Mistletoe Marriage (Harlequin Romance)

by Jessica Hart

  And actually, now that she looked at him properly, he did have rather an intriguing mouth. Funny that she had never noticed that before, thought Sophie. It must be something to do with all this talk about falling in love. She couldn’t remember ever noticing Bram’s mouth before. It was cool and quiet, as you might expect, but there was something about it that made her feel vaguely…what was the word? Not excited. Not definitely not that. No, disturbed. Did it make her feel just a tiny bit unsettled?

  Just the teensiest bit sexy?

  Horrified by the thought, Sophie shook the feeling aside. This was Bram. It felt all wrong to be studying him like this. She shouldn’t be thinking about his eyes, and definitely not about his mouth. Not that way, anyway.

  ‘If we were engaged you’d have the perfect excuse to stay here with me rather than at Glebe Farm at Christmas.’ Bram returned to the point of the discussion. ‘You’d still have to face Nick, of course, on your father’s birthday and at Christmas lunch, but it wouldn’t be for long. You’d be able to leave whenever you wanted, instead of having to wait for them to decide to go. We can always say that there’s a crisis here. We’re never short of those,’ he added, with a gleam of humour.

  It would be easier to get through Christmas if Bram were there, Sophie had to admit. He had a quiet self-assurance that lent him an impressive manner. Bram was never rude, never showed off and, more importantly, he never let Sophie’s mother rile him. You could always rely on him to ease an awkward silence or defuse tension with humour—qualities which were likely to come in very handy indeed at the Beckwiths’ Christmas dinner.

  His presence might make things easier for Melissa, too. Sophie was very conscious of how guilty her sister felt about the situation. Perhaps if Melissa thought that she had found happiness with Bram she would be able to relax and enjoy being married to Nick.

  And Nick? How would he feel? Would he be glad to think that Sophie had found someone else and was finally over him?

  No prizes for guessing how her mother would feel if she and Bram announced their engagement. Harriet would be delighted. Not only would she get the family Christmas she had planned, but she would have another wedding to plan in the New Year. It would be the best Christmas present Sophie could possibly give her.

  Her father would be pleased, too, to have both his daughters at his seventieth birthday party.

  Yes, it would be easier for everyone if she said that she was marrying Bram.

  But could she marry him just to make her family happy?

  Sophie turned the mug of tea between her hands.

  Could it work? What would it be like to marry Bram? She had never thought of him as anything other than a friend before. What would he be like a husband? As a lover?

  She studied him from under her lashes. His mouth was firm, cool, quiet. How would it feel against her own? What would his kiss be like? And those square, capable farmer’s hands. She had seen them gently easing a lamb into the world, running assessingly down the flank of a heifer, fixing an engine with deft fingers. She had never felt them smoothing over her skin. What would that be like?

  The very thought made her uncomfortable.

  ‘This is crazy,’ she said, embarrassed. ‘I can’t believe we’re seriously talking about getting married just to save a bit of awkwardness at the Christmas dinner table!’

  ‘I was thinking more about saving awkwardness in life generally,’ said Bram lightly, sensing that the moment had gone.

  ‘We could never go through with it,’ Sophie said, still torn.

  ‘Couldn’t we?’

  ‘No.’ Her tentative smile faded. ‘No, we couldn’t. It’s not that I can’t see the advantages, Bram. I don’t really want to go through life on my own, watching from the sidelines and wasting my time feeling bitter. Of course I don’t. But it wouldn’t be fair. I care about you too much to marry you knowing how I still feel about Nick. You deserve better than that.’

  ‘Better in what way?’ he asked wryly, surprised at the strength of his disappointment.

  It was funny. An hour ago the thought of marrying Sophie would never have crossed his mind, but now that it had it seemed like one of the best ideas he had ever had.

  ‘You deserve more than second best, Bram,’ said Sophie in a gentle voice. ‘You deserve someone who believes in you and loves you completely for yourself, and I know that you’ll meet her sooner or later. She’ll be real and warm and kind, and you’ll wonder how you could ever have loved anyone else. You’ll be her rock, and she’ll be your star, and you’ll be so happy together that you’ll wake every morning with her and be grateful to me for not marrying you now.’

