Kiss Me Under the Mistletoe

She looked him up and down and then the door inched wider. ‘Wait here and I’ll get the key.’

The key? It had never been locked before. But he supposed if he’d have found a stranger lurking in his greenhouse, he’d have been tempted to lock it too.

A couple of minutes passed and Ben stepped out of the porch and onto the gravel drive, the crunch underneath his boots deafening in the still of the autumn morning. Louise Thornton reappeared just as he’d managed to find himself a spot where the pebbles didn’t shift underneath him. Her long, dark hair was scooped back into a ponytail, but the ever-present fringe left her face half-hidden. In her jeans and a pullover she should have looked like any other of the young mothers who stood outside the school gates.

He followed her up the hill, round the house to the top lawn. When she moved, her actions were small, precise, as if she didn’t want to be accused of taking up too much space. Megan and all her friends had reached an age where their body language spoke of a certain confidence, a certain comfort in their own skin. This woman had none of that, despite her high-gloss lifestyle and multi-million pound bank account.

Once again he felt an unwelcome twinge. He fought the urge to catch up with her, to tell her that it would get better one day, that there was life after divorce. But, since he’d become a cliché by burying himself in his work and, therefore, wasn’t a glowing example of man with an active social life, he thought it was better if he kept his mouth shut.

She unlocked the greenhouse door, then stood well back, giving him plenty of room to pass through. She didn’t stay outside, though. He heard her footsteps on the tiled floor of the greenhouse behind him and, when he looked over his shoulder, she was watching him suspiciously.

The wallet was right where he’d remembered it was, tucked slightly out of sight next to a plant pot. He picked it up, jammed it into his jacket pocket, then stooped to pick up the plant that had been a casualty of yesterday’s meeting. He’d forgotten all about it after Louise Thornton had appeared.

Carefully, he placed it back on the shelf and pressed the compost down with his fingertips. Despite his ministrations, the slender pitchers pointed at an odd angle. He would have to bring a cane from home and …

No. There would be no canes from home. Not any more.

He stepped back and indicated the listing plant. ‘This needs a cane. There might be one around here somewhere—’ Down the other end was a likely place. He started to walk in that direction, checking behind pots and peering under the bench as he went.

‘Why should you care?’

That kind of question didn’t even warrant turning round to answer it. He carried on searching. ‘It’s a beautiful plant. It would be a shame to leave it to die.’

Once again he heard footsteps. Just a handful, enough for her to have stepped further into the greenhouse. He found what he was looking for—a small green cane—hidden between the window sill and a row of pots. He picked it up, careful not to send anything else flying, and turned to find her fingering the delicate cream and purple foliage of the ailing Sarracenia.

‘Then you really are a gardener?’

He moved past her, retrieved a roll of garden wire from a hook near the door and returned to the plant, unwinding a length as he walked. ‘You think I like to play in the dirt for fun?’

She remained silent, watching him fashion a loop of wire wide enough to help the plant stand up without pinching it to the cane. When he’d finished, and the little plant was straining heavenwards once again, she took a few steps backwards.

‘Most men are big kids. So it’s entirely possible you play in the dirt for fun.’ There was a dry humour behind her words that took the edge off them.

His lips didn’t actually curve but there was a hint of a smile in his voice when he answered. ‘It is fun. The earth feels good beneath my fingertips.’ She raised an eyebrow, clearly unconvinced. He’d bet she’d never hadn’t had dirt underneath fingernails in her life. And he’d bet her life was poorer for it.

‘Gardening brings a sense of achievement.’ He fiddled with the stake and wire loop around the Sarracenia until it was just so. ‘You can’t control the plants. You just tend them, give them what they need until they become what they should.’

She broke eye contact and let her gaze wander over the plants nearest to her. ‘These don’t look like they’re becoming much. Aren’t you a very good gardener?’

He fought back the urge to laugh out loud. ‘They’re in their dormant phase. They’ll perk up again, when the conditions are right.’ He stood looking at her for a few seconds as she stared out into the gardens. ‘Well, I’ve got what I came for. I’ll be going now—as promised. I did say I was one not to break a promise, didn’t I?’

He took a few long strides past her, breathed out and opened the greenhouse door. He was halfway across the lawn before she shouted after him.

‘Then promise to come again.’

Ben didn’t want to turn round. He’d told himself he wouldn’t respond this time. After all, he’d had enough of high-maintenance women. But …

She stood on the lawn watching him, her hair whipped across her face by another surly gust of wind. Once again, her eyes held him captive. Not for their dark beauty, but because something deep inside them seemed to be pleading with him. His friends had told him he was a sucker for a damsel in distress, and he’d always denied it, but he had the awful feeling they might be right. Hadn’t he tried—unsuccessfully—to rescue Megan?

