скачать книгу бесплатно
‘I’m fine, thanks.’ Turning back to the job in hand, she picked up the waiting sharp knife to dice the onions. But it was hard to keep her hand perfectly steady when the image of Jake in a fitted wine-coloured sweater and tailored black trousers, his hair damply golden from his shower, kept impinging on her ability to think straight. ‘I know when we were together my cooking wasn’t great, but I’ve gotten better at it over the years and you might even be pleasantly surprised.’
The man standing behind her didn’t immediately reply. When Ailsa heard him exhale a heavy sigh, she tensed anxiously.
‘Why did you think your cooking wasn’t great?’
‘Well … you always seemed to end up suggesting we go to a restaurant whenever I made anything. Perhaps that was a clue?’
Saying nothing, Jake moved up beside her and gently removed the ivory-handled knife from her hand. Laying it down on the chopping board, he turned her round to face him. ‘I don’t remember ever suggesting we go to a restaurant when you’d already spent hours in the kitchen cooking a meal. And when I suggested we eat out it was only ever to give you a break, so that you wouldn’t stress over preparing something. You made some great food when we were together, Ailsa. You must have, because I’m still here … right?’
What special ingredient did he possess that made that crooked smile of his so heartbreaking? His eyes so penetratingly, flawlessly blue? Her breath hitched and her heart started to race …
CHAPTER TWO
IT PAINED Jake that Ailsa had harboured the belief all these years that he’d thought her cooking unpalatable. Yes, he had on occasion smiled at her earnest efforts when they hadn’t quite worked out, but he hoped he’d conveyed that he was appreciative too. He’d eat burnt offerings every day if he could turn back the clock to the time when they were together, before the shattering event that had torn them apart.
He breathed out slowly. As he examined her thoughtful amber gaze a ripple of undeniable electricity hummed between them.
‘Yes, you’re still here,’ she quietly agreed with a reticent smile.
‘Battle-scarred, but still alive and kicking,’ he added, joking.
Ailsa’s smile fled, as did the beginning-to-melt look in her eyes. ‘Don’t joke about that,’ she scolded. Her tone was softer as she looped some silky strands of hair behind her ear. ‘Does it still bother you? The scar, I mean?’
His heart thudding—as it always did whenever his scar came under scrutiny—Jake mentally strengthened his defences, hammering in iron nails to hold them fast. ‘Do you mean am I worried that it’s spoiled my good looks?’ he mocked. Spinning away from her, he jammed his hands into his pockets, but quickly turned back again before she had a chance to comment. ‘It’s been over four years since I acquired it. I’ve quite got used to it. I think it gives me a certain piratical appeal … don’t you? At least, that’s what women tell me’
‘Women?’
‘We’ve been divorced four years, Ailsa. Did you imagine I would stay celibate?’
‘Don’t!’
‘Don’t what?’
‘Be cruel. I don’t deserve that. When I asked you if your scar bothered you, I meant does it still give you pain?’
‘The only pain I get from it is when I remember what caused it … and what we lost that day.’
She fell silent. But not before Jake glimpsed the anguish in her golden eyes.
‘Well,’ she said after a while, ‘I’d better get on with the cooking or we won’t have a meal tonight at all.’ Clearly discomfited by what he’d confessed, Ailsa returned to the counter to continue dicing onions. ‘Why don’t you go and make yourself comfortable in the living room and just relax?’
‘Maybe I’ll do just that,’ he murmured, glad of the opportunity to regroup his feelings and not blurt out anything else that might hurt her. Gratefully, he exited the room.
The charming dining room had terracotta walls, exposed beams on the ceiling, and a rustic oak floor. In the centre of the sturdy table—also oak—several different-sized white and scarlet candles burned, lending a warm and inviting glow to the room now that the day had turned seasonally dark. The window blinds were not yet pulled down, and outside snowflakes continued to float past the window in a never-ending stream. In the past, when they’d been married and in love, Jake might have considered the atmosphere intimate. But something told him it wasn’t his ex-wife’s intention to create such a potentially awkward impression. She ‘d always lit candles at dinner, whatever the season. She simply loved beauty in all its forms.
