Playboy Under the Mistletoe

She ran a hand through her long, burnished chestnut hair, tossing her head slightly, allowing the waves to ripple freely. It was good to be uncluttered by her outer garments, and for the first time that day she took a deep, satisfying breath, content to be back in the cosy confines of her room.

‘Perhaps you’d like to order room service for both of us,’ she suggested, ‘while I start on my packing?’ She glanced at Ben as she went to place her suitcase on the bed, but something in his gaze made her stop what she was doing.

He was watching her closely, a glimmer of pure, male interest in his blue glance as it trailed over her, taking in the silky sweep of her hair and wandering down to trace a path over the gentle curve of her hips.

‘I’d almost forgotten how beautiful you are,’ he murmured, his gaze returning to settle on the soft curve of her mouth. ‘Whenever I thought about you, I’d remember your smile, the way you had of looking at me with that guarded expression, as though you weren’t quite sure what trouble I’d land myself in next. But it was always your hair that fascinated me. It’s so glorious that I’d long to run my fingers through it, very much as you did just then.’ He smiled. ‘Only I would have lingered a while longer, I think.’

His gently seductive manner unsettled her, causing her to falter as she set the suitcase down on the bed. Had he really been thinking about her from time to time? She hadn’t expected that. How was she to deal with this man from her past now that he had turned up, out of the blue, the one man she had kept at a distance all this time for fear of being hurt? He’d been a charmer, a man who’d known exactly how to wind women around his little finger, and it didn’t seem as though much had changed.

She fumbled with the zip of the suitcase, encountering resistance, and within a second or two Ben was beside her, his hand resting briefly on hers. The fleeting contact caused a tide of heat to surge through her veins and brought a soft flush of colour to her cheeks.

‘There you are,’ he said. ‘It’s free now.’

‘Thank you.’ She tried breathing slowly and deeply for a while in an effort to calm herself down. She studied him, letting her gaze run over his features and trying to assess what really lay behind that calm, unruffled exterior. ‘It’s been a while since we last ran into one another,’ she murmured, struggling to find her voice. ‘I’m surprised that you thought about me at all.’

‘It would be hard not to think about you,’ he responded with a faint smile. ‘After all, we both lived in the same village, and I watched you grow from a lively tomboy who landed in almost as many scrapes as I did into a lovely, serene and accomplished woman. It would have been very strange if I had forgotten you after that, just because we were separated by a few miles.’

She gave him a long, thoughtful look. Was he teasing her, trying to lead her along the same route that all those unsuspecting young women had travelled back home…like Anna, her brother’s girlfriend? She had to be wary of him. He simply wasn’t to be trusted.

‘Like I said, maybe you should order some food for us…the menu is on the desk. I’ll have a jacket potato with cheese, please. And a pot of coffee would be good. I’ve a feeling I’ll need something to sustain me on the journey.’

He nodded, accepting her change of subject without comment. Glancing through the menu, he said, ‘I think I’ll go with the ham and cheese melt. Leave it with me.’

She nodded and turned back to her packing. Some fifteen minutes later, she had managed to cram most of her belongings into her case, and Ben lent a hand with zipping it up.

‘All this for one week?’ he murmured, lifting a questioning brow. ‘How can any woman need so many changes of clothes in such a short space of time—unless, of course, you’ve been throwing yourself wholeheartedly into the night life? A few boisterous nights in the bar with the people on your course?’ He was looking at her quizzically, and she shook her head, giving off an air of innocence. He lifted a dark brow.

‘Well, maybe a couple,’ she amended with a laugh. ‘Though they weren’t what you’d call boisterous…more of a lively and animated type of evening, I’d say, especially as the night wore on.’

His eyes took on a contemplative expression. ‘No intimate dinners for two, then? Does that mean you’re not involved in any serious relationship at the moment? Or maybe you’ve a boyfriend waiting for you back home?’

She frowned. Why did he want to know that? There was no way she was going to let him wheedle his way into her affections, was there, given his past history? Enough was enough, and she decided to sidestep his questions. Why should he learn every detail of her private life when she knew nothing of his? Simply guessing what he might have been up to was bad enough.

‘It means,’ she said, looking down at her overstuffed case, ‘that I’ve packed my suitcase full of the Christmas presents I’ve bought for friends and family while I’ve been up here. Like I said, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to explore the shops in a new town…and with Christmas just three weeks away, there was no time to lose, was there?’

His mouth curved. ‘I guess not,’ he said, accepting her avoidance tactics with good enough grace. Then he moved away from her as a waiter arrived with the food, setting it out on the table.

‘I ordered a couple of desserts, too,’ Ben told her when the man had gone. ‘All this is my treat,’ he said. ‘I told the receptionist I would be paying for it.’

‘Thank you…but you didn’t need to do that.’ She eyed up the mouth-watering fruit crumble topped with creamy custard and felt all her good intentions fade away. How had he known that was her favourite? ‘That’s my diet blown for the week,’ she added mournfully.

He laughed. ‘I don’t believe that you’ve ever needed to diet in your life,’ he said, looking her over. ‘You’ve a perfect hourglass figure…’

She steeled herself not to rise to his bait. ‘Perhaps you should sit down and eat before the food gets cold,’ she suggested, doing her best to bat his comments to one side. ‘And tell me how it is that you came to be working with the rescue services this afternoon. I thought you were working in A and E, the same as me.’

She pulled out a chair and sat down opposite him at the table. Glancing out of the window she could see that in the grey light of the afternoon the snow was beginning to thicken, fat white flakes coming down in a steady flow.

