Christmas Nights

by Penny Jordan

  Despite the heat inside the car Heaven had started to shiver.

  ‘I know that you are deliberately trying to frighten me,’ she warned him. ‘You’re just exaggerating… Harold wouldn’t—

  Abruptly she stopped.

  ‘Harold would,’ he told her softly, and as she looked across at him Heaven knew that the knowledge that what he had just said was true showed in her eyes, and with it her growing apprehension.

  ‘Perhaps what I’ve done is rather dramatic,’ Jon acknowledged, ‘but it seemed the best solution for both of us, given the short time I had in which to make a decision.

  ‘Harold’s possibly forgotten that I own property in the north and being there will provide you with a safe haven and give me the chance to use the information you’ve given me to force Harold into giving Louisa the money she’s entitled to…’

  ‘Aren’t you afraid he might try to retaliate? To…?’ She stopped and shivered again.

  ‘To what?’ Jon asked her softly. ‘To ruin my reputation the way he did yours? Well, I suspect he was intending to do that anyway, but thanks to you that won’t now be possible. I know that taking you off like this must seem a trifle dramatic, but believe me, Heaven, I am not in any way overdramatising when I say that you will be much safer somewhere where Harold can’t find you.

  ‘Is there any problem about you being away from home?’ he asked her carefully. ‘A friend… a lover who might—?’

  Quickly Heaven shook her head.

  ‘No. There’s nothing… no one like that. My parents are in Australia with my brother and—’

  ‘You were going to be on your own over Christmas?’

  Heaven’s vulnerable heart gave a small treacherous leap at that past tense ‘were’.

  ‘I… I was invited to join a friend and her family but…’ She took a deep breath. ‘What about you? Was Louisa…? Were you…?’

  ‘Louisa is taking the children to stay with our parents,’ Jon told her, shaking his head as he added, ‘I did have the option of joining a party of friends who are going skiing but a telephone call is all it will take to notify them that I shan’t be going.’

  ‘But surely all this will be over by Christmas?’ Heaven pointed out, suddenly panicking at the thought of having to spend several days with him.

  ‘Perhaps, but not necessarily, and you have to remember that it’s going to be quite some time before Harold forgets the part you’ve played in ruining his plans to cheat the Americans. Although, with a bit of luck, he should have rather more on his mind than pursuing you.’

  ‘Quite some time… How… how long?’ Heaven asked him dry-mouthed.

  ‘It’s hard to say,’ Jon told her seriously, but inwardly he was feeling far more light-hearted than he looked and than the situation warranted because, if anything, he had played down rather than over-emphasised the danger they were both potentially in.

  ‘What about Tiffany?’ Heaven queried, suddenly remembering the other girl. ‘Won’t Harold…?’

  ‘Harold won’t be able to do anything to harm or hurt Tiffany. I happen to know that her mummy and daddy are very protective of their precious little chick and none too happy about losing her to Harold.’

  ‘But I can’t stay with you… I… I don’t have any clothes…’

  For the first time since their journey had started Heaven saw Jon smile.

  ‘No! What a pity,’ he drawled teasingly. ‘That means…’

  The look he gave her made Heaven turn crimson from the tips of her ears all the way down to her toes. Toes which curled up in her shoes with something that was very, very different from the self-conscious embarrassment burning her skin.

  ‘Well, I’m sure we can remedy that. We’re not far from the nearest town.’

  ‘But I can’t go out and buy a new wardrobe just like that,’ Heaven protested. ‘For a start I haven’t—’

  She stopped, closing her lips over the admission she had been about to make. But Jon had obviously guessed what she had been about to say as he finished her sentence for her by saying, ‘You can’t afford it. Did Harold pay you for the dinner?’

  ‘No.’ Heaven shook her head.

  ‘Well, then as his business advisor I strongly suggest that you write to him in strong terms demanding payment, and in the meantime I will be more than happy to make you a small loan against that payment.’

  Heaven was not so easily gulled.

  ‘He won’t pay me,’ she told Jon positively.

