Pippa blinked her eyes open. Then she blinked again. Kafi was sleeping next to her. They were in her bed. Well, not exactly in her bed. More like on her bed. They both lay stretched out on top of the duvet, with two of Maisy's big Christmas throws covering them. They were both still dressed just as they had been last night.
Pippa rolled onto her back and sighed. It was a sweet, happy sound.
“Morning.”
“Ah!” So startled was Pippa by Kafi's quiet salutation that she jumped almost off the bed. Kafi laughed softly and sat up against the headboard, pulling Pippa against him. “Come here.”
Pippa relaxed into him, the two of them fitting together nice and snug.
“Happy Christmas Eve,” he murmured into her hair.
“Happy Christmas Eve.” Pippa ran her fingers along Kafi's hand, twining her fingers with his.“It feels odd to be cuddled here with you, like this,” she said. “Good odd. Amazing odd. But odd.”
Kafi caressed her palm with his thumb. “What's so odd about my loving you?”
Pippa could feel herself blushing as Kafi kissed her on the head.
“It sounds so … strange. Like you can't be talking to me. Or about me.”
“What sounds strange?”
She pulled away from him so she could look at him. “The L word.”
Kafi smiled and the warmth of it went all the way to his crinkled eyes. The L word. Pippa was twenty-two, but Kafi knew she wasn't being silly or too immature to talk about love. But he was pretty sure she'd never said it in her life before. Never had it in her life before. Never expected to have someone to say it to. Well sure, she'd been swimming in love at Drakenfall. Cook, Glynis, Mrs. Browning, Mark, and Maisy. But not this kind of love. In his family, Kafi was surrounded by people in love, from his grandparents on down to his older brother and his wife. But Pippa? Before Mark and Maisy, had she ever really seen, really known what it could be like to be in love?
He was pretty sure she felt it for him. And he was perfectly happy to wait for her to catch up with her heart.
“Tell you what,” he said softly. “I won't say it again, not until you're ready. Until you want me to say it.”
“But how will you know? Do I just say, Okay, Kafi, you can say it now?”
He laughed a deep, belly laugh at that. “If you ever feel moved to say it to me, then I'll know.”
“And until then? You'll just say like all the time?”
He shrugged. “Well, I do like you. And adore you.” He started kissing her. “I am just … so …. fond of you.”
Pippa laughed, letting herself sink further beneath him as they continued to kiss on top of her duvet. He moved to trail kisses down her neck. “Kafi … this is … you can't … I'm just ...”
Kafi stopped kissing her and looked at her. “Pippa, last night, the whole big shebang with the kids and the angels and the Job Centre presentation. It was all a Christmas card to you. A love letter. To show you how much I care, how much you mean to me. Last night, I wanted to show you that I could be … worthy of you.
Pippa's eyes grew wide. “Worthy of me? But I'm just Pippa.”
Kafi looked down at her and cocked one brow. “And I'm a red hot god of men?”
Pippa seemed to twitch her shoulders. “Well … yeah.”
“Then you be my goddess.”
And he bent down and took her in another kiss.
But she didn't feel like a goddess. She felt so much more human than that. So deliciously human.
Chapter 49: Go Tell It in the Kitchen
As circumstance would have it, Shaun Fletcher could not stay asleep nor away from Glynis Ferry for as long as he'd predicted the night before. By 9:30, he was gliding into the kitchen from the mudroom, his boots immaculately shod of slush and snow.
As soon as Glynis saw him, she felt as aglow as Tinker Bell. And oh, how Shaun smiled when he saw her. Not a noticeable grin, but a half smile that blasted into his eyes.
“Quiet this morning,” he noted.
“Christmas Eve. We always let guests know when they book that they'll be on their own, for the most part. Fruit and bread set out for breakfast, sandwich fixings and cold salads for lunch. Paper plates and napkins and cups, though all very Christmas-themed, of course.”
“He works here, doesn't he,” observed Mrs. Browning, putting away a crock pot from the evening before. “How do you not know our Christmas protocol, Fletcher?”
