Kiss Me Under the Mistletoe. Fiona Harper

what husbands and wives are supposed to do. I’m not even sure Alex notices the difference. Maybe that’s because he always seems to be in such a rush.

       Dominic wasn’t in a rush.

       He was soft, gentle. Patient. I know it was all supposed to be about Richard and how he felt about Charity, but I couldn’t help feeling as if he was gently reaching inside me to see what no one else has ever seen before. All the bits I hide. All the bits that are too precious to let anyone see. It was utterly, utterly bewitching.

       I fluffed the next three takes on purpose.

       But then I think Sam got wise to me. He gave me one of his looks. The ones I’ve learned to pay attention to. It doesn’t do to cheese the great Samuel Harman off, not if you want a career that lasts longer than a fortnight, so I steeled myself to make the last take count.

       Dominic walked onto the balcony, placed his hands on my shoulders and turned me to face him. The shaking started again. I couldn’t help it. This was going to be it—the take Sam wanted, and my very last kiss with a man who felt like my perfect match. It was almost too much. I nearly fluffed it for real.

       He stared down at me, looked deep into my eyes in a way that made my insides both churn and come to rest at the same time. I felt as if I was flying. And then he pressed the softest of kisses to my eyelids. I hung onto him, taking all I could. Giving everything back.

       And then his lips were on mine. Sweet, sweet heaven. I started crying for real. No need for the glycerine.

       And then something wonderful happened. Dominic had been leaning against the balcony, pulling me close against him, and he lost his balance, stumbled slightly because of the way he’d turned his body to kiss me more deeply. I knew the camera was in really close on us, and I heard Sam swear when we both lurched out of shot.

       ‘Cut!’ he yelled, and Dominic and I broke apart.

       I looked up at him and I thought my heart was going to pop right out of my chest.

      ‘Sorry,’ he said, but there was a glimmer of humour in his eyes, a sense of being co-conspirators in some wonderful secret.

       And that’s when I realised that Dominic Blake had messed up on purpose.

      

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      Louise watched Ben go. She kept watching until long after his tall frame disappeared round the side of the house into a tangle of grass and shrubs and trees that were now, technically, her back garden. Not that she’d had the courage to explore it fully yet.

      She forced herself to turn away and look back at the greenhouse.

      Was she mad? Quite possibly.

      In all seriousness, she’d just given a man she knew nothing about permission to invade her territory on a regular basis. Yet … there’d been something so preposterously truthful about his story and so refreshingly straightforward about his manner that she’d swallowed it whole. Next time she’d have to frisk him for a long-lens camera and a dictaphone, just in case.

      She’d left the greenhouse door open. Slowly, she closed the distance to the heavy Victorian glazed door, with its beautiful brass handle and peeling, off-white paint. On a whim, she stepped inside before she closed the door and stood for a few moments in the warm dampness. It smelled good in here, of earth and still air, but very real. She liked real.

      The assorted plants lining the shelves by the windows really were quite exquisite. She’d never seen anything like them. Venus fly-traps sat next to frilly, sticky-looking things in shades of pink and purple.

      She walked over to the little plant that the gardener had saved. She felt an affinity with this little plant, recently uprooted, thin, fragile. Now in a foreign climate, reaching hungrily heavenwards with an appetite that might never be satisfied. She reached out and touched the soil at its base. It did feel good. She pulled her hand away, but didn’t wipe it on the back of her jeans.

      Near the door were the stubby, brown plants that had started to hibernate. Just like her. All those years with Toby now seemed like a time half-asleep. Her mind wandered to a photo of a famous actress who had graced the pages of all the gossip magazines a few years ago. She’d been snapped whooping for joy when the papers finalising her divorce had arrived. Since then she’d lost twenty pounds, received two Oscars and had been seen with a string of hot-looking younger men.

      Louise frowned. Shouldn’t this be the time when she blossomed, came into her own? She paused for a moment, tried to search deep inside herself for the first signs of germination, but she was afraid she’d be waiting a very long time. She still felt numb inside.

      She turned and exited the greenhouse, closing the door behind her and marched back down the path to her new home. Once the house was sorted, she’d feel better. She’d already talked to a team of decorators who could make her vision for this old house come alive. But what she really wanted more than anything was to find some pictures of how it had been in the past, so she could take the best elements of its history and mix them with her own unique stamp.

      Surely there were photos somewhere she could look at? Once she’d had a cup of tea, she’d rifle through all the forgotten cupboards and attics of the vast old house and see if she could find a photo, or some papers—something—that would help her bring this house back to life.

      Louise might still be hibernating, but she had a feeling Whitehaven was ready to wake up.

      It seemed odd to have so much noise and movement in the house after a couple of weeks of solitary occupation and silence. The structure of the house was sound, but it needed a little TLC. The outside was worse than the inside, having had to brave a few winters high up on a hill above a salty tidal river. Nothing a little skilled work wouldn’t fix, though.

      At first Louise stayed on hand to oversee the repairs and redecoration work. When she wasn’t needed, she hunted through the forgotten spaces of Whitehaven, looking for any clues to the house’s past. She found old newspapers and some electricity bills from a decade ago, but nothing that got to the heart of the lovely old mansion.

      In the end she took refuge from the muddy boots, the endless tea-making, and took herself off down to the boathouse. That was also somewhere that could do with a bit of a spruce-up, but she’d already decided it was a project she would handle personally. If all those women on the decorating shows on telly could wield a paintbrush, then so could she. And, if she got it all wrong, then she would be the only person to see it, because this was her place, her sanctuary.

      Louise wasn’t scared of a bit of hard work. She’d done plenty while she’d been raising her brothers and sisters and looking after her dad. But she’d felt trapped by it, as if it were a prison sentence stretching into the future. Cleaning up the boathouse was different. It was her choice, and she found that instead of being draining and weary, scrubbing down the walls and making every last inch shine was energising. She surprised herself with how long she kept going the first day.

      Even more, she surprised herself by arriving early the next morning again—flask of tea in hand, and a book to read when she took a break—ready to start again. Halfway through the morning she turned her attention to the fireplace. It was a Victorian design: cast iron holding tiled inserts with a wooden surround and a firestone cut into the floorboards. She decided to take the thick layer of dust off first, then she’d be able to work out what kind of cleaning materials she could use on the tiles without damaging them. She didn’t want to rub the hand-painted blue flowers off their white background with one pump of cleaning spray.

      This wasn’t normal dust, she realised, as she passed the duster over it. It didn’t fluff and fly off like normal stuff. It seemed to be welded on. She rubbed a little harder, trying to dislodge some of the stubbornly clinging dirt,