  Getting up, she moved round the table until she could put her arms around him from behind and bend to kiss his cheek. ‘You’re my best friend,’ she whispered in his ear, and Bram closed his eyes briefly, shocked at the jolt of awareness he felt at her nearness and her warmth.

  ‘I know you’re just trying to find a way out for me, but you’ve got to think of yourself too. I just wish things could be different for both of us.’

  Bram put his hand up to cover hers, where they were linked on his chest, and wished that his throat didn’t suddenly feel so tight and uncomfortable.

  ‘So do I,’ he said.

  CHAPTER THREE

  HARRIET BECKWITH came out of the kitchen the moment she heard Sophie let herself in at the front door. In spite of wearing an apron and actually holding a rolling pin, she managed to look the antithesis of the clichéd farmer’s wife. No buxom figure or floury hands for Sophie’s mother. Instead she was a handsome, well-groomed woman, with every hair perfectly in place and an air of brisk competence.

  ‘Look at the state of you, Sophie!’ She tutted as Sophie took off her jacket. ‘You’re absolutely covered in mud! And as for your hair…’ She trailed off in despair. ‘I suppose you’ve been up at Haw Gill?’

  As always, she managed to make Sophie feel like a scrubby, rather exasperating schoolgirl. Sophie tried not to feel sullen and defensive in response, but it was hard sometimes to remember that she was thirty-one and not fourteen.

  ‘I thought I’d go and see Bram,’ she said placatingly.

  ‘I don’t know what on earth you two find to talk about,’ said Harriet, shaking her head.

  What would her mother say if she knew they had been talking about marriage? Sophie watched Harriet pick up the jacket she had just slung carelessly over the chair and brush it down fussily.

  Knowing her mother, she’d probably just sigh and say, Not with your hair like that, surely, Sophie?

  ‘Oh, you know—this and that,’ she answered vaguely.

  Harriet was still brushing fastidiously. ‘Where have you been in this jacket? It’s covered in dog hairs and leaves!’

  ‘That’ll be from the Land Rover,’ said Sophie. ‘Bram drove me home.’

  They had talked easily enough once they had dropped the bizarre marriage idea. Bram hadn’t tried to persuade her to change her mind, and Sophie thought that it was just as well. She had been perilously close to taking him up on his offer at one point, and, even though she was sure that she had made the right decision, she had a nasty feeling that it wouldn’t have taken much for her to give in.

  It was all just the same as ever. Or almost. Sophie had been aware of a faint constraint on the drive down to Glebe Farm. ‘I’ll maybe see you at Christmas, then,’ was all Bram had said when he dropped her off. He hadn’t asked her to think about marrying him, to take her time and maybe reconsider.

  So that was that.

  ‘I’m glad to hear that Bram didn’t let you go wandering around in the dark,’ sniffed Harriet. ‘At least he’s got some sense.’

  Bram was always sensible, always practical. Which made it all the more amazing that he would come up with that idea of getting married. He had even managed to make it sound like the obvious solution.

  ‘It’s only half past six,’ Sophie protested, following her mother into the kitchen as she tried to shake the whol
e thought of that strange proposal from her mind.

  The kitchen at Glebe Farm could not have been more different from the one at Haw Gill. In place of comfortable, shabby chairs and cluttered dressers there were gleaming steel surfaces, installed when Harriet’s catering business had begun to take off. That had now been expanded into a specially designed outbuilding, where Sophie’s mother controlled the five women from the village who helped there with the ruthless efficiency of a Harvard MBA graduate. Talk about the iron fist in the oven glove.

  ‘How is Bram getting on, anyway?’ her mother asked as she went back to rolling pastry. When Sophie tried to make pastry she got flour everywhere, but Harriet’s apron was pristine. ‘It must be difficult for him now Molly’s gone.’

  Sophie clambered awkwardly onto one of the modern stools at the breakfast bar. ‘He’s managing.’

  ‘He needs to find himself a wife.’ Intent on her pastry, Harriet didn’t notice Sophie’s instinctive start. What was this? A conspiracy? ‘I heard that Rachel took herself off to York,’ she went on, before Sophie had a chance to reply. ‘I didn’t think she’d last long.’