Louise tugged a strand of chocolate-brown hair out of her mouth. ‘The garden. It does need looking after. You’re right. It would be a shame to …’

Once again, the eyes pleaded. He should have a sign made, reading ‘sucker’, and just slap it on his forehead.

He’d do it. But not for her. For Laura. Just until he was sure this new owner was going to care for the place properly. And then he’d pass it on to one of his landscaping teams and charge her handsomely for the privilege. After all, he reminded himself, life was complicated enough already without looking after somebody else’s garden.

Or somebody else’s wife.

CHAPTER SIX

11th June, 1952

It was both better and worse than I’d feared.

Today we finally shot the scene in the boathouse—the one I’d both been anticipating and dreading. The basic story was this …

Charity had realised she was utterly in love with Richard, but his parents announce his engagement to the highly suitable Margaret. Heartbroken, she runs through the woods on a glorious summer afternoon and hides away in the cool of the boathouse, the one place she can be alone and think of him.

He comes to find her.

She’s on the balcony, crying, and he pulls her into his arms and kisses her tears away. It’s the first time she knows he feels the same. Before then he’s been trying to keep the peace with his parents, despite their growing attraction, but when they push the engagement issue, it makes him realise what he really wants. Who he really wants.

Thank goodness for incompetent sound recordists, that’s all I can say.

Just like that first time, we might have only needed one take otherwise. I forgot to fake it totally, thereby giving Sam exactly what he wanted. Dominic came towards me. I could hardly see him through the glycerine the make-up woman had put round my eyes, but I didn’t need to see much. Just the look in his eyes.

Whether it was Richard’s eyes or Dominic’s I wasn’t sure at first.

I shook. Literally felt myself rattle in my shoes when his lips first touched mine. It was what I’d always thought kissing should be like.

When I kiss Alex, it’s different. At first it was nice. Warm. Comforting. Now I do it because I think I ought to, because it’s what husbands and wives are supposed to do. I’m not even sure Alex notices the difference. Maybe that’s because he always seems to be in such a rush.

Dominic wasn’t in a rush.

He was soft, gentle. Patient. I know it was all supposed to be about Richard and how he felt about Charity, but I couldn’t help feeling as if he was gently reaching inside me to see what no one else has ever seen before. All the bits I hide. All the bits that are too precious to let anyone see. It was utterly, utterly bewitching.

I fluffed the next three takes on purpose.

But then I think Sam got wise to me. He gave me one of his looks. The ones I’ve learned to pay attention to. It doesn’t do to cheese the great Samuel Harman off, not if you want a career that lasts longer than a fortnight, so I steeled myself to make the last take count.

Dominic walked onto the balcony, placed his hands on my shoulders and turned me to face him. The shaking started again. I couldn’t help it. This was going to be it—the take Sam wanted, and my very last kiss with a man who felt like my perfect match. It was almost too much. I nearly fluffed it for real.

He stared down at me, looked deep into my eyes in a way that made my insides both churn and come to rest at the same time. I felt as if I was flying. And then he pressed the softest of kisses to my eyelids. I hung onto him, taking all I could. Giving everything back.

And then his lips were on mine. Sweet, sweet heaven. I started crying for real. No need for the glycerine.

And then something wonderful happened. Dominic had been leaning against the balcony, pulling me close against him, and he lost his balance, stumbled slightly because of the way he’d turned his body to kiss me more deeply. I knew the camera was in really close on us, and I heard Sam swear when we both lurched out of shot.

‘Cut!’ he yelled, and Dominic and I broke apart.

I looked up at him and I thought my heart was going to pop right out of my chest.

‘Sorry,’ he said, but there was a glimmer of humour in his eyes, a sense of being co-conspirators in some wonderful secret.

And that’s when I realised that Dominic Blake had messed up on purpose.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Louise watched Ben go. She kept watching until long after his tall frame disappeared round the side of the house into a tangle of grass and shrubs and trees that were now, technically, her back garden. Not that she’d had the courage to explore it fully yet.

She forced herself to turn away and look back at the greenhouse.

Was she mad? Quite possibly.

In all seriousness, she’d just given a man she knew nothing about permission to invade her territory on a regular basis. Yet … there’d been something so preposterously truthful about his story and so refreshingly straightforward about his manner that she’d swallowed it whole. Next time she’d have to frisk him for a long-lens camera and a dictaphone, just in case.

She’d left the greenhouse door open. Slowly, she closed the distance to the heavy Victorian glazed door, with its beautiful brass handle and peeling, off-white paint. On a whim, she stepped inside before she closed the door and stood for a few moments in the warm dampness. It smelled good in here, of earth and still air, but very real. She liked real.

The assorted plants lining the shelves by the windows really were quite exquisite. She’d never seen anything like them. Venus fly-traps sat next to frilly, sticky-looking things in shades of pink and purple.