  Jon was equally positive back.

  ‘Oh, yes, he will,’ he told her softly. ‘I shall make sure of that! I’ve spent months searching for a way to force him to make a decent settlement on Louisa and the girls but he’s kept on claiming that the business is losing money even though it’s been perfectly obvious that he’s lying, that that sleazy accountant he employs has no doubt siphoned off all the assets to some dubious off-shore tax haven. He’s even threatening to stop paying the girls’ school fees.’

  ‘What makes a person like that? So mean and… and horrid,’ Heaven wondered out loud, adding, ‘He’s even kept the dining-room furniture that Louisa was given by your parents.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Jon agreed, his mouth growing grim. ‘And thank you for reminding me of that, Heaven. That’s something else to put on the list.’

  ‘What will you do?’ Heaven asked him uncertainly. ‘You’re not going to let him cheat the Americans, are you? I mean…’

  ‘Oh—’ Jon shook his head ‘—the most he can expect from that is I keep quiet about the potential fraud he was planning to enact; the price for my keeping quiet will be Louisa’s settlement and the sale of the company with all its software.

  ‘We have very strong fraud laws in this country and so do the Americans. If what he was planning to do becomes public it won’t just be his reputation he’ll lose and somehow I can’t see Harold settling happily into prison life.’

  ‘Prison…’ Heaven’s eyes widened.

  ‘Now you see why I’m so concerned for your safety,’ Jon pointed out to her.

  ‘What about yours?’ Heaven challenged.

  ‘Oh, I shall be safe enough,’ he assured her.

  ‘The Borders,’ Heaven murmured sleepily, smothering a yawn as the events of the evening began to catch up on her. ‘That sounds so romantic…’

  Her eyes were already starting to close so she didn’t see the look that Jon gave her, but she did hear the softly sensual note in his voice as he told her, ‘Then we shall have to see if we can’t make them live up to your image, shan’t we?’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  SLEEPILY Heaven struggled to sit up. Outside the car everything was pitch-black.

  ‘Where are we?’ she asked Jon groggily.

  ‘Nearly home,’ he told her.

  Nearly home. Heaven could feel her heart start to beat just a little bit too fast.

  ‘Look, it’s starting to snow,’ he told her urgently as small fine white flakes started to drift across the car windscreen.

  ‘Snow!’ Heaven peered out of the window as excitedly as a small child, whilst Jon watched her and laughed.

  ‘You look about sixteen,’ he teased her, ‘with your hair all ruffled and your make-up…’

  When his glance drifted to her mouth Heaven discovered that she was colouring up again as she remembered how she’d come to be denuded of her lipstick. Self-consciously she touched her lips with her fingertips and then tensed as Jon told her softly, ‘Don’t do that…’

  ‘Why not?’ Heaven whispered back to him, her eyes soft and huge in her small face as she turned uncertainly to look at him.

  The road was empty; it was three o’clock in the morning. Swiftly Jon brought the car to a halt and reached for her, gathering her into his arms as he whispered against her mouth, ‘Because it makes me want to kiss you.’

  Heaven tried to protest as logic and common sense dictated that she must, but happily the very fact that Jon’s mouth was already covering hers, caressing hers, meant that her prote
st never got further than an ‘Oh’—and for some reason instead of recognising this for what it was Jon seemed to think that the soft parting of her lips wasn’t so much representative of a womanly objection to his kiss-stealing actions but in fact a very feminine invitation to make the kiss even more intimate and devastating to Heaven’s vulnerable self-control.

  Mmm… Outside the car it might be cold enough to be snowing but inside the temperature was quite definitely rising. The sexual chemistry and magnetism between them were positively making the air sizzle, Heaven recognised dreamily as she snuggled closer to Jon, her hands automatically sliding beneath his jacket to hold him closer.

  The deep sound of satisfaction he made in response to her own softer but very recognisable sensual response made Heaven feel as though she was melting, slowly, deliciously, languorously, and as inevitably as a dish of ice cream in the warm summer sun. Jon made her feel all soft and sensual and deliciously, dangerously wanton, as though… as though…

  ‘What happened to you? We should have done this months ago,’ she heard Jon groaning as he drew her even closer.

