Gorgeous Reads for Christmas (Choc Lit)

by Sue Moorcroft

  She opened the bedroom door and peeped out onto the landing. Which one of the bedrooms was Morgan’s? It had been impossible to tell on the tour of the house he’d given her – and he hadn’t said. And there hadn’t been the tell-tale sign of a shirt hanging up anywhere, or shoes kicked off and left lying where they’d fallen. Or a photo of a special someone in a frame on a bedside table in any of the rooms. It was as though he wasn’t intending to stop long this time, just as he’d not come to see his father often either. Cannes was his main home and he’d be going back soon – why leave personal stuff lying about?

  In the kitchen, Carrie tried turning the knob of the back door and to her surprise it creaked open. Perhaps Morgan was up after all. But there was no sign that he’d been in the kitchen. Carrie turned back into the room and put her hand to the kettle but it was cold.

  Granite worktops, Carrie said to herself, would work in here. But nothing too modern – no stainless steel, no glass. Elm, perhaps, to replace the white-painted cupboard doors.

  She ran a hand over the domed chrome lids of the Aga. Cold. As though the poor thing hadn’t been lit, or loved, in a long while.

  ‘But you can stay,’ she told it, ‘if I’m asked to do up this room.’

  Then she stepped outside into the garden and inhaled deeply, the air fresh and surprisingly warm for so early in the morning, and made her way across the grass. There was a circular seat around one of the apple trees – wrought iron, rather rusty with lichen attached here and there. Carrie sat down and reached up to pull a branch of blossom towards her. She closed her eyes and sniffed – mmmm, it smelled good. Then her hand found its way to the top of her head where Morgan had kissed her the night before.

  ‘Ah, there you are.’

  Morgan’s voice startled her. Had he known by her gesture that she’d been remembering?

  ‘Oh! I hope you don’t mind me, you know, taking liberties coming into your garden.’

  ‘Of course not,’ he said walking towards her carrying two mugs of tea. He was wearing a dressing-gown, but his legs, peeping from the bottom of it, were bare.

  Was he, Carrie wondered, wearing anything at all underneath that dressing-gown? She could hardly drag her eyes away from it.

  ‘Thanks,’ Carrie said, taking the tea from him and wrapping her hands around the mug. Better that than unfastening the belt of his dressing-gown which was what she really wanted to do.

  ‘Sleep well?’ Morgan asked.

  ‘Very, thank you. It’s so quiet here.’ Carrie looked around the garden at the tulips just beginning to open their petals as the sun crept higher in the sky, and other flowers she didn’t know the names of. ‘I think I’m in love with this house.’

  ‘Are you?’ Morgan said – something like shock in his voice.

  ‘You sound as if you aren’t,’ Carrie said.

  And the minute the words were out of her mouth she could have bitten them back.

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘A bit,’ she said. ‘But sorry – it’s not in my brief to offer opinions.’

  ‘It’s okay. Don’t apologise.’ Morgan sipped his tea and swallowed.

  Carrie watched his Adam’s apple going up and down. He hadn’t shaved yet, and she was surprised to see that the stubble on his neck and chin was darker than his hair. Surprised and rather thrilled because it gave him a rakish air – not quite as bandbox fresh as he had been. What would it be like to wake up beside him each morning and have his stubbled chin brush her cheek?

  ‘I’m still trying to decide what to do about the house actually,’ Morgan said, cutting through her daydreams.

  ‘Oh! So why have you brought me in?’

  ‘Cosmetic job initially. Tidy it up a bit prior to selling. But now I’ve found my father’s letter expressing his wishes that I don’t sell, it will still be cosmetic only for renting out.’

  ‘Expensive cosmetics,’ Carrie said, softly. She couldn’t imagine how he could possibly bear to get rid of a house as lovely as this. ‘If it were me …’

  ‘Well it’s not.’

  Carrie shuddered – she’d allowed her personal feelings to overstep her professional ones again, and Morgan hadn’t much liked it. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you, Carrie admonished herself, pressing her lips together.

  ‘I’ve got a villa in Cannes and a business to run, after all.’ Morgan stared into the distance.