She’d once told him that the children’s home she’d grown up in had been bare of beauty of any kind and her soul had longed for it. Quickly he jettisoned the poignant memory, but not before berating himself for not encouraging her to talk more about her childhood experiences when they’d been married.
Now, at her invitation, he drew out a carved wooden chair, then tried to relax as she briefly disappeared to get their food. When she returned he watched interestedly as she carefully placed the aromatic meal she’d prepared in front of him, noting how appealing she’d made it look on the plate. He hadn’t realised how hungry he was until he’d scented the chilli, and he tucked into it with relish when Ailsa told him to, ‘Go ahead and eat … don’t wait for me.’
‘What do you think?’
The slight suggestion of anxiety in her tone made his gut clench. Touching his napkin to his lips, Jake grinned in a bid to help dispel it. Sitting opposite him, her long hair turning almost copper in the light of the gently flickering candle flames, she was quite utterly bewitching. A little buzz of sensual heat vibrated through him. ‘It’s delicious. I can’t begin to tell you how welcome it is after a long day’s travelling,’ he answered huskily.
‘That’s all right, then. Would you like some juice or some water?’ She was already reaching her hand towards the two jugs positioned on the raffia place-mat between them.
Jake nodded. ‘Water is fine … thanks.’
They seemed to have an unspoken agreement not to talk during the meal. But then, just as he finished every last scrap of the chilli she had prepared, Ailsa took a deep breath and brought an end to the silence.
‘Was it snowing in Copenhagen when you left?’ she asked conversationally.
‘We’ve had a few heavy snow showers over the past couple of days, but nothing like you’ve got here.’
‘Saskia must be pleased, then. She loves the snow. She’s been praying for a white Christmas.’
Leaning back in his chair, Jake met her gaze warily. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t bring her home today.’
Ailsa didn’t reply straight away and reassure him that she was okay with it. Behind her soft amber glance he sensed deep disappointment, and perhaps some residue of anger too. He blew out a breath to release the tension that had started to gather force in the pit of his stomach.
‘I know you don’t want to hear it, but I had so many plans for Christmas. I even told my customers to get their orders in early because I was taking an extra week off before Christmas Day to spend some time with my daughter. I’m really sorry that your mother lost your father, Jake, but she’s not the only one grieving.’ She was fighting hard to contain her emotion, and her beautiful eyes misted with tears.
‘Grieving?’ he echoed, not understanding.
‘Have you forgotten what day it is today?’ Her steady gaze unflinching now, she curled her fingers into the pristine white napkin now lying crumpled by her plate. ‘It’s the anniversary of our baby’s death … the day of the accident. That’s why I needed Saskia home today. If she was here I’d be focusing all my attention on her and wouldn’t let myself dwell on it so much.’
For the second time since setting eyes on Ailsa after so long Jake felt winded. Then a plethora of raw emotion gripped him mercilessly, almost making him want to crawl out of his own skin. An intense feeling of claustrophobia descended—just as if someone had shoved him inside a dark, windowless cell and then thrown away the key …
‘I’ve never noted the date,’ he admitted, his dry throat suddenly burning. ‘Probably because I don’t need some damned anniversary to remind me of what we lost that day!’ Pushing to his feet, he crossed to the window to stare blindly out at the curtain of white still drifting relentlessly down from the heavens. Vaguely he registered the scrape of Ailsa’s chair being pushed back behind him.
‘We haven’t talked about what happened in years … not since the divorce,’ she said quietly.
‘And you think now’s the right time?’ He spun round again, feeling like a pressure cooker about to blow. Ailsa was standing in front of him with her arms folded, her expression resolute. Yet he easily noted the giveaway tremor in her lower lip that revealed she was nervous too.
‘I’m not saying I want to dwell on what happened just because it’s the anniversary of Thomas’s death, but I—’
‘Don’t call him that … Our son wasn’t even born when he died!’
