Her Christmas Fantasy. PENNY JORDAN

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СКАЧАТЬ had been less impressed. In fact, he had been in an edgy, difficult mood throughout the entire journey—and not just, Lisa suspected, because of the damage to his precious car.

      It had struck her, over the previous weekend, when they’d been doing the last of their Christmas shopping together, that he was obviously having doubts about her ability to make the right impression on his parents. There had been several small lectures and clumsy hints on what his family would expect, and one particularly embarrassing moment when Alison had called round to the flat just as Henry had been explaining that he wasn’t sure that the Armani trouser suit was going to be quite the thing for his parents’ annual pre-Christmas supper party.

      ‘What century are Henry’s parents living in?’ Alison had exploded after Henry had left the room. ‘Honestly, Lisa, I can’t—’

      She had stopped when Lisa had shaken her head, changing the subject to ask instead, ‘Any more repercussions about the clothes you bought from Second Time Around, by the way?’

      Lisa had told Alison all about her run-in with Oliver Davenport, asking her friend’s advice as to what she ought to do.

      ‘Ring the shop and find out what they’ve got to say,’ had been Alison’s prompt response.

      ‘I’ve already done that,’ Lisa had told her. ‘And there was just a message on the answering machine saying that the owner has had to close the shop down indefinitely because her father has been taken seriously ill.’

      ‘Well, if you want my opinion, you bought those clothes in all good faith, and I feel that their original owner deserves to know exactly what kind of miserable rat her boyfriend is… I mean…selling her clothes… It’s…it’s… Well, I’d certainly never forgive any man who tried to pull that one on me. I think you did exactly the right thing in refusing to give them back,’ Alison had said comfortingly.

      ‘No. No further repercussions,’ Lisa had told her in response to her latest question. ‘Which I find surprising. I suppose I did overreact a little bit, but when he virtually accused me of trying to blackmail him into paying almost more for them than they had originally cost…’

      Her voice had quivered with remembered indignation as she recalled how shocked and insulted she had felt to be confronted with such a contemptuous assessment of her character.

      ‘You overreacting—and to a man… Now that’s something I would like to see,’ Alison had told her.

      ‘Who are you discussing?’ Henry had asked, coming back into the room.

      ‘Oh, no one special,’ Lisa had told him, hastily and untruthfully, hoping that he wouldn’t question the sudden surge of hot, guilty colour flooding her face as she remembered the shocking unexpectedness and intimacy of the way Oliver Davenport had reached out and touched her, and her even more shocking and intimate reaction to his touch.

      The whole incident was something that was best forgotten she told herself firmly now as she craned her neck to watch a shepherd manoeuvring his flock on the distant hillside. She felt very sorry for Emma, of course, in the loss of her clothes, but hopefully it would teach Oliver Davenport not to behave so arrogantly in future. It was certainly a lesson he needed to learn.

      Lisa glanced at her watch.

      Henry’s mother had announced last night that they sat down for breakfast at eight o’clock sharp, the implication being that she suspected that Lisa lived too decadent and lazy a lifestyle to manage to get up early enough to join them.

      She couldn’t have been more wrong, Lisa acknowledged. She was normally a very early riser.

      The build-up to Christmas, and most especially the week before it, was normally one of her favourite times of the year. Her parents might live a rather unconventional lifestyle by Henry’s parents’ standards, but wherever they had lived when she’d been a child they had always made a point of following as many Christmas traditions as they could—buying and dressing a specially chosen Christmas tree, cooking certain favourite Christmas treats, shopping for presents and wrapping them. But Lisa had always yearned for the trappings of a real British Christmas. She had been looking forward to seeing such a traditional scenario of events taking place in Henry’s childhood home, but it had become apparent to her the previous evening that Henry’s parents, and more specifically Henry’s mother, did not view Christmas in the same way she did herself.

      ‘The whole thing has become so dreadfully commercialised that I simply don’t see the point nowadays,’ she had commented when Lisa had been describing the fun she had had shopping for gifts for the several small and not so small children who featured on her Christmas present list.

      Her father in particular delighted in receiving anything toy-like, and had a special weakness for magic tricks. Lisa had posted her gifts to her parents to Japan weeks ago, and had, in turn, received hers from them. She had brought the presents north with her, intending to add them to the pile she had assumed would accumulate beneath the Christmas tree, which in her imagination she had visualised as tall and wonderfully bushy, dominating the large hallway that Henry had described to her, warmed by the firelight of its open hearth and scenting the whole room with the delicious aroma of fresh pine needles.

      Alas for her imaginings. Henry’s mother did not, apparently, like real Christmas trees. They caused too much mess with their needles. And as for an open fire! They had had that boarded up years ago, she had informed Lisa, adding that it had caused far too much mess and nuisance.

      So much for her hazy thoughts of establishing the beginnings of their own family traditions, her plans of one day telling her own children how she and their father had spent their first Christmas together, going out to choose the family Christmas tree.

      ‘You’re far too romantic and impractical,’ Henry had criticised her. ‘I agree with Mother. Real Christmas trees are nothing but a nuisance.’

      As she turned away from the window Lisa was uncomfortably aware not only of Henry’s mother’s reluctance to accept her, but also of her own unexpectedly rebellious feeling that Henry was letting her down in not being more supportive of her.

      She hadn’t spent one full day with Henry’s family yet, and already she was beginning to regret the extended length of their Christmas stay with them.

      Reluctantly she walked towards the bedroom door. It was ten to eight, and the last thing she wanted to do now was arrive late for breakfast.

      ‘Off-white wool… Don’t you think that’s rather impractical?’ Henry’s mother asked Lisa critically.

      Taking a deep breath and counting to ten, Lisa forced herself to smile as she responded politely to Mary Hanford’s criticism.

      ‘Perhaps a little, but then—’

      ‘I never wear cream or white. I think they can be so draining to the pale English complexion,’ her prospective mother-in-law continued. ‘Navy is always so much more serviceable, I think.’

      Lisa had arrived downstairs half an hour ago, all her offers to help with the preparation of the pre-Christmas buffet supper having been firmly refused.

      So much for creating the right impression on Henry’s parents with her new clothes, Lisa reflected wryly, wishing that Alison was with her to appreciate the ironic humour of the situation.

      She could, of course, have shared the joke with Henry, but somehow she doubted that СКАЧАТЬ