  ‘Mum, you hardly knew her!’

  ‘You didn’t need to know her. You just needed to look at her.’ Harriet clicked her tongue against her teeth. ‘I could have told Bram that he was wasting his time a long time ago. A city girl like that is no good to him. He needs someone who can help him make a go of that farm. There’s good land up there. He could do so much more with it.’

  Harriet was a great believer in diversification. ‘You can’t get by on farming alone nowadays,’ she would tell anyone who would listen. ‘You’ve got to try something different.’ She herself had an excellent business brain, and Sophie had often suspected that she had been bored as a farmer’s wife until yet another agricultural crisis had prompted her to set up her own catering company.

  It had been such a success that Harriet was always encouraging farmers like Bram to follow her example and branch out. She thought he should convert his steadings into holiday cottages, offer shooting weekends, or turn his lower fields into a par three golf course. She seemed frustrated that Bram was apparently content to stick with farming sheep and cattle at Haw Gill, as generations of Thoresbys had done before him.

  ‘I’m very fond of Bram,’ Harriet often said, tutting, ‘but he’s got no ambition. He’s not going anywhere.’

  But it seemed to Sophie that Bram was already exactly where he wanted to be. He had no need to go anywhere at all.

  ‘It’s just as well Melissa didn’t marry Bram,’ Harriet said now. ‘He wouldn’t have been able to offer her the kind of life she’s used to. Look at Haw Gill. That farmhouse has hardly changed in fifty years!’

  No, and as a result it was so much more comfortable than Glebe Farm, Sophie thought to herself.

  ‘Anyway, she’s much better off with Nick,’ her mother said with satisfaction. ‘His company’s doing very well, you know. He can look after her.’

  Spoil her, you mean, Sophie corrected her mother, but only mentally. She wouldn’t waste her breath saying it out loud.

  ‘Melissa and Bram were far too young to get engaged.’ Harriet continued her train of thought. ‘Your father said so at the time, and he was right. It would never have worked. But it was a shame for Bram. I do wonder sometimes if he’s still got a soft spot for Melissa. He never seems to have got close to settling down with anyone else. It does seem a waste. He’s a nice young man.’

  Bram was more than nice, thought Sophie, vaguely aggrieved but not quite sure why. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t always known that Bram was in love with Melissa.

  ‘Did he tell you about Vicky Manning?’ her mother was asking, laying the circle of pastry over a pie dish. She cut off the excess with a few swift, clean movements and began knocking up the edges with the back of the knife.

  ‘No.’ Sophie was surprised at the apparent non sequitur. Vicky had been in the year below her at school. She was a plump, pretty girl, nice enough, but a bit wishy-washy in Sophie’s opinion. ‘What about her?’

  ‘She was supposed to be getting married in less than a month,’ Harriet told her. ‘They’d booked that hotel over Whitby way. Her dress was made and the invitations had gone out and everything, and then her fiancé Keith lost his nerve and called the whole thing off! He’s gone off to Manchester to get a job, and Vicky’s been left to pick up all the pieces. She devastated, apparently.’

  ‘Oh, poor thing!’ Vicky might not be the most interesting person in the world, but no one deserved to be treated like that. Sophie knew how Vicky must feel. She might not have got as far as sending out invitations or choosing a dress herself, but that didn’t make the rejection and humiliation any easier to bear. ‘I’m really sorry,’ she said sincerely.

  ‘It’s hard on her,’ Harriet agreed, ‘but I dare say it’s all for the best. According to Maggie, Keith was always going on about how boring it was up here, and hankering after the bright lights, but Vicky wouldn’t have wanted to move. She’s a real country girl.’

  She checked the temperature on the oven, put in the pie and closed the door, wiping her hands on a teatowel. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if she ended up with Bram,’ she said.

  ‘Bram?’ Sophie sat up straight on her stool, outraged. ‘Vicky’s not the right girl for Bram!’

  ‘Well, I don’t know…’ Harriet considered the matter as she wiped down the work surface. ‘She could do with losing a bit of weight, but she’s got a sweet little face and she’s a hard worker. She’s grown up on the moors, too. I think she would make a good farmer’s wife.’

