe»

About the Author

As a child, FIONA HARPER was constantly teased for either having her nose in a book or living in a dream world. Things haven’t changed much since then, but at least in writing she’s found a use for her runaway imagination. After studying dance at university, Fiona worked as a dancer, teacher and choreographer, before trading in that career for video editing and production. When she became a mother, she cut back on her working hours to spend time with her children and, when her littlest one started pre-school, she found a few spare moments to rediscover an old but not forgotten love—writing.

Fiona lives in London, but her other favourite places to be are the Highlands of Scotland and the Kent countryside on a summer’s afternoon. She loves cooking, good food and anything cinnamon-flavoured. Of course, she still can’t keep away from a good book or a good movie—especially romances—but only if she’s stocked up with tissues, because she knows she will need them by the end, be it happy or sad. Her favourite things in the world are her wonderful husband, who has learned to decipher her incoherent ramblings, and her two daughters.

Kiss me Under the Mistletoe
Fiona Harper

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Mum again. Still love you.

CHAPTER ONE

Most women would have given at least one kidney to be in Louise’s shoes—both literally and figuratively. The shoes in question were hot off the Paris catwalk, impossibly high heels held to her foot by delicately interwoven silver straps. The main attraction, however, was the man sitting across the dinner table from her. The very same hunk of gorgeousness that had topped a magazine poll of ‘Hollywood’s Hottest’ only last Thursday.

Louise stared at her cutlery, intent on tracing a figure of eight pattern with her dessert spoon, and eavesdropped on conversations in the busy restaurant. Other people’s conversations. Other people’s lives.

Her dinner companion shifted in his seat and the heel of his boot made jarring contact with the little toe of her right foot. She jerked away and leaned over to rub it.

‘Thanks a bunch, Toby!’ she said, glaring at him from half under the table.

Toby stopped grinning at a pair of bleached blonde socialites who were in the process of wafting past their table and turned to face her, eyebrows raised.

‘What?’

‘Never mind,’ she muttered and sat up straight again, carefully crossing her ankles and tucking them under her chair. Her little toe was still warm and pulsing.

The waiter appeared with their exquisite-looking entrées and Toby’s eyebrows relaxed back into their normal sexily brooding position as he started tearing into his guinea fowl. Louise’s knife and fork stayed on the tablecloth.

He hadn’t even bothered with his normal comments about the carbs on her plate. She was supposed to be getting rid of that baby weight, remember? Never mind that Jack had just turned eight. His father was still living in a dream world if he thought she was going to be able to squeeze back into those size zero designer frocks hanging in the back of her wardrobe.

But then Toby had emotionally checked out of their marriage some time ago. She kept up the pretence for Jack’s sake, posed and smiled for the press and celebrity magazines and fiercely denied any gossip about a rift. He hadn’t ever said he’d stopped loving her, but it was evident in the things he didn’t do, the things he didn’t say. And then there was the latest rumour …

She picked up her cutlery and attacked her pasta.

‘Slow down, Lulu! Good food like this is meant to be enjoyed, not inhaled.’ Toby said, eyes still on his plate.

Lulu. When they’d first met, she’d thought it had been cute that he’d picked up on, and used, her younger brother’s attempts at pronouncing her name. Lulu was exotic, exciting … and a heck of a lot more interesting than plain old Louise. She’d liked being Lulu back then.

Now she just wanted him to see Louise again.

She stopped eating and looked at him, waiting for him to raise his head, give her a smile, his trademark cheeky wink—anything.

He waved for the waiter and asked for another bottle of wine. Then she saw him glance across and nod at the two blondes, now seated a few tables away. Not once in the next ten minutes did he look at her. Her seat might as well have been empty.

‘Toby?’

‘What?’ Finally he glanced in her direction. But where once she had been able to see her dreams coming to life, there was only a vacancy.

He rubbed his front tooth with his forefinger and it made a horrible squeaking noise. ‘Why are you looking at me like that? Do I have spinach in my teeth?’

She shook her head. What spinach leaf would dare sully the picture of masculine perfection sitting opposite her? The thought was almost sacrilegious. She was tempted to laugh.

The words wouldn’t come. How could she ask what she wanted to ask? And how could she stand the answer when it came?

She tried to say it with her eyes instead. When she’d been modelling, photographers had always raved about the ‘intensity’ in her eyes. She tried to show it all—the emptiness inside her, the magnetic force that kept the pair of them revolving around each other, the small spark of hope that hadn’t quite been extinguished yet. If he’d just do it once … really connect with her …

‘Jeez, Lulu. Cheer up, will—’

A chime from the phone in his pocket interrupted him. He slid it out and held it shielded in his hand, slightly under the table. The only change in his features was a slight curve of his bottom lip. Now he made eye contact. He searched her face for a reaction, and then returned the mobile to his jacket pocket and his gaze to his plate.

She waited.

He shrugged. ‘Work stuff. You know …’

Unfortunately, she had the feeling she did know. And she kept on knowing all the way through dinner as she shoved one forkful after another into her mouth, tasting nothing.

The rumour was true.