‘I wanted to try something different,’ he said, taking a bite out of his toasted sandwich. ‘I used to enjoy climbing in the Lake District and thought I might volunteer my services for the mountain rescue team. Then one of the team members here fell sick, so Mike asked me to come and do today’s stint. I suppose that’s why you didn’t see my name on the advertising bumph.’

She nodded. ‘I wondered if it was something like that.’ She scooped up a mound of potato. ‘I expect you know most of your local team already, don’t you? That will probably make things easier for you, won’t it?’

He shook his head. ‘I won’t be working with my local team because I’m preparing to go back to Woodsley. I’ve served out my notice at the hospital where I’ve been these last few years.’

Jasmine put down her fork and stared at him. ‘You’re going home? After all this time?’

‘That’s right. I might not be too welcome back there, but five years has perhaps been long enough for me to stay away. There are things I need to deal with, and I think it’s probably high time I started to put my life in order.’

She pressed her lips together. The news had come as a huge shock. How was she going to cope if Ben came back to the village? Woodsley Bridge was a relatively small place, and the chances of seeing him around and about were pretty great. There would be no escape.

Even so, she couldn’t prevent the thrill of nervous excitement that shimmied along her spine at the thought of him coming home. But that was the unruly, wanton side of her body betraying her, wasn’t it? Common sense told her that there would be nothing but trouble if Ben went back to the Lake District. How would his father react?

Worse still, how would her brother Callum deal with the wanderer’s return? Once, he and Ben had been best friends, but all that had changed. He blamed Ben for taking Anna away from him, and that anger had not dissipated. It had continued to simmer throughout all those long years.

How was she going to deal with this? Was she destined to stand on the sidelines and watch the process of bitter condemnation start all over again?

Chapter Two

JASMINE frowned, gripping the steering-wheel firmly and making a determined effort to concentrate on her driving. Starting out on the long journey home, she was still reeling from the bombshell that Ben had dropped just a short time ago.

Her mind was caught up in a fog of confusion. One minute she had been secure in her own sheltered world, and now, in an instant, everything had changed. Somehow, she couldn’t come to terms with the fact that from now on he would be staying around. For her, life in her home village of Woodsley Bridge would never be quite the same again.

It was early evening now, already dark, and snow was falling in a gentle curtain, lending a picture-postcard atmosphere to the landscape. The branches of the trees were topped with thick ribbons of snow, the rooftops of isolated farmhouses had become a pristine white and all around snow spread like a glistening carpet over the fields. It was lovely to look at, but not so good when she had to drive in it.

She had already been on the road for half an hour, and there were still many miles left to go. She was keeping her fingers crossed that the steady downfall would ease off at some point and that at least the roads would stay clear.

Ben was following her on this first lap of the journey. ‘My route follows yours for the first fifteen miles or so,’ he had told her before they’d set off, and she had looked at him in surprise.

‘But I thought you were living in St Helens, down in Cheshire,’ she responded with a frown. Surely that was in the opposite direction?

Driving along, she recalled their conversation. ‘I didn’t realise you knew where I was living,’ he had said, raising a brow.

She’d given a faint shrug. ‘Information filters through from time to time about what you’ve been doing or where you are. People might have caught a glimpse of you, here and there, or maybe their friends and relatives have been further afield to a hospital for treatment…it really doesn’t take much for word to get around.’

He’d smiled crookedly. ‘Tongues will always wag, won’t they? I expect rumours are rife about all my transgressions. The village folk could never quite get over my youthful misdemeanours, could they? That Radcliffe boy’s up to his tricks again is about all I ever heard from them. Even when I was doing my medical training they were convinced I’d be thrown out for something or other.’

He wasn’t far off the mark there, Jasmine acknowledged inwardly. His father had made it clear from the first that he wasn’t expecting him to finish the course, and perhaps that was because his son had such a wide range of interests that he found it hard to stick to one in particular. Ben was a wild spirit, always game for anything, and even at medical school he had managed to raise brows. News of his exploits quickly found its way back home.

‘Well, you did get into trouble for almost setting fire to the kitchen in your student residence,’ she murmured. ‘And then there was that time when you and your friends stayed out all night and turned up at your lecture next morning looking the worse for wear.’

He made a face. ‘Almost being the operative word about the fire,’ he said. ‘I only left the omelette cooking on the hob for a minute or two while I went to help a fellow student who had cut her hand…and the fact that the smoke alarm didn’t go off was down to someone else removing the battery and forgetting to put it back. I think he was fed up with it going off every time he made toast.’

His brows drew together. ‘And as to the night out, why should that have turned out to be a disciplinary offence? At least we turned up for the lecture on time next day. Some of these people on the boards of universities seem to have no recollection of what it’s like to be a student. Yet I’ll bet they had their moments, if the truth was known.’

‘You make it sound as though it was all unfair,’ she said with a wry smile. ‘Anyway, I’m sure that’s all in the past. I heard you’d done well for yourself in the last few years. There was a piece in the paper about you setting up a new emergency paediatric unit at the hospital in Cheshire…’ She frowned. ‘But that brings me back to what I was saying—if you’re following the same route home as me, I’m guessing you must be living and working somewhere else at the moment.’

He nodded. ‘I’ve been doing some locum work up in Lancashire, so it made sense to stay there for the last couple of months. And, of course, it meant I was able to come and do the stint with the rescue services today, since I’m based not too far away.’

It made sense to Jasmine. He had always been a restless soul, and from what he had just described of his travel arrangements, things didn’t seem to have changed very much.