Snowed In For Christmas

‘Voilà!’

He set the plates down on the places she’d laid, and she smiled. ‘Very pretty.’

‘We aim to please. Dig in.’

She dug, her mouth watering, and it was every bit as good as it looked and smelled.

‘Oh, wow,’ she mumbled, and he gave a wry huff of laughter.

‘See? No faith in me. You never have had.’

Georgie shook her head. ‘I’ve always had faith in you. I always knew you’d be a success, and you are.’

Even if she hadn’t been able to live with him any more.

He shrugged. There was success, and then there was happiness. That still eluded him, chased out by a restless, fretful search for his identity, his fundamental self, and it had cost him Georgia and everything that went with her. Everything she’d then had with another man—and he really didn’t want to think about that. He changed the subject. Sort of.

‘Josh seems a nice little kid. I didn’t know you’d had a child.’

She met his eyes, her fork suspended in mid-air. ‘Why would you unless you were keeping tabs on me?’

A smile touched his eyes. ‘Touché,’ he murmured softly, and the smile faded. ‘I was sorry to hear about your husband. That must have been tough for you.’

Tough? He didn’t know the half of it. ‘It was,’ she said quietly.

‘What happened?’

She put her fork down. ‘He had a heart attack. He was at work and I had a call to say he’d collapsed and died at his desk.’

He winced. ‘Ouch. Wasn’t he a bit young for that?’

‘Thirty-nine. And we’d just moved and extended the mortgage, so things are a bit tight.’

‘What about the life insurance? Surely that covered the mortgage?’

Her mouth twisted slightly. ‘He’d cancelled it three months before.’

That shocked him. ‘Cancelled it? Why would he cancel it?’

‘Cash flow, I presume. Property wasn’t selling, and because he’d cancelled the insurance of course they won’t pay out, so I’m having to work full-time to pay the mortgage. And it’s still not selling, so I can’t shift the house, and I’m stuck.’

He rammed a hand through his hair. ‘Oh, George. That’s tough. I’m sorry.’

‘Yeah, me, too, but there’s nothing I can do. I just have to get on with it.’

He frowned, slowly turning his wine glass round and round by the stem with his thumb and forefinger. ‘So what do you do with Josh while you’re at work?’

‘I have him with me. I work at home—mostly at night. He goes to nursery three mornings a week to give me a straight stretch of time, and it just about works.’

He topped up her glass and leaned back against the chair, his eyes searching her face. ‘So what do you do?’

She smiled. ‘I’m a virtual PA. My boss is very understanding, and we get by, but I won’t pretend it’s easy.’

‘No, I’m sure it’s not.’ For either of them. He thought of how he’d manage if he and Tash weren’t in the same office, and then realised that they weren’t for a lot of the time, but that was because he was the one out of the office, not her, and she was there in the thick of it and able to get him answers at the touch of a button.

The other way round—well, the mind boggled.

‘How old was Josh when it happened?’

‘Two months.’

Sebastian felt sick. ‘He won’t remember him at all,’ he said, his voice sounding hollow to his ears. ‘That’s such a shame.’

‘It is, it’s a real shame. David was so proud of him. He would have adored him.’

‘You will tell Josh all about him, won’t you?’

‘Of course I will. And he’s got grandparents, too. David’s parents live in Cambridge. Don’t worry. He’ll know all about his father, Sebastian. I won’t let him grow up in a vacuum.’

He felt the tension leave him, but a wave of grief followed it. He hadn’t grown up in a vacuum, but he’d been living a lie and he hadn’t known it until he was eighteen. And then this void had opened up, a yawning hole where once had been certainty, and nothing had been the same since. Especially not since he’d been privy to the finer details. Not that there was anything fine about them, by any stretch of the imagination.

Had his father been proud of him? Had his mother? Had her voice softened when she talked about her little son, the way Georgie’s did?

Who was he?

Endless questions, but no proper answers, even after all this time, and realistically he knew now that there never would be. He sucked in a breath and turned his attention back to the food, but it tasted like sawdust.

‘Hey—it’s OK,’ she said, frowning at him, her face concerned. ‘We’re doing all right. Life goes on.’

