Christmas Nights

by Penny Jordan

  It looked as if Alison was a much better judge of character than she, Lisa acknowledged as she zipped her case shut and picked it up.

  CHAPTER THREE

  LISA WAS HALFWAY down the stairs when Henry walked into the hallway and saw her.

  ‘Lisa, why are you dressed like that? Where are you going?’ he demanded as he looked anxiously back over his shoulder, obviously not wanting anyone else to witness what was going on.

  ‘I’m leaving,’ she told him calmly. It was odd that she should be able to remain so calm with Henry who, after all, until this evening’s debacle had been the man she had intended to marry, the man she had planned to spend the rest of her life with, and yet with Oliver, a complete stranger, a man she had seen only twice before and whom she expected… hoped… she would never see again, her emotions became inflamed into a rage of gargantuan proportions.

  ‘Leaving? But you can’t… What will people think?’ Henry protested. ‘Mother’s got the whole family coming for Christmas dinner tomorrow and they’ll all expect you to be there. We were, after all, planning to announce our engagement,’ he reminded her seriously.

  As she listened to him in disbelief Lisa was shocked to realise that she badly wanted to laugh—or cry.

  ‘Henry, I can’t stay here now,’ she told him. ‘Not after what’s happened. You must see that. After all you were the one—’

  ‘You’re leaving to go to him, aren’t you?’ Henry accused her angrily. ‘Well, don’t expect Oliver to offer to marry you, Lisa. He might want to take you to bed but, as Mother says, Oliver isn’t the kind of man to marry a woman who—’

  That was it. Suddenly Lisa had had enough. Her face flushing with the full force of her emotions, she descended the last few stairs and confronted Henry.

  ‘I don’t care what your mother says, Henry,’ she told him through gritted teeth. ‘And if you were half the man I thought you were you wouldn’t care either. Neither would you let her make up your mind or your decisions for you… And as for Oliver—’

  ‘Yes, as for me… what?’

  To her consternation Lisa realised that at some point Oliver had walked into the hall and was now standing watching them both, an infuriatingly superior, mocking contempt curling his mouth as he broke into her angry tirade.

  ‘I’ve had enough of this… I’ve had enough of both of you,’ Lisa announced. ‘This is all your fault. All of it,’ she added passionately to Oliver, ignoring Henry’s attempts to silence her.

  ‘And don’t think I haven’t guessed why you’ve done it,’ she added furiously, her fingers tugging at the strap of her suitcase. She wrenched the case open and cried out angrily to him, ‘You want your precious clothes back? Well, you can have them… all of them…’

  Fiercely she wrenched the carefully packed clothes from her case and hurled them across the small space that lay between them, where they landed in an untidy heap at Oliver’s feet.

  She ignored Henry’s anguished, shocked, ‘Lisa… what on earth are you doing…? Lisa, please… stop; someone might see… Mother…’

  ‘Oh, and we mustn’t forget this, must we?’ Lisa continued, ignoring Henry, an almost orgasmic feeling of release drowning out all her normal level-headedness and common sense. For the first time in her life she could understand why it was some people actually seemed to enjoy losing their temper, giving up their self-control… causing a scene… all things that were normally completely foreign to her.

  Triumphantly she threw the beautiful Armani suit which she had bought with such pleasure at Oliver’s feet whilst he watched her impassively.

  ‘There! I hope you’re satisfied,’ she told him as the last garment headed his way.

  ‘Lisa,’ Henry was still bleating protestingly, but she ignored him. Now that the sudden, unfamiliar surge of anger was retreating she felt oddly weak and shaky, almost vulnerably light-headed and dangerously close to tears.

  In the distance she was aware that Henry was still protesting, but for some reason it was Oliver whom her attention was concentrated on, who filled her vision and her prickly, wary senses as she deliberately skirted around him, clutching her still half-open but now much lighter suitcase, and headed for the front door.

