Mills & Boon Christmas Delights Collection. Rebecca Winters

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      ‘Away as in…?’

      ‘She’s spending Christmas in a…a retreat in Cornwall.’

      ‘But that’s the other end of the country!’ Darcy heard herself exclaim stupidly—as if the where mattered! It was the how and why that were infinitely more important. Her spinning head struggled to make sense of what she was hearing and failed miserably. No matter what else was wrong in her life, there had always been a solid, reliable, constant…Mum… No, this just didn’t make sense—no sense at all!

      ‘It wouldn’t matter if it was down the road; they don’t even have a phone,’ her stepfather came back in a heavy, doom-laden tone. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do! Everyone’s asking after her. She’s making the costumes for the school Nativity play, the WI want two-hundred mince pies by Thursday… How do you make mince pies, Darcy…?’ he asked pathetically.

      ‘We’ve got more important things than mince pies to worry about.’ As if he needed reminding of that! ‘Have you any idea at all why has she done this, Dad? Did you have a row or something?’

      ‘No, nothing like that; she’d been a bit quiet lately…but you’re right; it must be my fault.’

      ‘Nonsense!’ Darcy meant it. The day she found a man who was half as marvellous as Jack Alexander she was going to stick to him like superglue!

      ‘Apparently she needs time alone. Are you still there…? Darcy…Darcy…?’

      ‘Sorry, Dad, I dropped the phone.’ There was a distinctly surreal feel about the entire situation. People like Cathy Alexander didn’t suffer from identity crises, they didn’t walk out on their family with no proper explanation!

      ‘God, Darcy, what am I going to do…?’ She could hear the escalating panic in her stepfather’s gruff voice. ‘Sam, Beth and the children arrive from the States on Friday. It’s too late to put them off.’

      ‘No, you mustn’t do that!’ Darcy replied swiftly. Since Jack’s daughter from his first marriage had moved to the States the opportunities for Jack to see her and his only grandchild were few and far between.

      ‘Nick rang to say to expect him at the end of the week, and no doubt Clare will show up some time.’

      Darcy permitted herself a wry smile—it was so like Clare not to commit herself to a date.

      ‘Your grandmother is likely to drop in on us at any moment. Can you imagine what she’s going to make of this…? At the last count we were doing Christmas dinner for fifteen people that I know of, and the Aga’s gone out and I can’t light it! I never did have the knack with the darned thing like your mother has…’

      Darcy could hear him gulp down the line. She took a deep breath; desperate circumstances required drastic solutions.

      ‘Don’t panic,’ she instructed her harassed stepfather with shameless hypocrisy. ‘If I pack now I should be there about… There shouldn’t be too much traffic at this time of night, should there…?’

      ‘Your skiing holiday, Darcy!’

      Darcy recognised a token protest when she heard it.

      ‘I know how much you’ve been looking forward to it…’

      Darcy allowed herself a final indulgent moment to wistfully visualise crisp snow-covered slopes, twinkling mountain villages and the hunky outdoor type she had been destined to meet amidst the après-ski gluwein before she squared her slight shoulders.

      ‘With my luck I’d probably have come back with several limbs in plaster.’ You had to be philosophical about these things.

      Did her cancellation insurance cover family crises caused by the parent of the policy-holder unexpectedly needing to find herself…? Somehow Darcy didn’t think so.

      ‘You can’t cancel,’ Jennifer insisted a little later that evening as she sat on Darcy’s bed. Darcy smiled and continued to replace the skiing gear in her suitcase with clothes more suited to Christmas in a remote corner of the Yorkshire Dales. ‘You’ve been looking forward to it all year. I don’t see why it has to be you; why can’t Clare go home to help?’

      Darcy laughed. ‘I don’t think domesticity is really Clare’s scene,’ she responded wryly. Her beautiful, talented and slightly spoilt half-sister had a heart of gold, but she needed therapy to recover from a broken fingernail.

      ‘And it’s yours…?’

      Darcy couldn’t deny this. ‘I’ll have to learn, won’t I?’

      Jennifer, seeing her friend wasn’t to be dissuaded, sighed. ‘Well, I think you’re being a fool.’

      Darcy shrugged. ‘So what’s new?’

      Jennifer’s expression darkened. ‘That,’ she said angrily, ‘wasn’t your fault!’

      ‘Tell that to Michael’s wife and children.’

      This year Reece Erskine wasn’t taking any chances. He was going to lose himself in the wilds of deepest, darkest Yorkshire until the so-called festive season was well and truly over!

      So he didn’t like Christmas… Why was it considered a crime when a man refused to participate in the manic few weeks that culminated in several days of gluttony in the company of people you avoided for the rest of the year?

      Of course, the most insupportable part was the fact that everyone was so understanding. He refused to put on a paper party hat and suddenly he was failing to come to terms with his loss. He’d had it with pop psychology, no matter how well-intentioned!

      After the debacle last year, when the girlfriend—and he used the term in the loosest possible sense—of the moment, armed with champagne, sympathy and a criminally sexy nightie, had tracked him down to the hotel he’d holed up in, he wasn’t leaving any clues. She’d proved to be a scarily tenacious woman! She’d had her revenge, though; she’d sold the story of their so-called ‘stormy relationship’ to a tabloid.

      Whether he would have been quite so keen to avail himself of Greg’s hospitality if he’d known that the renovations of the big Victorian pile had been at such an early stage was questionable, but that was academic now he was here.

      ‘God, man, you’re getting soft,’ he told himself in disgust. His deep voice sounded eerily loud in the empty lofty-ceilinged room. ‘What’s a rat or two between friends…? A bit of good old-fashioned frontier spirit is what’s called for here. Who wants to call Room Service when he could pump up the old Primus stove?’ His tone lacked conviction even to his own ears.

      Having unrolled his sleeping bag, he made his way into the overgrown garden that stretched down towards what sounded like a river in full spate. He tightened the collar of his leather jacket around his neck; it was almost as cold out here as inside.

      From the bone-chilling temperature in the old place even after he’d lit that smoky fire in the cavernous grate, he suspected he’d need to invest in a few thick blankets to supplement his state-of-the-art bedding, which might well live up to its press and be able to withstand a night in the North Pole, but the Yorkshire СКАЧАТЬ