Mistletoe Seductions. Nicola Marsh

      ‘Shall I cut up the chicken?’ Missy nodded, then watched intently as she cubed it neatly and spread it in the bottom of the dish. ‘Now, the sauce,’ she said, and picked up the jar.

      The lid wouldn’t shift. She ran it under hot water, gripped it with a tea towel and finally it came away with a pop.

      She turned back to Missy, and saw to her horror that she had escaped from her high chair and was sitting on the table, playing with the sugar bowl. ‘How did you get out?’ she asked in amazement, and Missy gave her a megawatt smile.

      ‘Missy undo it,’ she piped proudly. ‘Missy clever.’

      One more thing to worry about! Liv thought with a slightly desperate laugh, and scooped her errant daughter off the table, removing the sugar bowl from her grasp. At least there wasn’t too much in there! It could have gone everywhere, and instead there was just a little sprinkle here and there. ‘As if I didn’t have enough to worry about—stay there, please!’ she instructed, strapping her firmly back into the chair.

      She stayed, while Liv poured the sauce quickly over the chicken, spread it evenly and stuck it in the oven.

      While it cooked she made Missy scrambled eggs and chopped up bacon, with toast fingers and a glass of fruit juice, and fed Kit again before bathing them both and popping them into bed. Then she cooked the rice, fluffed it up, left it to keep warm in the other oven and boiled the veg while she laid the table.

      The gateau was thawing, the children were in bed asleep, the table was laid—success.

      Feeling thoroughly pleased with herself, she settled back to wait for Ben.

      It was revolting. She hadn’t expected it to be nice, but it was bizarre. Sickly.

      Liv pushed her plate away and looked up at Ben in disgust. ‘I’m sorry. I thought it would be OK—it sounded nice. I can’t believe the sauce is so awful.’

      She prodded the rice disparagingly. It was lovely, but it had been soaked with the sauce, and—well, frankly it was horrible.

      The chicken underneath had been all right, but the jar of sauce had been more than generous, and it was hard to find any chicken without it.

      Ben was shuffling it round his plate, tasting it cautiously, his brow furrowed. ‘Um—is it by any chance supposed to be sweet and sour?’ he ventured. ‘Perhaps—without the sour?’

      Sweet and—?

      ‘Oh, no!’ She clapped her hand over her mouth and stared at Ben in horror.

      He froze, his fork halfway to his mouth, his expression comical. ‘What?’ he asked warily.

      ‘Missy,’ she said, remembering. ‘I couldn’t get the lid off, and when I did, she’d escaped from her high chair and she was paddling in the sugar bowl on the table.’

      ‘Anywhere near the chicken?’

      She nodded miserably. ‘It was just there, beside her. She was helping me. She must have tipped it on to the chicken—oh, Ben, I’m sorry!’

      ‘Or were you trying to sweeten me up?’ he said mildly, pushing his plate away.

      ‘Wretched child,’ she said crossly, throwing the ruined meal into the bin. ‘I’ll kill her.’

      ‘No, you won’t,’ he said. ‘You’ll keep it out of her way in future—if there’s going to be a future. I thought you said you could cook?’ he added teasingly.

      ‘I said I could learn—and I only promised you wouldn’t get salmonella,’ she reminded him. ‘I never said you’d like it.’

      His mouth twitched, and she cleared the plates away and sighed. ‘Dare I ask about a dessert?’ he said from behind her. She had the feeling he was getting ready to duck, in case she threw something at him. She stifled a smile.

      ‘Not had enough sugar yet?’ she teased, and he growled softly. She laughed and patted his cheek consolingly. ‘You’re all right. I bought a chocolate gateau. I didn’t think even I could ruin it, unwrapping it, and I promise you Missy hasn’t been near it!’

      He chuckled, and she put the gateau and their plates down on the table with a pot of cream, a knife and two spoons, and between them they ate it all. At least he didn’t seem angry, Liv thought, and wondered yet again why a man as genuinely nice as Ben still wasn’t married. The girls in Suffolk must all need their heads checked, she decided.

      ‘Do you think a cup of normal coffee to finish is expecting too much, or should I resign myself to Turkish?’ Ben asked wryly, and she chuckled and flapped him with a teatowel.

      ‘Don’t push your luck. Where do you want it?’

      ‘In the drawing room? I hardly ever use it, but it’s a nice room. Or my study. That’s cosier, but it’ll remind me of all the work I should be doing.’

      ‘Or we could stay here. I love those chairs.’

      His eyes crinkled. ‘Me, too. Let’s do that.’

      He helped her clear up, and when the coffee was done they settled down in the chairs with a sigh and talked about nothing in particular for hours.

      They’d always been able to talk, she mused as she fed Kit in her room just before she went to bed. In all the years she’d known him, they’d never been lost for words, or awkward, or distant.

      Well, only once.

      When she’d told him she was moving in with Oscar. Then he’d been distant, and she had the strangest feeling he’d been hurt, but she couldn’t imagine why. He had no interest in her—if he had had, he would have said so, and he always seemed to have a bevy of girlfriends hanging round him like bees round a honeypot.

      It was the only time in ten years that she’d felt that he disapproved of her, and it had hurt her terribly. She’d treasured his friendship ever since she and her parents had moved in next to his family when she was fifteen and he was twenty-two. He’d been away at university and had come back, and was working in his father’s firm.

      They’d moved in the same circles, mixed with the same people, and she’d always known she was too young to interest him, but he’d been endlessly kind to her and patiently escorted her to a host of parties. Then, when she’d grown older, he’d been just the same, good old Ben, her best friend and confidant. He’d taught her to drive, taken her out to celebrate when she’d passed her test, and again when she got her first major modelling job.

      She’d dropped out of university to pursue her career, and he’d turned up one day on the set of a shoot and taken her out to lunch. He was there for her when she’d had her first disastrous affair, and he’d never criticised or interfered.

      Till Oscar. Then, he’d just taken himself away for a while, and she’d missed him horribly.

      She wondered if he even realised she was a woman and not just a person, and then she laughed at herself. How many of her friends had wailed that their partners didn’t realise they were people and not just women? And she was complaining that Ben was the other way round.

      Well, not complaining. Of course not. She and Ben were very dear and close friends, nothing more, nothing less, and she knew that he would never see her as anything else. Not after all this time.

      It was a curiously saddening thought.