Under the Boss’s Mistletoe

by Jessica Hart

  ‘I bet they’ve had a row,’ she said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The couple on our left in the blue car.’ Cassie pointed discreetly. ‘Have a look when we go past. I can’t decide whether she left the top off the toothpaste again, or whether she’s incredibly possessive and sulking because he just had a text from his secretary.’

  Jake cast her an incredulous glance. ‘What’s wrong with getting a text from your secretary?’

  ‘She thinks he’s having an affair with her,’ said Cassie, barely pausing to consider. ‘She insists on answering his phone while he’s driving. Of course the text was completely bland, just confirming some meeting or something, but she just knows that it’s a code.’

  It was their lane’s turn to move. Against his better judgement, Jake found himself glancing left as they passed. Cassie was right; the people both looked hatched-faced.

  ‘They could be going to visit the in-laws,’ he suggested, drawn into the fantasy in spite of himself.

  Cassie took another look. ‘You might be right,’ she allowed. ‘Her parents?’

  ‘His, I think. She’s got a face like concrete, so she’s doing something she doesn’t want to do. They don’t really approve of her.’

  ‘Hey, you’re good at this!’ Cassie laughed and swivelled back to watch the traffic. ‘Now, who have we got here?’ They were passing a hatchback driven by an elderly man who was clutching onto the wheel for dear life. Beside him, a tiny old lady was talking. ‘Grandparents off to visit their daughter,’ she said instantly. ‘Too easy.’

  ‘Perhaps they’ve been having a wild affair and are running away together,’ said Jake, tongue in cheek.

  ‘I like the way you’re thinking, but they look way too comfortable together for that. I bet she’s been talking for hours and he hasn’t heard a word.’

  ‘Can’t imagine what that feels like,’ murmured Jake, and she shot him a look.

  ‘I wonder what they think about us?’ she mused.

  ‘I doubt very much that anyone else is thinking about us at all.’

  ‘We must look like any other couple heading out of town for a long weekend,’ said Cassie, ignoring him.

  Perhaps that was why it felt so intimate sitting here beside him. If they were a couple, she could rest her hand on Jake’s thigh. She could unwrap a toffee and pop it in his mouth without thinking. She could put her feet up on the dashboard and choose some music, and they could argue about which was the best route. She could nag him about stopping for something to eat.

  But of course she couldn’t do any of that. Especially not laying a hand on his leg.

  She turned her attention firmly back to the other cars. ‘Ooh, now…’ she said, spying a single middle-aged man looking harassed at the wheel of his car, and instantly wove a complicated story about the double life he was leading, naming both wives, all five children and even the hamster with barely a pause for breath.

  Jake shook his head. He tried to imagine Natasha speculating about the occupants of the other cars, and couldn’t do it. She would think it childish. As it was, thought Jake.

  On the other hand, this traffic jam was a lot less tedious than others he had sat in. Cassie’s expression was animated, and he was very aware of her beside him. She had pushed back the seat as far as it would go, and her legs, in vivid blue tights, were stretched out before her. Her mobile face was alight with humour, her hands in constant motion. Jake had a jumbled impression of colour and warmth tugging at the edges of his vision the whole time. It was very distracting.

  Now she was pulling faces at a little boy in the back seat of the car beside them. He crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue, while Cassie stuck her thumbs in her ears and waggled her fingers in response.

  Jake was torn between exasperation and amusement. He didn’t know where Cassie got her idea that she was ordinary. There was absolutely nothing ordinary about her that he could see.

  He glanced at the clock as they inched forward. It was a bad sign that they were hitting heavy traffic this early. It wasn’t even midday, and already they seemed to have been travelling for ever.

  Cassie had fallen silent at last. Bizarrely, Jake almost missed her ridiculous stories. Suddenly there was a curdled growl that startled him out of his distraction. He glanced at Cassie in surprise and she blushed and folded her arms over her stomach.

  ‘Sorry, that was me,’ she apologised. ‘I didn’t have time for breakfast.’

  How embarrassing! Cassie was mortified. Natasha’s stomach would never even murmur. At least Jake seemed prepared to cope with the problem.