‘Were you happy together, you and David?’ he asked, wondering why he was beating himself up like this, but she didn’t answer, and after a moment he looked up and met her eyes.

‘He was a good man,’ she said eventually. ‘We lived in a nice house with good neighbours, we had some lovely friends—it was good.’

Good? What did that mean? Such an ineffectual word—or maybe not. Good was more than he had. ‘And did you love him?’

Her eyes went blank. ‘I don’t think that’s any of your business,’ she said softly, and put her cutlery down, the food unfinished.

‘I’ll take that as a no, then,’ he said, pushing it because he was angry about Josh, angry that she’d been playing happy families with someone else while he’d been alone—

‘Take it as whatever you like, Sebastian. As I said, it’s none of your business. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll go to bed now.’

‘And if I mind?’

She stood up and looked at him expressionlessly. ‘Then I’m still going to bed. Thank you for my meal and your hospitality,’ she said politely. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

He watched her go, and he swore softly and dropped his head into his hands. Why? Why hadn’t he kept his mouth shut? Getting angry with her wouldn’t change anything, any more than it had nine years ago.

He was reaching for the wine bottle when the lights on the baby monitor flashed, and he heard a sound that could have been a sigh or a sob or both.

‘Why does he care, Josh? It’s none of his business if I was happy with another man. He didn’t make me happy in the long term, did he? He could have done, but he just didn’t damn well care.’

Sebastian closed his eyes briefly, then picked up the baby monitor and took it upstairs, tapping lightly on her door and handing it to her silently when she opened it.

‘Oh. Thanks.’

‘You’re welcome. And, for the record, I did care. I never stopped caring.’

She swallowed, and he could see the realisation that he’d heard everything she’d said register on her face. She coloured, but she didn’t look away, just challenged him again, her voice soft so she didn’t disturb the sleeping child.

‘You didn’t care enough to change for me, though, did you? You wouldn’t even talk about it. You didn’t even try to understand or explain why you never had time for me any more.’

No. He hadn’t explained. He still couldn’t. He wasn’t sure he really knew himself, in some ways.

‘I couldn’t change,’ he said, feeling exasperated and cornered. ‘It wasn’t possible. I had to do what I had to do to succeed, and I couldn’t have changed that, not even for you.’

‘No, Sebastian, you could have done. You just wouldn’t.’

And she stepped back and closed the door quietly in his face.

* * *

He stared at the closed door, his thoughts reeling.

Was she right? Could he have changed the way he’d done things, made it easier for her to live the life he’d had to live?

Not really. Not without giving up all he’d worked for, all he’d done to try and find out who he really was, deep down under all the layers that had been superimposed by his upbringing.

He was still no closer to knowing the answer, and maybe he never would be, but until then he couldn’t stop striving to find out, to explore every avenue, every facet of himself, to push himself to the limit until he found out where those limits were.

And on the way, he’d discovered he could make money. Serious money. Enough to make a difference to the people who mattered? Maybe. He hoped so. The charities he supported seemed to think he was making a difference to the kids.

But Georgie mattered, too, and she was right, there hadn’t been time for her in all of this.

OK, it had been tough—tough for both of them. He’d had a hectic life—working all day, networking every evening in one way or another. Dinner out with someone influential. Private views. Trade fairs, cocktails, fundraising dinners—a never-ending succession of opportunities to meet people and forge potentially beneficial links.

To do that had meant working eighteen-hour days, seven days a week. There’d been hardly any down time, and of course it had meant living in London, And that hadn’t been compatible with her view of their relationship, or her need to follow her career—although there was no sign of that now.

She’d wanted to stay at university in Norwich, get her Biological Sciences degree and work in research, maybe do a PhD, but now it seemed she was a virtual PA with a ‘very understanding’ boss.

So much for her career plans, he thought bitterly.

Hell, she could have been his PA. She would have been amazing, and with him, by his side every minute of the day and night, and Josh would have been his child. That would have been a relationship worth having. Instead she’d chosen her career over him, and then gone on to live her dream with some other man who hadn’t had the sense to keep his life insurance going to protect his family.

