'Tis the Season

by Carole Mortimer, Alison Roberts

  Caro followed more reluctantly, curious about the ‘other things’ that awaited them in the drawing room, and at the same time very wary about the fact that Jake had ordered any of those things to be delivered at all. Plus there was the highchair, of course. And the cot was most worrying of all! That meant Jake intended them to stay here overnight…

  All this coupled with that pitying look Jake had given her a few minutes ago, and Caro knew she was right to feel apprehensive.

  Jake, having sat down on the carpeted floor to take off Magdalena’s coat and interest her in the numerous toys there, glanced up as Caro entered the drawing room, and was struck once again by her almost ethereal beauty.

  Two years ago Caro had been exquisitely lovely. So much so that Jake had been knocked off his feet the first time he’d looked at that cloud of red-gold hair, those deep blue eyes and the sensuously kissable mouth, the delectable curves of her slender body that had been clearly outlined in the red sun-dress she had been wearing.

  But now, at twenty-six and also a mother, Caro possessed something much more elusive. A serenity, perhaps? An inner peace both with herself and the life she had chosen?

  A life Caro had chosen, Jake recalled with a scowl, and that totally excluded him.

  ‘Take your coat off and stay a while, Caro,’ he offered as she made no effort to come farther into the room.

  ‘It’s how long you expect me to stay that concerns me!’ Her eyes flashed deeply blue. ‘Especially as you appear to have a cot upstairs for Magdalena to sleep in!’

  Jake gave a wicked smile. ‘Don’t worry. I’m sure a bed can be found for you to sleep in, too.’

  An angry flush darkened the paleness of her cheeks. ‘No doubt Mrs Weaver has already assumed that as your wife I will be sharing yours!’

  ‘No doubt,’ Jake acknowledged casually.

  Caro gave a firm shake of her head as she crossed the room to stand over him and Magdalena. ‘Neither Magdalena nor I will be staying long enough to need a bed of any kind.’

  His mouth tightened. ‘Oh, I think that you will.’

  ‘We’re spending Christmas with Gavin!’

  Jake gave an unconcerned shrug. ‘Your brother is quite welcome to join us here if he wishes to. Although, knowing Gavin, he’s probably forgotten that it is Christmas.’

  Caro knew Gavin better than Jake did—and she was also pretty sure her brother had forgotten it was the holiday season! Focused didn’t even begin to describe Gavin when he was working on a problem with a computer program; obsessive probably more aptly de scribed it. Gavin probably wouldn’t emerge from his programming fog until the New Year! Unless he was given a very firm nudge…

  Caro’s mouth firmed. ‘I need to call him.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ Jake invited, with a gesture towards a telephone on the table near the window that looked out into a walled garden. ‘I’m sure Magdalena and I can manage to amuse each other for a few minutes.’

  Caro was sure they could, too—with the amount of toys that literally covered half the carpet!

  At only six months old Magdalena wouldn’t even know what to do with most of them. At the moment she was really only interested in toys she could put in her mouth and chew in an effort to alleviate the discomfort of teething.

  ‘I would rather be alone when I speak to Gavin,’ Caro pointed out, having every intention of telling her brother exactly what she thought of him for so thoughtlessly landing her in this awkward situation.

  Leaving Jake at all, when Caro had been still in love with him, had been difficult enough, and that difficulty had been added to by the fact that she had known he would never have allowed her to leave if he had known she was pregnant.

  As he had no intention of allowing her to leave now…?

  Jake could almost see the thoughts going through Caro’s mind, and knew the exact moment when it dawned on her that he really wasn’t going to let her to leave here any time soon. Her cheeks lost their healthy colour. There was an apprehensive tremble to those pouting, kissable lips. Her eyes clouded with apprehension and she looked across at him warily.

  It made Jake want to stand up and grasp her firmly by the arms, before berating her soundly and condemning her for leaving him—especially for keeping Magdalena’s existence a secret from him all these months.

