The Christmas Marriage Mission

by Helen Brooks

  When the telephone rang she nearly jumped out of her skin, the book on her lap falling to the floor as she hastily reached for the receiver. ‘Hallo?’

  ‘Missing me?’

  She nearly dropped the phone, her heart beginning to thunder. ‘Mitchell?’ she said weakly.

  ‘I hope there’s not another man in your life with the right to ask you if you’re missing him,’ he said softly, his voice full of laughter. ‘So, are you?’

  ‘What?’ Her brain wouldn’t function.

  ‘Missing me.’

  ‘Are you missing me?’ she prevaricated. ‘ ‘Like hell.’ There was no hesitation.

  ‘Well, I’m missing you too.’ What else could she say? she asked herself helplessly. Besides, it was the truth.

  ‘Good.’ She could tell he was smiling. ‘Very good.’

  There was a pause while Kay tried to steady her breathing and gain control of her rapid heartbeat. ‘Where are you phoning from?’ she asked quietly, hoping the trembling in her stomach didn’t communicate itself to her voice.

  ‘A hotel I use when I’m down here.’ It was offhand and stated he didn’t want to talk about his bed for the night.

  ‘How were things when you arrived? As bad as you expected?’

  ‘Worse.’ She could hear the irritation in his voice as he thought of it and didn’t envy the unfortunate Holden one little bit. ‘Looks like I’ll be a day or two at least trying to sort out the damn mess.’ His voice changed. ‘Think you can manage without me that long?’ he asked softly.

  ‘I’ll just have to try, won’t I?’ she said lightly, having gained control of her equilibrium after the shock of hearing his voice.

  ‘Don’t try too hard.’

  It wouldn’t matter how hard she tried, she thought ruefully. He was the most fascinating man she had ever met—exciting, sexy, funny, handsome and she loved him to bits. She had never dreamt it was possible to be so captivated by another human being. So, all that being the case, what chance did she have of trying to squeeze him out of her life in a couple of days? It was going to take far, far longer than that, and buckets full of tears. ‘You should be pleased I can manage without you,’ she said levelly. ‘No snares, no promises, right?’

  ‘Modern woman.’ There was a note in his voice she couldn’t quite place and she wrinkled her nose as she tried to discern it.

  ‘Exactly,’ she agreed.

  There was another pause. A second passed, then another and another. ‘You can be too modern, you know,’ he said with faint emphasis.

  ‘I didn’t know,’ she said, still in a light tone. Keep it nice and easy, Kay, she thought as her heart raced.

  ‘Neither did I until recently.’

  She didn’t know what to say or how to interpret the meaning of his words. Riddles, things half said, it was always the same. She never knew if she was on foot or horseback.

  ‘How are the twins?’ he asked in a different tone of voice entirely.

  ‘Fine. Tired out. They spent ages arranging all the furniture in the doll’s house after they’d decided where they wanted it in their bedroom. Big decision between on the floor next to the bookcase so they could lie on the carpet and play with it, or on the dressing table so they could sit on the stool. Georgia wanted the floor, Emily wanted the dressing table. I let them sort it out.’

  ‘I bet I know who won,’ he said wryly.

  ‘No prizes, it was Georgia,’ Kay admitted.

  ‘She’s nearly as strong-willed as her mother.’ The smile in his voice softened any sting in the words.

  Nevertheless, Kay felt compelled to protest, ‘Strong will isn’t a bad thing, surely?’

  ‘No, unless…’

  ‘Unless what?’

  ‘It stops someone seeing what’s under their nose.’

  She blinked, completely taken aback.

  ‘Goodnight, Kay,’ he said smokily. ‘Dream of me.’

  This time she couldn’t come back with the sarcasm she’d used the last time he had said the same words. She swallowed hard. ‘Goodnight, Mitchell.’

  She stood staring across the room with the telephone in her hands for some time after the line had gone dead, until it bleeped loudly at her. She replaced it slowly, her head spinning, and then reached for the glass of wine and drank the whole glassful straight down, whereupon she walked into the kitchen and poured herself another.