All afternoon, since she’d spoken to Tara on the phone, she’d hoped it was all silly speculation, someone putting two and two together and coming up with five. Six years ago, when the tabloids had been jumping with the stories of Toby’s ‘secret love trysts’ with his leading lady, she’d refused to believe it. She had given interview after interview denying there had been any truth in it. During the second ‘incident’ she’d done the same but while her outward performance had been just as impassioned, inside she’d been counting all the things that hadn’t added up: the hushed phone calls, the extra meetings with his agent. Never enough to pin him down, but just enough to make her die a little more each time she shook her head for the reporters and dismissed it as nonsense.

She blocked out the busy restaurant with her eyelids. No way could she go through that again. And no way could she put Jack through it. He’d been too young to understand before, but he was reading so well now. What if he saw something on the front of a newspaper? She squeezed her jaw together. What kind of message was she giving to her son by lying to the world and letting Toby use her as a doormat? What kind of man would he become if this was his example?

‘Oh, my God! It’s Tobias Thornton! Can I have your autograph?’

Louise’s eyes snapped open and she stared at two women hovering—no, make that drooling—next to Toby’s chair. Toby smiled and did the gracious but smouldering thing his fans loved as he put his ostentatious squiggle on the woman’s napkin. Louise just tapped her foot.

Only when they’d finished gushing and jiggling on the spot did they glance at her. And a split-second scowl was obviously all she was worth. They didn’t even bother keeping their voices down as they walked away. Huddled over her new treasure, she clearly heard one say, ‘He is so hot!’

Toby opened his mouth so speak but, once again, his phone got the first word in. He glanced at the display, stifled a smile, then gestured to Louise that he was going to have to take this one. ‘My agent,’ he mouthed as he walked off to stand near the bar.

My foot, thought Louise, as the waiter cleared her half-eaten pasta.

She watched him out the corner of her eye as he talked. Her husband smiled and laughed and absent-mindedly preened himself in the mirror behind the bar. His agent was male, over fifty, and as wide as he was tall. No, Louise could do the maths. And the number she kept coming up with was four.

Even as something withered inside her, she sat up straighter in her chair. She demanded eye contact from Toby as he finished his call and sauntered back towards her. Now she got her smile—warm, bright, his eyes telling her she was the most wonderful thing in the world.

As he sat down at the table, he reached for her hand and brushed her knuckle with the tip of his thumb. Louise leaned forward and smiled back at him, turning on the wattage as only a former model knew how to do. Toby leaned in, clearly hoping he was going to have his cake and eat it too this evening. She should have thanked him for that; it just made what she was about to do easier.

She let the grin slide from her face and spoke in a low, scratchy whisper. ‘Toby …’ She paused, mentally adding all the names she wasn’t about call him out loud. ‘I want a divorce.’

‘What charity is this thing tonight for again?’ Tara asked as she slid into the limousine beside Louise and flicked a coil of artfully tonged blonde hair over her shoulder.

‘Relief,’ Louise said quietly. ‘They support carers—especially children.’

Tara scrunched up her pretty face. Five years younger. Three sizes thinner. She had none of the telltale lines on her forehead that Louise had, the ones that refused to disappear completely when she stopped frowning. Not that she did that much these days.

‘Isn’t child slavery illegal?’

‘It is,’ Louise said. ‘But there are tons of kids whose parents are sick and they have to take on the role of looking after them. Sometimes they have no choice.’

A different form of child slavery. One Louise knew all about. But she wasn’t going to tell Tara that. The younger woman might be the closest thing she had to a best friend in this shark-infested world she lived in, but she didn’t tell anyone about her childhood. They had enough ammunition for looking down at her as it was.

At least she could support Relief in some small way. At the end of the charity benefit she’d be writing a ridiculously large cheque. Since that dinner a week ago, spending Toby’s money had become an act of revenge.

‘You’re so good to remember all of that stuff they put on the invite,’ Tara said, fluffing her hair and looking out of the window as they sped through central London. ‘All I do is turn up and drink champagne at these things. One benefit just seems to merge into the next.’

Which was a pity, Louise thought. Relief could use someone like Tara championing them. She might play the dumb blonde, but she was nothing of the sort. She’d been to a good private school, got a university degree—in other words, had the education that Louise had only been able to dream about. Tara knew words that Louise couldn’t even spell, let alone understand, but she chose to hide that side of herself away. Didn’t serve her purpose, she said. Degrees didn’t get you much these days. Certainly not a footballer husband who earned more in ten minutes than most people made in six months.

The limo pulled up outside an exclusive Park Lane hotel. She and Tara slid out and walked down the red carpet together. Louise heard her name called repeatedly, but she practised the vague and ethereal smile she wore for these occasions, never really focusing on one person or one thing.

She wanted to rush inside as quickly as possible, but that wouldn’t do. She needed to look calm and poised as always. While she wasn’t going to cover up for Toby about this latest story, she knew that if she gave a hint of a twitch or a frown a lens somewhere would catch it and she’d see it blown up in the morning editions, with a caption reading ‘Louise’s private hell’, or some other rubbish. She wouldn’t give Toby—or his pre-schooler of a girlfriend—the satisfaction.