  ‘We’ll stop and get something to eat when we get out of this,’ he promised, but it was another twenty minutes before the blockage cleared, miraculously and for no apparent reason, and he could put his foot down.

  To Cassie’s disappointment they didn’t stop at the first service-station they came to, or even the second. ‘We need to get as far on our way as we can,’ Jake said, but as her stomach became increasingly vocal he eventually relented as they came up to the third.

  After a drizzly summer, the sun had finally come out for September. ‘Let’s sit outside,’ Cassie suggested when they had bought coffee and sandwiches. ‘We should make the most of the sun while we’ve got it.’

  They found a wooden table in a sunny spot, away from the ceaseless growl of the motorway. Cassie turned sideways so that she could straddle the bench, and turned her face up to the sun.

  ‘I love September,’ she said. ‘It still feels like the start of a new school year. I want to sharpen my pencils and write my name at the front of a blank exercise-book.’

  Perhaps that was why she was so excited about transforming Portrevick Hall into a wedding venue, Cassie thought as she unwrapped her sandwich. It was a whole new project, her chance to draw a line under all her past muddles and mistakes and start afresh. She was determined not to mess up this time.

  ‘It’s great to get out of London too,’ she went on indistinctly through a mouthful of egg mayonnaise. ‘I’m really looking forward to seeing Portrevick again, too. I haven’t been back since my parents moved away, but the place where you grow up always feels like home, doesn’t it?’

  ‘No,’ said Jake.

  ‘Really?’ Cassie was brushing egg from her skirt, but at that she looked up at him in surprise. ‘Don’t you miss it at all?’

  ‘I miss the sea sometimes,’ he said after a moment. ‘But Portrevick? No. It’s not such a romantic place to live when there’s never any money, and the moment there’s trouble the police are at your door wanting you to account for where you’ve been and what you’ve been doing.’

  Jake could hear the bitterness seeping into his voice in spite of every effort to keep it neutral. Cassie had no idea. She had grown up in a solid, cosy house in a solid, cosy, middle-class family. They might have lived in the same place, but they had inhabited different worlds.

  Miss it? He had spent ten years trying to put Portrevick behind him.

  ‘You must have family still there, though, mustn’t you?’ said Cassie. There had always been lots of Trevelyans in Portrevick, all of them reputedly skirting around the edges of the law.

  ‘Not in Portrevick,’ said Jake. ‘There’s no work in a village like that any more.’ And there were richer pickings in places like Newquay or Penzance, he thought dryly. ‘They’ve all moved away, so there’s no one to go back for. If it wasn’t for Sir Ian and the trust, I’d be happy never to see Portrevick again. And once I’ve sorted out something for the Hall I’ll be leaving and I won’t ever be going back.’

  Cassie was having trouble keeping the filling in her sandwich. The egg kept oozing out of the baguette and dropping everywhere. Why hadn’t she chosen a nice, neat sandwich like Jake’s ham and cheese? He was managing to eat his without any mess at all.

  She eyed him under her lashes as she licked her finger and gathered up some of the crumbs that were scattered on her side of the table. Jake had always been such a cool figure in her
memories of Portrevick that it had never occurred to her to wonder how happy he had been.

  He hadn’t seemed unhappy. In Cassie’s mind, he had always flirted with danger, roaring around on his motorbike or surfing in the roughest seas. She could still see him, sleek and dark as a seal in his wetsuit, riding the surf, his body leaning and bending in tune with the rolling wave.

  It was hard to believe it was the same man as the one who sat across the table from her now, contained and controlled, eating his sandwich methodically. What had happened to that fierce, reckless boy?

  Abandoning her sandwich for a moment, Cassie took a sip of coffee. ‘If you feel like that about Portrevick, why did you agree to be Sir Ian’s trustee?’

  ‘Because I owed him.’

  Jake had finished his own sandwich and brushed the crumbs from his fingers. ‘It was Sir Ian that got me out of Portrevick,’ he told her. ‘He was always good to my mother, and after she died he let me earn some money by doing odd jobs for him. He was from a different world, but I liked him. He was the only person in the village who’d talk to you as if he was really interested in what you had to say. I was just a difficult kid from a problem family, but I never once had the feeling that Sir Ian was looking down on me.’