  But most of all Jake knew that he wanted to kiss that trembling from her lips. To kiss her until she didn’t have the strength or the will to leave him again!

  Jake had been so angry with Caro when she’d left him just over a year ago. Both before, during and after the business trip that had necessitated him going to the States for six days. Jake had been angry before he went away because Caro had originally intended going with him, but a political scandal had broken and she had chosen to remain in England to cover that story instead.

  Jake had been so annoyed with her for making that choice that through sheer bloody-mindedness he hadn’t even called her while he was away. To make matters worse, his PA had taken to her bed with a very bad cold within a day of their arrival in New York, unexpectedly delaying Jake’s return.

  Caro’s reaction to that delay had been unexpected and completely baffling.

  As soon as Jake had let himself into their penthouse apartment he had been confronted by a stony-faced Caro, telling him she was leaving him, that her bags were already packed and waiting in her car in the car park beneath the building.

  There had been no explanation, no real argument, just a totally un reachable Caro, insisting that their marriage was at an end.

  Jake had thought it was an aberration at the time—that she was just annoyed with him because he hadn’t called her while he was away, and upset because his day’s delay had meant he hadn’t got back in time for their first wedding anniversary. He had fully expected to be able to sort out the problem with Caro once she had calmed down.

  Instead of which she had chosen to completely disappear.

  The suddenness of her decision to end their marriage hadn’t made any sense to him a year ago and it made even less sense now, when it was obvious that Caro must have already known of her pregnancy when she’d made her decision to leave him.

  ‘By all means use the telephone in my study to call Gavin,’ Jake told her now. ‘But when you do be sure and tell him that you won’t be joining him in London for Christmas after all.’

  Caro eyed Jake in frustration, knowing by the open challenge she could see in those chilling green eyes that he meant exactly what he said.

  There was no way Jake could make her stay here.

  No—she knew better than that, Caro instantly chided herself. Jake could do anything he wanted. He always had!

  She ran a weary hand through her travel-mussed hair. ‘I can’t believe you want to spend the Christmas holiday with me any more than I want to spend it with you.’

  ‘Then you are wrong, Caro,’ he said simply.

  Caro gave him a searching look, but she could read nothing from his expression except a determination that warned her of the futility of even trying to argue with him.

  It was something Caro knew she had to do, but was no longer sure that she could. She had managed to walk out on Jake once; she wasn’t sure she had the strength to do it again!

  She couldn’t still be in love with him, could she…?

  How could she possibly be? Jake had married her because it had been the only way he could get her into his bed, not because he was in love with her. It had been a marriage he had completely ignored, along with the vows he had made, when he’d chosen to take his mistress with him to New York instead of Caro. No, of course she didn’t still love Jake!

  Her gaze rose to meet the challenge in his. ‘Fortunately, Jake, what you want is no longer of any importance to me.’

  His eyes glittered dangerously. ‘I think you should go and make your phone call to Gavin, Caro,’ he warned softly. ‘Before I’m tempted to stand up and show you exactly what it is I do want!’

  Caro wanted to continue arguing the p
oint—but at the same time she simply wanted to gather Magdalena up into her arms and make a run for it!

  Which she already knew would be totally futile.

  Jake might have ceased wanting her a long time ago, but she only had to see his gentleness with Magdalena, to watch the way his expression softened with wonder every time he so much as looked at his daughter, to know that there was no way he was going to let her leave here with their baby.

  Just as Caro would never leave without her…

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘HOW WAS GAVIN?’ Jake asked wryly when Caro re turned to the drawing room after making her telephone call, knowing by the frustrated impatience of her expression that her brother must have been his usual exasperating self.

  She gave a dismissive shake of her head as she moved absently to pour them both a cup of tea from the pot Mrs Weaver had delivered in her absence. ‘He said “great” a lot.’ She grimaced. ‘Which normally means he isn’t listening to a word that’s being said to him!’

  Jake raised mocking brows. ‘Looks like you’re stuck here with me for the holidays, then, doesn’t it?’