  After reseating herself in front of the fire with the book on her lap again, she took another hefty sip of wine. If ever she needed a drink it was tonight, she thought ruefully. What was she going to do? Every time she made a conscious decision to withdraw it was as though he reached out and pulled her closer to him.

  What did he want? Really want? With his strange, grim background and meteoric success, which had brought him wealth and power, what did he really want? Did he know himself? He had set the boundaries of their relationship in concrete at the beginning of it all, and he hadn’t said anything specific to indicate he had changed. She would be crazy to hope that a few shrouded words and the odd glance might suggest she meant more to him than all the others. It wasn’t even as if she had the sexual skills, the worldly knowledge, the sheer ‘it’ factor of his exes—not to mention the women he met socially and in business all the time.

  Jealousy streaked through her and she clenched her stomach against it, telling herself not to be so stupid. She shut her eyes, relaxing into the plumpy back of the sofa. He was in some anonymous hotel room right now—probably very luxurious, with everything he wanted at his fingertips, but characterless none the less. She wished she were with him; she wished it so much it was a physical ache in the essence of her.

  CHAPTER TEN

  MITCHELL wasn’t due back until Monday some time, but he phoned Kay on Friday and Saturday night. Not for anything would she have admitted to a living soul that she was on tenterhooks all day long, every nerve and fibre in her body longing to hear his voice.

  She’d got it bad, she told herself helplessly when, at three o’clock on Sunday morning, she still hadn’t been able to drift off to sleep. And it scared her to death. Scared her witless, in fact. Which was what she was—witless, crazy, off her trolley, stark, staring and completely mad.

  She sat up in bed, brushing her hair out of her eyes before throwing the duvet to one side and swinging her legs onto the floor. After reaching for her robe she slid her feet into her slippers and silently left the bedroom. Her mother was fast asleep; Leonora had spent the day with Henry and hadn’t arrived home until gone eleven o’clock, whereupon Kay had noticed she was flushed and happy with the kind of rosy glow that suggested the day had gone extremely well.

  Once downstairs she fixed herself a mug of hot milk sweetened with honey and carried it through into the sitting room, not bothering to turn on the light. There was a full moon slanting in through the windows and, with the glow of the dying fire in the grate, she could see enough.

  She curled up on the sofa, cradling the warm mug as she sipped at the drink, and when it was finished she snuggled down, pulling her robe about her. Maybe she could sleep down here? she thought drowsily. She was tired, exhausted in fact, but for some reason the bedroom she had shared with her mother for the last few years had become claustrophobic the last day or two. Or perhaps it was just the fact that she had always been asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow in the past?

  She must have fallen asleep because when the noise awoke her she was conscious of spiralling up from a deep, warm place where she’d been dreaming of Mitchell.

  She was curled up in a little ball on the sofa in front of the now-dead fire and it still wasn’t light, the moonlight causing dancing shadows to flicker across the room from the bare branches of the tree outside. Kay raised her head, peering over the back of the sofa towards the window as the noise—a kind of scratchy, fumbling sound—came again.

  Afterwards she could never explain why she hadn’t been frightened up to that point, but she hadn’t. Maybe because the cat from across the way of
ten prowled into their garden at night, or because she was still more asleep than awake, she didn’t know, but in the same moment that a swirl of icy cold air met her face she saw the outlines of two men at the now-open window.

  In the few seconds that she remained frozen with fear one of the men levered himself up onto the window sill, putting one leg into the room, and all the movements as silent as a cat.

  The shrillness of Kay’s scream, when it came, surprised even her, and after that several things seemed to happen all at the same time. She was aware of ducking down on the sofa and reaching for the poker in the grate, at the same time as she heard one of the men—the one inside the room, she thought—swear profusely and the other one say something urgently, although she couldn’t work out what it was.

  There was the sound of breaking glass, noise and scurry, but as the landing light went on and Leonora called, ‘Kay? Kay, what’s happening?’ in a voice filled with terror, Kay knew they had gone.

  ‘Stay with the girls,’ she called urgently to her mother, rushing across to the light switch. ‘I’m going to call the police. We’ve had some intruders.’