At the reminder that they’d given their baby a name, Jake felt his knees almost buckle. If he didn’t think of him as having a name then he couldn’t have been real, right? He couldn’t have had an identity other than that of an unborn foetus in the womb. It was the only way he’d been able to cope with the tragedy all these years.
The delicate oval face before him, with its perfectly neat dark brows, looked faintly horrified. ‘But we did give him a name, Jake … a name and a gravestone, remember? Before the snow got really bad yesterday I took a bouquet of lilac asters and white anemones to the graveyard where he’s buried. I do it every year at this time.’
The graveyard that housed the tiny remains of his son was situated in the grounds of a picturesque Norman church tucked away behind a narrow street not far from the Westminster offices of Larsen and Son. But Jake hadn’t visited it since the day of the funeral. That had been a bitter winter’s day, when icy winds had cleaved into his wounded face like hot knives, and it was a day that he wished he could blot from his memory for ever.
Pressing his fingers into his temples, he drove them irritably back into his hair. ‘And that helps, does it?’
‘Yes, it does, as a matter of fact. I know I was only seven months pregnant when he died, but he deserves to be remembered, don’t you think? Why do you seem so angry that I’ve brought the subject up? Did you really expect to stay here the night and not have me talk about it?’
Feeling utterly drained all of a sudden, as well as a million miles away from any remedy that could soothe the pain and distress he was experiencing at the memory of the longed-for son they’d lost so cruelly, Jake moved across to the dining room door that stood ajar.
‘I’m sorry … but I really don’t think there’s any point in discussing it. What can it possibly achieve? You have to let it go, Ailsa. The past is finished—over. We’re divorced, remember? We’ve made new lives for ourselves. Who would have thought the shy young girl I married would end up running her own business? That’s quite an achievement after all that’s happened. Not everything ended in disaster between us. We’ve still got our beautiful daughter to be thankful for. Let’s leave it at that, shall we?’
‘Yes, we have Saskia—and I count my blessings every day that we have. And, yes, I run my own business and I’m proud of it. But do you really believe that if we don’t discuss it the shadow of that dreadful time we endured will magically go away? If it was so easy to just let it go don’t you think I would have done it by now? I thought that the divorce would help bring some closure after our baby’s death—help us both put it behind us and eventually heal. But somehow it doesn’t feel like it has. How can it when I’ve lost half of my family and can’t even hope for more children in the future? The accident robbed me of the chance. Perhaps because we’re not together any more it helps you to pretend that it never happened at all, Jake? “Out of sight, out of mind”, as they say?’
Ailsa was so near the truth that Jake stared at her. He hadn’t really wanted a divorce at all, but he had finally instigated it when the agony and the blame he’d imagined he saw in his wife’s eyes every day began to seriously disturb him. He just hadn’t been able to deal with it.
‘How can I pretend it never happened, hmm? I only have to look in the mirror every time I go to the bathroom and see this damned scar on my face to know that it did! Anyway …’
He swallowed down a gulp of air and his thundering heartbeat gradually slowed. It gave him a chance to think what to do next … to try to blot out the torturous memory of Ailsa being so badly injured in the accident that she’d slipped into unconsciousness long before the surgeons had performed a ceasarean to try and save the baby. The head surgeon had told Jake afterwards that her womb had been irreparably damaged and their infant hadn’t survived. It was unlikely she’d ever be able to bear a child again.
‘I’ve brought some work with me that I need to take a look at before I turn in. My father’s death has meant that I’ve become CEO, and inevitably there’s a raft of problems to sort out. Thanks for dinner and the bed for the night. The food was great. I’ll see you in the morning.’
Even though his excuse was perfectly legitimate, there was no escaping the fact that it made him feel like a despicable coward.
‘If you need an extra blanket, you’ll find a pile of them in the oak chest at the end of the bed.’
Ailsa’s tone made her sound as if she was determined to rise above her disappointment at his reluctance to yet again deal with the past. He silently admired this new strength she’d acquired, and was moved to hear the compassion in her voice … compassion that he probably didn’t deserve.