  Her mouth firmed as she distractedly placed his cup of tea safely out of Magdalena’s way before taking a sip from her own cup. ‘It’s my intention to go to Montgomery Software and drag Gavin from the building kicking and screaming, if necessary—’

  ‘Caro,’ Jake interrupted softly, ‘this is Magdalena’s first Christmas. Don’t you think she should spend it with both her mother and her father?’

  She eyed him scathingly. ‘Considering how well that worked for you?’

  Jake’s mouth tightened at this reference to his own childhood Christmases, with divorced parents who had only spent the holiday season together ‘for Jake’s sake’. By the time he was nine he had known exactly what was going on, and would have preferred it if they had just not bothered and as a result stopped hurting each other. And him…

  He scowled. ‘It’s hardly the same, is it?’

  ‘Close enough,’ Caro bit out tightly.

  Jake looked at her searchingly for several long seconds before his attention was drawn back to Magdalena, as she banged a coloured brick on the carpeted floor. His expression gentled as he looked at his young daughter. And he finally understood what his parents had at least tried to do for him when he was a child—even if they had failed miserably…

  Despite the fact that he and Caro had married, Jake had never envisaged, let alone considered, that he might one day have a child of his own. But as he looked at Magdalena, as love for his baby daughter filled his heart, Jake at last realised why his parents had tried so hard for all those years to give him the kind of magical Christmas every child deserved but so sadly didn’t always have.

  It was too late to tell his parents that, of course; they had both died five years ago—within months of each other. Neither of them had ever remarried, and after years of continuing arguments and bitterness between them it had almost been as if one couldn’t survive without that conflict with the other…

  ‘At least my parents only attempted to be civilised with each other at Christmas,’ he said, knowing that Caro’s own parents had stayed together for the sake of the children—and made Caro and Gavin’s childhoods hell as a result. ‘And there’s the added fact that I don’t think the two of us actually hate each other as your own parents did!’

  Caro felt a jolt in her chest where she knew her heart to be. No, despite everything, she didn’t hate Jake…

  How could she possibly hate someone she had once loved so deeply? How could she possibly hate Jake when she had only to look at Magdalena, her beloved daughter, and see her likeness to him?

  Magdalena had Caro’s own hair colour, of course, but it had been obvious within weeks of Magdalena’s birth that she was going to have Jake’s emerald-coloured eyes. As she had his facial structure. His height. His determination!

  Although she was generally quite placid, Magdalena’s will could become intractable if she was determined on something.

  Just like Jake’s…

  Caro gave a rueful smile. ‘I’m sure that it’s nice to think we don’t actually hate each other, Jake—’

  ‘Nice?’ he repeated dryly, the expression in his eyes having nothing to do with ‘nice’ and everything to do with—

  Caro broke abruptly away from the mesmerising sensuality of Jake’s gaze. It had been losing herself in that gaze and having no will to resist it that had persuaded her into marrying Jake in the first place!

  ‘It’s time to give Magdalena her tea,’ she said briskly as she bent to scoop her daughter up into her arms.

  Magdalena gave her a beaming smile, as if she sensed that food might be on the agenda.

  Jake drew in a sharp breath. ‘She has two teeth!’

  Caro felt emotion catch at the back of her throat as she saw the love blazing in the depths of Jake’s eyes as he stared in wonder at his baby daughter—Magdalena’s smile having revealed the two tiny white teeth in her lower gum.

  Jake looked at Magdalena in a way he never had, nor ever would, look at Caro…

  ‘Given the opportunity, she’ll bite you with them, too,’ Caro warned huskily as she turned away to pick up Magdalena’s changing bag. ‘Will Mrs Weaver mind if I invade her kitchen to make up Magdalena’s food?’

  ‘That would be my kitchen, Caro,’ Jake said. ‘Or yours, if you should decide to live in this house,’ he added.

  Caro looked at him sharply, but could read nothing from Jake’s suddenly closed expression. ‘I’m not staying on in England at all after the holidays.’

