Dating Mr. December

by Phillipa Ashley

  ‘Wait! Don’t go—not like this!’

  She was in the car now as the driver revved the engine and started to pull away. As he saw her look back through the window, he was shouting at her, running hard to catch her.

  It was too late. He’d blown it again.

  ***

  There had been no need to pay the taxi driver in chocolate or alcohol. When they’d reached the flat, Emma had found real money in the purse of her work bag. No need to explain to the driver what had happened. Seeing her evening clothes and red eyes, the man had obviously put two and two together. Even if he’d made five it wouldn’t have added up to the disaster that had happened this morning.

  She’d fallen for it. The picnic, the yacht, the sunny Sunday morning coziness. The mind-blowing tender sex. Will had pulled out all the stops and without so much as a whimper of resistance she’d fallen for it.

  In fact, she’d asked for it. Actually asked him to take her home to bed and asked to be hurt. Maybe the seduction had lasted a bit longer than average for him, but he’d managed it. And now?

  She was turning into a serial victim. She must be giving off ‘hurt me—I’m a sure thing’ signals. She’d let Jeremy do it and now she’d let Will do the same. She’d thought they were so different but underneath it all they were the same.

  She needed to talk to someone—needed comfort. Jan maybe. Suzanne. Her mum. Anyone. She reached in her evening bag for her mobile and found it missing. She sighed. Well, there you are, she thought, now she needed new shoes, a new mobile—and a new attitude to men. A ‘get any closer, you ratbag, and I’ll shoot you’ attitude.

  As soon as she’d thought it, she knew it wasn’t her. It wasn’t her instinct to keep people at arm’s length. No, it was her way to trust people, to give them the benefit of the doubt. She liked people. That’s why she’d wanted the tourist board job, why she’d volunteered to help the Mountain Rescue.

  She was just way too soft and gullible.

  ***

  God almighty, what had happened here?

  Will stared in disbelief at the mess that was his bedroom. He needed his car keys and his pager and he’d found chaos. Just what had she been doing? At first he thought she’d just gone mad and trashed his room. God knows, he deserved it.

  Then he saw the paper bag with the writing and he knew.

  She’d taken Kate’s shoes—of course, Emma needed shoes; she’d left hers behind on the yacht.

  Picking up the bag, he swept the clothes off the duvet, cleared a space, and sat down, crumpling the bag up in his hands. Two years it had been, he thought in surprise, since he’d seen that bag—those sandals. He’d bought them for Kate en route to New Zealand, but in the rush of the wedding preparations he hadn’t got round to giving them to her. Then, of course, he hadn’t got around to giving them to her at all.

  The day was becoming more distant now. The once painfully perfect memory of it was beginning to blur at the edges. Even though he’d tried so many times to hear their conversation again, looking for a clue or a reason, that day was fading.

  He knew this, though: he’d been laying out his morning suit on the bed and checking that he had the rings to give to Max when it had happened. In fact, he’d thought it was Max when he heard the bell ring downstairs. It had hit him as soon as he opened the door. It was unlucky for a groom to see his bride on their wedding day, even he, without a superstitious bone in his body, knew that.

  Kate had only said four words to him before everything fell into place in one awful moment: ‘I’m so sorry, Will.’

  He remembered how he’d had to hold on to the door to steady himself as she’d tried to explain why she was leaving him. Why, at that moment, of all moments, she was walking out on him when his life with her had stretched out in front of him, shining and happy and new. She’d done it then, she said, before it was too late for all of them.

  ‘Do you still love me?’ he’d asked her, as she tried to tell him why she’d shattered his world.

  ‘I’m—I’m very fond of you…’

  She could have used any obscenity other than ‘fond,’ a word he still couldn’t bear to hear. Then he’d begged. Demanded. Shouted. But nothing would change her mind. Nothing he had could.

  When Max and his mother arrived, they found the front door wide open and a note saying he’d called off the wedding. He’d found a place few people knew. A dark and inaccessible place where he’d licked his wounds. When he got home that evening, he was a different person. One who was cautious now, to the point of obsession about ever letting anyone get close to him again—until Emma had breached his defenses.