  There had been a look in his eyes as she had flung that trouser suit at him which she had not totally understood—a gleam of an emotion which in another man she could almost have felt was humour mixed with a certain rueful respect, but of course she must have been imagining it.

  As she tugged open the front door and stepped outside a shock of ice-cold air hit her. She hadn’t realised how much the temperature had dropped, how overcast the sky had become.

  Frost crunched beneath her feet as she hurried towards her car. Faithful and reliable as ever, it started at the second turn of the key.

  As Lisa negotiated the other cars parked in the drive she told herself grimly that she had no need to try to work out whom that gleaming, shiny Aston Martin sports car belonged to. It just had to be Oliver Davenport’s.

  As she turned onto the main road she switched on her car radio, her heart giving a small forlorn thud of regret as she heard the announcer forecasting that the north of England was due to have snow.

  Snow for Christmas and she was going to miss it.

  It was half past eleven; another half an hour and it would be Christmas Day, and she would be spending it alone.

  Stop snivelling, she told herself as she felt her throat start to ache with emotional tears. You’ve had a lucky escape.

  She knew she had a fairly long drive ahead of her before she reached the motorway. As she and Henry had driven north she had remarked on how beautiful the countryside was as they drove through it. Now, however, as she drove along the empty, dark country road she was conscious of how remote the area was and how alone she felt.

  She frowned as the car engine started to splutter and lose power, anxiety tensing her body as she wondered what on earth was wrong. Her small car had always been so reliable, and she was very careful about having it properly serviced and keeping the tank full of petrol.

  Petrol. Lisa knew what had happened from the sharp sinking sensation in her stomach even before she looked fearfully at the petrol gauge.

  Henry had not bothered to replace the petrol they had used on the journey north and now, it seemed, the tank was empty.

  Lisa closed her eyes in mute despair. What on earth was she going to do? She was stranded on an empty country road miles from anywhere in the dark on Christmas Eve, with no idea where the nearest garage was, no means of contacting anyone to ask, dressed in jeans and a thin sweater on a freezing cold night.

  And she knew exactly who she had to blame for her sorry plight, she decided wrathfully ten minutes later as the air inside her car turned colder and colder with ominous speed. Oliver Davenport. If it hadn’t been for him and his cynical and deliberate manipulation of the truth to cast her in a bad light in front of Henry and his parents, none of this would have happened.

  Even now she still couldn’t quite believe what she had done in the full force of that final, unexpected burst of temper, when she had thrown her clothes at him.

  Lisa hugged her arms tightly around her body as she started to shiver. It was too late to regret her hasty departure from Henry’s parents’ home now, or the fact that she had brought nothing with her that she could use to keep her warm.

  Just how far was it to the nearest house? Her teeth were chattering now and the windscreen had started to freeze over.

  Perhaps she ought to start walking back in the direction she had come. At least then the physical activity might help to keep her warm, but her heart sank at the thought. So far as she could remember, she had been driving for a good fifteen minutes after she had passed through the last small hamlet, and she hadn’t seen any houses since then.

  Reluctantly she opened the car door, and then closed it again with a gasp of shock as the ice-cold wind knifed into her unprotected body.

  What on earth was she going to do? He
r earlier frustration and irritation had started to give way to a far more ominous and much deeper sense of panicky fear.

  One read about people being found dying from exposure and hypothermia, but it always seemed such an unreal fate somehow in a country like Britain. Now, though, it suddenly seemed horribly plausible.

  Her panic intensified as she realised that unless she either managed to walk to the nearest inhabited building, wherever that might be, or was spotted by a passing motorist, it would be days before anyone realised that she was missing. There was, after all, no one waiting at home in London for her. Her parents had agreed not to telephone on Christmas Day because they knew she would be staying with Henry’s family. Henry would assume—if indeed he gave her any thought at all—that she was back in London.

  As she fought down the emotions threatening to overwhelm her Lisa happened to glance at her watch.

  It was almost half past twelve… Christmas Day.

  Now she couldn’t stop the tears.

