One Winter's Day: A Diamond in Her Stocking / Christmas Where They Belong / Snowed in at the Ranch

‘You seem to have a distorted idea of who I am based on gossip and innuendo. I want to prove to you I’m a decent guy.’

Again she realised that some of her reactions to him might have hurt him. She hastened to reassure him. ‘You’ve shown me that in so many ways. The fact you went off and trained to be a barista just to help me is the latest example.’ She looked away and then back. ‘It’s just...just the other women thing.’

Jesse sighed. She didn’t like the sound of it. ‘I saw the way you watched me as I talked to Evie’s friend.’

‘Dell.’

‘Were you jealous?’

‘A...a little. She’s very attractive.’

‘Is she? I didn’t notice. She’s friendly, pleasant.’

‘How could you not see how cute she is?’

‘Contrary to that bad old reputation of mine, I don’t look with lust at every female I meet because I want to bed her and run.’

She managed a weak smile. ‘I never thought that for a minute.’ Though she’d certainly been told that was what Jesse was capable of. She was beginning to realise the gossips had got him wrong.

Jesse shifted on the sofa, a movement that brought him closer to her. ‘I haven’t spent much time in Dolphin Bay in recent years. I don’t like people knowing my business. It’s suited me to let them think Jesse the player has waltzed through life unscathed. If I’d brought Camilla home to marry her it would have been a triumph. But when it turned out such a disaster I was glad I’d never mentioned her. I didn’t want anyone to know I’d been brought down so low.’

Lizzie was shocked at the slight edge to his voice. ‘Camilla?’ she asked.

‘She was a photojournalist who came to do a feature story on our team. We were rebuilding tsunami-ravaged villages in Sri Lanka a few years back. I wasn’t attracted to her at first but she singled me out for a lot of one-on-one photography.’

‘I bet she did,’ Lizzie murmured under her breath.

‘What was that?’ asked Jesse.

‘Nothing,’ she said and decided to keep her comments to herself. She couldn’t be jealous of someone in Jesse’s past and it sounded petty to criticise the unknown woman.

‘I spent a lot of time with her being interviewed, being photographed.’

‘And you fell for her.’

‘Hard and fast.’

Lizzie jumped down hard on an unwarranted twinge of jealousy. Her imagination was running crazy wondering what kind of photos Camilla had taken of Jesse and whether he’d been wearing any clothes. But she couldn’t ask.

‘Her time with us was limited,’ Jesse continued. ‘It was a pressure cooker environment. I managed to get hold of a sapphire ring. I proposed. She laughed. Then turned me down.’

‘She laughed?’ Indignation for Jesse swept through Lizzie.

‘Seemed what I’d thought was a serious relationship was a casual fling to her. She already had a fiancé at home in London. That was the first I’d heard of him. She had never told me she was anything other than single.’ The delivery of his words was matter-of-fact, emotionless, as if he didn’t care. But the rigid line of his mouth told Lizzie otherwise.

‘You must have been devastated.’

He shrugged. ‘You could say that.’

‘So what happened?’

‘She went home to London to marry the poor sucker.’

‘And you never saw her again?’

He paused. ‘Not from choice.’

‘What...what do you mean?’

‘She showed up in India at the start of this year to do a follow-up feature.’

‘On you?’

‘On the organisation I worked for. I wanted nothing to do with her.’

Something about the tone of his voice made her ask, ‘But she wanted you?’

‘To take up where we left off. Another fling. She was married by then and prepared to betray her husband.’

Under her breath, Lizzie uttered some choice swear words in French.

‘I don’t dare ask what that meant,’ Jesse said with a shadow of his grin.

‘Don’t,’ said Lizzie.

‘Probably nothing I wouldn’t have said myself,’ he said. ‘I told her what I thought of her and got transferred to another site.’

Lizzie put her hand on his arm. ‘I hate her on your behalf,’ she said vehemently. ‘How dare she do that to you? And what an idiot to...to have let you go. I would have...’ Her voice tapered off as she realised what she had said. What she had revealed. ‘I...I mean—’

Jesse cradled her face in his hands, dropped a kiss on her mouth. ‘That’s sweet of you,’ he said.

She managed a weak smile. ‘I...I think you’re kinda wonderful. I can’t imagine every other woman wouldn’t think so too.’

‘I’m glad you think I’m wonderful.’ He rolled his eyes in self-mockery.

‘You...you must know I do. I don’t mean that as a joke.’

Her breath hitched with awareness of how attractive she found him but it was so much more than the way he looked. ‘I missed you terribly while you were away in Sydney. It...it scared me. The thought of what it would be like when you leave for your job.’

‘I missed you too. I thought about you every minute of that four-hour trip to Sydney and all the way back.’