  ‘So, is the nursery project still on?’ Carrie asked. It seemed pointless for Morgan to go to the expense of a nursery when whoever rented Oakenbury Hall might not need, or want, it.

  Morgan didn’t answer for what seemed like an eternity. Carrie’s imagination began to run away with her and she saw her fee for this project going down the pan.

  Why, oh why, couldn’t she keep her mouth shut?

  ‘Or there’s my third option. I could leave your friend Genifer, and Jean-Claude, to run my business and move back here and let my future children grow up surrounded by countryside.’

  ‘So, you’re engaged to someone?’

  ‘Did I say that?’

  ‘No. You don’t have to be engaged or married to have children.’

  ‘You said that as though that wasn’t how you’d do things. Not marry, I mean.’

  ‘It’s how I was brought up,’ Carrie said. ‘And it’s how I’d want to raise a family – within a marriage.’

  But if Morgan wasn’t going to be marrying Delphine as she’d thought he was, then who was he thinking of having children with? There must be another woman in his life …

  ‘That’s me told!’ Morgan laughed.

  ‘Do you have to make a decision right away?’ she asked. ‘About the house.’

  ‘Soonish,’ Morgan said. ‘But first breakfast. Toast? Or there might be some eggs somewhere. I think I could just about scramble some eggs.’

  ‘Toast will be fine, thanks. I don’t want to put you to too much trouble.’

  ‘You’re not. More tea when the toast is done? I’ll give you a shout.’

  ‘Please,’ Carrie said, but Morgan was already striding back towards the kitchen.

  ‘Do you sail?’ Morgan asked.

  He’d made more toast than Carrie was ever going to be able to eat and was buttering a piece. He slid it onto a plate and handed it to Carrie.

  ‘I went on the ferry to Calais once, when I was at school,’ Carrie said. She cut her toast into neat fingers without looking up. ‘Does that count?’

  ‘But you didn’t like it much – right?’

  ‘I was sick before the ferry even slipped its moorings or whatever it is boats do. But it might have been the gin and orange my friends and I drank when Miss Keyte was fussing around with our passports.’ Carrie grinned conspiratorially at him at the memory of it. ‘Oh, and the duty free chocolate probably didn’t help my cause either. We really were pretty smashed!’

  ‘But you’ve never tried it again, er, less toxically challenged?’

  Carrie laughed.

  ‘That’s a very polite way of putting it! But no. Never.’

  ‘Any reason?’

  Slowly, Carrie spread marmalade on a small square of toast.

  ‘Did Genifer never tell you about … about … Aaron?’

  ‘She didn’t. I hired Gen and Jean-Claude because they are both discreet. Did she tell you anything personal about me?’

  ‘No. Never.’

  ‘Well then, it figures she wouldn’t tell me about you.’

  ‘Sounds like, Gen,’ Carrie said. ‘Aaron and I were engaged. The wedding never happened.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Really sorry. We’ve got a lot in common it seems. So, back to my sailing question. Is there any way you could be convinced to try it again?’

  ‘I think I’ve been off the water too long to venture on it again, Morgan. I’m wary.’

  ‘Well, you’ve come to the right person to lay that ghost. There’s a dinghy …’

  Carrie raised her shoulders up to the level of her ears and then dropped them again.

  �
��I’m not really talking about dinghies.’ she said.

  ‘You’re not?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Carrie,’ Morgan said, ‘to use another nautical term, I’m a bit out of my depth here. I’m afraid I’m a mere bloke who doesn’t read these things well.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m talking in riddles, aren’t I?’

  Morgan nodded.

  ‘A bit. I’ll help if I can though.’

  ‘Jumping straight in then,’ Carrie said, ‘seeing as we’re talking all things water. I was jilted. Not quite at the altar, but near enough. We had the honeymoon booked – everything. We were going to stop in Gen and Jean-Claude’s place, and they were going to stop in my flat while we were there. Except …’ She folded her napkin, rolled it, and threaded it back through the holder.

  ‘Except?’

