A Countess For Christmas

‘Will do,’ Sophie said, swivelling on the spot and heading over to the broom cupboard where all the cleaning materials were kept.

‘Ashleigh—’

‘I’ll get another tray of drinks out there right now and go and flirt with the guy you splattered with booze,’ Ashleigh cut in with a smile, first at Emma, then at Grace.

‘Great,’ Grace said, grinning back. ‘Emma, go and sit down with your head between your knees until your colour returns.’

‘But—’ Emma started to protest, but Grace put her hands on her shoulders and gently pushed her back towards one of the kitchen chairs.

Emma sat down gratefully, relieved that everything was being taken care of but experiencing a rush of embarrassment at causing so much trouble for her friends.

After a moment of sitting quietly, her heart rate had almost returned to normal and the feeling that she was about to pass out had receded.

She was just about to stand up and get back out there, determined not to shy away from this, but to deal with Jack’s reappearance head-on, when Sophie came striding back into the kitchen.

‘You look better,’ she said, giving Emma an assessing once-over.

‘Yeah, I’m okay now. Ready to get back out there.’

‘You know, you could stay in the kitchen and orchestrate things from here if you want. We can handle keeping all the guests happy out there.’

Emma sighed, grateful to her friend for the offer, but knowing that hiding wasn’t an option.

‘Thanks, but I can’t stay in here all evening. Jolyon expects me to be out there charming his guests and keeping a general eye on things.’ Rubbing a hand over her forehead, she gave her friend a smile, which she hoped came across with more confidence than she felt.

‘Okay, well, let’s fix your hair a bit, then,’ Sophie said, moving towards her with her hands outstretched. ‘We’ll get it out of that restricting band and you can use it to shield your face if you need to hide for a second.’

Grateful for her friend’s concern, Emma let Sophie gently pull out the band that was holding her up-do neatly away from her face so that her long sheet of hair swung down to cover each side of her face.

‘It’s such a beautiful colour—baby blonde,’ Sophie said appreciatively, her gaze sweeping from one side of Emma’s face to the other. ‘Is it natural?’

Emma nodded, feeling gratified warmth flood her cheeks. ‘Yes, thank goodness. I’d never be able to afford the hairdressing bills.’ Her thoughts flew back to how much money she used to waste on expensive haircuts in her pampered youth and she cringed as she considered what she could do with that money now—things like putting it towards the cost of more night classes and studying materials.

The kitchen door banged open, making them both jump, and Emma’s gaze zeroed in on the puce-coloured face of Jolyon Fitzherbert as he advanced towards her.

‘Emma! What’s going on? Why are you skulking in here when you should be out there making sure my party’s running smoothly? And what the hell was that, throwing a tray of drinks all over my new carpet?’

She put up a placating hand, realising her mistake when his scowl only deepened. Jolyon hated it when people tried to soothe him.

‘I was just checking on the stores of alcohol in here. I’m going back out there right now,’ she said, plastering a benevolent smile onto her face.

Jolyon’s eyes narrowed. ‘Come with me,’ he ground out, turning clumsily on the spot and giving away just how drunk he was.

Sophie put a hand on Emma’s arm, but she brushed her off gently. ‘It’s okay, I can handle him. You make sure everything runs smoothly here while I’m dealing with this, okay?’ She gave her friend a beseeching look, pleading for her support, and was rewarded with a firm nod.

‘No problem.’

Running to catch up with Jolyon, Emma saw him unlocking the door to his study and the lump in her throat thickened. This couldn’t be good. She was only ever summoned to his study when he felt something had gone badly wrong. He liked to sit behind his big oak desk in his puffy leather armchair as if he were lord of the manor and she were his serving wench being given a severe dressing-down.

Deciding to pre-empt his lecture, she put out both hands in a gesture of apology. ‘Jolyon, I’m very sorry about dropping those drinks. It was a genuine accident and I promise it won’t ever happen again.’

Stopping before he reached the desk, he turned to regard her through red-rimmed eyes, his gaze a little unfocussed due to the enormous amount of whisky he’d drunk throughout the evening.

‘What are you going to do to make it up to me?’ he asked.