“I do,” he said, smiling. “But I think Ms. Ferry likes to say it all out loud just to hear how precise and organized she is.”
“Not at all!” But Glynis's denial broke through a smile she was trying to suppress.
Mrs. Browning looked back and forth from Glynis to Fletcher. From Fletcher to Glynis. “Right.” And with that acute assessment, she took a tray of silverware to the dining room.
“So ….” Shaun began as he poured himself some coffee into a thick paper cup festooned with snowflakes. “Any chance of my laying my hands on some of that fruit and pastry?”
“Fletcher,” squawked Kendrick, zipping into the kitchen to get another armful of plates to take back to the China cabinet. “The kids were all bright as larks this morning before they left. So everything went brilliantly for the away-in-the-manger sleepover, then?”
“Perfect,” he said as Glynis set an iced bun in front of him. His eyes lit up at her subtle attention. “Cheers.” But he didn't look at her, lest he never look away. He looked toward Kendrick instead. “The lads were all spot-on, knowing they were in charge of safety with the kids being so close to the animals. And the staff working with the kids couldn't have been better.”
“And I heard you had them in stitches with a rousing round of The Minister's Cat.”
Fletcher smiled and nodded. “It's old-fashioned as can be, but it always works. It's amazing.”
Kendrick hurried out of the kitchen as quickly as he'd come in, leaving Glynis and Shaun alone.
And neither of them was either daft enough or obtuse enough to hesitate. They fell on each other, kissing like they had precious little time before the guards came to drag him back to his cell. They pulled apart just as rashly, knowing that at any minute, anyone might walk in. And as besotted as they were, there was yet decorum.
“Tonight?” he whispered.
“Counting the minutes,” Glynis whispered back as they stepped apart, mere seconds before the Lord and Lady of the Manor appeared, followed closely by Kendrick and Finola.
“It doesn't matter,” Maisy was saying as she and Mark bustled in, laden with trays of dirty breakfast dishes. “So, we won't have a bed over Christmas and we'll all be on top of one another. After Boxing Day, we have enough checkouts that we can arrange something then.”
“But maybe we can nip down to Swindon today and get a bed.”
“Oh please, Mark. Pretty please don't make me spend my first Christmas Eve at Drakenfall in Swindon.”
Glynis cleared her throat. “So, we need a bedroom for your parents, right, Maisy? We could put them in the southwest sitting room. The colours are fine and it's got its own bathroom.”
“With a shower!” Kendrick piped in. “You know, I always wondered why it had a shower, but I guess now I know.”
“Now you know?” hooted Finola. “You mean it has a shower because Maisy's parents were one day going to surprise us at Christmas?”
Kendrick thought about it. “Or some such. Yeah.”
“Okay,” Maisy said. “I agree with you all. Except you, Mark. Swindon's out. The southwest sitting room is perfect. But we don't have any extra beds. They're all in use. Unless we try to get the four poster from the attic all the way down here.”
Glynis opened her mouth to offer a solution, but before she spoke, she glanced at Shaun. He gave her the barest hint of a nod, with a bit of a shrug and an amused cast to his features.
“Well,” Glynis announced briskly. “This is all solved easily enough. Leave the four poster where it is. Mr. and Mrs. Clay can use my bed. Kendrick and Phinea
s should quite handily be able to move the mattress, box spring, and frame into the southwest sitting room in no time. I'll just need a minute to strip it of linens and we are good to go.”
“Glynis!” Maisy said, clapping her hands together, smiling brightly, ready to accept her offer in all its implications.
But at the same time, Mark spoke up. But his cry of “Glynis!” expressed not delight, but a chiding surprise that his worthy house manager would ever offer a solution so discomforting to herself.
Maisy put her hand on Mark's arm as she bit down on a smile.
But Glynis just gracefully ploughed right over his protestations with her hallmark cool efficiency. “It's all right Mark. I can make myself most comfortable in the stable flat with Shaun.”
