Jessica Hart - Under the Boss’s Mistletoe

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Well, I’m certainly not handing over the money yet. Natasha deserves better than to be married for such a cynical reason. The moment Rupert’s got his hands on the money, he’ll dump her like the proverbial ton of bricks,’ said Jake. ‘He’s still got to prove to me that he’s settled down, and I’ll believe that when I see it!’

Under the circumstances, it was generous of him to still think about Natasha, Cassie thought. He must love her, even if she had proved to be not quite as perfect as he had believed.

Cassie pushed her glass around, making patterns on the tablecloth. It would be quite something to be loved by someone like Jake, who didn’t give up on you even when you made a terrible mistake. She wondered if Natasha would realise that once the first thrill of being with Rupert wore off.

As it inevitably would. Cassie wasn’t a fool, whatever her family thought. She had long ago realised that Rupert’s appeal lay largely in the fact that he was out of reach. He was so impossibly handsome, so extraordinarily charming, so unbelievably glamorous, that you couldn’t imagine doing anything ordinary with him. He was the kind of man you dreamed of having a mad, passionate affair with, not the kind of man you lived with and loved every day.

Not like Jake.

Cassie’s fingers stilled on the glass. Where had that thought come from?

Looking up from her wine, she studied him across the table. Lost in his own thoughts, he was broodingly turning a fork on the tablecloth, his own head bent and the dark, stormy eyes hidden. She could see the angular planes of his face, the jut of his nose, the set of his mouth, and all at once it was as if she had never seen him before.

There was a solidity and a control to him, she realised, disconcerted to realise that she could imagine living with him in a way she had never been able to with Rupert. Bumping into Rupert again had been one of her favourite fantasies for years, but in her dreams they were never doing anything ordinary. They were getting married, not being married. They were going to Paris or sitting on a yacht in the Caribbean, not having breakfast or watching television or emptying the dishwasher.

How strange that she could picture Jake in her flat, could see him coming in from work, taking off his jacket, loosening his tie, reaching for her with a smile…

A strange shiver snaked its way down her spine. It was just Jake, she reminded herself. But he was so immediate, so real, so there, that his presence felt like a hand against her skin, and all at once she was struggling to drag enough oxygen into her lungs.

And then he looked up, the dark-blue eyes locked with hers, and she forgot to breathe at all.

‘Spaghetti carbonara.’

Cassie actually jumped as Giovanni deposited a steaming plate in front of her.

‘And fettucine all’arrabiata for your client!’

She barely noticed Giovanni’s jovial winks and nods of encouragement as he fussed around with pepper and parmesan. How long had she been staring into Jake’s eyes, unable to look away? A second? Ten? Ten minutes? She hoped it was the first, but it was impossible to tell. She felt oddly jarred, and her heart was knocking erratically against her ribs.

She was terrified in case Jake was able to read her thoughts in her eyes. Of course, she would have known if he had, because he would look absolutely horrified. He probably couldn’t think of anything worse than going home to her in an untidy flat every night.

Why was that a depressing thought?

AND why was she even thinking about it? Cassie asked herself crossly as she picked up her fork. Disappointed by her lack of response, Giovanni had taken himself off at last. Jake was obviously still in love with the not-quite-so-perfect Natasha, who had had her sensible head turned by Rupert.

Twirling spaghetti in her spoon, she forced her mind back to the conversation. ‘I’m really sorry,’ she said when Giovanni had left. ‘If it’s any comfort, I don’t imagine Rupert will be easy to live with. Perhaps Natasha will change her mind.’

‘That’s what I’m hoping,’ said Jake.

That wasn’t quite what Cassie had been hoping to hear. I wouldn’t take her back if she grovelled from here to Friday was more what she had had in mind.

She sighed inwardly. Stop being so silly, she told herself.

‘In the meantime, I’ll go back to Wedding Belles and tell them that we’d still like a feature on the Hall, but we can’t manage the human-interest angle.’

Jake’s gaze sharpened. ‘I thought you said they wouldn’t do a piece without that?’

‘No, well, it’s not the end of the world. We can find other ways of promoting the Hall.’

‘They won’t reach the same market, though?’

‘Probably not.’

Jake brooded, stirring his fork mindlessly around in the fettucine. ‘To hell with it!’ he said explosively after a while and looked up at Cassie, who regarded him warily. ‘I’m damned if I’m going to let Rupert mess up my plans for the Hall, too. He’s made enough trouble! I say we go ahead with it anyway.’