She didn’t like the expression in his eyes. Not one little bit.

‘I’ll pay to have the carpet professionally cleaned. None of the glasses broke, so it’s just the stain that needs taking care of.’

He shook his head slowly. ‘I don’t think that’s apology enough. You ruined my party!’

Despite knowing it would be unwise to push him when he was in this kind of mood, she couldn’t help but fold her arms and tilt up her chin in defiance. She might have made a bit of a mess, but, if anything, her little accident had livened the party up.

‘Jolyon, everyone’s having a great time. You’ve thrown a wonderful party here today,’ she said carefully. What she actually wanted to do was suggest where he could shove his job, but she bit her lip, mentally picturing the meagre numbers in her bank balance rapidly ticking down if she let her anger get the better of her.

As she’d predicted, her boldness only seemed to exacerbate his determination to have his pound of flesh and he took a deliberate step towards her and, lifting his hand, he slid it roughly under her jaw and into her hair. His grip was decisive and strong and she acknowledged a twinge of unease in the pit of her stomach as she realised how alone they were in here, away from the rest of the party.

He began to stroke his thumb along her jaw, grazing the bottom of her lip. Waves of revulsion flooded through her at his touch, but she didn’t move. She needed to brazen this out. She knew exactly what he was like—if you showed any sign of weakness that was it, you were fired on the spot.

‘Well, you ruined it for me,’ he growled, moving even closer so she could smell the sharp tang of whisky on his breath. ‘But perhaps we can figure out a satisfactory way for you to make it up to me,’ he said, his gaze roving lasciviously over her face and halting on her mouth.

She clamped her lips together, racking her brains for a way out of this without making the situation worse.

‘Jolyon, let go of me,’ she said, forcing as much authority into her voice as she could summon, which wasn’t a lot. ‘I need to get back to the party and serve your guests and they’ll be missing you, wondering where you are,’ she said, grasping for something—anything—to aid her getaway. Appealing to his ego had worked well before, but she could tell from the look in his eyes that it wasn’t going to fly this time. He wanted much more than a verbal apology from her.

The thought made her shudder.

Taking a sudden step backwards, she managed to break his hold on her. ‘I need to get back. Let’s talk about this tomorrow, shall we?’ Before he could react, she turned and walked swiftly out of the door and back towards the noisy hubbub of the party, her heart thumping hard against her ribcage and the erratic pulse of her blood spurring her on.

She heard him come after her, his breath rasping in his throat as his movements picked up into a drunken jog. She’d just made it to the living-room doorway when he caught up with her, grabbing hold of her arm and spinning her around to face him.

‘Jolyon, please—’ she gasped, then froze in horror as his lips came crashing down onto hers, his arms wrapping around her like a vice. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, her heart hammering hard in her ears as she struggled to get away from him—

Then suddenly he seemed to let go of her—or was he being dragged away? The loud ooof! sound he made in the back of his throat made her think that perhaps he had been and she spun around only to come face to face with Jack.

His mesmerising eyes bore into hers, blazing with anger as a muscle ticced in his clenched jaw, and her stomach did a slow somersault. His gaze swept over her face for the merest of seconds before moving to lock onto Jolyon instead, who was now leaning against the doorjamb, gasping as if he’d been winded.

‘What do you want, Westwood?’ Jolyon snapped at Jack, flashing him a look of fear-tinged contempt.

Jack glared back, his whole body radiating tension as if he was having to physically restrain himself from landing a punch right on Jolyon’s pudgy jaw.

He took a purposeful step towards the cowering man and leaned one strong arm on the jamb above Jolyon’s head, forming a formidable six-foot-three enclosure of angry, powerful man around him.

‘I want you to keep your hands off my wife!’

CHAPTER TWO

JACK WESTWOOD KNEW he’d made a monumental mistake the moment he heard the collective gasp of the crowd in the room behind him.

What the hell had he just done?

It wasn’t like him to lose his head, in fact he was famous in the business circles in which he presided for being a cool customer and impossible to intimidate, but seeing Emma again like this had shaken him to his very soul.

