SNOWED IN WITH THE BILLIONAIRE

by Caroline Anderson

  ‘Smells good,’ he said, rubbing his hands together to warm them, and Georgie looked up and searched his face.

  ‘And the answer is?’ she asked, the laughter fading in her eyes, and he shook his head.

  ‘We’re going nowhere. The lane’s full to head height.’

  ‘Head height?’ she gasped, and her eyes looked shocked. As if she was imagining being out there with Josh, trapped in the car, seeing what he’d seen in his mind’s eye?

  ‘Hey, it’s all right, I was here,’ he said softly, reading her mind, and she looked up at him again and their eyes locked.

  ‘But what if...?’

  ‘No what ifs. Don’t go there, George.’ He certainly wasn’t going there again. Once was enough. He took a mug out of the cupboard. ‘Any more tea in the pot?’

  ‘Mmm. And I made you more toast. I wasn’t sure if you’d want it but I made it anyway because we interrupted your breakfast.’

  He dropped into the chair opposite her and reached for a slice. ‘That’s fine, I could do with more,’ he said, and sank his teeth into it, suddenly hungry.

  Hungry for all sorts of things.

  Her warmth. Her laughter.

  Her little boy, so like her, so mischievous and delightful, a part of her. What did that feel like? To have someone to love, someone who was part of you?

  He looked quickly away and turned on the television to give himself something to do.

  So much for his defences. They were in tatters, strewn around him like an old timber barn after a hurricane, and she and her child had walked straight through them as if they’d never even existed.

  Maybe they hadn’t. Maybe they’d just never been tested before, but they were being tested now, with bells on.

  Jingle bells.

  She was watching the screen, looking at the pictures of snow sent in by viewers of the local breakfast news programme. Not just them, then—not by a long way. And tomorrow was Christmas Day.

  ‘There’s no chance we’ll be out of here by tomorrow, is there?’ she said flatly.

  Had she read his mind? Probably, as easily as he’d read hers. They’d always been good at it. Except at the end—

  ‘I think it’s very unlikely. I’m sorry. Your parents will be disappointed.’ She nodded. Josh was playing on the floor now, driving a piece of toast around like a car, and she met Sebastian’s eyes, worrying her lip again in that way of hers.

  ‘They will be disappointed,’ she said softly, lowering her voice. ‘So will yours. Was it just them coming?’

  ‘No. My brothers were coming up from London—well, Surrey. I expect they’ll spend it together now. They live pretty close to each other. What about your family? Was it just your parents, or was Jack going to be there?’

  ‘No, just them. Jack’s got his own family now.’ She sighed. ‘I really wanted this Christmas to be special. Josh was too small to understand his first Christmas, and last year—well, it just didn’t happen really, without David. It seemed wrong, and he was still too young to understand it, so we just spent it very quietly with my parents. But this year...’

  ‘This year he’s old enough, and you’ve moved on,’ he murmured.

  She nodded. ‘Yes. Yes, I have, and he is, and it was going to be so lovely—’

  She broke off and swallowed her disappointment, and he couldn’t leave her like that. Her, or a little boy who’d lost his father. He had no idea how his own first Christmases had been spent. He didn’t even know the religion of his real parents, their nationality, their age. Nothing. Just a void. And he couldn’t bear the thought that Josh would have a void where Christmas should have been. He’d make sure that didn’t happen if it killed him.

  He took a deep breath, buried his misgivings and smiled at her.

  ‘Well, we’ll just have to make sure it is lovely,’ he said. ‘Heaven knows we’ve got enough food, and I’ve got all the decorations and there’s a tree outside waiting to come in, if I can find it under the snow. And we can’t do anything else. My family aren’t going to be able to get here, and you can’t get away, so why don’t we just go for it? Give Josh a Christmas to remember.’

  She stared at him, taking in his words, registering just what it must be costing him to make the offer—although she might have known he would. The old Sebastian, the one she loved, wouldn’t have hesitated. The new one—well, she was beginning to realise she didn’t know him at all, but he might not be as bad as she’d feared.