She walked over to the little plant that the gardener had saved. She felt an affinity with this little plant, recently uprooted, thin, fragile. Now in a foreign climate, reaching hungrily heavenwards with an appetite that might never be satisfied. She reached out and touched the soil at its base. It did feel good. She pulled her hand away, but didn’t wipe it on the back of her jeans.

Near the door were the stubby, brown plants that had started to hibernate. Just like her. All those years with Toby now seemed like a time half-asleep. Her mind wandered to a photo of a famous actress who had graced the pages of all the gossip magazines a few years ago. She’d been snapped whooping for joy when the papers finalising her divorce had arrived. Since then she’d lost twenty pounds, received two Oscars and had been seen with a string of hot-looking younger men.

Louise frowned. Shouldn’t this be the time when she blossomed, came into her own? She paused for a moment, tried to search deep inside herself for the first signs of germination, but she was afraid she’d be waiting a very long time. She still felt numb inside.

She turned and exited the greenhouse, closing the door behind her and marched back down the path to her new home. Once the house was sorted, she’d feel better. She’d already talked to a team of decorators who could make her vision for this old house come alive. But what she really wanted more than anything was to find some pictures of how it had been in the past, so she could take the best elements of its history and mix them with her own unique stamp.

Surely there were photos somewhere she could look at? Once she’d had a cup of tea, she’d rifle through all the forgotten cupboards and attics of the vast old house and see if she could find a photo, or some papers—something—that would help her bring this house back to life.

Louise might still be hibernating, but she had a feeling Whitehaven was ready to wake up.

It seemed odd to have so much noise and movement in the house after a couple of weeks of solitary occupation and silence. The structure of the house was sound, but it needed a little TLC. The outside was worse than the inside, having had to brave a few winters high up on a hill above a salty tidal river. Nothing a little skilled work wouldn’t fix, though.

At first Louise stayed on hand to oversee the repairs and redecoration work. When she wasn’t needed, she hunted through the forgotten spaces of Whitehaven, looking for any clues to the house’s past. She found old newspapers and some electricity bills from a decade ago, but nothing that got to the heart of the lovely old mansion.

In the end she took refuge from the muddy boots, the endless tea-making, and took herself off down to the boathouse. That was also somewhere that could do with a bit of a spruce-up, but she’d already decided it was a project she would handle personally. If all those women on the decorating shows on telly could wield a paintbrush, then so could she. And, if she got it all wrong, then she would be the only person to see it, because this was her place, her sanctuary.

Louise wasn’t scared of a bit of hard work. She’d done plenty while she’d been raising her brothers and sisters and looking after her dad. But she’d felt trapped by it, as if it were a prison sentence stretching into the future. Cleaning up the boathouse was different. It was her choice, and she found that instead of being draining and weary, scrubbing down the walls and making every last inch shine was energising. She surprised herself with how long she kept going the first day.

Even more, she surprised herself by arriving early the next morning again—flask of tea in hand, and a book to read when she took a break—ready to start again. Halfway through the morning she turned her attention to the fireplace. It was a Victorian design: cast iron holding tiled inserts with a wooden surround and a firestone cut into the floorboards. She decided to take the thick layer of dust off first, then she’d be able to work out what kind of cleaning materials she could use on the tiles without damaging them. She didn’t want to rub the hand-painted blue flowers off their white background with one pump of cleaning spray.

This wasn’t normal dust, she realised, as she passed the duster over it. It didn’t fluff and fly off like normal stuff. It seemed to be welded on. She rubbed a little harder, trying to dislodge some of the stubbornly clinging dirt, trying hard not to think about what the ingredients might be to make it stick that way.

She must have been rubbing harder than she’d realised, because suddenly the second tile down in the vertical strip of four gave way and her hand hit the wall behind. Her heart pounded. Had she broken the tile? If she had, she had no idea if she’d ever be able to match it again. But she hadn’t heard a crashing noise, just a dull clang as it had fallen down behind the tiles below it. She moved closer to the fireplace and dipped most of her forearm down into the hole. Her fingers reached and flexed trying to find a hard ceramic edge. Perhaps she could just balance it back in place until she found some glue to repair it?

Louise’s fingers closed around something, but it wasn’t fired clay.

It was paper. And a leather binding.

It was a book.

What on earth was it doing inside the fireplace in an out-of-the-way spot like this? Hardly a conventional bookshelf. Could it have fallen down the back?

She stood up and checked the surround. No. It was fixed securely against the plaster wall. Frowning, she knelt down again and reached inside the square hole once more. Carefully, she pinched the book between thumb and forefinger and tried to pull it out. The hole the fallen tile had left behind was too small, but she found she could slide the next tile down out of its spot easily, and then the book was freed from its dusty prison.