It occurred to him with a sick twist of irony that the last time he’d acted so rashly was when he’d asked her to marry him. She’d always had this effect on him, messing with his head and undermining his control until he didn’t know which way was up.

Logically he knew he should have stayed away from her tonight, just until he was mentally prepared to see her again, but after finding he couldn’t concentrate on a word anyone had said to him after he’d spotted her earlier his instinct had been to search her out, then jump in to defend her when he’d seen Fitzherbert trying to kiss her.

She was still his wife after all, even if they hadn’t had any contact for the last few years—that was what had prompted him to do it. That and the fact he hated any kind of violence towards women.

The searing anger he’d felt at seeing this idiot being so rough with her still buzzed through his veins. Who did he think he was, forcing himself on a woman who clearly wasn’t interested in him? And it was obvious that Emma wasn’t. He knew her too well not to be able to read her body language and interpret her facial expressions, even when she was trying to hide her true feelings.

‘Emma, are you okay?’ he asked, turning to check her face for bruises. But it seemed all that was bruised was her pride. At least that was what the flash of discomfiture in her eyes led him to believe.

‘I’m fine, thank you, Jack. I can handle this,’ she said, laying a gentle hand on his arm and giving him a supplicatory smile.

Unnerved by the prickle of sensation that rushed across his skin where she touched him, he shook the feeling off, putting it down to his shock at seeing her again mixed in with the tension of the situation. Nodding, he took a couple of steps backwards, allowing Jolyon to push himself upright, and watched with bitter distaste as the man brushed himself down with shaking hands and rolled back his portly shoulders.

‘I’d like you both to leave,’ Fitzherbert said, his voice firm, even if it did resonate with a top note of panic.

Jack turned to see Emma looking at Fitzherbert with a pleading expression, making him think that leaving was the last thing she wanted to do. Why on earth would she want to stay? Unless they were together as a couple?

The thought of that made him shudder. Surely she couldn’t have stooped so low as to have attached herself to a playboy like Fitzherbert. He knew she’d been brought up living the high life, was used to being taken care of by other people, but this was beyond the pale.

‘Jolyon, please, this is just a misunderstanding. Can we talk about it—?’

Fitzherbert held up a hand to halt her speech and shook his head slowly, his piggy eyes squinty and mean.

‘I don’t want to hear it, Emma. I want you to leave. Right now. The other girls can cover for you. From what I’ve seen tonight that’s already been happening anyway. Whenever I’ve looked for you, you’ve been skulking in the kitchen.’

‘I’ve been orchestrating the party from there, Jolyon—’

He held up his hand higher, his palm only inches away from her face.

Jack experienced a low throb of anger at the condescension of the act, but he kept his mouth shut. He didn’t think Emma would appreciate him butting in right now. He’d let her handle this.

For now.

‘Didn’t you hear me, Emma? You’re fired!’ There was no mistaking Fitzherbert’s tone now. Even though he was drunk, his conviction was clear.

Fired? So she was working for him? Jack found this revelation even more shocking than the idea that they’d been a couple.

She went to argue, but Fitzherbert shouted over her.

‘I specifically requested the agency find me a housekeeper that wasn’t married so there wouldn’t be any difficulties with priorities. I need someone who can work late into the evening or on short notice without having to check with a partner first. I’ve been burned by problems like that before.’

He glanced at Jack now, his expression full of reproach. ‘A decent chap doesn’t want his wife working for a bachelor such as myself.’

By that, Jack assumed what Fitzherbert actually meant was that he’d wanted the option to pursue more than just housekeeping duties with his employees without the fear of a husband turning up to spoil his fun, or, worse, send him to the hospital.

A prickle of pure disgust shot up his spine at the thought.

‘You said in your application that you were unmarried,’ Fitzherbert went on, apparently choosing to ignore Jack’s balled fists and tense stance now.

‘You lied. So I’m terminating our contract forthwith. I don’t want a liar as well as the daughter of a wastrel working in my house.’

Shock clouded Emma’s face at this low jibe and Fitzherbert smiled and leaned closer to her, clearly relishing the fact that he’d hit a nerve. ‘Yes, that’s right, I know all about your father’s reputation for spending other people’s money. I make sure to look up everyone I employ in order to protect myself.’