  ‘That would be lovely,’ she said softly, her eyes welling. ‘Thank you. I know you don’t—’

  He lifted his hand, silencing her. ‘Let it go, George. Let’s just take it at face value, have a bit of fun and give Josh his Christmas—no strings, no harking on the past, no recriminations. And no repeats of last night. Can we do that?’

  Could they? She wasn’t sure, but she wanted to try.

  She felt the tears welling faster now, and pressed her lips together as she smiled at him. ‘Yes. Yes, we can do that. Thank you.’

  He returned her smile a little wryly, and got to his feet.

  ‘So—want to help me decorate the house?’

  * * *

  He gave them a guided tour of the ground floor.

  Josh loved it. There were so many places to hide, so much to explore. And Georgie—well, she loved it in a different way, a bitter-sweet, this-could-have-been-ours way that made her heart ache.

  No what ifs.

  His words echoed in her head, and she put the thoughts out of her mind and concentrated on what he’d done to the house.

  A lot.

  ‘Oh, wow!’ she said, laughing in surprise when they went into the dining room. ‘That’s a pretty big table.’

  ‘It extends, too,’ he said, his mouth twitching, and she felt her eyes widen.

  ‘Really?’ She went to the far end and sat down. ‘Can you hear me?’

  His smile was wry with old memories. ‘Just about. Probably not with the extra leaves in.’

  Their eyes held for just a beat too long, and she felt a whole whirlpool of emotions swirling in her chest. She got up and came towards him, running her fingers slowly over the gleaming wood, avoiding his eyes while she got herself back under control. ‘Did you get the grand piano for the music room?’ she asked lightly, and looked up in time to catch a flicker of something strange in his eyes.

  He shook his head. ‘No. It seemed pointless. I don’t play the piano, but I do listen to music in there sometimes. It’s my study now. I prefer it to the library, the view’s better. Come and see the sitting room—the old one, in the Tudor part. I think it’s probably where I’ll put the tree.’

  ‘Not in the hall?’

  He shrugged. ‘What’s the point? I’m never in the hall, I just walk through it. And I thought, over Christmas, we might want to sit somewhere warm and cosy and less like a barn than the drawing room. It’s huge, if you remember, and a bit unfriendly. It’ll be better in the summer.’

  She nodded. It was huge, but it was stunningly elegant and ornate in a restrained way, and it had a long sash window that slid up inside the wall so you could walk out through it onto the terrace. She’d loved it, but she could see his point.

  In winter, the little sitting room—which was still twice the size of her main reception room—would be much more appropriate. Next to the kitchen in the same area of the house, it was beamed and somehow much less formal than its Georgian counterpart, and it had a ginormous inglenook fireplace big enough to stand inside.

  He pushed open the door, and she went in and sighed longingly.

  ‘Oh, this looks really cosy.’ Huge, squashy sofas bracketed the inglenook, and there were logs in the old iron dog grate waiting to be lit. She could just imagine curling up there in the corner of a sofa with a book, with a dog leaning on her knees and Josh drivin
g his toy cars around on the floor.

  Dreaming again.

  ‘Where are you going to put the tree?’

  ‘In this corner. There’s a power socket for the lights, and it’s out of the way.’

  ‘How big is it?’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Eight foot?’

  Her eyes widened. ‘Will it fit under the beams?’

  He grinned and shrugged again. ‘Probably. I can always trim it. Only one way to find out.’

  ‘Finding out’ turned out to be a bit of a mission. It was in the courtyard, close to the coach house, but the snow was deep except by the back door where it had all fallen in earlier.

  ‘A shovel would make this a lot easier,’ he said, standing at the door in his boots and eyeing the snow with disgust.

  ‘I thought you had a shovel in the car?’

  ‘I do. Look at the coach-house.’

  ‘Ah.’ Snow was banked up in front of the doors, and digging it out without a shovel wasn’t really practical.