Oh, she’d fall apart at some point. Just not tonight, especially as this was her last public engagement before she announced her split from Toby and her retirement into private life. She was going to make it count.

But as she and Tara ran the gauntlet of the red carpet, stopping to pose for the cameras, Louise’s smile began to take on a frozen quality. Nowadays, this kind of thing was as common to her as walking down the aisles of a supermarket once had been, but Toby’s shenanigans seemed to have hurled her into a time warp, back to the days when she’d been terrified of all the noise and popping lights, when she’d half-expected to hear a lone accusatory voice above the crowd. ‘Fake …! Imposter!’

‘Let’s get out of here,’ she whispered to Tara, who was taking far too long. But she’d just had her boobs done again, so Louise supposed she was happy to have the excuse to show them off. The lime-green halter-neck dress she was wearing had been deliberately chosen to showcase their new gravity-defying properties.

Tara frowned at her request, and Louise thought she was going to pout and moan, but she took one look at Louise’s flushed face and furrowed brow and gave in. Only when they were in the lobby, once they were out of earshot and camera range, did she turn to her friend and whisper, ‘I thought you were just letting off steam when you ranted to me about Toby down the phone the other day, but you’re really going to go through with it, aren’t you?’

Louise gave her a hooded look. ‘He’s cheating on me. Why would I not go through with it?’ For an intelligent woman, Tara could be really thick sometimes.

‘He loves you really, you know,’ she said, smiling brightly as they entered the ballroom. She paused to waggle her fingers in reply to someone on the other side of the room. ‘Can’t stand her,’ she said out of the corner of her mouth, and then switched seamlessly into the one subject Louise was hoping she’d drop. ‘Husbands like ours … There are some big perks, but there’s a price to pay too.’ She gave Louise a sideways look. ‘It never bothered you before.’

Louise snorted. ‘I never had anything truly concrete before, just suspicions, and my darling husband would just deny everything convincingly and make me feel stupid and disloyal for asking in the first place.’ If Toby’s on-screen performances had been as good as his private ones, he’d have had an Oscar or three by now.

Tara’s eyes widened. ‘You have actual proof? Really?’

Louise nodded. She’d got up early the next morning after their dinner and had checked Toby’s phone and email account. Plenty of proof. All sickeningly graphic. He’d got lazy about hiding it from her. She really didn’t want to think about what that said about the state of their relationship.

Tara sighed as she plucked two glasses of champagne from a passing waiter’s tray and handed one to Louise. ‘But divorce … it’s such a big step. Are you sure?’

Louise nodded.

Around them the glitzy party continued. People swanned past, greeting each other loudly, air-kissing each other even more loudly, all the while their eyes moving, gauging just how many others they’d impressed with their entrance.

It was a big step. This was the only life she’d known for more than a decade. And the only security she’d ever known in her thirty years. Until her late teens she’d been an outsider, someone who only got to look on while other girls her age were young and silly and carefree. She’d felt like a ghost. Someone not real. Someone who didn’t count.

And then Toby had come along and swept her off her feet. He’d not only seen her, but he’d liked what he saw. It had been nectar to Louise’s neglected soul. She must be worth something if a man like him wanted her, right? For so long she’d hung on to that thought, used it to give her inner strength when she felt out of her depth or that everyone could see past the designer clothes and make-up to the lanky, shy teenager still hiding beneath.

But now everything had gone wrong. Toby didn’t want her any more.

Not really. Oh, he might say he didn’t want the marriage to end, that he wanted to work on it with her, but she’d lost hope he’d ever change. Even if he wanted to—which was a big if—she wasn’t sure he was capable of it.

So, big step or not, it was time to go.

And no one thought being with Toby made her special any more, anyway. Even though she knew for a fact that half the newspaper reports hadn’t been true, Toby had not behaved well the last few years. The rest of the world thought she was a fool. And she was finally ready to agree with them. Staying with Toby was making her an object of scorn—or worse, pity.

‘I’m going to buy a big house in the country somewhere,’ she told Tara, ‘Maybe Devon or Somerset. And Jack and I are going to have long, healthy walks in the fresh air and enjoy the community spirit of village life.’

‘Devon!’ Tara almost choked on her champagne. ‘Nobody lives in Devon!’

Louise blinked. She knew for a fact they did. The county had been the location of some of her favourite family holidays as a girl, before her mother died. ‘Well you’d better phone up the police and report all those people in the houses down there for breaking and entering then,’ she said.

Tara rolled her eyes. ‘You know what I mean. God, I’m so lucky that Gareth is the sort who’d never stray. I’d hate to have to do what you’re doing. But do you really have to go to the lengths of burying yourself alive in the back of beyond?’ She turned to Louise with a genuinely sincere expression on her face, so Tara’s next words astonished her completely. ‘Couldn’t you just, you know, have a hot fling with some young stud to get Toby back and then forget about it all? Tit for tat and all that …’

Louise shook her head again. ‘I can’t.’