  Months ago he had left on a flight to goodness knew where after one brief date, whilst she…

  The shudder of remembered revulsion and shame which had begun to tense her body turned to a shivery muscle reaction of a very different type as Jon’s hand slid upwards over her body towards her breast. She could hear her own heartbeat picking up speed, feel her whole body starting to react to the urgent pressure of his hand against her breast.

  ‘Oh-h-h…’ Heaven couldn’t stop herself from giving a small betraying gasp of pleasure as Jon’s thumb circled her nipple, causing it to harden and beg unashamedly and very provocatively for even more of his touch.

  ‘You’re making me feel… react… more like a teenager than a grown man,’ she heard him whispering, groaning in her ear as he started to drag a passionate line of kisses along her jaw and over her throat.

  ‘Jon…’ Heaven could hear the passion in her own voice as she arched her neck, her instinctive response throwing the profile of her body into clear relief, revealing her tightly erect nipples.

  Totally lost in what she was feeling, she was unaware of Jon’s momentary tension and hesitation, and of the fact that he was muttering something very male and urgent below his breath, but the sudden sensation of his mouth against her body as his hands cupped her breasts sent a thrill of sharp, dizzying feminine pleasure hurtling through her.

  In his urgency to taste the delicious nubs of flesh that were being so innocently and irresistibly offered to him, Jon couldn’t wait to unzip Heaven’s dress, hungrily pulling the fabric down and quickly laying bare one soft round breast.

  Heaven felt the shudder that went through him as he studied the feminine softness of her avidly for a heartbeat of time, gently rubbing her bare nipple with his thumb before guiding it into his mouth.

  The sensation of his lips closing round her flesh, of him suckling on her bare flesh—carefully at first and then with far more urgency as his reaction to the taste of her overwhelmed him—made Heaven’s whole body contort with delicious pleasure. Willingly she gave herself up to the erotic sensation of Jon’s mouth tugging on one breast whilst his hand caressed the other.

  Yearningly Heaven reached out to touch him, an erotic image of his naked body dancing behind her closed eyelids, her imagination tantalising and arousing her. Her fingertips found the buttons on his shirt and impetuously tugged at them.

  The shudder that racked Jon’s body as she touched him had nothing to do with the cold beyond the passionate heat they had generated inside the car—and nor had the low male groan of need he gave as the hand that had been caressing her breast captured her wrist, pressing her palm flat against the soft, silky dark hair that arrowed downwards from his chest.

  ‘Lower,’ Heaven heard him growl pleadingly. ‘Lower, Heaven—touch me here,’ he begged rawly, moving her hand down towards his waistband as his mouth released her breast to whisper the tormented words against her lips.

  All at once Heaven started to panic. She was behaving as though she and Jon had known one another for ever, as though it was the most natural thing in the world for them to be together like this, as though the intimacy they were sharing was so natural and preordained that to deny or obstruct it would be like denying one another air to breathe.

  But their relationship wasn’t like that. She knew him, yes, had been attracted to him, yes, and yes, all right, had felt perhaps even more than mere attraction for him—had, if she was honest, hoped, even felt that he had shared the feelings she had experienced the evening he had taken her out. But this—this explosion of passion and intensity between them, this sense of coming home, of being completely at one with him—these were surely far too dangerous emotions for her to put any trust in.

  She had, she reminded herself, already been on an adrenalin- and tension-induced high even before she had realised that Jon was one of Harold’s guests, and events since she had realised it had done nothing to help her come down from that high—far from it.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she heard Jon ask her softly as he felt her tension.

  ‘Nothing…’ Heaven denied, and then added shakily, ‘This wasn’t meant to happen. I didn’t want…’

  ‘To be dragged off into the night and driven half the length of the country? Or to be made love to by me?’ he asked her wryly. ‘Which?’