‘Sleep well,’ she added with a little half-smile. ‘Don’t sit up too late working, will you? You’ve had a long day’s travelling and you must be tired.’
Obviously not expecting an answer to her remarks, she gracefully moved back to the table, then methodically started to clear away the detritus of their meal. Knowing already that his unexpected appearance had disturbed and upset her, Jake fleetingly reflected again that he should never have come here. Then he would have avoided this agonising scene. His throat locked tight with the guilt and regret that made him feel, and he swept from the room. In the prettily furnished bedroom he’d been allocated, he glanced despairingly over at the neat stack of paperwork he’d left on the hand-stitched patchwork quilt that covered the bed and angrily thumped his chest with a heartfelt groan …
Knitting at the fireside, as was her usual habit before retiring to bed—she was always working on something beautiful and handmade for a customer—Ailsa took comfort from the rhythmic click of her needles along with the crackle of fresh ash logs she’d added to the wood-burner. After that altercation with Jake earlier she was feeling distinctly raw inside—as though her very organs had been scraped with a blade. Already she’d resigned herself to another sleepless night. Sometimes she didn’t vacate the high-backed Victorian armchair until the early hours of the morning. What was the point when all she did most nights if she went to bed early was toss and turn? Sleep was still the most elusive of visitors. It wasn’t usually until around five a.m. that she’d fall into an exhausted slumber, then a couple of hours later she’d wake up again feeling drugged.
She often wondered how on earth she survived on such a relentlessly punishing lack of sleep and was able to take care of Saskia and work too. The human capacity to endure never ceased to amaze her.
But she was even more unsettled tonight by the fact that Jake was occupying the spare room upstairs. Seeing him again had been wonderful and dreadful all at the same time. But the sight of him had always made her react strongly. The deeply grooved scar on one side of his chiselled visage made him no less charismatic or handsome, she reflected. She was grief-stricken at the idea he believed that it did. And. yes … she privately admitted it did make him look rather piratical—although she hadn’t wanted to hear that other women thought so too. It nearly killed her that he seemed to have forgotten the passionate love they’d shared and moved on. There was no such ‘normal’ pattern of existence for her. How could she even look at another man with the prospect of a relationship at the back of her mind after someone like Jake Larsen?
She’d been a trainee receptionist in the Larsen offices when they’d first met. Only nineteen, yet brimming with determination to better herself after her difficult start in life, she’d been so grateful for the chance of such a ‘glamorous’ job when she’d barely had any qualifications under her belt. But she’d been studying hard at her local adult education facility to remedy that. When Jake had walked through the revolving glass doors one day, wearing a single-breasted black cashmere coat over his suit, his lightly tanned skin and blond hair making him look like some kind of mythical hero from one of those magical folk tales that had at their roots the trials and travails of life and the story of how the handsome hero and beautiful heroine overcame them together, Ailsa almost forgot to breathe.
As he’d walked up to her and her colleague, her much more confident fellow employee had whispered under her breath, ‘It’s the boss’s son … Jake Larsen. He’s come over from Copenhagen.’ But even before her colleague had told Ailsa his identity her heart had already turned over inside her chest at the arresting sight of all that sculpted Viking beauty and the spine-tingling charisma that Jake exuded. She’d never been so fascinated by a man before. And especially not a man who was clearly light years out of her league, who wore the mantle of authority and power as though it was a natural component of his DNA. Yet he’d warmly introduced himself to her, the most junior and in-experienced of his staff, as though she were no less important than one of the firm’s directors, she recalled. When he had followed up his welcome to her with a near-incandescent smile—a smile that had wiped every thought clean from her head—she’d found herself well and truly under his spell …
‘Blast!’ She dropped a stitch, patiently unravelled the multi-coloured wool, then cast on again. The logs in the burner hissed and spat and she glanced mournfully across at the beautiful Norwegian pine standing in the corner. It poignantly reminded her of a shy young girl at a party, waiting to be noticed by a boy and asked to dance … Once upon a time, in another life, Jake would have happily volunteered to help her dress the tree, singing lustily along to the carols playing in the background and teasingly increasing the volume of his voice when she protested he was singing out of tune.