  ‘You will,’ he bit out uncompromisingly.

  Caro frowned with deepening frustration at his arrogance. ‘Somehow I don’t think so!’

  His smile was completely lacking in humour. ‘You know me better than to believe that, Caro.’

  She shook her head. ‘I’m not sure that I ever knew you, Jake.’

  His mouth tightened. ‘You knew me, all right. And you still know me well enough to realise that there is no way I’m going to allow you and our baby to return to Majorca,’ he added bluntly.

  Blue eyes warred with emerald-green for several long seconds. Caro was finally the one to look away first. ‘You obviously don’t know me at all if you believe that,’ she countered, before turning to stride purposefully from the room.

  Jake watched her go, admiring the way her hair moved silkily over her shoulders and halfway down the length of her spine. The stirring, the hardening of his thighs as his gaze moved down to where her hips and the rounded firmness of her bottom were clearly out lined against the snugness of her jeans, told Jake that he still wanted his wife as badly as he had the first time he’d looked at her.

  ‘COME AND HELP ME decorate the tree, Caro,’ Jake invited as he stood beside the tree he’d had delivered earlier that day, along with everything else he had thought the three of them would need to enable them to spend Christmas here. ‘We had fun decorating the tree together two years ago—remember?’ he added, as Caro remained stubbornly unmoving beside the fireplace.

  What Jake most remembered about that day in December, only weeks after they had married, was the way he and Caro had made love beneath the tree instead of decorating it.

  She gave him a scorching glance. ‘I have a much more vivid memory of us not decorating the tree together last year!’

  Jake’s mouth compressed as he recalled the bleakness of the Christmas he had been forced to spend alone the previous year. Caro had left him only days earlier, and had already all but disappeared off the face of the earth. Had arrived on the island of Majorca, as he now knew. ‘That was your choice, Caro, not mine!’

  Yes, it had been, Caro acknowledged with an inward sigh. But at the time it hadn’t seemed like a choice, merely the inevitable conclusion of the end of her marriage.

  She and Jake should never have married each other. If she had only been agreeable to a brief affair, then she knew they wouldn’t have done. With the example of his paren
ts’ stormy marriage, getting married himself had never been a part of Jake’s plans for his future.

  She had been a fool, Caro told herself for what had to be the hundredth time. A naïve fool who had believed that the love she felt for Jake and the desire he felt for her—that she had stupidly mistaken for love!—was enough to make a marriage between them work.

  And Jake was being naïve if he thought she would consider—even for a moment—any idea of resuming that marriage just because of Magdalena.

  Caro had left Jake because of his involvement with another woman and because she had no intention of living in the kind of loveless marriage her parents had had for so many years. She wasn’t about to let him bully her into reconsidering that decision.

  Although glancing at Jake’s face now, recognising the growing desire gleaming in the emerald depths of his eyes as he looked steadily back at her, was enough to tell Caro that bullying her wasn’t on Jake’s agenda at this precise moment!

  She straightened hastily. ‘I think I’ll go up and check on Magdalena.’ Her daughter had been sleepy enough after eating her tea to need a short nap.

  In the cot Jake had arranged to be delivered that morning, once he had learnt of Magdalena’s existence…

  ‘We’ll hear her when she wakes up.’ Jake gave a pointed glance at the baby-listening device plugged into the wall socket even as he took the step that blocked her exit from the room.

  Caro looked up at him warily, her breathing becoming shallow, almost non-existent, as she saw the way Jake’s gaze lingered on her parted lips. It was as tangible as a light brushing of his own lips against hers…

  Caro’s legs felt weak, and an insidious warmth was moving up her limbs to between her thighs, and then higher, into her breasts, the nipples hardening and tingling with an awareness Caro had tried so hard this last year to banish even from her thoughts.

  She nervously moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue, and at once realised her mistake as Jake’s darkened gaze followed the movement. One of his hands moved up, as if to encircle her nape beneath the heavy thickness of her hair, causing Caro to twist sharply away. ‘Don’t—’