  And as he’d predicted, it was all ending in misery again.

  Will drew his mobile from his pocket and dialed, wondering if she would answer when his name came up on the screen. The ringing made him jump. It was coming from under a pile of his clothes.

  Emma’s ring tone. Emma’s phone.

  He tracked it down to the floor by the bedside table.

  She’d left it behind in her haste to escape him. Escape him… hell, he’d really screwed her up, hadn’t he! He threw it back down on to the carpet and let it lie with all the other debris of his life.

  Stuff the phone anyway—he needed to see her and to talk to her right now. Taking the stairs two at a time, he thudded through the hall and out to the Range Rover. He was going to Emma and he was going to tell her everything.

  ***

  In the corner of Emma’s bedroom, the laptop was whirring softly. She flopped down into the chair and tapped the mouse, watching the screen flower into life. She needed human contact, a friendly face, even across cyber space, to remind her someone still cared about her. Wearily, she clicked on a message received in the early hours of the morning. Steven and Gina. Both over the moon as they told her to expect another niece or nephew by Christmas.

  Her answer to her brother’s email was the best piece of ‘spin’ she’d ever produced. She sounded happy and positive and her delight in the baby-to-be was genuine—that hadn’t needed to be faked. But the story she told him about her own weekend was a complete fabrication.

  As for the job offer, well, that was surely a no-brainer now. Leaving Bannerdale had never seemed so tempting and so unutterably awful. Hitting ‘reply,’ she started to compose her thanks to Rachel Brockhouse. This offer was too good to miss, impossible to miss, in fact. There was nothing for her here now. It was time to go back to reality and start over. She’d done it before and she could do it again.

  Then why did it have to be so very, very hard?

  ***

  That bloody stupid pager. This bloody stupid job. For the first and only time in his life, Will found himself resenting being called out on a rescue. Not even on the wettest, coldest, most awful night had he ever felt that he wanted to ignore a cry for help and tell them to find somebody else because just this once, he needed to look after himself.

  He’d actually had the keys in the ignition when the buzzing had started. The noise that meant that he wouldn’t be going to Emma. Couldn’t go. Not yet. He’d had the whole of yesterday, the whole of last night off duty at his own request. Plenty of time to impress her, seduce her, to hurt her and reject her. But there was no time now, to go to her, and tell her the truth.

  He looked at the screen and groaned. As always it said only one word: Rescue. Sitting with the engine running, he called into the base. The car phone crackled into life, Suzanne’s calm voice was unmistakable.

  ‘Will?’

  ‘Yeah. What and where?’ he barked.

  ‘Two climbers cragfast on Ravenhowe Crag. A young lad and an older girl, late teens by the sound of it.’

  ‘Exact location?’

  After a brief pause, Suzanne gave him the reference.

  ‘I’m closer than you. I’m on my way now,’ he replied curtly.

  He heard the doubt in her voice and felt angrier than ever. ‘We’ll meet you there.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘Will, is everyt
hing all right?’

  ‘Why the hell shouldn’t it be?’

  There was a long silence, then Bob’s voice, steady and calm, more like the one he used with casualties than team members. Bloody annoying, in fact.

  ‘Will, it’s me, mate. We’ll be right behind you. Wait for us on—’

  ‘Yeah—right.’ He flicked off the phone, cutting off Bob in mid-sentence.

  Too fucking right they’d be behind him, a good twenty minutes behind him. Ghyllside Cottage was way closer to Ravenhowe Crag than the base and it was a busy Sunday afternoon. Plus, he knew a back route he could take in the four-wheel drive, while the base was the wrong end of the village center.

  As he roared up the drive, sending the gravel flying, he put through a call to Max and Francine. Getting their voicemail, he left a garbled message apologizing for ruining their lunch and blaming the climbers. My God, he thought, the day was turning into a complete disaster…

  His shortcut cost him a wing mirror by the time he reached the stony pull-in at the bottom of the incident site. A brush with a dry stone wall had flipped back the mirror and shattered the glass. Fuck that. He could easily get it fixed when all this was over.

