Her Christmas Fantasy

‘If that’s what you’re looking for you’d be better off with a dog,’ Alison suggested critically, but Lisa wasn’t prepared to argue the matter any further.

‘I’m just not the type for excitement and passion,’ she told her friend. ‘I like stability. Marriage isn’t just for now, Alison; it’s for the future too. Look, I’d better go,’ she announced, glancing at her watch. ‘Henry’s taking me out for dinner this evening.’ As she got up and headed for the door, she added gratefully, ‘Thanks for recommending that shop to me.’

‘Yes, I’m really envious. You’ve got some lovely things and at a knock-down price. All current season’s stuff too… Lucky you.’

As she made her way home to her own flat Lisa was ruefully aware of how difficult her friends found it to understand her relationship with Henry, but then they had not had her upbringing and did not possess her desire—her craving in a sense—for emotional tranquillity, for roots and permanence.

Her parents were both by nature not just extremely artistic—and because of that at times wholly absorbed by their work—they were also gypsies, nomads, who enjoyed travelling and moving on. The thought of basing themselves somewhere permanently was anathema to them.

During her childhood Lisa couldn’t remember having spent a whole year at any one school; she knew her parents loved her, and she certainly loved them dearly, but she had a different nature from theirs.

All right, so she knew that it would be difficult persuading Henry to accept that there was no reason why she should not still pursue her career as well as being a mother, but she was sure that she would be able to make him understand that her work was important to her. At the moment Henry worked for a prestigious firm of insurance brokers, but they had both agreed that once they were married they would move out of London and into the country.

She let herself into her small flat and carefully carried her new purchases into her bedroom.

After she had had a shower she intended to try them all on again, if she had time before Henry arrived. However, when she replayed her answering-machine tape there was a message on it from Henry, cancelling their date because he had an important business dinner that he had to attend and reminding her that they still had to shop for suitable Christmas presents to take for his family.

She had already made several suggestions based on what Henry had told her about his family, and specifically his parents—a very pretty petit point antique footstool for his grandmother, some elegant tulip vases for his mother, who, he had told her, was a keen gardener. But Henry had pursed his lips and dismissed her ideas.

She had been tempted to suggest that it might be better if he chose their Christmas presents on his own, but she had warned herself that she was being unfair and even slightly petty. He, after all, knew their tastes far better than she did.

She had just put on her favourite of all the outfits she had bought—the cream wool crêpe trouser suit—when her doorbell rang.

Assuming that it must be Henry after all, she went automatically to open the door, and then stood staring in total shock as she realised that her visitor wasn’t Henry but the man she had last seen striding past her and storming into the dress agency as she’d left it.

‘Lisa Phillips?’ he demanded curtly as he stepped past her and into her hall.

Dumbly Lisa nodded her head, too taken aback by the unexpectedness of his arrival to think to question his right to walk uninvited into her home.

‘My name’s Oliver Davenport,’ he told her curtly, handing her a card, barely giving her time to glance at it before he continued, ‘I believe you purchased several items of clothing from Second Time Around earlier today.’

‘Er…yes,’ Lisa agreed. ‘But—’

‘Good. This shouldn’t take long then. Unfortunately the clothes that you bought should not have been put on sale. Technically, in fact, the shop sold them without the permission of their true owner, and in such circumstances, as with the innocent purchase of a stolen car or indeed any stolen goods, you have no legal right to—’

‘Just a minute,’ she interrupted him in disbelief. Completely taken aback by his unexpected arrival and his infuriatingly arrogant manner, Lisa could feel herself becoming thoroughly angry. ‘Are you accusing the shop of selling stolen clothes? Because if so it should be the police you are informing and not me.’

‘Not exactly. Look, I’m prepared to refund you the full amount of what you spent plus an extra hundred pounds for any inconvenience. So if you’ll just—’

‘That’s very generous of you,’ Lisa told him sarcastically. ‘But I bought these clothes for a specific purpose and I have no intention of selling them back to you. I bought them in good faith and—’

‘Look, I’ve just explained to you, those clothes should never have been sold in the first place,’ he cut across her harshly, giving her an impatiently angry look.

Lisa didn’t like the way he was filling her small hall, looming almost menacingly over her, but there was no way she was going to give in to him. Why should she?

‘If that’s true, then why hasn’t the shop been in touch with me?’ Lisa challenged him.

She could see that he didn’t like her question from the way his mouth tightened and hardened before he replied bitingly, ‘Probably because the idiotic woman who runs the place refuses to listen to reason.’