  ‘Neither,’ Heaven lied primly, taking advantage of the fact that he had released her to hurriedly straighten her dress and turn her head slightly away from him so that he couldn’t see her face properly.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she heard him apologising. ‘It wasn’t my intention to. You’re a very special woman, Heaven,’ he added in an even softer and very deep voice. ‘So special in fact that…’

  He was starting the engine as he spoke, and set the car back in motion without finishing his sentence, but, even though she was desperately curious to know what he had been about to say, Heaven didn’t trust herself to ask him—nor him to answer her.

  Along with the intense passion and sensuality of the lovemaking they had just shared there had also been a heart-tugging skein of sweetness and tenderness. Or was she just imagining it? Would the spell he had woven around her by reigning in the urgency of his passion be broken if she forced him to put what he was thinking and feeling into words and then discovered that he was not sharing her thoughts and feelings after all?

  So much had happened so quickly—too much and too quickly, perhaps, Heaven rationalised as they rounded a bend in the road and she could see the lights of what looked like a small village ahead of them.

  ‘Not much further,’ Jon told her as they drove through the village, which was picturesquely sheltered by the surrounding hills of the Borders, its stone cottages hugging the winding road, the narrowness of the humpback bridge crossing the river that Jon drove over making Heaven breathe in automatically.

  Ahead of them lay what was obviously the village’s main street, its bare trees currently adorned with Christmas lights.

  It had stopped snowing, the sky clearing to reveal the stars, and Heaven couldn’t stop herself from exclaiming out loud, ‘Oh, Jon, it’s so pretty! So Christmassy.’

  ‘It may look pretty now,’ he responded, ‘but it has a rather bloody history. The actual border with Scotland isn’t very far from here and this village was the home of border reivers from the English side of the border and the target from those from the Scots side. When a truce was finally declared it was decreed that it would be celebrated and remembered annually at Christmas time, which means that Christmas for the villagers is a doubly special time of joy and celebration. It’s a tradition that everyone attends a special thanksgiving supper. We could go to it if you’d like?’

  ‘Could we…?’ Heaven began, her eyes shining, and then abruptly she stopped, reminding herself of just why she was here with Jon in the first place, the excitement dying out of her face as she asked him anxiously, ‘But Christ
mas is a week away and I can’t…’

  ‘You can’t stay…’ Jon finished quietly for her.

  Heaven bit her lip and turned to look out of the car window. They had left the village behind and were starting to climb now, the road winding upwards through the hills. The snow lay more thickly on the road here, but not too thickly for Jon’s car, thank goodness.

  Heaven could feel her eyes starting to close as waves of tiredness washed down over her. Sleepily she snuggled deeper into her comfortable seat and then, as Jon swung the car off the road and down a gravel drive, she sat up abruptly and asked him, ‘What on earth is that?’

  ‘Home,’ Jon responded, laughing, obviously enjoying her surprise.

  ‘Home?’ Heaven stared in bemusement at the ancient tall square slit-windowed tower looming in front of her. ‘You live here?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jon confirmed with a smile, bringing the car to a halt on the gravel and causing the building’s security lights to come on, further illuminating the building and the soft warm stone from which it was built.

  ‘But what is it?’ Heaven asked in fascination as she studied the tower’s unfamiliar shape, height and its narrow, almost slit-like windows. That it was very old was obvious.

  ‘A peel tower,’ Jon told her promptly, and then explained, ‘They were fortified homes built by those who lived on the border, very often, I’m afraid to say, using stone they “acquired” from Hadrian’s wall. The tower acted as a protective place of retreat for the family should they come under attack, and it has to be said that it was equally used as a means of holding captive goods and even people they themselves had purloined on their own reiving trips across the border.

  ‘Originally there would have been a collection of wooden shelters at the base of the tower to hold their livestock, with the family accommodation at the top of the tower where it was deemed to be safer. Because of their height the towers also served as good lookout points. On a clear day from here you can see right across the border for miles. Of course this particular tower was renovated and modernised quite some time ago—before I bought it in fact.