  And now he was here: Ravenhowe Crag. A safe enough climb for an experienced climber on a good day, but not a novice’s route and definitely not in these conditions. The sun had gone in and mist was swirling around the fells, obscuring the tops. It looked like summer was going into hiding again. Will tried to thrust his personal problems aside and focus on the young climbers.

  They must be terrified. A girl, barely twenty, and a teenage lad, Suzanne had said. Stuck on the cragside, too scared or inexperienced to find their way down as the weather had closed in. People had no idea how fast things could change up here. From bright and sunny to cold and wet, from a dream to a nightmare.

  He felt no resentment now. Only a sense of urgency and a need to get the job over and done with, for this was one thing he was good at. A problem that he could solve through straightforward sweat and toil and physical skill. Nowhere near as risky as trying to get Emma to trust him again.

  He jumped down from the car and glanced up at the fell tops. His T-shirt was by no means warm enough even down here. The temperature had dropped several degrees already as the clouds had come out, obscuring the sun. Several hundred feet up, it would be cold and damp and pretty unpleasant. So very different, he thought, to a few hours ago when he’d woken with Emma’s warm body next to him in bed.

  The place she should wake up every morning. He knew now, how much he needed to say it to her: wake up with me, Emma, every day. I love you.

  He pulled his jacket from the back of the car and grabbed a rucksack, ropes, first aid, and drinks. He slung the rucksack on to his shoulder and fastened up his coat. The team was right behind.

  They wouldn’t be long. They knew exactly where he’d be.

  ***

  Emma sat back in the chair in her bedroom and sucked in a long breath. Her shoulders felt stiff with tension, her head was starting to throb. How could composing a simple email be so hard? She should be turning cartwheels at the opportunity that had dropped in her lap. Not that she hadn’t earned the chance of this ticket back to London. She deserved this invitation back to civilization with its buzzing streets, decent coffee, and a taxi on every street corner… that was where she really belonged.

  Stretching her arms above her head, she read back the note she’d written. It was full of typos.

  Hi, Rahcel, thanks for your emmail,

  Fantastic news about the sponsorshpi deal. On behalf of Bannerdale MRT, please accept my thanks for your company’s generosity. I aslo want to thank your ND for the job tipoff. Yes, I’d be very interested in teh role of communications Director.

  You see, there’s this guy I’ve met up here and he’s absolutely the sexiest bloke I’ve ever known and hes a leader in the MRT and well, it’s quite simple, relly. I’ve fallen in love with him and he just doesn’t feel teh same way about me. He likes me and cares about me—he cares aboutEeveryone—but he just doesn’t want to go that extra mile for me—per se

  Let’s put it simply, Rachel. I love him but he doesn’t love me and that’s all there is to it.

  She added the last few lines with her eyes shut.

  ‘Basicly,’ she typed, ‘Id be madd to stay here and not accep your offer. I’m comigg hom …’

  Pressing her finger on the backspace key, she held it there as moisture splashed on to the keyboard. She couldn’t see properly anymore and as the tears ran down her face, she turned off the lap top, stumbled onto her bed, and gave in.

  ***

  It took Will longer than he thought to reach the crag. Maybe he was tired after last night. That made him smile. Holding Emma, making love to her, had been the sweetest pleasure. Her body was beautiful, soft and curvaceous, and her response giving and open as he’d explored every inch of her.

  That first time, when he’d thrust inside her and felt the power of her orgasm around him… Even here in the cold, when his mind should have been on them, he was aching for her. She was absolutely beautiful. Feisty and loving and courageous—not like him.

  He’d been a coward, he told himself. He’d been so intent on never getting close to someone again and so careful not to allow anyone through his armor that he’d hurt Emma. He could see that now in absolute clarity, even here in the mist. He slowed for a moment, feeling the cold damp air on his face.

  It was getting pretty rough up here, thought Will, the visibility was getting worse by the minute. As he stopped to catch his breath, a faint cry above him on the fell side made him stop and listen.

