Kiss Me Under the Mistletoe

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.

She’d always seemed so perfect on the screen, had always been one of Louise’s icons. Who wouldn’t fall for that ice-blonde hair and those big, sparkling blue eyes? Laura Hastings had always looked so poised, so in control. She wondered if anyone had had any idea of the inner turmoil underneath the movie star surface.

She flicked back through the diary again. The entries seemed to be sporadic. Sometimes they were days apart, sometimes months. Sometimes there were gaps of a few years.

She carefully replaced the book in its hiding place and slotted the two tiles back into place. She discovered the one she’d pushed through would sit very nicely in its spot, held gently by the cast iron surround, as long as no one applied undue pressure to it. As she hid the book again, made everything look as it had before she’d made her discovery, she tried to wrack her brains about what had happened to Laura after her heyday.

She made films into her forties, but then she’d just quietly faded away. Must have lived here for some time and died an old woman. Louise was shocked to realise she didn’t even know if Laura had lived here on her own or if she’d been married. And if she’d been married, who had the husband been? Alex, still? Or Dominic?

She could ask Ben, she supposed, but he seemed to be a little tight-lipped about the previous owner. And, anyway, the diary wasn’t huge. It wouldn’t take too long to read it and find out for herself.

Louise frowned. She didn’t want to gulp it down in one sitting—it was too beautiful for that. Maybe she’d just read a little bit each week, ration herself. Then she could make the magic last for months. She had years to uncover the rest of Whitehaven’s secrets, so maybe she could be patient about finding out about Laura’s too.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Almost a fortnight later, Louise was putting the finishing touches to Jack’s room. She looked at her watch. It was almost one o’clock, but she couldn’t even contemplate eating anything. Only five more hours and Jack would be here. Her eyes misted over as she fluffed the duvet and smoothed it out, making sure it was perfect—not bunched up in the corners or with an empty bit flapping at one end.

It looked so cosy when she had finished that she flumped down on top of the blue and white checked cover and buried her head in the pillow.

She’s made the trip up to London a couple of times to see him in the month and a half she’d been here, but it had been far too long to go without seeing him every day. She sighed. It had been the longest they had ever been apart. Toby had used to moan that she didn’t travel with him any more, and maybe that had been part of the reason their marriage had crumbled. Even strong relationships were put under pressure when the couple spent weeks or even months apart. But how could she leave Jack? He was everything. He always would be everything.

It wouldn’t have been fair to uproot him and ask him to change schools before the half-term break. She snuggled even further into the pillow, wishing it smelled of more than just clean laundry.

Toby had agreed—thank goodness—to let Jack live with her. Her ex was away filming so often that it wouldn’t have been fair to Jack to leave him at her former home in Hampstead with just a nanny for company. Even Toby had seen the sense in that.

So Jack would be with his father on school holidays, and even though Louise hadn’t lived with her son for weeks, she’d still agreed to let Jack stay with Toby for the half-term week. Her ex could be a true diva, so she’d decided it was sensible to appease him, just to make sure he didn’t change his mind.

But tonight Jack would be coming to Whitehaven. He’d be here.

She turned to lie on her back and stared at the ceiling. She wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. Mostly she just ached.

Minutes, maybe even half an hour, drifted past as Louise hugged herself and watched the light on the freshly painted ceiling change as the October wind bullied the clouds across the sky. Eventually, she dragged herself off the bed and sloped towards the window.

Something shiny glinted in the bushes and instantly her back was pressed against the wall, every muscle tense. After five seconds, she made herself breathe out. Nosing very carefully round the architrave, so only half of an eye and the side of her face would be visible from outside, she searched for another flash of light.

No-good, money-grabbing photographers!

In her effort to remain hidden, she only had a partial view of the front lawn. She remained motionless for some time, until her left leg started to cramp and twitch, and then only when she was very sure nobody was in her line of sight, did she lean out a little further.

Another glint! There!

Once again she found herself flattened against the wall. But this time she let out a groan and covered her face with her hands. It wasn’t a telephoto lens but a big, shiny spade that had reflected the light. Ben the gardener-guy’s spade. It was Sunday afternoon and he was here. Just as he’d been for the previous two weeks. Only she’d forgotten he’d be here in all her excitement about Jack coming.

Not that she ever really saw him arrive when he came. At some point in the afternoon, she’d become aware that he was around. She’d hear him whistling as he walked up to the top lawn, or hear the hum of a mower in the distance.

So why had she felt the need to slam herself against the wall and pretend she wasn’t here? This was stupid.