‘Really?’ Lisa asked him scathingly. ‘You seem to have a way with women. Has it ever occurred to you that a little less aggression and a good deal more persuasion might produce better results? Not that any amount of persuasion will change my mind,’ she added firmly. ‘I bought those clothes in good faith, and since the shop hasn’t seen fit to get in touch with me concerning their supposedly wrongful sale I don’t see why—’

‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ She was interrupted furiously. ‘Look, if you must know, the clothes belong to my cousin’s girlfriend. They had a quarrel—it’s a very volatile relationship. She walked out on him, vowing never to come back—they’d had an argument about her decision to go on holiday with a girlfriend, without him apparently—and in a fit of retaliatory anger he gave her clothes to the dress agency. It was an impulse…something he regretted virtually as soon as he’d done it, and when Emma rang him from Italy to make things up he asked me to help him get her things back before she comes home and discovers what he’s done.’

‘He asked you for help?’

There was very little doubt in Lisa’s mind about whose girlfriend the absent Emma actually was, and it wasn’t Oliver Davenport’s fictitious cousin.

The look he gave her in response to her question wasn’t very friendly, Lisa recognised; in fact it wasn’t very friendly at all, but even though, concealed beneath the sensual elegance of her newly acquired trousers, her knees were knocking slightly, she refused to give in to her natural apprehension.

It wasn’t like her to be so stubborn or so unsympathetic, but something about him just seemed to rub her up the wrong way and make her uncharacteristically antagonistic towards him.

It wasn’t just the fact that he was demanding that she part with her newly acquired wardrobe that was making her combative, she admitted; it was something about the man himself, something about his arrogance, his…his maleness that was setting her nerves slightly on edge, challenging her into a mode of behaviour that was really quite foreign to her.

She knew that Henry would have been shocked to see her displaying so much stubbornness and anger—she was a little bit shocked herself.

‘He was about to go away on business. Emma’s due back at the end of the week. He didn’t want her walking into the flat and discovering that half her clothes are missing…’

‘No, I’m sure you…he…’ Lisa corrected herself tauntingly ‘…doesn’t…’

She saw from the dark burn of angry colour etching his cheekbones that he wasn’t pleased by her deliberate ‘mistake’, nor the tone of voice she had delivered it in.

‘You have no legal claim over those clothes,’ he told her grimly. ‘The shop sold them without the owner’s permission.’

‘If that’s true, then it’s up to the shop to get in touch with me,’ Lisa pointed out. ‘After all, for all I know, you could want them for yourself…’ She paused. His temper was set on a hair-trigger already and although she doubted that he would actually physically harm her…

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she heard him breathe softly, as though he had read her mind.

Inexplicably she realised that she was blushing slightly as, for no logical reason at all, she remembered exactly what she had been thinking about him—and his body—earlier in the day. Just as well he hadn’t second guessed her private thoughts then!

‘So you’re not prepared to be reasonable about this?’

She be reasonable? Lisa could feel her own temper starting to rise.

‘Doesn’t it mean anything to you that you could be putting someone’s whole relationship at risk by your refusal?’

‘Me putting a relationship at risk?’ Lisa gasped at the unfairness of it. ‘If you ask me, I’m not the one who’s doing that. If your relationship is so important to you, you should have thought of that before you lost your temper and decided to punish your girlfriend by selling her clothes—’

‘Emma is not my girlfriend,’ he told her with ominous calm. ‘As I’ve already explained to you, I am simply acting as an intermediary in all of this for my cousin. But then I suppose it’s par for the course that you should think otherwise. It goes with all the rest of your illogical behaviour,’ he told her scathingly.

‘If you ask me,’ she told him, thoroughly incensed now, ‘I think that Emma…whoever’s girlfriend she is—yours or your cousin’s…is better off without you. What kind of man does something like that…? Those clothes were virtually new and—’

‘Exactly. New and expensive and paid for by my cousin, who is a rather jealous young man who objects to his girlfriend wearing the clothes he bought her to attract the attentions of other men…’

‘And because of that he stole them from her wardrobe and sold them? It sounds to me as though she’s better off without you…without him,’ Lisa corrected herself fiercely, her eyes showing her contempt of a man—any man—jealous or otherwise, who could behave in such a petty and revengeful way.

‘Well, I’m sorry,’ she continued, patently anything but. ‘But explaining to Emma just exactly what’s happened to her clothes is your problem and not mine. I bought them in good faith—’

‘And you’ll be able to buy some more with the money I’m willing to refund you for them, especially since… Oh, I get it,’ he said softly, his eyes suddenly narrowing.