Mistletoe Marriage. Jessica Hart

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 me too when he could have anyone he wanted.’

      Closing her eyes, she’d hugged herself in remembered ecstasy. ‘I have to keep pinching myself to see if I’ll wake up and find that it’s all just a wonderful dream…and I know that I couldn’t bear it if it was. I think I’d die!’

      That was his Sophie, Bram remembered thinking affectionately. No half measures for her. He should have guessed that when she fell in love it would be totally, utterly and passionately. Moderation simply wasn’t in her vocabulary.

      ‘Nick’s asked me to marry him already,’ Sophie had said, glowing in that new, unexpectedly disturbing way. ‘I haven’t said anything to Mum and Dad yet. I know they’d think I haven’t known him for very long, and they might think it was a bit soon, but Melissa’s going to come and stay with me in London in a couple of weeks, so I thought I could introduce him to the family gradually. I’m sure she’ll report back and tell them how fantastic he is, and then it won’t be like springing the news on them when I bring him up in a month or so.’

      But that wasn’t quite how it had worked out.

      He had been on his way home at the end of an unusually hot, still day in July when he had spotted a solitary figure trudging across the moor. Stopping the tractor, Bram had waited for her to reach him. He’d known it was Sophie, and he’d known from the brittle way that she held herself that something was very wrong.

      Sophie hadn’t said a word as she’d come up to him. Bess had greeted her with her usual enthusiasm, and when Sophie had looked up from patting the dog the stricken expression in her eyes had made Bram’s heart contract.

      Wordlessly, he’d moved to make way for her on the tractor step beside him, and for a while they’d just sat in silence while the evening sun turned the hillsides to gold. It had been very quiet. Bess had panted in the shade beneath the tractor, but otherwise all had been still.

      ‘I always thought it was too good to be true,’ Sophie had said eventually. And for Bram the worst thing was hearing her voice. She had always been so fiery, so alive, but now all the emotion seemed to have been emptied out of her, leaving her sounding flat and utterly expressionless. Utterly unlike Sophie.

      ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ he asked carefully.

      ‘I shouldn’t. I promised that I wouldn’t tell anyone,’ she said, in the same dull tone.

      ‘What? Even your oldest friend?’

      She looked at him then, the river-coloured eyes stark with suffering. ‘I think at least you’d understand,’ she said.

      ‘Then tell me,’ said Bram. ‘Is it Nick?’

      Sophie nodded dully. ‘He doesn’t love me any more.’

      ‘What happened?’

      ‘He saw Melissa. He took one look at her and fell out of love with me and in love with her. I saw it happen,’ she said, in that terrible, brittle voice. ‘I watched his face and I knew that was it.’

      Bram didn’t know what to say. ‘Oh, Sophie…’

      ‘I should have expected it,’ she said, not looking at him. ‘You know what Melissa is like.’

      Bram did know. Sophie’s sister was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. She had an ethereal golden loveliness that was somehow out of place on the Yorkshire moors, unlike Sophie’s vibrant sturdiness.

      It was hard to believe that the two were sisters. Melissa was nothing like Sophie. She was sweet and fragile and helpless, and few men were immune to her appeal. Bram certainly wasn’t. Sometimes it seemed to him that their brief engagement ten years ago was no more than a dream. How could a practical, ordinary man like him ever have hoped to hold on to such a treasure?

      Bram couldn’t in all honesty blame Nick for falling for Melissa, but he hated him for hurting Sophie.

      ‘What did you do?’

      ‘What could I do? There was no point in pretending that nothing had happened. When we got back that night I gave him back his ring. I told him there was no point in all three of us being unhappy.’ Sophie smiled a little bitterly. ‘I let him go. Ella said that I should have fought to keep him, but how could I compete with Melissa?’

      ‘He might have forgotten her when she left,’ Bram suggested. He had noticed that about Melissa himself. When she was there, it was impossible to look at anyone else, but once she had gone it was sometimes hard to remember exactly what she was like, or what she had said, or how he had felt—other than dazzled by her sweetness and her beauty.

      Sophie wasn’t like that, he realised with something like surprise. She wasn’t beautiful as Melissa was beautiful, but he kept a vivid picture of her in his mind, of her expressions and her laughter and the way she waved her hands around as she talked. He could always picture Sophie exactly.

      ‘He might have forgotten her,’ Sophie agreed, ‘and I might have tried harder if it hadn’t been for Melissa. I saw her face too. You know she’s used to men being in love with her, but I don’t think that she’s ever really been in love herself before.’

      She stopped abruptly, remembering too late that Bram had loved Melissa for a very long time. The last thing she wanted to do was hurt Bram. ‘Sorry,’ she said, contrite.

      ‘It’s OK,’ said Bram. ‘I know what you mean.’ Sophie was right. Melissa was more used to being loved than to loving. It was just the way things were when you looked the way she did.

      ‘I think that Melissa fell in love for the first time when she saw Nick,’ Sophie was saying. ‘She looked completely bowled over. She couldn’t take her eyes off him, and although she tried not to show it, for my sake, I could see how she felt. Who could understand better than me?’ she added, with a brave attempt at a wry smile.

      ‘It was too late for me,’ she went on. ‘I knew that once Nick had seen her he wouldn’t be able to look at me in the same way. If I tried to pretend that nothing has happened it would just make three of us unhappy. At least this way Melissa and Nick have a chance at happiness.’

      ‘Does Melissa know what you’ve done for her?’ asked Bram, thinking that few sisters would have made the sacrifice Sophie had done.

      Sophie nodded. ‘She felt absolutely awful. She cried when I told her that I wasn’t going to marry Nick after all. She said she couldn’t do that to me. But I told her that she didn’t do anything. It wasn’t her fault. She couldn’t help falling in love with Nick, and he couldn’t help falling in love with her. That’s just how it was.’

      ‘So Nick and Melissa are now together?’

      ‘Yes.’ Sophie looked down at her hands and fought to get the words past the terrible tightness in her throat. She wouldn’t cry any more, she wouldn’t. ‘Nick’s moved up to join Melissa here, and they’re going to set up an outdoor clothing business together. They’re getting married in September.’ There—the hardest bit was out. ‘That’s why I’m back now. Mum wants me to try on my bridesmaid’s dress.’

      ‘You’re going to be Melissa’s bridesmaid?’ Bram said incredulously. ‘Sophie, surely you don’t have to put yourself through that? It’s asking too much of you.’

      ‘It would look odd if I wasn’t her bridesmaid,’ she tried