Great stuff. Good choice, Georgia.

Shaking his head in disgust, he turned away from the door and went downstairs to the kitchen. It was in uproar, the worktops covered with the wreckage of their meal and its preparation, but that was fine. He needed something to do, and it certainly needed doing, so he rolled up his sleeves and got stuck in.

* * *

The bath was wasted on her.

It should have been relaxing and wonderful, but instead she lay in the warm, scented water, utterly unable to relax, unable to shift the weight of guilt that was crushing her.

She got out, dried herself on what had to be the softest towel in the world and pulled on clean clothes. Not her night clothes—she wasn’t that crazy—but jeans and a jumper and nice thick slipper socks, and picking up the baby monitor she padded softly downstairs to find him.

The kitchen door was ajar and she could hear him moving around in there—clearing up, probably, she thought with another stab of guilt. She shouldn’t have stalked off like that, not without offering to help first, but he’d been so pushy, so—angry?

About David?

She opened the door and walked in, and he turned and met her eyes expressionlessly. ‘I thought you’d gone to bed?’

She shook her head.

‘I wasn’t fair to you just now. I know you cared,’ she said quietly, her voice suddenly choked.

He went very still, then turned away and picked up a cloth, wiping down the worktops even though they looked immaculate. ‘So why say I didn’t?’

‘Because that was what it felt like. All you seemed to worry about was your career, your life, your plans for the future. There was never any time for us, just you, you, you. You and your brand new shiny friends and your meteoric rise to the top. You knew I wanted to finish my degree, but you just didn’t seem to think that was important.’

He turned back, cloth in hand. ‘Well, it doesn’t seem important to you any longer, does it? You’re doing a job you could easily have done in London, that’s nothing to do with your degree or your PhD or anything else.’

‘That’s not by choice, though, and actually it’s not true, I am still using my degree. I’m working for my old boss in Cambridge. I’d started my PhD and I was working there in research when I met David.’

‘And then you had it all,’ he said, his voice curiously bitter. ‘Everything you’d always wanted. The career, the marriage, the baby—’

‘No.’ She stopped him with one word. ‘No, I didn’t have it all, Sebastian. I didn’t have you. But you’d made it clear that you were going to take over the world, and I just hated everything about that lifestyle and what it had turned you into. You were never there, and when you were, we were hardly ever alone. I was just so unhappy. So lonely and isolated. I hated it.’

‘Well, you made that pretty clear,’ he said gruffly, and turned back to the pristine worktops, scrubbing them ferociously.

‘It wasn’t you, though. You weren’t like that. You’d changed, turned into someone I’d never met, someone I didn’t like. The people you mixed with, the parties you went to—’

‘Networking, Georgia. Building bridges, making contacts. That’s how it works.’

‘But the people were horrible. They were so unfriendly to me. They made me feel really unwelcome, and I was like a fish out of water. And so much of the time you weren’t even there. You were travelling all over the world, wheeling and dealing and counting your money—’

‘It wasn’t about money! It’s never been about money.’

‘Well what, then? Because it strikes me you aren’t doing badly for someone who says it’s not about money.’

She swept an arm around the room, pointing out the no-expense-spared, hand-built kitchen in the house that had cost him ridiculous amounts of money to restore on a foolish whim, and he sighed. ‘That’s just coincidence. I’m good at it. I can see how to turn companies around, how to make things work.’

‘You couldn’t make our relationship work.’

Her words fell like stones into the black pool of his emotions, and he felt the ripples reaching out into the depths of his lonely, aching soul, lapping against the wounds that just wouldn’t heal.

‘No. Apparently not.’ He threw the cloth into the sink and braced his hands on the edge of the worktop, his head lowered. ‘But then nor could you. It wasn’t just me. It needs give and take.’

‘And all you did was take.’

He turned then and met her eyes, and she saw raw pain and something that could have been regret in his face. ‘I would have given you the world—’

‘I didn’t want the world! I wanted you, and you were never there. You were too busy looking over the horizon to even see what was right under your nose.’

‘So you left me. Did it make you happy?’