She blew on it, and instantly started coughing. Regular dust, this. It flew up into her face straight away and clung to her hair the moment the air moved around it. She grabbed the duster and gave it the once over, then wandered over to the window to get a better look.

There were no markings on the outside and the tan leather cover was soft. She took a moment to stare at it before she opened the cover and looked inside. Her heart-rate tripled when she did so.

This wasn’t a novel or a child’s picture book. Elegant blue ink filled the pages. Hand-written sentences. Dates and times …

This was a diary.

Louise closed the cover and walked out onto the balcony.

Should she?

This was obviously someone’s private thoughts. She now realised it hadn’t got behind that fireplace by accident. It had been hidden. But there was one very likely candidate as to the author and Louise was burning with curiosity to find out if she was right. She sucked in a breath, looked to the sky, said a silent prayer for forgiveness, and opened the cover again.

The beginning of the diary was tame—starting in January, as new diaries often do—and detailing Laura’s glamorous life: rehearsals, parties, dinners at nice restaurants with other famous people. It all seemed so wonderful, but as Louise read on, she couldn’t help feeling as if there was something missing.

She sighed. Laura Hastings, with her ice-blonde hair and classic bone structure, had always seemed like the perfect woman to Louise. She’d loved her films as a child, used to watch them with her dad in the afternoons when he hadn’t been feeling well. And for some reason, Louise had never even considered that Laura might have struggled with her seemingly perfect life, just as she had with hers. How odd.

Of course, it had been the same for her. Of course.

So Louise read on, reading not just the words, but interpreting the spaces between them, what was not said as much as what was said, and it brought a whole new sense of connection between herself and the previous owner of her home.

And then Whitehaven was mentioned … and the boathouse …

Louise sank even deeper down into the chair, forgetting completely about grime and dusters and pulled-apart fireplaces. And when Laura met Dominic, she pressed a palm against her chest and it stayed there as she read the next handful of entries.

26th June, 1952

Dominic and I have been spending a lot of time together. The nature of our job means there’s a lot of time hanging around, waiting. And even when we’re working we have a lot of scenes together.

He talks to me. Really talks to me. In a way Alex has never done.

I think about my marriage now and wonder why we got together. It seemed so perfect at the time—like a fairy tale ending. Industrial heir marries movie princess. But I wonder now if I just got caught up with the glamour and the whole idea of us. I know that’s one of my faults, acting impulsively, getting carried away in the emotion of the moment.

I try to tell myself that’s what this is with Dominic, but I don’t really believe myself.

Alex doesn’t see me the way Dominic does. I think, to him, I’m just another trophy he’s collected. He likes the best of everything, you see. And I was flattered that he thought I was the best. But I hadn’t realised that once he’s got that object he’s had his eye on, that he locks it away behind glass and then moves on to the next conquest. I’ve tried not to think about what that might mean when it comes to other women, and I’ve never even caught of whiff of scandal about him, but still …

No, that’s horrid. I can’t blame my husband for things he hasn’t done, because I’m feeling guilty about having feelings for someone else. That’s too low.

Alex is a good man, really. He’s just rather distant and … I don’t know. I don’t know what’s wrong with him—except that he isn’t Dominic.

And Dominic trumps Alex in every way. I know he feels something for me. I can see it in his eyes, the way I find him looking at me across the set a thousand times a day. Where Alex is a good man, Dominic is an extraordinary one. We talk, we sit together, but he won’t take it any further. I want to hate him for being so principled, but I find I can’t. If I were his wife, I wouldn’t want him any other way. I don’t want him to lower himself to something he isn’t for me. I don’t want to make him less, when I feel he makes me so much more.

But when we have scenes together—scenes where Richard and Charity get close—I know it isn’t acting. I know he’s drinking every moment in, saving it up, like I am. It’s taking the film to a new level. Sam hardly says a word when we have our scenes. More than once we’ve got an important moment down in one take.

I wrote that something magical would happen here at this house this summer, didn’t I, and it has.

I met Dominic.

But I also know I’m making the film of my career. Something that will last long after I’ve grown old and ugly and no one will want to watch films with me in them any more.

Thank you, Whitehaven. I don’t know how I am ever going to repay you.

Louise closed the diary and walked back into the relative gloom of the boathouse interior. She stared at the book in her hands, hardly able to comprehend what she’d just read, what she’d just found.

This was Laura Hastings’ diary! And obviously written the year she’d filmed A Summer Affair here. This was … it was … amazing. She felt as if the house had given up one of its secrets, trusted her with it. She hugged the book to her chest until she realised it was leaving a dusty imprint on her front, and then she carefully wiped it down with a soft, clean duster.

And what a romantic story.

At least, it seemed like one from the outside. But Louise knew all about how glamorous and exciting things could seem when you read about them, when it was a whole different ball game to live through them. Part of her ached for the young Laura Hastings, too.