Claiming His Christmas Bride

‘I’m sure that helped to convince him of Merlin’s tameness.’ Crys chuckled huskily. ‘Time for breakfast, I think,’ she announced briskly, placing the sleeping baby in Molly’s arms. ‘Pancakes all round!’ she decided brightly as she walked towards the house.

Molly followed slowly behind Crys and Sam. Ordinarily she would have been one of the first to appreciate Crys’s pancakes—they were to die for, light and fluffy, delicious with maple syrup or sugar. But not today. Not when the dark green Jaguar parked in the front driveway clearly told of Gideon Webber’s presence inside the house still.

‘Perhaps he’ll choke on one of Mummy’s pancakes,’ Molly suggested hopefully to baby Peter as he opened his lids to look up at her with alert blue eyes. ‘I know, I know, he’s your godfather,’ she accepted apologetically. ‘But you do have another one—and I can hope, can’t I?’

‘Talking to yourself?’ drawled a mockingly recognisable voice.

Molly looked up sharply to find Gideon Webber approaching the kitchen door from the front of the house, having moved so quietly she hadn’t heard his footsteps on the gravel. Merlin obviously had, and was walking at the man’s side, the two of them obviously happy in each other’s company.

He raised dark brows derisively, obviously aware of her surprise at seeing him there. ‘I had to get something from my car.’

Perhaps it was too much to hope that he had been putting his suitcase in the boot at the same time.

‘I was talking to baby Peter, not myself,’ she told him stiffly.

Gideon gave a mocking smile. ‘Well, I suppose talking to a three-month-old baby has its pluses; at least he can’t answer you back!’

Unlike this man, who seemed to have an answer to everything!

Molly eyed him scathingly. ‘Unusual in a man,’ she acknowledged dryly.

‘In my experience, even more unusual in a woman,’ Gideon murmured softly, before opening the door for her to enter the kitchen ahead of him, effectively cutting off any sharp retort she might have liked to make at this arrogantly sexist remark. And there were several she would have liked to make.

But the laughter and warmth in the kitchen, with Crys busy mixing pancakes, Sam and David helping to lay the table, the three of them talking as they worked, made her desire to snap a reply seem churlish.

Falcon House was a large, three-storey-high building, but Crys and Sam both loved their privacy, and they preferred to do most things in the house themselves. A woman came in from the village three afternoons a week to take care of any heavy housework that might need doing, but Crys did all the cooking herself.

Despite its obvious size, it was definitely a family home, full of warmth, love, and laughter, and Molly usually enjoyed her visits here enormously. Usually…

Why did Gideon Webber have to be here to ruin it all?

Although she had a feeling she was in the minority in feeling that way. David and Sam were obviously enjoying the other man’s company, and Crys and Gideon were standing close together as he helped in the cooking of the pancakes, the two of them moving with an easy familiarity that spoke of a long friendship.

But was it just friendship, or did it go deeper than that? Molly wondered as she sat slightly apart from everyone else, still holding baby Peter as she silently watched them all. Certainly there was nothing more than that on Crys’s side—Crys’s love for Sam was absolute—but Gideon was definitely more at ease with Crys than Molly had seen him with anyone else. The two of them were talking softly together, Gideon smiling openly, his gaze warm as it rested on Crys—

Now what was she imagining? That perhaps Gideon was secretly in love with Crys? A man she had previously believed wasn’t capable of feeling love for anyone?

Ridiculous, she admonished herself impatiently. Gideon had known Crys for years, he was her ex-brother-in-law—of course he had feelings for her; it was only Molly’s own resentment towards the man that saw it as possibly being anything else.

‘All right?’ Sam prompted softly, having come to stand beside her without Molly even being aware of it.

She pushed her troubling thoughts firmly to the back of her mind, looking up to smile at her stepbrother. As well as being a highly successful screenwriter, Sam was the epitome of tall, dark and handsome, and Molly had adored him from the moment she’d known her mother was to marry his father seventeen years ago.

‘Of course,’ she assured him brightly. ‘How could I not be when I’m holding my favourite nephew?’ she added teasingly.

Sam came down on his haunches beside her, briefly touching his son’s cheek in wonder. ‘Your only nephew—unless you know something I don’t?’ He looked lovingly across the room to where Crys was laughingly serving pancakes.

‘Not at all,’ Molly chucklingly assured him as he turned back to her.

‘Does it make you feel in the least broody yourself?’ Sam asked shrewdly.

That was a little harder to answer. She wasn’t even involved with anyone at the moment, had severed what had only been a casual relationship with a fellow actor before leaving New York. But she was twenty-nine now, the same age as Crys, and, if she were honest with herself, she envied her friend her loving husband and beautiful baby.

For all the good that would do her, Molly reproved herself ruefully. Without a man in her life, loving or otherwise, there would be no family of her own, either.

She grimaced. ‘Sam, I doubt it’s escaped your notice that I’m not involved with anyone just now.’

He shrugged. ‘What do you think of David and Gideon?’

Molly frowned her puzzlement at this abrupt turn in the conversation. ‘What do I think of them as what?’

It was Sam’s turn to grimace. ‘Well, I think Crys has one of them in mind as your future husband and father of your children.’

‘She what?’ Molly gasped her bewilderment, sitting rigidly in her chair now, unable to hide her horror at what Sam was suggesting.

‘Don’t tell her I said anything,’ Sam told her hastily. ‘I think it’s all this domesticity that’s gone to her head and infused her with this desire to matchmake for you,’ he added affectionately. ‘She wants everyone to be as happy as we are.’

Molly blinked dazedly. ‘Yes, but—’

‘Crys assures me that David and Gideon are both extremely eligible men,’ her stepbrother teased.

‘They may be—’ her voice rose slightly ‘—but David was only recently widowed. And as for Gideon—I don’t happen to—’

‘Not a word to Crys about any of this, Molly,’ Sam warned softly as plates were put on the table. ‘She won’t be very happy with me if she knows I’ve said anything to you.’

‘But—’

‘I’ll put Peter in his cradle and then we can all have breakfast.’ He spoke normally as he bent to take Peter and crossed the room to put him in the cradle that stood in the corner of the kitchen.

Molly stared after him, totally bewildered by their conversation.

What did he mean, Crys was matchmaking between her and David or Gideon? She wasn’t due to start working with David until the end of January, and after today she hoped never to meet Gideon Webber ever again, so exactly when was this matchmaking supposed to take place?

She had a definite feeling she wasn’t going to like the answer to that question.

CHAPTER THREE

‘EVERYONE had enough to eat?’ Crys prompted happily half an hour later.

Half an hour during which Molly’s bewilderment hadn’t lessened in the least. She knew that Crys was happier now than she had ever been, and that this second marriage to Sam was her whole life, but it certainly hadn’t occurred to Molly that her best friend might decide it was high time that she found such happiness—to the point that she had already picked out two eligible men for her to look over as prospective husband material.

David Strong and Gideon Webber, of all people…

David was one of the nicest men Molly had ever met, and instantly put one at ease, but he was still suffering badly from the unexpected death of his wife. Molly was very much looking forward to working with him, but she knew he certainly wasn’t on the look-out for another woman in his life in the near future.

As for Gideon Webber…!

The only consolation to her own aversion to such an idea was that, much as he obviously loved Crys, Molly knew Gideon Webber would be furious at the very idea of being matched with her.