She closed her eyes. ‘No! Of course it didn’t, not then, but gradually it stopped hurting quite so much, and then I moved to Cambridge and met David. I was looking for somewhere to live and I went into his office, and we got talking and he asked me out for a drink. He was kind and funny, and he thought that what I was doing was worthwhile, and we got on well, and it just grew from there. And he really cared about me, Sebastian. He made me feel that I mattered, that my opinion was valid.’

‘That was all it took? Kind and funny?’

She gave him a steely glare. ‘It was more than I got from you by the end.’

A muscle in his jaw flickered, but otherwise his face didn’t move and he ignored her comment and moved on. ‘So what happened to your PhD?’

‘I found out I was pregnant, but he’d been moved to the Huntingdon office by then and I was commuting, which wasn’t really satisfactory, and then the housing market collapsed. So I contacted my professor and he offered me this job, which kept us going, and then just after I had Josh, David died.’

‘And do you miss him?’ he asked. His voice was casual, but there was something strange going on in his eyes. Something curiously intense and disturbing. Jealousy? Of a dead man? ‘Yes, of course I miss him,’ she said softly. ‘It’s lonely in the house by myself, but life goes on, and I’ve got Josh, and I’m OK. He was a nice man, and I did love him, and he deserved more from me than I was ever able to give him, but I never felt the way I did with you, as if I couldn’t breathe if he wasn’t there. As if there was no colour, no music, no poetry. No sense to my life.’

His eyes burned into hers. ‘And yet you walked away from me. From us.’

‘Because it was killing me, Sebastian. You were killing me, the person you’d become. You never had any time for me, we never went anywhere or did anything that didn’t serve another purpose. It was all about business, about making contacts that would make more money. I felt like an ornament, or a mistress, someone who should just be grateful for the crumbs that fell from your table. But I didn’t want crumbs, I wanted you, I wanted what we’d had, but you shut me out, and you broke my heart, and I never want to let anyone that close to me ever again.

‘So, no, I didn’t feel for David the way I did for you. I didn’t want to. He didn’t give me what I’d thought I wanted when I was little more than a kid and everything was starry-eyed and rose-tinted, but he loved me, and he took care of me, and he made me happy.’

‘And he cancelled the life insurance.’

Damn him! ‘He had no choice! We were really struggling—’

‘Did he tell you he was doing it? Did you discuss it? Or did he just do it and hope for the best? Because I would never have done that to you, Georgia,’ he said passionately. ‘I would never have left you so unprovided for. Would never have compromised your safety or security like that.’

‘You have no idea what you would have done in those circumstances—’

‘I know I’d starve before I did that—’

‘You have no right to criticise him!’

‘You were mine!’ he said harshly. ‘And you gave him all the things you’d promised me. Marriage. A child. Hearth and home and all of that—hell, George, we had so many dreams! How could you walk away? I loved you. You knew I loved you—’

His voice cracked on the last word, and her eyes flooded with tears; she closed them, unable to look at him any longer, unable to watch his face as he bared his soul to her. Because she had left him, and he had loved her, but she hadn’t been mature enough or brave enough to cope with what he’d asked of her.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, her heart aching with so many hurts and wrongs and losses she’d lost count. ‘If it helps, I loved you, too, and it broke my heart to leave you.’

She heard him swear softly, then heard the sound of his footsteps as he walked up to her, his voice a soft sigh.

‘Ahh, George, don’t cry. No more tears. I’m sorry.’

She felt his hands on her shoulders, felt him ease her close against his chest, and with a ragged sigh she rested her cheek against his shirt and listened to the steady thudding of his heart. His arms closed around her, cradling her against his warmth and solidity, the mingled scent of his skin and the cologne he’d always used wrapping her in delicious, heart-wrenching familiarity.

She slid her arms around his waist, flattening her palms against the broad columns of muscle that bracketed his spine, and he held her without speaking, while their breathing steadied and their hearts slowed, until the tension left them.

But then another tension crept in, coiling tighter, pushing out everything else until it was the only thought, the only reason for breathing.

The only reason for being.