  ‘Intruders? Oh, Kay, Kay! Are you hurt?’ It sounded as though her mother was going into hysterics, but when the twins called from their bedroom Leonora’s voice was more controlled as she answered, ‘I’m coming, dears, don’t worry. Everything’s all right.’

  ‘Keep them up there,’ Kay warned as she dialled. ‘I don’t want them down here.’ She was still gripping the poker and she knew she would have no compunction about using it should the men come back. ‘I’m perfectly all right; they didn’t touch me.’

  In the few minutes in which it took the two young policemen to arrive, Kay stood by the phone without moving. She could see now the burglar who had been inside must have broken the window in his haste to escape, along with a heavy glass vase that had been on the window sill. She was shaking, her teeth chattering, as much from reaction as the freezing air swirling into the room.

  They had been trying to invade her house, and with her babies asleep upstairs. She felt such a sickening mixture of shock and rage it made her legs tremble. How dared they?

  When she heard the car draw up outside, she forced herself to walk to the front door and open it, her face ashen. The two policemen were wonderful, another car—this time with a female police officer—arriving moments later. While one of the policemen took a statement, the other searched the garden outside, but Kay had already told them she was sure the men had gone.

  The woman police officer went upstairs to talk to Leonora, returning shortly and smiling at Kay as she said, ‘You’ve got two lovely little girls.’

  Yes, she had, and those men would have been here, in the same house with her precious babies. By rights she should have been asleep upstairs, Kay thought sickly. That was what they’d expected.

  The police woman must have seen in her face what she was thinking because now she said briskly, ‘A cup of tea, I think.’

  It was a long night, but by the time a weak and windy dawn began to banish the darkness the police had gone through the wreckage with a fine-tooth comb, dusting and sorting and even finding a piece of glass with some blood on it.

  ‘One of ’em cut themselves,’ the policeman said with a great deal of satisfaction. ‘Nice of ‘em to leave a calling card. We might well find we’ve got this one on file.’

  Her mother and the twins had come downstairs at some point, the children’s curiosity overwhelming, but Kay was pleased and relieved to find both Georgia and Emily didn’t really seem aware of the significance of what had happened. They had clung to her a while at first, and neat, tidy little Emily had been indignant about all the mess, but there had been no tears. It had been too cold for them to remain downstairs, and her mother had reported both girls were asleep within ten minutes or so once they’d been tucked up back in bed.

  ‘Are you sure we can’t call your brother or someone else, a friend maybe, before we leave, Mrs Sherwood?’ the woman police officer had asked, once they had done all they could. One of the policemen had stuck a large piece of cardboard across the hole in the window, but the room was still icy.

  Kay shook her head. ‘No need to disturb anyone now,’ she said quietly. It was still only seven o’clock. ‘Time enough for that later.’

  ‘I’m ringing Henry.’ The police officers were hardly out of the door when Leonora picked up the telephone. ‘He always rises at six and he’d want to know.’

  More like her mother was longing to tell him, Kay thought indulgently. But she didn’t mind. If she was honest her first coherent thought when she’d been waiting for the police to arrive had been an intense desire to be able to talk to Mitchell.

  Her mother was a little deflated when the answer machine cut in after she had dialled the number, but, assuming Henry was down at the lake feeding the ducks their normal hearty breakfast, she left a message and hung up.

  Once Kay had showered and dressed she felt better, although the white face staring back at her from the mirror still looked like death warmed up. Coffee. Lots of strong, sweet coffee before the girls woke up, she thought practically. Those men, whoever they were, weren’t going to get the better of her. She wouldn’t let them frighten her, not in her own house.

  She put the coffee on to percolate while her mother went upstairs to wash and dress, and was just checking every tiny piece of glass had gone when she heard a car screech to a halt outside. Henry, bless him. He’d obviously heard her mother’s message and come flying over in person, rather than ringing back.