  ‘I should have thought of that last night,’ he said, but of course he hadn’t, and nor had she, because they’d had quite enough to think about already.

  She didn’t want to think about last night.

  She picked Josh up and stood in the kitchen watching through the window as Sebastian ploughed his way through the snow to a huge, shapeless lump in the corner by the coach-house door. He plunged his arm into the snow, grabbed something and shook, and a conical shape gradually appeared.

  ‘Mummy, what ’Bastian doing?’

  ‘He’s finding the Christmas tree. It’s buried under the snow—look, there it is!’

  ‘Oh..!’ He watched, spellbound, as the tree emerged from its snowy shroud and Sebastian hauled it out of the corner and hoisted it into the air.

  She went to the boot room door.

  ‘Can I help you get it in?’

  ‘I doubt it. I should stand back, this is going to be wet and messy.’

  She moved out of the way, and he dragged it through the doorway, shedding snow and needles and other debris all over the place. Then he emerged from underneath it, propped it in the corner and grinned at them both.

  ‘Well, that’s the easy bit done,’ he said. There was a leaf in his hair, in amongst the sprinkles of snow, and she had to stuff her hand in her pocket to stop from reaching out and picking it off.

  ‘What’s the hard bit?’ she said, trying to concentrate.

  ‘Getting it to stay upright in the stand, and finding the right side.’

  She chuckled, still eyeing the leaf. ‘I can remember one year my mother cut so much off the tree trying to even it up she threw it out onto the compost heap and bought an artificial one.’

  He laughed and turned his back on the tree and met her eyes with a smile. ‘Well, that won’t happen here. There’s no way I can find the secateurs, and the compost heap’s far too far away.’

  ‘Well, let’s hope it’s a good tree, then,’ she said drily. ‘How about coffee while it drip-dries? And then, talking of my mother, I really should phone her and tell her what’s happening.’

  ‘Do that now, although I expect she’s worked it out. The news is full of it. The entire country’s ground to a halt, so at least we’re not alone. And at least you’re both safe. There are plenty of people who’ve been stuck on the motorways overnight.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. It’s bad. Go on, ring her, and I’ll make the coffee,’ he offered, so she picked up the phone and dialled the number, and the moment she said, ‘Hi, Mum,’ Josh was clamouring for the phone.

  ‘Want G’annie! Me phone!’

  ‘Oh, Mum, just have a quick word with him, can you, and then I’ll fill you in.’

  ‘Are you stuck there? We thought you must be. It’s dreadful here.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Well and truly—OK, Josh, you can talk to Grannie now.’

  She handed over the phone to the pleading child, and he beamed and started chatting. And because he was two, he just said the things that mattered to him.

  ‘G’annie, ’Bastian got a big tree!’

  Oh, no! Why hadn’t she thought of that? She held out her hand for the phone. ‘OK, darling, let Mummy have the phone now. You’ve said hello to Grannie.’

  But he was having none of it, and ran off. ‘We got snow, and we stuck,’ he went on, oblivious. ‘And we having a ’venture, and ’Bastian got biscuits—’

  Biscuits. That was the way forward.

  She grabbed the packet off the table and waved them at him. ‘Come and sit down and give me the phone and you can have biscuits,’ she said, and wrestled the receiver off him.

  ‘Hi. Sorry about that. He’s a bit excited. Anyway, Mum, I’m really just ringing to say we’re stuck here for the foreseeable. The lane is head high, apparently, and there’s just no way out, so we aren’t going to be able to get to you until it’s cleared, and I very much doubt it’ll be today—’

  ‘Did he say Sebastian?’

  Oh, rats. Trust her to cut to the chase. ‘Uh—yeah. He did.’

  ‘As in Sebastian Corder? At Easton Court? Is that where you are?’

  ‘Uh—yeah.’ Her brain dried up, and she ground to a halt, but it didn’t matter because her mother had plenty to say and no hesitation in saying it.