  Christmas Day and she was stuck in a car miles from anywhere and probably about to freeze to death.

  She gave a small, protesting moan as she sneezed and then sneezed again, blinking her eyes against the dazzling glare of headlights she could see in her driving mirror.

  The dazzling glare of headlights… Another car…

  Frantically Lisa pushed on her frozen car door, terrified that her unwitting rescuer might drive past her without realising her plight.

  The approaching car was only yards behind her when she finally managed to shove open the door. As she half fell into the icy road in her haste to advertise her predicament any thoughts of the danger of flagging down a stranger were completely forgotten in the more overriding urgency of her plight.

  The dazzle of the oncoming headlights was so powerful that she couldn’t distinguish the shape of the car or see its driver, but she knew he or she had seen her because the car suddenly started to lose speed, swerving to a halt in front of her.

  Now that the car was stationary Lisa recognised that there was something vaguely familiar about it, but her relief overrode that awareness as she ran towards it on legs which suddenly seemed as stiff and wobbly as those of a newborn colt.

  However, before she could reach it, the driver’s door was flung open and a pair of long male legs appeared, followed by an equally imposing and stomach-churningly recognisable male torso and face.

  As she stared disbelievingly into the frowning, impatient face of Oliver Davenport, Lisa protested fatalistically, ‘Oh, no, not you…’

  ‘Who were you hoping it was—Henry?’ he retorted sardonically. ‘If this is your idea of staging a reconciliation scene, I have to tell you that you’re wasting your time. When I left him you were the last thing on Henry’s mind.’

  ‘Of course I’m not staging a reconciliation scene,’ Lisa snapped back at him. ‘I’m not staging a scene of any kind… I—it isn’t something I do…’

  The effect of her cool speech was unfairly spoiled by the sudden fit of shivering that overtook her, but it was plain that Oliver Davenport wouldn’t have been very impressed with it anyway because he drawled, ‘Oh, no? Then what was all that highly theatrical piece of overacting in the Hanfords’ hall all about?’

  ‘That wasn’t overacting,’ Lisa gritted at him. ‘That was…’

  She shivered again, this time so violently that her teeth chattered audibly.

  ‘For God’s sake, put a coat on. Have you any idea what the temperature is tonight? I know you’re from the south and a city, but surely common sense—?’

  ‘I don’t have a coat,’ Lisa told him, adding bitterly, ‘Because of you.’

  The look he gave her was incredulously contemptuous.

  ‘Are you crazy? You come north in the middle of December and you don’t even bother to bring a coat—’

  ‘Oh, I brought a coat all right,’ Lisa corrected him between shivers. ‘Only I don’t have it now…’

  She gritted her teeth and tried not to think about the warmth of the lovely, heavenly cream cashmere coat which had been amongst the things she had thrown at his feet so recklessly.

  ‘You don’t… Ah… I see… What are you doing, anyway? Why have you stopped?’

  ‘Why do you think I’ve stopped? Not to admire the view,’ Lisa told him bitterly. ‘The car’s run out of petrol.’

  ‘The car’s run out of petrol?’

  Lisa felt herself flushing as she heard the disbelieving male scorn in his voice.

  ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ she defended herself. ‘We were supposed to be coming north in Henry’s car, only it was involved in an accident and couldn’t be driven so we had to use mine, and Henry was so anxious to get… not to be late that he didn’t want to stop and refill the tank…’

  Lisa hated the way he was just standing silently looking at her. He was determined to make things as hard for her as he could. She could see that… He was positively enjoying making her look small… humiliating her.

  In any other circumstances but these she would have been tempted simply to turn her back on him, get back in her car and wait for the next driver to come by, but common sense warned her that she couldn’t afford to take that kind of risk.

  Her unprotected fingers had already turned white and were almost numb. She couldn’t feel her toes, and the rest of her body felt so cold that the sensation was almost a physical pain.