  ‘Aaron texted me two days before the ceremony. But I should have known because however many times Gen had asked us over before, Aaron didn’t want to go. So, we never did. I thought his reluctance to take holidays was because we were saving for a place of our own, but in Aaron’s case it seems it was his reluctance for us to have any sort of a future, anywhere, because he was two-timing me and he wanted his future to be with her.’ Carrie banged her napkin in its holder down on the table, as though she was bringing the conversation to an end. She’d already said too much. ‘Texted you?’

  ‘And I texted back. I should have gone and told him face-to-face what I thought of him, but I didn’t. Weak of me, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Weak?’ Morgan said. ‘I wouldn’t say you were weak. Then or ever.’

  ‘You’re being very kind,’ Carrie said, with a shrug of her shoulders. Rule one, never talk about your ex with someone you fancy – and she’d just broken that rule, big time. ‘But I know I can’t go on blaming Aaron for everything, forever. Another reason I don’t do boats is that I can’t swim.’

  ‘You can’t swim?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I can’t believe it.’ Morgan shook his head in disbelief.

  ‘There are people who can’t swim, you know. And besides, I can do other things.’

  Carrie picked up her mug and drained the last drops of tea.

  ‘Like?’ Morgan asked.

  ‘I can draw as you found out in Greenbase. And I paint portraits in my spare time – sell them too. I played violin in the school orchestra and can probably still scratch out a tune. Oh, and I can tap dance. Eat your heart out Ginger Rogers style.’

  ‘You’re quite the accomplished young lady, then? But remember never to ask me to dance. My size thirteens would crush you.’

  ‘I will,’ Carrie said. She took her mug over to the sink and rinsed it under the tap. ‘Finished?’ she said, indicating his now empty mug.

  And when Morgan nodded, she took that and rinsed it out too, then wiped both mugs and hung them back on their hooks on the dresser. How comfortably domestic this all was? She was as at home here in Morgan’s kitchen as she was in her own.

  But it could be dangerous to get too comfortable – she had been hired to do a job, that was all.

  ‘And now I’d better get on,’ she said.

  Carrie crept quietly down the stairs to the kitchen. The time for lunch had been and gone hours ago and now she was starving – her tummy rumbling noisily. But the master bedroom was beginning to take shape nicely – all the woodwork was painted and the walls sized ready for the paper. And the making of the drapes was well in hand at The Attic.

  From now on it would be only a matter of popping back now and then to check that her electrical contractors were getting on with work in the drawing room, and that everything else was running to schedule. And that Morgan was pleased with progress. She still had to do a mood board for the nursery Morgan said was now in his plans for Oakenbury Hall. She would need to get on with that soon – run her ideas past Morgan and get his approval.

  She wondered where he might be right now. A couple of hours after that horribly embarrassing breakfast, when she’d almost broken down telling him about Aaron, he’d shouted up the stairs that he was going out and would be back later. She was to help herself to anything she could find in the fridge or the larder.

  So now she was going to do just that. And then she’d take whatever she found and a mug of tea out into the garden. And draw – with a pencil in her hand and something to concentrate on would stop her thoughts straying to all sorts of fancies where Morgan Harrington was concerned.

  But despite finding a seat well away from where she’d drunk tea under the apple trees with Morgan earlier, her best efforts to draw the garden and the house from that perspective didn’t happen. The only thing to fly from her fingers onto the paper was Morgan’s profile.

  Carrie sighed – her heart was well and truly ruling her head at the moment. She leaned back against the warm wall. She’d have to get back to work soon, but another five minutes, her face turned to the sun, feeling the peace of Morgan’s garden soothe her – the first time she’d felt soothed in a long time – wouldn’t hurt, would it?

  Carrie must have dozed for a few minutes because she was startled suddenly by the sound of voices coming from the other side of the high stone wall. Morgan. And a woman. Mrs Dawkins back from visiting her sister? To move now would mean they might know she was there – but to stay and listen … she didn’t really hold with eavesdropping.

  ‘You, settling down? I’d never thought I’d see the day,’ the woman said. ‘Not the way my Ken says you’ve played the field, I didn’t!’