She had to think of Jack. What would seeing an I-can-shag-more-people-than-you-can contest between his parents in the tabloids teach him? It was precisely because she didn’t want him to grow up and think that was normal behaviour that she was leaving.

‘Pity,’ Tara said. ‘There’s going to be a complete lack of eligible men in Dorset …’

‘Devon,’ Louise reminded her.

Tara waved a hand. ‘Wherever. The geography’s irrelevant. You’re going to become a dried-up old prune with no sex life.’

‘Thanks for the encouragement,’ Louise said dryly. ‘Nice to know you’re on my side.’

Tara’s brows arched. ‘I am on your side. I’m trying to get you to think this through properly, Lou. I don’t think you’ve really considered what you’ll be giving up.’

Ah, the one time Tara liked to play the clever card was when she was instructing Louise on how to live her life. She did it very well. It got right up Louise’s nose.

‘Perhaps I’ll meet a hot surfer dude or a nice young farmer,’ she told Tara in silky voice, going for shock effect and knowing she’d succeeded from the look of horror on the other woman’s face. Unlike Tara, Louise didn’t need guarantees of Porsches in the garage or Rolexes on a man’s wrist before she dropped her knickers.

‘Maybe I’ll have a hot fling after all,’ Louise said airily, then swigged back a mouthful of her warming champagne. ‘All men are rats, anyway. There’s not a good one out there. I don’t want or need their money. I might as well use them for sex. That’s what they do to us, and it’s about time someone turned the tables.’

Tara’s expertise also extended to her vast vocabulary of swear words. She let a choice phrase out now. ‘I seriously don’t know what’s wrong with you tonight, Lou. I’ve got half a mind to bundle you into a cab and take you to The Priory.’

Louise just laughed. ‘What for? Regaining my sanity? Taking control of my life? I don’t think they make a pill or a detox treatment for that.’

Tara’s brows lowered as she looked at her friend. ‘They should.’ And then she pouted. ‘I’m going to miss you if you move away from London. What are you going to do with yourself?’ She looked her up and down. ‘I suppose you could try plus size modelling.’

Louise closed her eyes briefly and swallowed. Thanks for that, Tara, she muttered silently in her head. You know just how to cheer a girl up.

And she wasn’t plus size, really. She was a normal thirty-year-old woman, with a normal, post-pregnancy, thirty-year-old body. Why was that such a crime? So what if she was the only one amongst her peers not to have shrunk back to beanpole proportions within ten minutes of giving birth?

That was the problem with the kind of life she led: her current version of ‘normal’. Everything was distorted: body image, priorities, people, marriages … children. What some of her older acquaintances were shelling out in rehab fees for their teenage children was shocking. She didn’t want that to be Jack’s fate in a few years’ time. Some of those kids were only thirteen, fourteen …

No, she didn’t want to have a get-you-back fling and carry on like nothing had happened. She wanted out of this life. For her and for Jack. She wanted to find a way to be normal again, to feel like a proper person again. But Tara wouldn’t understand that. All she was interested in was climbing the bling-encrusted ladder of WAGdom until she was Queen Bee. And Louise was quite happy to step out her way and let her.

The time came for speeches and donations, and Louise wrote an eye-watering cheque for the charity. But even that only gave a momentary lift in her spirits. All evening she’d talked and sipped champagne and watched the other people congratulating themselves on having made it onto the exclusive guest list, and all she’d been able to think was: is this all there is? Is this all I was made for?

That couldn’t be true. It couldn’t. She wanted more from life. Needed more. There was a great gaping hole inside her that demanded it.

And once she’d thought she could get that elusive something by being Toby’s wife. It hadn’t worked. Not even one little bit, because Louise felt more of a nothing now than she’d ever done.

So this new life for her and Jack would all be about finding out how she could be something without him. A strange quivering feeling started up in her chest as that thought floated through her brain. She squashed it down. She could be something without Tobias Thornton by her side. She would.

CHAPTER TWO

15th May, 1952

Finally I have something worthwhile to write in my diary, something more than screen tests and script learning and rehearsals.

I’ve fallen in love.

I knew it from the very first moment. Never, ever have I felt anything like this before. I’ve found my soul mate. Pity it’s a house and not a man. However, I could never imagine a man being as perfect as Whitehaven. I envy the owners so much it hurts.

Still, for the next two months I can pretend it’s my home. That’s the beauty of being an actress. I can step into another reality for a while. Alexander isn’t coming with me to film on location, so I can pretend I’m not married too, just for a bit. He always says his travels do him good, so maybe this will be my holiday away from him.

The house sits on a wooded hill high above the River Dart in Devon, farther upstream than the busy town of Dartmouth, just before a bend where the green waters widen. I spotted the whitewashed exterior and columns from the river as we crossed over in the local ferry from the little village of Lower Hadwell. Just a glimpse. Even then the house seemed to be calling to me, tempting me …

Alex would scoff if he heard me talking this way out loud. He’d call me sentimental and a romantic fool. He hasn’t got time for my impractical mental meanderings, he says. But maybe they’ve done me some good.