It hurt that he wouldn’t discuss the baby’s death with her. Ailsa had hoped such a discussion would help them be a little easier around each other and truly be able to move on. They hadn’t had a prayer of being able to do that after the accident and then leading up to their divorce, when they’d both been so wounded, hurt and angry, blaming each other for everything. She’d even hoped that such a mutually frank discussion might at last help her to sleep better at night.
‘Oh, well …’ Murmuring under her breath, she sighed softly. When he leaves tomorrow I’ll just carry on as normal. It’s not all bad … I’ve still got Saskia. And the business is doing well … better than ever, in fact.
She bit her lip, trying hard not to cry. Sniffing determinedly, she wiped her eyes and lifted her gaze to the tree again. Her daughter might not be around to share in the joy that decorating a Christmas tree could bring but it wouldn’t stop Ailsa from taking on the task herself. After all, it was something she excelled at. She ran a very successful business designing and making beautiful things—everything from tree decorations to hand-knitted sweaters and patchwork quilts. Plus, she and Saskia had been collecting and making decorative odds and ends the whole year for this season.
Feeling her spirits lifting a little, she put her knitting away and instead of dozing in the armchair, as she normally did, for the first time in months she went upstairs to bed …
His hand fumbling for the clock beside the bed, Jake groaned when his sleep-fogged brain registered the time. Realising that he must have slept the sleep of the dead, he tried to fathom why. Like Ailsa, he had become a veritable insomniac over the years following the accident. Sitting up and arranging a plump pillow against the iron-bedstead to support his back, he was just in time to hear the radiator in the room click and hum into life. Breathing out deliberately heavily, he wasn’t surprised to see the plume of steam that hit the icy air.
Was the house usually this perishingly cold in the morning? He couldn’t help feeling a spurt of annoyance shoot through him at the thought that Ailsa could have chosen to live in much more luxurious surroundings, with under-floor heating and every available comfort. Instead she had stubbornly opted for this too isolated cottage. Charming as it was, it wasn’t the home he wanted his daughter to grow up in …
Rubbing his hands briskly together to warm them, he diverted this disturbing line of thought by wondering how soon he could get a flight back to Copenhagen today. Mulling over the possibilities—or not as the case might be—he shoved aside the patchwork quilt that covered the silk-edged woollen blankets and strode over to the window. Lifting a corner of the heavily lined floral curtain, Jake stared out at the incredible scene that confronted him with a mixture of frustration, disappointment and sheer bewildering astonishment.
As far as the eye could see and beyond everything was deeply blanketed in brilliant diamond-white. And fierce gusts of wind were making the still falling snow swirl madly like dervishes. Unless he could sprout wings and fly there’d be no getting out of here today. In any case, all the planes at the airport would surely be grounded in such Siberian weather.
‘Damn!’
He stood there in black silk pyjama bottoms, his hard-muscled chest bare, and willed himself to come up with a plan. But even as he seriously considered phoning his helicopter pilot back in Copenhagen he remembered the lack of service yesterday for both landlines and mobiles in the area. The current extreme weather conditions didn’t bode well for the service returning any time soon. The helicopter option was clearly off the agenda. As he bit back his increasing frustration, a tentative knock at the door made Jake’s heart race.
‘Jake, are you up and about yet? I was wondering if you’d like a cup of tea?’
Instead of answering, he crossed to the door and pulled it wide. Her dark hair flowing down over her shoulders, slightly mussed as if she’d had a restless night, Ailsa stood in front of him like some wide-eyed ingénue in a kimonostyle red silk dressing gown. She barely looked out of her teens, let alone the mother of a nine-year-old. Disconcertingly, that old sense of fierce protectiveness that he’d always felt around her came flooding back.