  Unlike his nephew, Jake added to himself. Rupert got up every morning, looked in the mirror and found himself perfect. From the dizzying heights of his pedestal, how could he do anything but look down on lesser mortals? A boy from a dubious family and without the benefit of private schooling…Well, clearly Jake ought to be grateful that Rupert had ever noticed him at all.

  ‘Sir Ian was lovely,’ Cassie was agreeing. ‘I know he was a bit eccentric, but he always made you feel that you were the one person he really wanted to see.’

  Jake nodded. He had felt that, too. ‘I saw him the day after that fight with Rupert,’ he went on. ‘Rupert was all set to press assault charges against me, but Sir Ian said he would persuade him to drop them. In return, he told me I should leave Portrevick. He said that if I stayed I would never shake off my family’s reputation. There would be other fights, other brushes with the police. I’d drift over the line the way my father had done and end up in prison.’

  Turning the beaker between his hands, Jake looked broodingly down into his coffee, remembering the conversation. Sir Ian hadn’t pulled his punches. ‘You’re a bright lad,’ he had said. ‘But you’re in danger of wasting all the potential you’ve got. You’re eaten up with resentment, you’re a troublemaker and you take stupid risks. If you’re not careful, you’ll end up in prison too. You can make a new life for yourself if you want it, but you’re going to have to work for it. Are you prepared to do that?’

  Jake could still feel that churning sense of elation at the prospect of escape, all mixed up with what had felt like a shameful nervousness about leaving everything familiar behind. There had been anger and resentment, too, mostly with Rupert, but also with Cassie, whose clumsy attempt to make Rupert jealous had precipitated the fight, and the offer that would change his life if he was brave enough to take it.

  ‘The upshot was that Sir Ian said that he would sponsor me through university if I wanted the chance to start afresh somewhere new,’ he told Cassie. ‘It was an extraordinarily generous offer,’ he said. ‘It was my chance to escape from Portrevick, and I took it. I walked out of the Hall and didn’t look back.’

  ‘Was that when…?’ Cassie stopped, realising too late where the question was leading, and a smile touched Jake’s mouth.

  ‘When you accosted me on my bike?’ he suggested.

  Cassie could feel herself turning pink, but she could hardly pretend now that she didn’t remember that kiss. ‘I seem to remember it was you who accosted me, wasn’t it?’ she said with as much dignity as she could, and Jake’s smile deepened.

  ‘I was provoked,’ he excused himself.

  ‘Provoked?’ Cassie sat up straight, embarrassment forgotten in outrage. ‘I did not provoke you!’

  ‘You certainly did,’ said Jake coolly. ‘I wasn’t in the mood to listen to you defending Rupert. He asked for that punch, and it was only because he was all set to report me to the police that Sir Ian suggested I leave Portrevick.

  ‘That turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to me,’ he allowed. ‘And I’m grateful in retrospect. But it didn’t feel like that at the time. It felt as if Rupert could behave as badly as he liked and that silver spoon would stay firmly stuck in his mouth. I knew nobody would ever suggest that Rupert should leave everything he’d ever known and work for his living. I was angry, excited and confused, and I’m afraid you got in the way.’

  He paused and looked straight at Cassie, the dark-blue eyes gleaming with unmistakable amusement. ‘If it’s any comfort, that kiss was my last memory of Portrevick.’

  That kiss…The memory of it shimmered between them, so vividly that for one jangling moment it was as if they were kissing again, as if his fingers were still twined in her hair, her lips still parting as she melted into him, that wicked excitement still tumbling along her veins.

  With an effort, Cassie dragged her gaze away and buried her burning face in her coffee cup. ‘Nice to know that I was memorable,’ she muttered.

  ‘You were certainly that,’ said Jake.

  ‘Yes, well, it was all a long time ago.’ Cassie cleared her throat and cast around for something, anything, to change the subject. ‘I’d no idea Sir Ian helped you like that,’ she managed at last, seizing on the first thing she could think of. ‘We all assumed you’d just taken off to avoid the assault charges.’