Mark's eyes suddenly got huge, like kernels of corn that had just popped. Shaun?
“Aw, don't bunk in the stables,” Kendrick advised. “I'm sure one of the girls with a nicer place would be happy to put you up. Finola or Pippa or Eva.”
Everyone looked at Kendrick but no one chose to speak.
“Thank you, Kendrick,” Glynis finally said. “But I think I will be quite comfortable in the stables.”
“But—”
“C'mon, Kendrick.” And Finola started tugging him away by the sleeve. “We better go start getting the sitting room rearranged.”
“Right.”
And with that, Finola and the too delightful Kendrick vanished.
Shaun stood up then, taking a pear from the bowl of fruit Glynis had set on the table. “Right. I'm off.” He stopped for a fraction of a second in front of Glynis and just smiled. He turned to Lord and Lady Shiley. “Holiday dinner for the staff at eight?”
“In the parlour,” Maisy affirmed.
When Shaun went out and shut the door behind him, Maisy, brimming with delight, looked across the room. “Thank you, Glynis. Really, a perfect solution. Thank you.”
Chapter 50: On That Day Seven Years Ago
Lea ran through the wind and the thickening flurries, pulling up her hood even as gusts of snow blew under her coat and up along her naked legs.
Damn Jamie for telling her that he'd loved her for seven years before storming into frigid winter weather, into a forest of Christmas trees no less.
And she was chasing him.
Because she had to find him and sets things aright. And she had to do it now, in the icy chill, before things stretched out of retrievable shape. And froze stuck that way for the next decade.
Huffing and puffing like a cartoon dragon, Lea finally reached the stand of trees. But before charging in, she looked about for tracks of disturbed snow. But how fast was the snow falling? Surely such a trail could not yet be filled in. She headed to the right, but as she walked, she found no tracks. She turned around to retrace her steps, but the snow was coming down with dizzying speed, disorienting her. So she ploughed into the stand of giant evergreens. “Jamie,” she called. She knocked her hood off. “Jamie!” She was so cold, but she had to do this. “Jamie,” she called again.
“Lea.”
She felt his voice like an icy stream running all the way down her back. She turned around and there he was, coming around a great tree.
Lea's heart began racing. She had to fix this. To make things right. “Jamie,” she said, pulling her coat tightly around her with a shiver. “You had to come out to the North Pole.”
He smiled, his face ruddy with the cold, his hair messed by the wind. “I thought the middle of a snow squall was a good place to be alone.”
“You thought wrong.” She walked toward him. “You're wrong about something else, too. Well, not wrong. But … you don't understand. I want to ...” She stopped talking and looked around. But there were no answers anywhere. She just had to tell him. “Jamie ...”
“Lea—”
“No. Let me say this.”
“Say what?”
Lea opened her mouth. There was so much to say. How could she make him understand?
He looked away.
“Your mother got remarried!”
He looked back. “What?”
Lea swallowed. She had to keep going. She had to do this. “Your father and my mother were not nice people. But when he left you and your mum, she got remarried. You got a new father. You even got a brother and a sister out of the deal.”
“I did,” he agreed quietly.
“But all I ever had was my mother. I don't remember my father. And there was never anyone else. Just her. She was controlling and demanding, but she was all I had.”
“Lea ...”
She could feel the tears coming down her face. “You know, she used to needle your father with you. Driving in what a namby-pamby do-gooder his only son turned out to be.”
Jamie nodded. “I'm not ashamed of who I am or what I do.”
“But I am!” She wiped at the tears on her face. “Ashamed. Of who I've become. Of the things I've done and not done. Said and not said. Just to be like her. To win her approval.”
“Lea, I work at a Family Centre, but you know what? Half the people I help there have no family. I see what having no one does to people. I know how hard it can be. I don't blame you, not one bit.”
But Lea was shaking her head. “Don't you see? I chose her over you and she's not even the one I love.”
He stepped back, eyeing her as if she were a rattle snake or a rabid fox.