He jabbed a finger at her. ‘I gave you the benefit of the doubt because you’re a hard worker and easy on the eye...’ his snarl increased ‘...but who knows what could have gone missing in the time you’ve been here?’

That did it.

‘Don’t you dare speak to her like that!’ Jack ground out.

Emma turned to him with frustration in her eyes and held up a hand. ‘Jack, I said I can handle this. Please keep out of it!’

‘No wonder you’ve kept your marriage to her a secret if that’s the way she speaks to you,’ Fitzherbert muttered, slanting Jack a sly glance.

‘Oh, go to hell, Jolyon,’ Emma shot back, with a vehemence that both surprised and impressed Jack. ‘You know what, you can keep your measly job. I was going to leave at the end of the month anyway. Your wandering hands had got a bit too adventurous for my liking.’

And with that, she pulled an apron that Jack had not noticed she was wearing before from around her middle and dropped it on the floor at Fitzherbert’s feet, then spun on her heel and strode towards the front door.

Glancing back into the room, Jack saw that a large crowd of partygoers had gathered to watch their tawdry little show and every one of them was now staring at him in curious anticipation.

It suddenly occurred to him that they were waiting for him to chase after his wife.

Damn it.

Now the secret was out, he was going to have to find a way to handle this situation without causing more problems for himself. The last thing he needed was to catch the attention of the gutter press when he was just finding his feet again here in England. Knowing Emma as he did, he was aware that it would be down to him to handle the fallout from this, which was fine, he was used to dealing with complex situations in his role as CEO so this shouldn’t be much of a stretch, but he could really do without an added complication like this right now.

Throwing Fitzherbert one last disgusted glance, Jack turned his back on the man then went to grab his overcoat from the peg by the door. Following Emma out, he caught her up as she exited into the cold mid-November night air.

She didn’t turn round as she hopped down the marble steps of the town house and out into the square.

‘Emma, wait!’ Jack shouted, worried she might jump into a cab and he’d lose her before he had a chance to figure out what he was going to do about all this.

‘Why did you have to get involved, Jack?’ she asked, swinging round to face him, her cheeks pink and her eyes wild with a mixture of embarrassment and anxiety.

The sight of it stopped him in his tracks. Even in his state of agitation he was acutely aware that she was still a heart-stoppingly beautiful woman. If anything she was even more beautiful now than when he’d last seen her six years ago, with those full wide lips that used to haunt his dreams and those bright, intelligent green eyes that had always glowed with spirit and an innate joy of life.

Not that she looked particularly joyful right now.

Shaking off the unwelcome rush of feelings this brought, he folded his arms and raised an eyebrow at her.

‘I wasn’t going to just stand by and watch Fitzherbert manhandle you like that,’ he said, aiming for a cool, reasonable tone. There was no way he was going to have a public row in the middle of Sloane Square with her. What if there were paparazzi lurking behind one of the trees nearby?

He shifted on the spot. ‘I would have done the same for any woman in that position.’

There was a flash of hurt in her eyes. ‘Well, for future reference, I can take care of myself, thanks. It wasn’t your place to get involved, Jack.’

The muscles in his shoulders tensed instinctively. ‘I’m your husband. Of course it was my place.’

She sighed, kicking awkwardly at the ground. ‘Technically, maybe, but nobody knew that. I certainly haven’t told anyone.’

He was annoyed by how riled he felt by her saying that, as if he was a dirty secret she’d been keeping.

It was on the tip of his tongue to start demanding answers of her—about what had happened in the intervening years to make it necessary for her to work for a man like Fitzherbert and why she hadn’t contacted him once in the six years they’d been estranged, even just to let him know that she was okay.

But he didn’t, because this wasn’t the time or place to discuss things like that.

‘Why did you shout about us being married in front of all those people?’ she asked, her voice wobbling a little now.

He took a deep breath, rubbing a hand over his forehead in agitation. ‘I reacted without thinking in the heat of the moment.’

That had always been his problem when she was around. For some reason she shook him up, made him lose control, like no one else in the world could.