I know that the script for this latest film is marvellous, that we’ve got the best director in the business, and that the cast is top-notch, but for the first time since my agent signed me up for it I’ve got excited about this project. Finally, like everyone else has for months, I feel this summer will be magical.

CHAPTER THREE

A hefty gust of wind blew up the river and ruffled the tips of the waves. The small dinghy rocked as Ben tied it to an ancient, blackened mooring ring on the stone jetty. He stared at the knot and did an extra half-hitch, just to be sure, then climbed out, walked along the jetty and headed up a narrow, stony path that traversed the steep and wooded hill.

He whistled as he walked, stopping every now and then just to smell the clean, slightly salty air and listen to the nagging seagulls that swooped over the river. At first glance it seemed as if he was walking through traditional English countryside, but every now and then he would pass a reminder that this wasn’t a wilderness, but a once-loved, slightly exotic garden. Bamboo hid among the oaks, and palms stood shoulder to shoulder with willows and birches.

After only ten minutes the woods thinned and faded away until he was standing in a grassy clearing that was dominated by a majestic, if slightly crumbling, white Georgian mansion.

Each time he saw this beautiful building now, he felt a little sadder. Even if he hadn’t known its history, hadn’t known that the last owner had been dead for more than two years, he would have been able to tell Whitehaven was empty. There was something eerily vacant about those tall windows that stared unblinking out over the treetops to the river below and the rolling countryside of the far bank.

He ambled up to the front porch and tugged at a trail of ivy that had wound itself up the base of one of the thick white pillars. It had been nearly a month since his last visit and the grounds were so huge there was no way he could single-handedly keep the advancing weeds at bay. Too many vines and brambles were sneaking up to the house, reclaiming the land as their own.

Laura would have hated to see her beloved garden’s gradual surrender. He could imagine her reaction if she could have seen it now—the sharp shake of her snowy-white head, the determined glint in those cloudy eyes. Laura would have flexed her knobbly knuckles and reached for the secateurs in a shot. Not that her arthritic hands could have done much good.

At eighty-eight, she’d been a feisty old bird, one worthy of such a demanding and magical place as Whitehaven. Perhaps that’s why he came up here on the Sundays when it was his ex-wife’s turn to have Jasmine for the weekend. Perhaps that was why he tended to the lilies and carnivorous plants in the greenhouses and mowed the top and bottom lawns. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and shook his head as he crunched across the gravel driveway and made his way round the house and past the old stable block. He was keeping it all in trust on Laura’s behalf until the new owner came. Then he’d be able to spend his Sunday afternoons dozing in front of the rugby on TV and trying not to notice how still the house was without his whirlwind of a daughter.

He ducked through an arch and entered the walled garden. The whole grassy area was enclosed by a red brick wall dotted with moss, and sloping greenhouses filled one side. It was the time of year that some of the insect-eating plants were starting to hibernate and he needed to check on them, make sure the temperature in the old glasshouses was warm enough.

And so he pottered away for a good ten minutes, checking pots and inspecting leaves until he heard a crash behind him. He swung round, knocking a couple of tall pitcher plants off the bench.

The first thing he saw were the eyes—large, dark and stormy.

‘Get out! Get off my property at once!’

She was standing hands on hips and her legs apart, radiating annoyance but managing to look haughty at the same time. But then he noticed that she kept well back and her fingers worried the flaps of her pockets. His hands shot up in surrender and he backed away slightly, just to show he wasn’t a threat.

‘Sorry! I didn’t realise … I didn’t know anybody had—’

‘You’re trespassing!’

He nodded. Technically, he was. Only up until a few seconds ago he hadn’t known anybody had cared—save a dead film star who’d loved this place as if it were her only child.

‘I made a promise to the previous owner, when she was ill, that I would look after the garden until the house was sold.’

She just stared at him. Now his heart rate was starting to return to normal, he had time to look a little more closely at her. She was dressed entirely in black: black boots, black trousers and a long black coat. She even had long, almost-black hair with a heavy fringe. But beneath that dark curtain her face was pale, her eyes large. Ben thought he’d seen beautiful women before, but this one was in another league altogether.

‘Well, the house has been sold,’ she said as her chin tipped up. ‘To me. So you can clear off now. You won’t be required any longer.’

He pressed his lips together. There wasn’t much he could say to that. But the thought of leaving Whitehaven and never coming back shadowed him like a rain cloud. Funny, he hadn’t realised that he’d grown so personally attached to the old place or how much he cared about its future. This new woman—striking as she was—didn’t look like the sort to potter around a greenhouse or dead-head flower borders.

But that really wasn’t his business. He picked up his coat from where it lay on the bench and turned to go. ‘Sorry to disturb you. I won’t come again.’ There was a door at each end of the long narrow greenhouse and he headed for the one at the other end from where she stood, the one that would lead him back into the woods and back down to his boat.

‘Wait!’

He’d almost reached the door before she called out. He stopped, but didn’t turn round straight away. Slowly, and with a spark of matching defiance in his eyes, he circled round to face her.

She took a few steps forward, then stopped, her hands clasped in front of her. ‘The estate agent told me the place has been empty for a couple of years. Why do you still come?’

