Mistletoe Marriage. Jessica Hart

Vivid, rather than strictly pretty, it was dominated by a pair of bright eyes that were an unusual shade somewhere between grey and green. They made Bram think of a river, ever-changing with the light and the flow of the water. She had a wide, mobile mouth, and a set of the chin that revealed the stubbornness that had led to constant battles with her conventional mother as she was growing up.

      ‘I’m a big fat failure on every front,’ Sophie was saying, unaware of his scrutiny. ‘I’m thirty-one,’ she began, counting her problems off on her fingers, ‘I’m living in a grotty rented flat in a place I don’t want to be, and I’m about to lose my job—so chances are that I won’t even be able to pay for that any more. I’ve already lost the love of my life, and my ambitions for a glittering career as a potter have gone down the pan as well, since the only gallery I’ve ever persuaded to show my work has closed.’ She sighed. ‘Oh, and now I’m being blackmailed!’

      Bram raised an eyebrow. ‘Sounds bad.’

      ‘Sounds bad?’ Sophie echoed, regarding him with a mixture of resentment and resigned affection as he leant steady and solid on the gate beside her. In his filthy trousers, big mud-splattered boots and torn jumper, he looked exactly what he was—a hill farmer with a powerful body and a quiet, ordinary face. ‘Is that all you can say?’

      ‘What would you like me to say?’ he asked, looking at her with a trace of amusement in his blue eyes.

      ‘Well, you could gasp with horror, for a start,’ Sophie told him severely. ‘Honestly, anyone would think blackmail was an everyday occurrence on the North Yorkshire moors! You could at least try saying How dreadful or Poor you or something. Not just Sounds bad!’

      ‘Sorry,’ said Bram with mock humility. ‘I just had this idea that your mother might be up to her old tricks again.’

      He was right, of course. Sophie blew out a long breath. ‘How did you guess?’ she asked, her voice laced with irony.

      It wasn’t hard. Harriet Beckwith had emotional blackmail down to a fine art, having honed it over the years as Sophie was growing up.

      ‘What’s she up to now?’

      ‘She wants me to come home for Christmas,’ said Sophie, wriggling her shoulders against the cold, her expression glum. ‘She’s got it all planned. We’re going to have a jolly family Christmas all together.’

      ‘Ah.’ Bram got the problem immediately. ‘And Melissa…?’

      ‘Will be there,’ Sophie finished for him. She pulled some wayward strands of hair from her mouth, where they were being flattened by the wind. ‘With Nick, of course.’

      She had made an effort to keep her voice light, but Bram could hear what it cost her just to say her brother-in-law’s name.

      ‘Can’t you say you’re going away with friends, like you did last year? Say you’re going skiing or something.’

      ‘I would if I could afford it, but I’m completely broke,’ said Sophie morosely. ‘I suppose I could pretend that I was going, but then I’d have to spend the whole of Christmas hiding out in my flat and not answering the phone, eking out a tin of sardines and watching jolly Christmas specials until I tried to strangle myself with a piece of tinsel.’

      ‘That doesn’t sound like much fun,’ said Bram.

      ‘No,’ she agreed with another sigh. ‘Anyway, it wouldn’t work. Mum’s got it all covered. She’s reminded me that it’s Dad’s seventieth birthday on December the twenty-third and she wants to have a family party for him.’

      ‘Hence the emotional blackmail?’

      ‘Exactly.’ Sophie put on her mother’s voice. ‘“It’s so long since we’ve all been together. We never see you any more. It would mean so much to your father.”’ The expressive greeny grey eyes darkened. ‘Mum says Dad hasn’t been well recently. He told me that he was perfectly all right, but you know what Dad’s like. He’d say that if he was being hung, drawn and quartered!

      ‘On the other hand, he might be fine. I wouldn’t put it past Mum to embellish the fact that he’s had a cold or something. She even hinted that the farm was getting too much for them, and that they might have to sell, which would mean that this might be our last Christmas at Glebe Farm.’

      Sophie hunched her shoulders in her jacket. ‘She didn’t try that one in front of Dad! He’s always said that the only way he’s ever leaving the farm is in a box.’

      That sounded more like Joe Beckwith. Bram could see Sophie’s difficulty. She had always been very close to her father.

      ‘Tricky,’ he commented carefully.

      ‘I feel awful for even hesitating,’ Sophie confessed miserably. ‘I mean, Dad’s never been the touchy-feely type, and he’s never cared about birthdays before, but I think this one will be different. I have to be there.’

      Bram ruminated, hands clasped lightly together as he leant on the gate. ‘Could you be here for the party on the twenty-third and then make plans to go somewhere else for Christmas? At least then you’d only have to coincide for a night.’

      ‘I tried that, but that’s when the blackmail really started! Mum said that she would just cancel the whole idea of a party for him if I was going to rush off like that. Was it so much to expect Dad to have a happy birthday and what might be his last Christmas with his family around him? How would I be able to enjoy Christmas knowing that I had been so selfish and hurt my parents and spoilt things for everybody?’

      She sighed. ‘You can imagine it.’

      Bram could. He had known Harriet Beckwith for as long as he could remember. If she had decided that they were going to have a family Christmas, poor Sophie didn’t stand a chance.

      ‘Would it be so bad?’ he asked gently.

      ‘No, no—probably not. I’m obviously making a big fuss about nothing, the way I always do.’ Sophie made a brave attempt at a smile. ‘It’s just…’

      ‘Seeing Nick again,’ Bram finished for her quietly as her voice cracked.

      She nodded, her mouth wobbling too much to speak. Biting her lip fiercely, she scowled at the view. ‘I ought to be over it,’ she burst out after a moment. ‘That’s what everyone says. It’s time to move on. Get over it.’

      ‘It takes time, Sophie,’ said Bram. ‘Your fiancé left you for your sister. That’s not the kind of thing you can get over easily.’

      He would never forget her face when she had first told him about Nick. Incandescent with happiness, she had been too excited to stand still.

      Throwing her arms out, she had spun round, laughing, alight, radiating joy. ‘I am so, so happy!’ she had said, and Bram had looked at his childhood friend, scrubby, sturdy Sophie, with her tangled hair and her stubborn streak, and, startled, had seen her transformed.

      For years he had hardly thought about her at all. She was just Sophie, just there, part of his life. He had missed her a little when she went away to college, but he’d had other things to distract him. They had caught up whenever she came home, and she’d always been exactly the same turbulent, tomboyish Sophie—his friend. She was funny, warm, chaotic—the kind of girl you could talk to, the kind of girl you laughed with, but not the kind of girl you slept with. Not the kind of girl you even thought about sleeping with.

      So, it had been a strange feeling to look at her suddenly in a different light, to see her the same and yet somehow not the same at all.

      Sophie had babbled on, too excited to notice the arrested expression in his eyes, or to realise that Bram—unflappable, unshockable Bram—had at last been taken unawares.

      ‘I never knew what walking on air meant until now,’ she had told him. ‘Oh, Bram, I can’t wait for you to meet Nick. He’s incredible! He’s clever and witty and glamorous and, oh…just gorgeous! I can’t believe he loves