  Taking a deep breath and fixing her gaze on a point just beyond his left shoulder, she said shakily, ‘I’d be very grateful if you could give me a lift to the nearest garage…’

  Tensely she waited for his response, knowing that he was bound to make the most of the opportunity which she had given him to exercise his obvious dislike of her. But when it came the blow was one of such magnitude and such force that she physically winced beneath the cruelty of it, the breath escaping from her lungs in a soft, shocked gasp as he told her ruthlessly, ‘No way.’

  It must be the cold that was making her feel so dizzy and light-headed, Lisa thought despairingly—that and her panicky fear that he was going to walk away and simply leave her here to meet her fate.

  Whatever the cause, it propelled her into instinctive action, making her dart forward and catch hold of the fabric of his jacket as she told him jerkily, ‘It wasn’t my fault that your cousin sold his girlfriend’s clothes without her permission. All I did was buy them in good faith… He’s the one you should be punishing, not me. If you leave me here—’

  ‘Leave you here…?’

  Somehow or other he had detached her hand from his jacket and was now holding it in his own. Dizzily Lisa marvelled at how warm and comforting, how strong and safe it felt to have that large male hand enclosing hers. She could almost feel the warmth from his touch—his body—flooding up through her arm like an infusion of life-giving blood into a vein.

  ‘Leave you here in this temperature?’ he said, adding roughly, ‘Are you crazy…?’

  She couldn’t see him properly any more, Lisa realised, and she thought it must be because the tears that had threatened her eyes had frozen in the intense cold. She had no idea that she had actually spoken her sentiments out loud until she heard him respond, ‘Tears don’t freeze; they’re saline… salty.’

  He had let go of her hand and as Lisa watched him he stripped off his jacket and then, to her shock, took hold of her and bundled her up in it like an adult wrapping up a small child.

  ‘I can’t walk,’ she protested, her voice muffled by the thickness of the over-large wrapping.

  ‘You’re not going to,’ she was told peremptorily, and then, before she knew what was happening, he was picking her up and carrying her the short distance to his car, opening the passenger door and depositing her on the seat.

  The car smelled of leather and warmth and something much more intangible—something elusive and yet oddly familiar… Muzzily Lisa sniffed, trying to work out what it was and why it should inexplicably make her want to cry and yet at the same time feel oddly elated. />
  Oliver had gone over to her car, and as he returned Lisa saw that he was carrying her case and her handbag.

  ‘I’ve locked it… your car,’ he told her as he slid into the driver’s seat alongside her. ‘Not that anyone would be likely to take it.’

  ‘Not unless they had some petrol with them,’ Lisa agreed drowsily, opening her mouth to give a yawn which suddenly turned into a volley of bone-aching sneezes.

  ‘Here.’ Oliver handed her a wad of clean tissues from a pack in the glove compartment, telling her, ‘It’s just as well I happened to be passing when I did. If you’re lucky the worst you’ll suffer is a bad cold; another hour in these temperatures and it could have been a very different story. This road is never very heavily trafficked, and on Christmas Eve, with snow forecast, the locals who do use it have more sense than to…’

  He went on talking but Lisa had heard enough. Did he think she had wanted to run out of petrol on a remote Yorkshire road? Had he forgotten whose fault it was that she had been there in the first place instead of warmly tucked up in bed at Henry’s parents’ home?

  Tears of unfamiliar and unexpected self-pity suddenly filled her eyes. ‘It isn’t Christmas Eve,’ she told him aggressively, fighting to hold them back. ‘It’s Christmas Day.’

  It was the wrong thing to say, bringing back her earlier awareness of how very fragile were the brightly coloured, delicate daydreams that she had cherished of how this Christmas would be—as fragile and vulnerable as the glass baubles with which she had so foolishly imagined herself decorating that huge, freshly cut, pine-smelling Christmas tree with Henry.

  It was too much. One tear fell and then another. She tried to stop them, dabbing surreptitiously at her eyes, and she averted her face from Oliver’s as he started the engine and set the car in motion. But it was no use. He had obviously witnessed her distress.