  ‘Hey there,’ he called. ‘It’s OK. I’m coming.’

  He could hear them now and he knew he was close to the crag. Quickening his stride, his long legs soon covered the stony ground on the steep hill. Suddenly the rock face loomed above him and he saw them.

  A young girl was perched on a narrow ledge, crying quietly. She was obviously terrified but that was to be expected. It was the lad with her, propped against the rock, still and silent, which worried him more.

  The girl shouted to him, ‘Please help us. My brother’s hurt himself—’

  ‘It’s OK, sweetheart, we’re coming. You’re going to be just fine. What’s your name?’ soothed Will.

  He could just hear her voice above the freshening breeze.

  ‘Charlotte, is it? And your brother’s Tom. Well, everything’s going to be all right, Charlotte. Not long now.’

  As he took off his rucksack, he carried on talking to her. ‘Keep nice and still. I’m going to help you, sweetheart.’

  Reassuring her even as he unpacked the ropes and equipment, Will felt a sense of relief that was almost palpable. This was a situation he could deal with. He knew exactly what to do. He knew the crag, had climbed here himself many times—it wasn’t even a difficult grade.

  ‘Not long now,’ he called as he heard the girl sobbing in fear and relief. ‘Soon be with you, sweetheart.’ He was almost within touching distance of her when he heard the radio buzzing down on the fell side where he’d left it. He told himself the rest of the team must be close now and so what, if just this once, he’d broken a tiny rule.

  These people needed him and so did Emma.

  ***

  Emma finally managed to haul herself into the shower as the sky opposite the window deepened from blue to indigo. She turned the jet to full and tried to pummel herself into life under the stinging spray and scour herself clean of Will’s musky scent.

  Foamy water flowed down the drain, taking away the memory of his touch and the fleeting moment of tenderness he’d shown her. She could hardly bear to look at her body, knowing what he had done to her—recalling his fingers on her skin, his mouth on her breasts, his lovemaking.

  Winding a towel around her hair, Emma grabbed a bath sheet from the hook on the door, drying her body, rubbing him away… vowing to start afresh on Monday. Where, she wasn’t certain, but one thing wa
s for sure: there would be no more Will. She would ask her boss, James Marshall, to take over the production of the calendar and she’d never see Will again.

  A dull thudding intruded through the bathroom door: the sound of footsteps on the metal staircase, followed by a loud and insistent banging on the door. Her heart started beating out a retreat. That knock. It could only be one person. The question was, did she want to answer it?

  Her hand was on the bathroom door handle. She opened it a crack and peered round the jamb into the hall. A shadowy figure was waiting on the other side of the frosted half-glass in the front door.

  ‘Emma!’

  She reached the door in two strides and pulled it open wide.

  Chapter 13

  ‘Don’t you ever answer your mobile, girl?’ Emma tried not to look disappointed as she pulled the door open wider to find Suzanne there. ‘I left it at someone’s house. I’ve only just got out of the shower.’

  ‘That much is obvious,’ said Suzanne, taking in her towel-clad figure. She knelt down as she unlaced her boots wearily at the top of the staircase. Her strawberry blond crop was sticking up at all angles around her flushed face. She was wearing the muddiest pair of boots Emma had ever seen and an expression of total fatigue.

  ‘Aren’t you going to let me in?’ she said.

  ‘Sorry, Sue, you’ll have to forgive my manners. I’m not feeling at my best right now.’

  ‘Me neither and these damn boots don’t want to come off!’

  Emma winced as one did come off. It flew off, in fact, and hit the wall, leaving a muddy mark.

  Suzanne sighed dramatically. ‘Sorry, it’s been a bad day.’

  Emma had to smile in spite of how bad she was feeling. It wasn’t often she saw Suzanne in any state other than total control. ‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘Decorating’s the least of my worries.’ Especially now I’m moving out, she might have added. Showing Suzanne through to the lounge, Emma caught sight of the rain running down the window panes. It was turning into a crappy day all round.

  Suzanne’s voice cut into her thoughts. ‘Is it all right if I sit down? I’ll try not to make a mess of your trendy sofa.’