  She got up from her knees and walked to the front door. They had closed the curtains earlier, hoping it would help to warm the room a little, but it was still icy cold, despite the heating being on. She didn’t wait for Henry to knock, opening the door with a smile of welcome, which remained fixed in surprise when she found herself looking into a pair of silver-blue eyes set in an ominously dark face as Mitchell strode up the path, Henry following some yards behind.

  ‘Are you all right?’ He didn’t wait for her to speak, taking her into his arms as he reached her and holding her so tight she couldn’t breathe. ‘I’ll tear them limb from limb, I swear it.’

  ‘Mitchell, Mitchell.’ She had to struggle to become free, but when she saw the look on his face her voice gentled. ‘I’m fine, I am,’ she said quickly. ‘No one was hurt—no one but one of the burglars, anyway.’

  She had stepped backwards into the sitting room as she’d spoken, the two men following her, but as Henry shut the door Mitchell pulled her to him again, his voice hoarse as he murmured, ‘I’d have killed them if they’d hurt a hair on your head. Damn it, I should have been here.’

  She understood immediately. Her hand lifted to his face and he grabbed it and held it there as she said, ‘No, you shouldn’t, of course you shouldn’t. You can’t be everywhere,’ knowing that old ghosts had been resurrected and the torment of his sister’s death was heavy on his shoulders.

  Henry was standing silently behind them, his face grim, and now Kay said, ‘Mum’s getting dressed, Henry, but there’s coffee on the go in the kitchen if you’d like to take charge. And don’t you look like that either—we really are all right.’

  ‘Kay, Kay…’ As Henry disappeared into the other room Mitchell’s hands moved to cradle her face, his lips desperate as they bruised hers in an agony of fear at what might have been. ‘Are the twins okay? How badly were they frightened?’

  She loved that he’d thought of the girls. ‘They’re too young to really realise what’s happened,’ she said softly, her lips tingling and burning. ‘I’m not sure how they’ll be today, but they’re still asleep so that’s a good sign.’

  ‘When I think what could have happened—’

  ‘Don’t.’ She cut off his voice by putting a finger to his lips. ‘The police think they are just two petty thieves who have been working this area, apparently. They break in at night and go for things like the TV and video, but they’re not violent. One of them c
ut themselves on the window, they were so desperate to get away when I screamed.’

  ‘You screamed?’ His face went greyer. ‘Damn it, Kay, I want to do murder.’

  Kay thought he needed a cup of coffee more than she did. She pulled him over to the sofa and when they were both sitting down, his arm enclosing her, she said, after they had kissed again, ‘What are you doing here? I didn’t think you got back until this afternoon?’

  ‘I worked through the night and made the others do the same,’ he said grimly, ‘and caught the early train this morning. Henry was collecting me from the station when your mother called.’

  ‘You worked through the night? Why?’

  ‘Because I wanted to see you as soon as possible,’ he said simply.

  Her heart leapt and then began to pound.

  ‘We need to talk, Kay. I can’t go on like this,’ he said softly, ‘but now is not the time. Later.’

  She stared at him, doubt mixing with exhilaration. Was this his way of telling her she had to make a decision about the future? Accept his terms or else? The ‘iron fist in the velvet glove’ approach? She didn’t know; she just didn’t know. How could you ever read Mitchell’s mind?

  ‘Tell me exactly what happened here, Kay,’ he said quietly as Henry appeared from the kitchen with a tray holding the coffee. ‘Minute by minute.’

  Her mother appeared at the top of the stairs just as she began to relate the story, and Kay was left in no doubt as to Henry’s feelings for her mother—or her mother’s for Henry, come to that—by the exchange between the couple.

  Once they were all sitting down, Kay told the two men everything that had happened before they transferred to the kitchen for toast and marmalade and more coffee.

  Kay was beginning to feel panicky about what was to come. Mitchell was thoroughly in control of himself again, his brief glitch when he’d first arrived gone as completely as if it had never happened at all. He was attentive, considerate, but his eyes were veiled against her and his face was giving nothing away. She knew all over again that she just didn’t understand what made him tick. But he had come, she told herself feverishly. He had rushed here to her side when he’d thought she needed him. That had to mean something, didn’t it?