He shrugged. ‘A promise is a promise.’

Her brows crinkled and she nodded. A long silence stretched between them. He didn’t move, because he had the oddest feeling she was on the verge of saying something. Finally, when she knotted her hands further and looked away, he took his signal to depart.

This time, he had his hand on the door knob before she spoke.

‘Did you really know her? Laura Hastings?’

He let his hand drop to his side and looked over his shoulder. ‘Yes.’ A flash of irritation shot through him. For some unfathomable reason, he’d not expected this of her. He’d thought her better than one of those busy-bodies who craved gossip about celebrities.

‘What was she like?’ Her voice was quiet, not gushing and over-inquisitive, but her question still irritated him.

He stared at her blankly. ‘I really must be going. I meant what I said. I won’t trespass here again.’

She followed him as he swung the greenhouse door open and stepped out into the chilly October air. He could hear the heels of her boots clopping on the iron grates in the greenhouse floor. The noise echoed and magnified and he let the door swing shut behind him to muffle it.

‘Hey! You’re going the wrong way!’

No, he wasn’t. And he wasn’t in the mood to chitchat, either.

She didn’t give up, though. Even though it must have been hell to stride after him in her high-heeled boots, she kept pace. Something to do with those long legs, probably.

Either the changeable riverside weather had turned milder, or he could feel the warmth of her anger radiating towards him as she closed the gap. He left the garden through an arched gate in the brick wall and started off on the path that took him back down the hill and to his boat.

‘I asked you to get off my land!’

He stopped and turned in one motion, and was surprised to find himself almost nose to nose with her. She just about matched his height at six foot two, but then she had the advantage of heels and was standing on a slope.

She stepped back but her eyes lost none of their ferocity.

He didn’t have time for mood swings and tantrums. He had more than he could handle of those from his ex at the moment. That was why coming to Whitehaven was such a good distraction on a Sunday afternoon. It soothed him.

He looked Miss High-and-Mighty right back in the eyes. ‘And I’m getting off your land as fast as I can.’ Even though he had a strange sense that she was the trespasser. She was the one spoiling the peace and quiet of this perfect spot.

Her lips pressed together in a pout. One that might have been quite appealing if he weren’t so angry with her for being here. ‘The road is that way.’ She jerked a thumb in the direction of the drive.

‘I know.’ He deliberately didn’t elaborate for a few seconds. Just because he was feeling unusually awkward, although, in the back of his mind, he knew she was bearing the brunt of his frustration with someone else. But the woman in front of him was cut from the same cloth—expensive designer cloth, by the look of it—and he just couldn’t seem to stem his reaction. He took a deep breath. ‘My boat is tied up down by the boathouse.’

He blinked, waiting for more of her frosty words.

‘I have a boathouse?’ Once again, the tide had changed and she was suddenly back to being wistful and dreamy and far too beautiful to be real. That just got his goat even more. When she spoke again she was staring off into the bare treetops above his head. ‘It’s real? It wasn’t just a film set?’

He shrugged and set off down the path and his features hardened as he heard her following him.

‘Now what? I’m going, okay?’ he called out, only half-turning to let the words drift over his shoulder.

‘I want to see my boathouse.’

Ben normally loved the walk back down the hill on an autumn afternoon, but today it was totally ruined for him. He couldn’t appreciate the beauty of the leaves ranging from pale yellow to deep crimson. He didn’t even stop to watch the trails of smoke snaking from the cottages of Lower Hadwell, just across the river. All he could hear were the footsteps behind him. All he could see—even though she was directly behind him and completely out of sight—was a pair of intense, dark eyes looking scornfully at him. It wasn’t a moment too soon when he spotted the uneven stone steps that led down to the jetty.

As he reached the top step he heard a loud gasp behind him. Instinctively, he turned and put out a hand to steady her. But she hadn’t stumbled; she hadn’t even registered his impulsive offer of help. She stood with her hands over her mouth and her eyes shining. Great. Now it was time for the waterworks. He was out of here.

As quickly as he could, he made his way to where his boat was tied and started untying the rope, busily ignoring her slow descent of all the steps behind him. Just as he was about to step off the jetty and into the dinghy his mobile phone chimed in his back pocket. He would have ignored it, but it was Megan’s ring tone. Something might have happened to their daughter.

And, since she was standing within reaching distance, not doing much but staring at the old stone boathouse, he slapped the end of the rope into the frosty woman’s hands and dug around in his jeans pocket for his phone.

‘Dad?’ Not Megan, but Jasmine.

‘What’s up, Jellybean?’

There was a snort on the other end of the line. ‘Do you have to keep calling me that? I’m almost twelve. It’s hardly dignified.’

Ben’s brows lowered over his eyes. Less than twenty-four hours out of his custody and she was already starting to sound like her mother. ‘What’s up, Jas?’

‘Mum says she can’t drop me off this evening. She’s got something on. Can you come and get me?’