  ‘And there’s me thinking I’ve been discreet,’ Morgan laughed. ‘Not that I’ve played the field in quite the way your husband might imagine! Anyway, I haven’t settled yet.’

  ‘There’s still a question mark over it, then?’

  ‘I haven’t asked her, and besides …’ Morgan stopped speaking, and even from the other side of the wall Carrie could hear the sadness in his voice.

  ‘No, and I don’t suppose it’ll come easy after what that minx Georgina did to you. And as for your brother …’

  ‘No, it won’t. Still, it’s hypothetical at the moment.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ the woman laughed. ‘Nurseries hypothetical, are they?’

  Morgan laughed with her.

  ‘It was one of those blindingly obvious moments. Suddenly I couldn’t wait to see a child, children, in my old dinghy on the lake. But, d’you know, Carrie …’

  ‘Is that her name? The one you’re thinking of marrying?’

  ‘Carrie’s the interior decorator, Mrs Dawkins. Carrie can’t swim. Can you imagine – me and my aquatic lifestyle with a wife who can’t swim?’

  But Carrie didn’t wait to hear what Mrs Dawkins’ answer would be, or what Morgan was going to say next. She’d heard quite enough. Of course, a man as handsome and as rich as Morgan Harrington would have had more than his fair share of women – but it shouldn’t be making her feel jealous, for goodness’ sake! And hadn’t he just made it perfectly clear that a woman who couldn’t swim wouldn’t even get within reach of his radar?

  Back to work, my girl, Carrie chided herself. She scooped up her drawings and her pencils and her mug and plate and ran for the house. Closing the back door, Carrie leant against it, out of breath.

  ‘I hope you’ve taken a break, Carrie,’ Morgan said, leaning against the doorway of the master bedroom.

  ‘Of course I’ve taken a break,’ she said. ‘In the garden actually. Fresh air, sunshine, that sort of thing.’

  Carrie carried on trimming the end of a length of wallpaper as she spoke, her movements swift, controlled, accurate. But she didn’t look up. She’d leave it up to him to work out whether he’d been overheard talking to Mrs Dawkins or not.

  ‘That’s very impressive – what you’re doing. I’m all fingers and thumbs with anything practical.’

  ‘Unless it’s to do with yachts obviously. Or boats, or whatever they are.’

  ‘Most of us are good at something, Carrie,’ Morgan said.

  Carrie gra
bbed a brush and began smoothing bubbles from the bottom of the length of wallpaper she’d finished trimming.

  ‘Oh, and by the way,’ Morgan said. ‘I’m pretty pleased with progress so far.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Carrie said, twisting to look at him, giving him the briefest of professional smiles, before returning to the task in hand. ‘I’ve not had any complaints yet. But we’ll need a chat about the finer details for the nursery soon. Although I’m not sure it’s the right thing to have me choose the colour scheme.’ Carrie put down her brush and looked up at him again. ‘I mean, the woman you’re going to have children with will want to do that, I should think.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘Well, we won’t talk about that now. It’s too lovely an evening to be working, Carrie,’ Morgan said. ‘So why don’t we go over to the lake and watch the sunset?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘My hire van should have been here by now.’

  ‘Have you tried ringing them?’

  ‘No signal,’ Carrie said, tapping the phone in her pocket.

  ‘Come and use the landline then.’

  ‘I suppose I could …’

  Carrie followed him out onto the landing and down the stairs.

  But it was not good news for Carrie when the van hire firm eventually answered. And she let them know just what she thought of their ineptitude.

  ‘There’s been some sort of double-booking mess-up,’ she said, finding Morgan in the kitchen. ‘A van’s not available until 7 o’ clock. And it won’t be here until 8 o’ clock. It better had be!’

  ‘Or you’ll have their guts for garters!’

  ‘You heard me?’

  ‘Very impressive!

  Carrie laughed.

  ‘Honestly, what a way to run a business!’

  ‘Indeed. Talking of which, I’ll have to get back to mine soon.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Saturday.’

  ‘But that’s the day after tomorrow.’