‘Never mind me. You look like you could do with a hot drink to warm you up,’ he told her gruffly. ‘Why doesn’t your heating come on earlier? Have you seen the weather outside? It’s freezing in here.’
‘The boiler is on a timer. And, yes, I have seen the weather. I don’t think the snow has let up all night. But it’s not surprising you’re cold, standing there with barely a stitch on!’
Jake couldn’t prevent the grin that hijacked his lips. ‘You know I don’t sleep with much on. Or had you forgotten that?’
‘You didn’t say whether you wanted a cup of tea or not,’ she persisted doggedly, clutching the sides of the silk dressing gown more closely together and concealing her face by letting her hair fall across it.
But not before Jake saw that she was blushing. He experienced a very male sense of satisfaction at that. It was good to know that he could still get a reaction from her, despite all the muddied water flowing under the bridge between them …
‘I definitely wouldn’t say no to a hot drink of some kind. But let me take a shower first and dress before I join you downstairs.’
‘Okay.’ The slim shoulders lifted, then fell again before she turned away. As Jake closed the door on Ailsa’s retreating back, she swung round again. ‘Shall I cook breakfast for you as well?’
He hesitated. Purely because he’d just noticed the smudged violet shadows beneath her eyes that clarified his belief that she probably hadn’t slept. ‘I don’t want to put you to any trouble,’ he said huskily.
A fleeting smile curved the pretty lips he’d so loved kissing—still dreamed of kissing from time to time, whenever he tortured himself with thinking back to what they’d had.
‘It’s no trouble.’ She continued on her way down the landing and the gentle womanly sway of her hips made Jake’s heart ache.
CHAPTER THREE
EMERGING from the living room, flustered and hot after making up the fire with some freshly cut applewood logs, Ailsa brushed her dusty hands down over her jeans and glanced up at the very same moment that Jake descended the staircase. No matter how many times she’d seen him … lived with him, loved him … it still gave her heart a jolt to be confronted with the sheer physicality of his presence. He was dressed much more casually this morning than yesterday, his long muscular legs encased in softly napped light blue denims, and he wore a white tee shirt beneath a black V-necked wool sweater. His sun-kissed hair looked as if it had been finger combed rather than brushed, and when he turned towards her and smiled his clear blue eyes were no less a magnet for her than they’d always been.
She didn’t even notice the cruel scar on his cheek because her attention was so consumed by his gaze.
‘I’ll put the kettle on again and make some tea. I’m sorry if I’m a bit behind with the breakfast but I had to make up the fire. Did you sleep all right?’
‘Like a baby,’ he drawled. ‘That’s one hell of a comfortable bed.’
‘When you consider that most people spend half their lifetime in bed, a comfortable one has got to be pretty essential, don’t you think?’ Argh! She was babbling becauseshe was suddenly inexplicably nervous around him. And, however innocent, the last topic in the world she wanted to discuss with her charismatic ex-husband was bed!
When Jake merely grinned instead of commenting, as though he knew very well how uncomfortable she was, Ailsa quickly tore her glance away and headed down the hall to the kitchen. Her house guest followed her. She quickly washed her hands, then flicked on the switch to boil the kettle again. She was reaching for a couple of pottery mugs from the dresser when Jake pulled out a chair at the breakfast table and sat down. Knowing that his interested gaze trailed her every move, she grew more and more discomfited. Although she was tense and on edge in his company, she knew that if she turned round right then her ex wouldn’t be displaying any such similar tension. When he did relax he turned it almost into an art form. His athletic body knew how to lounge to mouthwatering effect … even in a hard-backed kitchen chair.
Ailsa bit back a sigh. Deciding to bite the bullet, she made herself bring up the subject that had been at the forefront of her mind since waking that morning and seeing the breathtaking result of last night’s heavy snowfall.
‘If you were hoping to get to the airport today I don’t think much of your chances.’
‘Neither do I,’ he agreed. The smooth skin between his brows puckered. ‘Have you checked to see if there’s a phone line yet?’
Ailsa grimaced. ‘Yes, I have … it’s still out, I’m afraid.’