‘We can’t do much about it without Natasha,’ she reminded him reluctantly.

‘Unless…’ Jake trailed off, staring at Cassie as if seeing her properly for the first time.

She stared back, more than a little unnerved. ‘What?’

‘Did you tell this editor Natasha’s name?’

‘No, I didn’t go into details. I just said the owner of the Hall was getting married.’

‘So I don’t really need Natasha-I just need a fiancée?’

‘Well, yes, but-’

‘So why don’t I marry you?’

There was a rushing sound in Cassie’s ears. She went hot, then cold, then hot again. ‘Me?’ she squeaked. ‘You don’t want to marry me!’

‘Of course I don’t,’ said Jake, recoiling. ‘God, no! But you said yourself that it doesn’t have to be a real engagement. If all we need is to have a few photographs taken, why shouldn’t you be the bride-to-be?’

‘Well, because-because-’ Cassie stuttered, groping for all the glaringly obvious reasons why she couldn’t, and bizarrely unable to think of any. ‘Because everyone would know it wasn’t true.’

‘You just said you didn’t give the magazine any names.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of them. I was thinking of all the people who know perfectly well we’re not engaged.’

‘Who’s going to know?’

‘Anyone who sees the article,’ she said, exasperated, but Jake only looked down his nose.

‘I don’t know anyone who’s likely to read Wedding Belles,’ he said.

Cassie glared at him. ‘It’s not just about you, though, is it? I know masses of people who read it for one reason or another, and if one of my friends gets whiff of the fact that I’m apparently engaged without telling anyone I’ll never hear the end of it!’

Jake couldn’t see the problem. ‘The article won’t be published until next year,’ he said dismissively. ‘We can worry about what we tell people then. Rupert will never stick with Natasha for more than a few weeks, so there’ll be no reason not to tell everyone the truth then. We’ll say it was just a marketing exercise.’

‘And what about when the Wedding Belles photographer comes down to take pictures of us supposedly planning our wedding at the Hall?’ asked Cassie, picking up her spoon and fork once more. ‘It’ll be all over Portrevick in no time. You know what the village is like. We’d never be able to keep it secret. Rupert’s got some fancy weekend place in St Ives; what’s the betting he’ll hear about it?’

‘What if he does? It wouldn’t do him any harm to think that I’m not inconsolable.’

‘No, but if he gets wind of the fact that you’re just pretending…’ Cassie trailed off and Jake nodded.

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Rupert wouldn’t hesitate to make trouble for me in whatever way he could.’ He looked across the table at Cassie. ‘In that case, let’s make it true,’ he said.

She stared at him. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Let’s make it a real engagement,’ he said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. ‘Or, at least, not a secret one,’ he amended. ‘We can tell everybody who needs to know, and do the photographs for the article quite openly. We’ll know it’s not a real engagement, but we don’t have to tell anyone else that.’

Let’s make it a real engagement. Cassie was furious with herself for the way her heart had jumped at his words, in spite of the fact that only a matter of minutes ago he had been recoiling in horror at the very idea. ‘Nobody would believe it,’ she said flatly.

‘Why not?’

‘Come on, Jake. I’m hardly your type, am I? Are you really going to ask people to believe you took one look at me and fell in love with me? They’d know it wasn’t true.’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Jake studied her over the rim of his glass. It was warm in the restaurant, and she had shrugged off the silky cardigan, leaving her shoulders bare. She was a warm, glowing figure in the candlelight. ‘I can think of more unlikely scenarios,’ he said.

His gaze flustered Cassie, and she tore her eyes away to concentrate fiercely on twisting spaghetti around her fork. ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘And when was this supposed to have happened?’

‘How about when you walked into my office and fell into my arms?’

Cassie felt her colour rising at the memory. ‘And you thought, “I’ve been waiting all my life for someone clumsy to come along”?’

‘Perhaps I’ve had a thing about you since I kissed you at the Allantide Ball,’ Jake suggested. ‘Perhaps I’ve been waiting ten years to find you again.’

It was clear that he was being flippant, but there was an undercurrent of Something in his voice. Cassie did everything she could to stop herself looking up to meet his eyes again, but it was hopeless. Something stronger than her was dragging her gaze up from the fork to lock with Jake’s. She could almost hear the click as it snapped into place.