Ben looked at his watch. Jasmine had been due back at five. It was past three now. ‘What time?’ Maybe it was just as well he’d had to leave Whitehaven early. It would take all of that time to cross the river, walk back to the cottage and drive the ten miles to Totnes.

He waited while his daughter had a muffled conference with her mother.

‘Mum says she has to be out by four.’

Ben found himself striding along the jetty in front of the boathouse. ‘I can’t do it, Jas.’ He kept walking while Jasmine relayed the information back to Megan. And when he reached the end of the jetty he turned and went back the way he’d come.

‘Mum says she wants to talk to you.’

There was a clattering while the phone changed hands. Ben steeled himself.

‘Ben? I can’t believe you’re being difficult about this! I know you’re still angry with me for moving on, but this kind of behaviour is just childish.’

He opened his mouth to explain there was nothing difficult about not doing the physically impossible, but Megan didn’t give him a chance.

‘Everything always has to be on your terms, doesn’t it?’ she said in that weary, self-righteous tone she seemed to have adopted recently. ‘You’d do just about anything to sabotage my new life, wouldn’t you? But I’m not coming back, Ben. I can’t.’

It had taken a while to get there, but Ben really didn’t want her back any more. Not that Megan was ever going to believe that. Her ego had puffed up far too much since she’d found her ‘freedom’ to allow that.

His voice was more of a growl than he’d intended when it emerged from his mouth. ‘I do hope you are not letting our daughter overhear this. She doesn’t need to witness any more arguments.’

Megan gave a heavy sigh. ‘That’s right. Change the subject, as always!’ Still, he got the distinct impression she had moved into the hallway as her voice suddenly got more echoey.

‘Megan, I’m at Whitehaven. This has nothing to do with sabotage and everything to do with being too far away to get there by four o’clock.’

He waited. He could almost see the pout on his ex’s face. And, as he found himself back by his boat, he noticed a similar expression on the woman standing there watching him. He abruptly turned again and carried on pacing. Not exactly the same expression. The lips were fuller, softer.

‘Fine! Well, if you’re not going to make the effort to come and get her, I’ll just have to take her with me. I’m having supper with … a friend. I’ll drop her back at eight.’

And with that, Megan ended the call. He was tempted to hurl his phone into the slate-grey waves. This is what that woman did to him—riled him up until he couldn’t think straight, until he was tempted to do foolish things. And he never did foolish things.

He jabbed at a button to lock the keypad then stuffed his phone back in his pocket. Then he marched back to his boat.

‘Thanks a lot for giving me some privacy,’ he said dryly as he got within a few feet of the glowering woman on the jetty.

She gave him what his grandmother had used to call an ‘old-fashioned look’ and waggled the end of the rope from side to side. Incredible! How did the woman manage to make a gesture sarcastic?

‘You didn’t give me much choice, did you?’ she said.

Ben ran his hands through his wind-tousled hair and made himself breathe out for a count of five. He had to remember that this wasn’t the woman he was angry with, not really. ‘Sorry.’

He’d expected the pout to make a reappearance, but instead her lips curved into the faintest of smiles. ‘Divorced?’

He nodded.

‘Me too,’ she said quietly. ‘Well, almost. That conversation gave me déjà vu. I bet I could fill in the blanks if I thought hard about it.’

Against his will, he gave half a smile back. ‘You’ve got kids?’

‘A boy,’ she said, her voice suddenly lower and huskier. When she caught him glancing up towards the house, eyebrows raised, she added, ‘he’s staying with his father while I move in down here.’ She turned away quickly and stood perfectly still, staring at the woods on the hillside for a few long seconds.

She turned back to him, a smile stretching her face. ‘What do you know about the history of the boathouse?’

He played along. The same smile had been part of his wardrobe in the last two years. Thankfully, he was resorting to it less and less often. ‘As far as I know, it was built long before the house. Some people say it’s sixteenth century. And, of course, it featured prominently in the film A Summer Affair, but you know that already.’

The defiant stare vanished altogether and she now just looked a little sheepish as she stared at the glossy seaweed washed up on the rocks nearby. ‘Busted,’ she said, looking at him from beneath her long fringe. ‘It was a favourite when I was younger and when I saw the details of the house, I knew I had to view it.’ She turned to look back at the two-storey brick and wood structure. ‘I didn’t realise this place was real. I suppose I thought it was just fibreglass and papier maché, or whatever they build those sets out of …’

‘It’s real enough. Take a look. But I ought to …’ Ben looked at the rope in his hand. ‘… get going.’

She nodded. ‘I’m going to explore.’

Ben stood for a few moments and watched her climb the steps up to a door on the upper level. It hadn’t been used for years. Laura hadn’t been steady enough on her feet to make the journey down the hill for quite some time before she died.

He climbed into the dinghy because it felt like a safe distance but carried on watching. The wooden floor could be beetle-infested, rotten. He’d just stay here a few moments to make sure the new owner didn’t go through it.

His hand hovered above the outboard motor. Any moment now, he’d be on his way. He readied his shoulder muscles and brushed his fingertips against the rubber pull on the end of the cord. He gripped the loosened rope lightly in his other hand.