  ‘I can’t believe you didn’t tell me last night! Are you all right? Of all the places to be stuck—is he OK with you? And you said “they”—is there someone else there? His family? A woman? Not a woman—oh, darling, do be careful—’

  ‘Mum, it’s fine—’

  ‘How can it be fine? Georgia, he broke your heart!’

  ‘I think it was pretty mutual,’ she said softly. ‘Look, Mum, I know it’s not what you want to hear, but we’re OK, and we’re alive, which is the main thing, and he’s being really generous and it’s fine. And there’s nobody else here, just us. His family were coming today. Don’t stress. Nothing’s going to happen.’

  Nothing more than the kiss they’d already exchanged, but they’d promised each other no repeats...

  ‘You can’t just tell me not to stress, I’m your mother. That’s what we do! And he’s—’ Her mother broke off and floundered for a moment, lost for a definition.

  ‘What?’ Georgie prompted softly. ‘An old friend? And at least we know he’s not a serial killer.’

  ‘He doesn’t need to be. There’s more than one way to hurt someone.’

  And didn’t she know that. ‘Mum, it’s fine. I’m a big girl now. I can manage. Look, I have to go, he’s made coffee for us and then we’re going to decorate the tree. I’ll give you a ring as soon as I know what’s happening with the snow, OK? And give Dad a hug from us and tell him we’ll see him soon. I’ll ring you tomorrow.’

  She hung up before her mother could say any more, and turned to find Sebastian watching her thoughtfully across the table.

  ‘I take it she’s not impressed.’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘You’d think you were holding us hostage, the fuss she’s making.’

  ‘She’s your mother. She’s bound to stress.’

  ‘That’s exactly what she said.’ She sat down at the table with a plonk and gave a frustrated little laugh. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘About your mother, who you have no control over, or the weather, for which ditto?’ He smiled wryly and pushed the biscuits towards her.

  ‘Here, have one of these before your son finishes them all, and let’s go and tackle this tree.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  EASIER SAID THAN DONE.

  It took the best part of an hour to wrestle the tree into the room and get it in the right position, and by the end of it he was hot, cross and had a nice bruise on his finger from pinching it in the clamp.

/>   ‘Look on the bright side,’ Georgie said, standing back to study it critically. ‘At least it’s a nice soft fir and not a prickly old spruce. And it fitted under the beam.’

  He stuck his head out from underneath it and gave her a look. ‘Just don’t tell me to turn it round again,’ he growled, and she smiled sweetly and widened her eyes.

  ‘As if. It looks good. It’s even vertical. That’s a miracle in itself. So, where are the decorations?’

  He worked his way out from under the tree and stood up, brushing bits of vegetation off his cashmere sweater. Probably not the best choice of garment for the task in hand, but with Georgia in the house he didn’t seem to be able to think clearly. ‘In my study. Come and have a look.’

  She followed him to the room that they’d christened the music room, under her bedroom. There was a desk in there positioned to take advantage of the views over the garden, and apart from the laptop on the desk, there was nothing to give away that it was an office. She wondered how much work he did here, or was planning to, or if it was just a weekend cottage.

  Some cottage, she thought drily.

  There was a stack of boxes beside the desk, and he pulled one of the boxes off the pile and opened it on the desk. ‘I’m not convinced they’re child-friendly.’

  Probably not, she thought, eyeing the expensive packaging. The decorations were all immaculately boxed, individually wrapped in tissue paper and made of glass. Beautiful though they were, she wasn’t in a hurry to put them in reach of Josh.

  ‘Not good?’ he asked, and she shrugged.

  ‘They’re lovely. Beautiful, but they aren’t really safe within his reach. He’s a bit small to understand about cutting his fingers off.’

  Sebastian winced. ‘We could put them higher up, out of his reach.’

  ‘We could. And we could decorate the lower part with other things. And they aren’t all glass. Look, these ones are traditional pâpier maché, it says. They’ll be all right, and I can make gingerbread stars and trees, and decorate them with icing—have you got icing sugar and colourings?’