  ‘That doesn’t surprise me. Portrevick was always ready to think the worst of me,’ said Jake, gathering up the debris of their lunch. ‘Sir Ian wasn’t the type to boast about his generosity, but I kept in touch all the time, and as soon as I was in a position to do so I offered to repay all the money he’d spent on my education. He flatly refused to take it, but he did say there was one thing I could do for him, and that was when he asked me to be his executor and the trustee. He asked me if I would make sure that the Portrevick estate stayed intact. You know how much he loved the Hall.’

  Cassie nodded. ‘Yes, he did.’

  ‘I can’t say I liked the idea of taking on a complicated trust, and I knew how much Rupert would resent me, but I owed Sir Ian too much to refuse. So,’ said Jake, ‘that’s why we’re driving down this motorway. That’s why I want to get the Hall established as a venue. Once it’s up and running, and self-supporting, I’ll feel as if I’ve paid my debt to him at last. I’ll have done what Sir Ian asked me to do, and then I really can put Portrevick and the past behind me once and for all.’

  He drained his coffee and shoved the sandwich wrappers inside the empty cup. ‘Have you finished? We’ve still got a long way to go, so let’s hit the road again.’

  Cassie studied Portrevick Hall with affection as she cut across the grounds to the sweep of gravel at its imposing entrance. A rambling manor-house dating back to the middle ages, it had grown organically as succeeding generations had added a wing here, a turret there. The result was a muddle of architectural styles that time had blended into a harmonious if faintly dilapidated whole, with crumbling terraces looking out over what had once been landscaped gardens.

  It was charming from any angle, Cassie decided, and would make a wonderful backdrop for wedding photos.

  Her feet crunched on the gravel as she walked up to the front door and pulled the ancient bell, deliberately avoiding looking at where Jake had sat astride his motorbike that day. She wouldn’t have been at all surprised to see the outline of her feet still scorched into the stones.

  Don’t think about it, she told herself sternly. She was supposed to be impressing Jake with her professionalism, and she was going to have to try a lot harder today after babbling on in the car yesterday. Jake had dropped her at Tina’s and driven off with barely a goodbye, and Cassie didn’t blame him. He must have been sick of listening to her inane chatter for seven hours.

>   So today she was going to concentrate on being cool, calm and competent.

  Which was easily said but harder to remember, when Jake opened the door and her heart gave a sickening lurch. He was wearing jeans and a blue Guernsey with the sleeves pushed above his wrists; without the business suit he looked younger and more approachable.

  And very attractive.

  ‘Come in,’ he said. ‘I was just making coffee. Do you want some?’

  ‘Thanks.’ Cassie followed him down a long, stone-flagged corridor to the Hall’s vast kitchen. Without those unsettling blue eyes on her face, she could admire his lean figure and easy stride.

  ‘Quite a looker now, isn’t he?’ Tina had said when they were catching up over a bottle of wine the night before. ‘And rich too, I hear. You should go for it, Cassie. You always did have a bit of a thing for him.’

  ‘No, I didn’t!’ said Cassie, ruffled. A thing for Jake Trevelyan? The very idea!

  ‘Remember that Allantide Ball…?’ Tina winked. ‘I’m sure Jake does. Do you think you could be in with a chance?’

  ‘No,’ said Cassie, and then was horrified to hear how glum she sounded about it. ‘I mean, no,’ she tried again brightly. ‘He’s already got a perfect girlfriend.’

  ‘Shame,’ said Tina.

  And the worst thing was that a tiny bit of Cassie was thinking the same thing as she watched Jake making the coffee.

  Which was very unprofessional of her.

  Giving herself a mental slap, Cassie pulled out her Netbook and made a show of looking around the kitchen. They might as well get down to business straight away.

  ‘The kitchen will need replacing as a priority,’ she said. ‘You couldn’t do professional catering in here. There’s plenty of space, which is good, but it needs gutting and proper catering equipment installed.’

  Jake could see that made sense. ‘Get some quotes.’ He nodded.

  Cassie tapped in ‘kitchen-get quotes’ and felt efficient.

  ‘We should start with the great hall and see how much work needs to be done there,’ she went on, encouraged. ‘That’s the obvious place for wedding ceremonies.’