Mistletoe Magic. Кэрол Мортимер

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СКАЧАТЬ less than his usual cheerful self is due to a rash on his face and chest. The doctor is with him now, deciding whether or not it’s chickenpox,’ he explained with a grimace.

      ‘Oh, no,’ Molly groaned sympathetically.

      ‘Chickenpox?’ Gideon’s frown deepened. ‘Isn’t he a little young to get something like that?’

      Too young, Molly acknowledged worriedly. Peter was only three months old…

      ‘That’s what the doctor said,’ David acknowledged lightly.

      ‘I’ll go and see Crys now…’

      David put out a hand to stop Molly as she would have hurried from the bedroom. ‘Not if you haven’t already had chickenpox,’ he warned.

      ‘I have,’ she assured him. ‘According to my mother I had every childhood disease going before I was a year old,’ she added ruefully.

      ‘Why am I not surprised?’ Gideon muttered dryly.

      Her eyes flashed deeply brown as she shot him a look across the room. ‘Have you had chickenpox?’

      He drew his breath in with a heavy sigh. ‘As it happens, no,’ he admitted with a grimace.

      ‘Oops,’ David sympathised. ‘If it actually is chickenpox, it seems that Peter will have been at his most infectious from the christening onwards,’ he explained at Gideon’s questioningly raised brows.

      It was all Molly could do to hold back her smile. Oh, it would be awful if a baby as young as Peter had contracted the infection, but the thought of the arrogantly confident Gideon Webber struck down with the unsightly rash was enough to make anyone smile.

      ‘Perhaps you should leave now?’ she suggested lightly—hope still sprang eternal that this man might not be here to ruin Christmas.

      ‘That wouldn’t be allowed, I’m afraid,’ David was the one to answer her. ‘The doctor has already said that if it is chickenpox, if we’ve all been in contact with Peter during the last forty-eight hours, that we would have to remain a self-contained unit for at least the next five days or so to see if any of us develop the infection.’

      Five days? When Molly had been expecting to rid herself of Gideon within a couple of days!

      But the look of mockery that had replaced Gideon’s frown was enough for her to immediately hide her dismay. ‘I’ll go and see if there’s any news,’ she offered briskly, deliberately turning away from Gideon—and his knowingly taunting look.

      Poor Peter did look very disgruntled when Molly entered the nursery a few seconds later, his face all red and blotchy from crying. Crys’s face was pale and anxious as she held him in her arms.

      ‘How is he?’ Molly asked a grey-faced Sam as he stood beside Crys, looking down worriedly at his young son.

      ‘It’s what’s commonly called milk rash.’ It was the young female doctor who answered her lightly. ‘Uncomfortable for Peter, but fortunately he doesn’t have a temperature or anything like that,’ she added reassuringly. ‘Poor little love is just feeling a trifle fed up with the world—aren’t you, Peter?’ She touched him comfortingly. ‘And his first Christmas, too.’

      In actual fact, apart from the slight rash on his face and chest, and his cheeks blotchy from crying, Peter looked in better health than either of his parents, Molly decided, after taking in Crys’s ashen face and Sam’s anxious gaze as he continued to look at his wife and son.

      ‘Well, that’s really good news.’ Molly smiled at the pretty doctor.

      The doctor grinned back. ‘Isn’t it?’ She nodded, obviously relieved to have someone other than worried parents to talk to. ‘I’m sure the rash will fade very soon, and Peter will be back to his normal placid self,’ she added dismissively, ‘but if you have any more worries about him at all over Christmas, please don’t hesitate to call me. I shall be on call all over the holiday period,’ she said ruefully.

      ‘Poor you,’ Molly sympathised as she escorted the doctor out of the nursery and down the wide staircase to the front door.

      The lights on the Christmas tree they had dressed the previous evening blinked on and off warmly as they passed the sitting-room.

      The doctor shrugged. ‘It seems only fair, as my partners all have families they would like to be with.’

      The doctor was probably aged in her mid-thirties, and was extremely pretty in a blond, blue-eyed, no-nonsense sort of way; it seemed unfair that she was to spend Christmas alone.

      ‘Everything okay?’ David prompted as he came out of the sitting-room. He was obviously the one responsible for putting on the Christmas lights; neither Crys nor Sam was in any mood to think of anything to do with Christmas at the moment.

      Molly drifted off into the kitchen as the doctor and the actor fell into easy conversation and David took over the task of escorting the doctor to her car.

      From the looks of things, what with Peter’s obvious discomfort and the doctor’s visit, no one had yet had any lunch, and now certainly wasn’t the time to ask Crys what she’d had in mind for the meal. But a quick look in the fridge revealed a huge bowl of freshly made chicken soup, and Molly had already seen there were three French sticks on the table to accompany it.

      ‘Oh!’ She gasped as she straightened from the fridge to find Gideon standing behind her; he moved with the silence of a feline.

      ‘Steady.’ He reached out and took the heavy bowl from her as it wobbled precariously. ‘Where shall I put this?’

      Those raised blond brows dared her to make the answer that had sprung so readily to her lips, but Molly clamped those lips together for several seconds before answering. ‘Just on the table, thanks,’ she said briskly. ‘I think Crys and Sam need to eat something after all that worry,’ she added ruefully.

      Gideon nodded. ‘Nothing ever looks as bad on a full stomach.’

      Molly wasn’t so sure that a bowl of soup and some French bread would work the same magic with her, concerning spending Christmas with this man.

      Gideon grinned as he seemed to guess her thoughts. ‘Well…usually not,’ he drawled mockingly.

      She glared up at him. ‘Why don’t you lay the table and make yourself useful, instead of standing there tormenting me?’ she bit out crossly, having transferred the soup to a large saucepan and put it on top of the Aga to warm while she cut the bread up into more manageable pieces.

      Gideon didn’t move, still standing far too close to her than was comfortable. ‘Am I tormenting you?’ he murmured huskily.

      Molly swallowed hard. ‘You know that you are!’ she snapped, at the same time knowing that her voice lacked conviction.

      What was it about this man that made her so aware of him? So physically aware of him—totally aware of the muscled tautness of his body, of the clean, male smell of him, of the arrogant curve to that sculptured mouth. In fact, she was so much aware of him at the moment that she could hardly breathe, let alone force her limbs to move away from him.

      That dark blue gaze easily held СКАЧАТЬ