The boathouse was on two levels. The bottom storey, level with the jetty, had large arched, panelled doors and had been used for storing small boats. The upper level was a single room with a balcony that stretched the width of the building. He was waiting for her to walk out onto it, spread her hands wide on the railing and lean forward to inhale the glorious salty, slightly seaweedy air. Her glossy, dark hair would swing forward and the wind would muss it gently.

A minute passed and she didn’t appear. He began to feel twitchy.

With a sigh, he climbed out of the boat and planted his boots on the solid concrete of the jetty. ‘Are you okay back there?’

No response. Just as he was readying his lungs to call again, she appeared back on the jetty and shrugged. ‘No key,’ she yelled back, looking unduly crestfallen.

All his alarm bells rang, told him to get the hell back in the boat and keep his nose out of it. Whitehaven wasn’t his responsibility any more. Only, the message obviously hadn’t travelled the length of his arm to his fingertips, because he suddenly found himself retying the boat and walking back up the jetty to the steep steps that climbed up to the boathouse door.

As he reached the bottom step, she turned and looked down at him, one hand on the metal railing, one hand bracing herself against the wall. Her thick hair swung forwards as she leaned towards him.

‘The door’s locked. Any ideas?’

With his fingernails, already dark-rimmed from the rich compost of the glasshouse plants, he scraped at a slightly protruding brick in the wall near the base of the stairs. At first, he thought he’d remembered it wrong, but after a couple of seconds the block of stone moved and came away in his hand. In the recess left behind, he could see the dull black glint of metal. Laura had told him about the secret nook, just in case.

He supposed he could have just told the woman about it, yelled the vital information from the safety of the dinghy. He needn’t get involved. Even now his lips remained closed and his mouth silent as he climbed the mossy stairs and pressed the key into the soft flesh of her palm.

There. Job done.

For a couple of seconds, they stayed like that. Then he pulled his hand away and rubbed it on the back of his jeans.

‘Thank you,’ she said, then shook her long fringe so it covered her eyes a little more.

She slid the key into the lock and turned it. He’d half-expected to door to fall off its hinges, but it swung in a graceful arc, opening wide and welcoming them in. Well, welcoming her in. But his curiosity got the better of him and he couldn’t resist getting a glimpse.

‘Wow.’

He’d expected shelves and oars and tins of varnish. Decades-old grime clung to the windows, and the filmy-grey light revealed a very different scene. A cane sofa and chairs huddled round a small Victorian fireplace, decorated with white and blue tiles, and a small desk and chair occupied a corner in front of one of the arched windows.

She walked over to the desk and touched it reverently, leaving four little smudges in the thick dust, then pulled her fingers back and gently blew the dirt off them with a sigh.

‘Did she come here often, do you know? Ms Hastings?’ she asked, still staring at the desk.

Why exactly he was still here, keeping guard like some sentry, he wasn’t sure. He should just go. He’d kept his promise to Laura. He wasn’t required. And yet … he couldn’t seem to make his feet move.

She turned to look at him and he shrugged. ‘Not when I knew her. She was too frail to manage the path down, but she talked of it fondly.’

She blinked and continued to stare at him, expressionless. He wasn’t normally the sort who had the urge to babble on, but most women he knew didn’t leave huge gaping gaps in the conversation. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and kicked at the dust on the bare floorboards with the toe of his boot. Everything was too still.

‘Not really your sort of place, is it?’ he muttered, taking in the shabby furniture, the broken leg on the desk chair, held together with string. The place was nowhere near elegant enough to match her. This woman was used to the finer things in life. Finer than a dilapidated old boathouse like this, anyway.

Her chin rose just a notch. ‘What makes you think you know anything about what sort of woman I am?’

Just like that, the sadness that seemed to cloak her hardened into a shell. Now the room wasn’t still any more. Every molecule in the air danced and shimmered. She strode over to the large arched door in the centre of the opposite wall, unbolted it, threw the two door panels open and stepped out onto the wide balcony.

He was dismissed.

He took a step towards her and opened his mouth. Probably not a great idea, since during his last attempt at small talk he’d planted a great muddy boot in it, but he couldn’t leave things like this—taut with tension, unresolved. Messy.

Her hands were spread wide as she rested them on the low wall and looked out over the river, just as he’d imagined. The hair hung halfway down her back, shining, untouchable. The wind didn’t dare tease even a strand out of place. He saw her back rise and fall as she let out a sigh.

‘I thought I’d asked you to get off my property.’ There was no anger in her tone now, just deep weariness.

He turned and walked out of the boathouse and down the stairs to the jetty with even steps. She didn’t need him. She’d made that abundantly clear. But, as he climbed back into the dinghy, he couldn’t help feeling that part of his promise was still unfulfilled.

This time there were no interruptions as he untied the rope and started the motor. He turned the small boat round and set off in the direction of Lower Hadwell, a few minutes’ journey upstream and across the river.

When he passed the Anchor Stone that rose, proud and unmoving, out of the murky green waters, he risked a look back. She was still standing there on the balcony, her hands wide and her chin tilted up, refusing to acknowledge his existence.