To his surprise the corner of her mouth quirked into a reluctant smile. ‘Well, it’s going to be round Chelsea society like wildfire now. That crowd loves a bit of salacious gossip.’

Sighing, he batted a hand at her. ‘Don’t worry, people will talk for a while, then it’ll become old news. I’ll handle it.’

She looked at him for a moment, her eyes searching his face as if checking for reassurance.

Jack stared back at her, trying not to let a sudden feeling of edginess get to him. As much as he’d love to be able to brush the problem of them still being married under the carpet he knew it would be a foolish thing to do. There was no point in letting it drag on any more now he was back. It needed to be faced head-on so they could resolve it quickly and with as little pain as possible.

Because, inevitably, it would still be painful for them, even after all this time.

Emma tore her gaze away from him, frowning down at the pavement now and letting out a growl of frustration. ‘I could have done with keeping that job. It paid really well,’ she muttered. ‘And who knows what the knock-on effect of embarrassing Jolyon like that is going to be?’

He balled his fists, trying to keep a resurgence of temper under control at the memory of Fitzherbert’s treatment of her. ‘He won’t do anything—the man’s a coward.’

‘Jolyon’s an influential man around here,’ she pointed out, biting her lip. ‘He has the ear of a lot of powerful people.’

She stared off into the distance, her breath coming rapidly now, streaking the dark night air with clouds of white. ‘Hopefully Clio at the agency will believe my side of the story and still put me forward for other jobs, but people might not want to take me on if Jolyon gets to them first.’

‘Surely you don’t need a job that badly?’ he asked, completely bemused by her anxiety about not being able to land another waitressing role. What had happened to her plans to go to university? She couldn’t have been working in the service industry all this time, could she?

The rueful smile she flashed him made something twang in his chest.

‘Unfortunately I do, Jack. We can’t all be CEO of our own company,’ she said with a teasing glint in her eye now.

He huffed out a mirthless laugh and shook his head, recalling how it had been through Emma’s encouragement that he’d accepted the prodigious offer for a highly sought-after job at an electronics company in the States right after graduating from university, which had enabled him to chase his dream of setting up his own company.

It had been an incredible opportunity and one he’d been required to act on quickly. Emma had understood how important it had been to him to become financially independent on his own merits, rather than trading on his family name as his father had, and had urged him to go. In a burst of youthful optimism, he’d asked her to marry him so she could go with him. She’d been all he could think about when he was twenty-one. He’d been obsessed with her—every second away from her had felt empty—and the mere suggestion of leaving her behind in England had filled him with dismay.

In retrospect it had been ridiculous for them to tie the knot so young; with him only just graduated from Cambridge University and she only eighteen years old.

They’d practically been children then: closeted and naïve.

She coughed and took an awkward step backwards and he realised with a start that he’d been scowling at her while these unsettling memories had flitted through his mind.

‘It’s good to see you again, Jack, despite the less than ideal circumstances,’ she said softly, her expression guarded and her voice holding a slight tremor now, ‘but I guess I should get going.’

She seemed to fold in on herself and he realised with a jolt that she was shivering.

‘Where’s your coat?’ he asked, perhaps a little more sharply than was necessary.

‘It’s back in the house, along with my handbag,’ she muttered. ‘I can’t go back in there for them now though. I’ll give one of the girls a ring when I get home and ask her to drop them over to me tomorrow.’ She paused as a sheepish look crossed her face. ‘I don’t suppose you could lend me a couple of pounds for my bus fare, could you?’

The tension in her voice touched something deep inside him, making him suddenly conscious of what a rough night she was having.

‘Yes, of course.’ Taking off his overcoat, he wrapped it around her shoulders. ‘Here, take my coat. There’s money in the pocket.’

She looked up at him with wide, grateful eyes. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes,’ he clipped out, a little unnerved by how his body was responding to the way she was looking at him.

He cleared his throat. ‘Will you be able to get into your—er—flat?’ he asked. He wasn’t sure where she was living now. He’d heard that she’d moved to London after they’d sold the family home in Cambridge, but other than that his information about her was a black hole. He’d deliberately kept it that way, needing to emotionally distance himself from her after what had happened between them.