She felt his head shift, felt the warmth of his lips press tentatively against her forehead, and she tilted her head and met his blazing eyes.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE KISS WAS INEVITABLE.

Slow, tender, fleeting, their lips brushing lightly, then gradually settling. Clinging. Melding into one, until she didn’t know where she ended and he began.

She curled her fingers into his shirt, felt his fingers tunnel into her hair and steady her head as he plundered her mouth, taking, giving, duelling with her until abruptly, long before she was ready, he wrenched his head back and stepped away.

She pressed trembling fingers to her aching, tingling lips. They felt as if his had been ripped away from them, tearing them somehow, leaving them incomplete. Leaving her incomplete.

She looked up, and his eyes were black as night, his chest rising and falling unsteadily. She could hear the air sawing in and out of his lungs, see the muscle jumping in his jaw as he took another step away.

‘I think you’d better go to bed,’ he said gruffly, and handed her the baby monitor from the table.

She nodded, her heart thrashing, emotions tumbling one over the other as she turned and all but ran back to her room.

What had she been thinking of, to let him kiss her? After all that had happened, all the water under the bridge of their relationship, everything that had happened since—she must have been mad!

She’d finally found peace, after years of striving, of what had felt like settling for second best—which was so unfair on David, so unfair, but how could he compete with Sebastian? He couldn’t. And, to be fair to him, she’d never asked him to. But still, it had felt like that, and it was only with Josh’s birth and the bond that had formed between them after David’s death that peace had finally come to her.

And now Sebastian had snatched it away, torn off the thin veneer of serenity and exposed the raw anguish in her heart. Because she still loved him. She’d always loved him, and now she was hurting all over again, her heart flayed raw by the knowledge of what she’d lost and what she’d done to him, but there was no way she could go back to that lifestyle, to the way he lived and the man he’d had to become.

She changed into her pyjamas and crawled into bed, lying there in a soft cloud of goose down and Egyptian cotton while her thoughts tumbled endlessly and went nowhere.

She heard him come upstairs to bed at something after midnight, but the sound didn’t wake her because she was still lying awake, listening to the wind howling round the house, battering the windows with its unrelenting assault. There was no way she was getting out of there any time soon. The lane would be full to the top by now, the snow trapped against the crinkle-crankle wall with no escape, piling up endlessly as the wind drove it off the field.

Trapping her and Josh inside with Sebastian.

Oh, why had she let him kiss her?

Or had she kissed him? She wasn’t sure, she only knew it had been the most monumental mistake. It had broken down the barriers between them, ripped away her flimsy defences, opened the Pandora’s box of their relationship, and try as they might, they’d never get the lid back on it in one piece.

She closed her eyes. She was so not looking forward to tomorrow...

* * *

He just couldn’t sleep.

Well, there might have been a few minutes here and there, but mostly he just lay awake trying not to think about that kiss while he listened to the wind battering the house and blocking them in forever.

There was no way he was getting her out of here today. No way at all. Which was all made a whole sight more difficult by the fact that he’d let his guard down and weakened like that.

He should have kept his mouth shut, not dragged it all out again. And his voice cracking like that! What the hell was that about? He was over her...

Liar.

He sighed harshly. OK, so he wasn’t over her, not totally, but he hadn’t had to tell her that quite so graphically. He certainly hadn’t needed to kiss her!

And now they were stuck here, forced together, with no prospect of escape for days. He rolled onto his front and folded his arms under his head, banging his forehead gently on them to knock some sense into himself.

Not working. So he lay there, fuming at his stupidity and resigning himself to a fraught and emotionally draining couple of days ahead.

It could have been worse. At least they had Josh there between them. They could hardly fight over his head, and he’d just have to make sure they were only together when he was around.

Although that was a problem in itself, because Josh, with his mother’s eyes and engaging personality, was a vivid and living reminder of all he’d lost when she’d walked away. Josh could have been his son. Should have been his son. His first known living relative.

His family.

He swallowed hard, the ache in his chest making it hard to breathe.

It was no good. He’d never get to sleep again. He threw off the covers, tugged on his clothes and went downstairs. If nothing else, he could get some work done.