She took a step closer to him. “Seven years ago … you weren't the only one whose life changed the day met. God, my whole life was fast and rich and cold. And then I turned around and saw you. With these big brown eyes that just looked right at me. Like I could just jump right in and you weren't going to hurt me. But I couldn't! Not when I found out who you were. You were younger than me, still at Uni. But it was worse than that. You were Simon's ridiculous son. If I ever let it show, even a glimmer of what you made me feel, I could never look at my mother again. I could never live it down. So I spent seven years running you down. I always made sure to have someone with me if I knew I was going to see you. Nobody could ever think I would even look twice at you. And I did it all for her.”
“Lea?” And God, how he was looking at her. Confused. Hurt.
“Jamie, I'm so sorry. I spent so long convincing myself I didn't love you that I knew you could never love me. It was too late. I'd been too awful for too long. But then … last night. I hoped maybe there was a chance. I want you to give me a chance.”
“A chance?”
“To be better. I want to go after what's around the corner, what I've been letting get away from me for seven years. I want the chance to love you.”
He still held back. “You think you love me?”
She shook her head. “I know I do. I feel happy when I'm with you.”
“I'm happy when I'm with you, too.”
“I just need practice actually doing it. Actually loving you. It's not something I'm good at. I … I let people down. I need lots of practice.”
“I don't know,” he said. “You're already pretty damn good at it.”
Lea could feel herself start to smile. “I … I am?”
He stepped up to her and put his arms around her. “Yeah. If you want, I'm cool with just skipping all the practice and going right to the Crazy About Each Other part.”
“But Jamie … you barely know me. Maybe we should ...”
“Maybe we should enjoy being together and see where it takes us.”
“Really? You'd do that with me? Let me do that with you?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Jamie!” And she threw her arms around his neck, holding him tight. “Jamie. Jamie.”
He eased back from her, just enough to kiss her. He slipped his hands inside her coat as it gaped open.
“Lea!” He jumped back suddenly and looked at her for just a split second before wrapping her coat tightly around her body. “You're naked? My God, we have to get inside!” Without a second's hesitation, he took off, dragging her behind him by the hand.
<
br /> “Jamie, no one can see—”
He stopped and turned around. “You're going to get pneumonia! Are you mad? Let's go!”
And he set off again, tugging her like a sled.
“I was in a hurry!” she yelled on a laugh. “You were getting away and I had to run after you.”
“I am NOT taking the blame for this!”
Lea put on a sudden burst of speed and ran to get in front of him, turning abruptly to face him. “I'm not blaming you. I'm not. But you're right about one thing. I AM freezing.”
“Then let's go!” And he pulled at her sleeve.
“Wait! When we get back, do you think you could help me warm up, maybe?”
“What?”
“I think a hot shower might even be an order.”
Jamie considered for less than a second. “Race you.”
And they were off across the field, headed to the house.
When they got to the east entrance, Lea stopped before Jamie charged into the house. “Wait,” she said again, panting.
He turned to her. “Wait? Why?”
“We need to get your suitcase.”
“What about my suitcase?”
Chapter 51: The Magic Right Behind You
For the sixth year, ever since the Twelfth Baron Shiley had moved into Drakenfall, the staff party's festive mood was low-key and relaxed, as everyone enjoyed potluck made by the villagers and collected by Lord and Lady Shiley themselves throughout the day. While fixing an extra dish or two for a Christmas Eve dinner might have been taxing to the people of Tippingstock who had their own families, friends, employees, and flocks, Mark and Maisy ensured that such sacrifice was lavishly paid for. And as every thriving member of the living, breathing great estate of Drakenfall kicked back and enjoyed themselves, Mark and Maisy handed out the elegant envelopes with silver trim enclosing the Christmas bonuses. There was good cheer all around, and even Mr. and Mrs. Clay looked more content than Maisy could ever recall.
At half ten, Kafi sidled up to Pippa who stood laughing with Finola and Eva. He slipped his hand into hers, and a few moments later, after bundling up, they went quietly out the east door.
A Drakenfall Christmas: A Novel Page 18