She stopped leaning against the wall and drew herself upright. There. Then she walked primly across the room and out of the door. No one was hiding. She was just walking around inside her own house, as she was perfectly entitled to do. Okay, she’d chosen a path across the room that had meant she couldn’t have been seen from the window, but that didn’t mean anything. It had simply been the most direct route. Sort of.

She found herself in the kitchen. It was in serious need of updating, with pine cabinets that had darkened to an almost offensive orange, but it had a fantastic flagstone floor and always seemed warm—probably because, in the now defunct chimney breast, there was an Aga. It looked lovely and spoke of families gathered in the kitchen sharing overflowing Sunday lunches, but after a more than a month at Whitehaven she still had no idea how to work it.

Well, that wasn’t strictly true. She knew how to boil the kettle. And, at this present moment, that seemed like a shockingly good idea. She filled the battered, thick-bottomed kettle with water, lifted the heavy lid on the Aga hotplate and left the kettle to boil.

She hoped Jack would love Whitehaven as much as she did. What was she going to do if he decided he didn’t like living in the depths of the countryside, far away from the flash London townhouse she’d shared with Toby? It was the only place he’d ever known as home. Well, that and the New York apartment. And the villa in Beverley Hills. Whitehaven was charming, but it lacked the gloss of her former houses.

She’d been getting what she needed out of the cupboards while she’d been thinking, and now discovered that she’d placed two teabags in two mugs. Something she’d done regularly in the early days after her split with Toby, but hadn’t done for months now.

Her first instinct was to put the teabag and mug back in the cupboard, but that urge was hijacked by another one.

She might as well make one for Ben. She gave a short, hollow laugh. It would be the nearest thing to payment she’d given him for all his hard work. The lawns were looking fabulous and, little by little, the shrubs and borders close to the house were starting to lose their wild look. Inside and out Whitehaven was regaining some of its former glory.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t intended to pay him. Just that she’d been heartily avoiding the issue. She’d acted like a diva herself that first week, and she didn’t know how to undo that all-important first impression. As if summoned up by her thoughts, she heard the crunch of footsteps outside. A moment later Ben passed the kitchen window, probably on his way up to the greenhouses.

A cup of tea seemed like a poor effort at a truce, but it was all she had in her arsenal at the moment. Boiling water lifted and swirled the teabag in the cup. Louise hesitated. Sugar, or no sugar?

On an instinct, she put one level spoon in the cup and stirred. He looked like a man who liked a bit of sweetness.

Another laugh that was almost a snort broke the silence. Well, she’d better have a personality change on the way past the herbaceous border, then. Especially if she was truly on a peace mission. At the moment she was the dictionary definition for the absolute opposite of ‘sweetness’. Meet Louise Thornton, sour old prune.

When Louise arrived at the greenhouse, she realised she had a problem. Two hands and two cups of tea meant that she had no spare hands to open the door, or even knock on it. But it had seemed stupid to leave her mug of tea in the kitchen. By the time she’d have delivered Ben’s, discussed paying him and walked back to the house, it would have been stone cold.

She peered inside the greenhouse and tried to spot him. The structure was long and thin—almost thirty feet in length and tucked up against the north side of the walled garden to catch as much sun as possible. Down the centre was the tiled path with wrought iron grates for the under-floor heating system. The side nearest the wall of windows was lined with benches and shelves, all full of plants, but on the other side, large palms and ferns were planted in soil at floor level.

Halfway down the greenhouse a leg was sticking out amongst the dark glossy leaves. She banged the door with her foot. The leg, which had been wavering up and down in its function as a counterbalance, went still.

She held her breath and tried to decide what kind of face she should wear. Not the suspicious glare he’d received on their first meeting, that was the sure. But grinning inanely didn’t seem fitting either. In the end, she didn’t have a chance to decide between ‘calm indifference’ and ‘professional friendliness’, because the leg was suddenly joined by the rest of him as he jumped back onto the path, rubbing his hands together to rid them of loose dirt, and looked in her direction.

She held up his cup of tea and then, when his face had broken into a broad grin, she breathed out. He was obviously really thirsty, because he practically ran to the door and swung it wide. She thrust the mug towards him, ignoring the plop of hot liquid that landed on her hand as she did so.

He took it from her, smiled again, and took a big gulp. ‘Fantastic. Just how I like it. Thanks.’

Louise took a little sip out of her own chunky white mug. ‘No problem. It’s the least I can do.’

Ben lent back against one of the shelves and took another long slurp of tea. He seemed completely at ease here. She tried to copy his stance, making sure she was a good five feet away from him, but she couldn’t work out what to do with her legs and stood up again.

‘Um … about money …’

Ben raised his eyebrows.

‘I can’t let you going on doing all this for nothing.’