  ‘Maybe, but not Bram’s,’ said Sophie stubbornly.

  ‘Beggars can’t be choosers,’ said Harriet. ‘There aren’t that many suitable girls around here. Bram will need to settle down soon, if he wants to have children. He’s certainly not getting any younger.’

  And neither are you. Sophie didn’t know why her mother didn’t say it out loud.

  ‘Bram’s only thirty-two, Mother. He’s not exactly decrepit!’

  ‘He’ll need to be getting on with it,’ said Harriet firmly. ‘I don’t know why you’re all so picky nowadays. If you wait too long for someone perfect, you’ll have lost your chance. Look at you and that Rob,’ she went on in an aggrieved tone. ‘He sounded so nice, and all you can say is that it didn’t feel right.’

  Sophie sighed. She didn’t want to start this argument again. ‘It didn’t feel right, Mum. You can’t marry someone just because they’re available and you’re not sure if you’ll find anyone better! And now I’ve met someone else. I told you that.’

  Her mind flashed to Bram, and she thought about what he’d said. What would it be like to be able to say, Look, it’s Bram, Mum. We’re in love and we’re going to get married! What would her mother say? Would she believe it?

  Not that she could say that now. They had decided it was impossible.

  As it was. Quite impossible.

  So impossible she really had to stop thinking about it.

  Her mother was not to be convinced. ‘And how do you know this secret someone is going to be any better than Rob?’ she demanded, checking the pots that were boiling on the stove and banging down the lids with unnecessary force.

  ‘He might be.’

  ‘Well, if he can’t even bring himself to reveal his name, I don’t suppose he’ll be committing himself to Christmas,’ said Harriet, and something in her voice told Sophie that a dose of emotional blackmail was coming up.

  She sighed inwardly. ‘We haven’t talked about Christmas yet.’

  ‘Because if he can’t make it—and I’m sure he’ll have his own family to go to—I thought I might ask Bram to Christmas lunch. He’s practically family anyway, and I don’t like the idea of him being on his own at Christmas.’

  This was a change of tack. Sophie looked at her mother suspiciously, unsure what was coming next. ‘I thought you’d have him married off to Vicky Manning by Christmas?’

  ‘Don’t be
silly, dear. It would be much too soon for that. No, this will be Bram’s first Christmas without Molly, and I think we should look after him. I’m sure he’d like to see you. You’re such good friends, after all.’

  She paused. ‘Of course it wouldn’t be much fun for him if you weren’t here,’ she continued airily. ‘Nick and Melissa can be a bit lovey-dovey sometimes, and he wouldn’t want to feel a gooseberry—especially if he is still hankering after Melissa.’

  Ah, there it was! Sophie had no trouble interpreting the subtext to this one. By refusing to come home for Christmas Sophie would not only be heartlessly denying her potentially frail father the pleasure of a last Christmas in the family home, but she would also be condemning Bram to a solitary Yuletide celebration with only his grief for company.

  Her ‘frail’ father had spent the day bringing sheep down off the moor, and at breakfast he had looked in rude health, but Sophie had already made the decision to come home to celebrate his birthday. Which meant staying for Christmas, too.

  But she might not dread it quite so much if she had Bram there for moral support. Why not let her mother think that she had successfully blackmailed her into Christmas at last?

  ‘That sounds a great idea, Mum,’ she said. ‘Of course I’ll come.’

  Sophie turned up her collar against the November drizzle and left the shelter of the tube station to walk back to her flat, feeling depressed. She was now officially without a job—and, more to the point, without an income. The rent was due at the end of the month and she had no idea how she was going to pay it.

  She couldn’t say that the redundancy was unexpected. They had all known that the axe was going to fall sooner or later, and the atmosphere in the office had been tense, to say the least, for some time now. Sophie wasn’t the first person to lose their job, and she wouldn’t be the last.

  It wasn’t as if it had broken her heart to leave either. Selling insurance for computing systems had to be the dullest of jobs. Maybe some of her colleagues found it fascinating, Sophie acknowledged fairly, but with her dreams of making it as a successful potter it had been dreary work.