Kissing Santa

‘But the whole idea is completely mad!’ protested Sue. Amanda refilled their glasses. ‘No, it isn’t,’ she said confidently. ‘It’s a brilliant idea. It solves your problem and it solves my problem and it even solves Blair MeAllister’s problem. What’s wrong with that?’

‘You don’t think it’s a bit deceitful?’ asked Sue, not without a trace of irony.

‘It’s not going to make any difference to Blair McAllister which girl he gets,’ said Amanda, waving the bottle dismissively. ‘He just wants someone to keep an eye on his sister’s kids, and I don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to do that as well as anyone else. I know you think I’m a domestic disaster, but I’m not completely irresponsible. And it would make a difference to me, Sue,’ she went on pleadingly. ‘It might be just another job to you, but my entire future depends on getting into Dundinnie Castle!’

Unfortunately, Sue was used to Amanda’s sense of drama. ‘Your future has depended on so many new jobs that I’ve lost count!’

‘This job’s different,’ Amanda insisted through a mouthful of peanuts. ‘I’m sick of being stuck as a secretary and told that I can only move up the ladder if I stay there for ten years. I want to be successful now.’

‘There’s no point in wanting to be successful unless you know what it is you want to be successful at,’ said Sue, ever practical, but Amanda brushed that aside.

‘Norris knows what I mean. He says he likes people who are hungry for success. That’s why he’s given me this job. ‘If I can get into Dundinnie and convince Blair McAllister to sell, he says there are no limits to how far I can go, but first I’ve got to prove to him that I’ve got the killer instinct.’

‘The killer instinct? You?’ Sue regarded her friend with exasperated affection. ‘I don’t know why you keep up this pretence of wanting to be a ruthless businesswoman when we all know what a softie you are underneath! You’d better not let Norris Jeffries find out about all those lame ducks you sort out if you want him to think that you’ve got the killer instinct!’

Amanda scowled. She had put a lot of effort into her new executive image. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t got any lame ducks.’

‘No? What about Geny?’

‘She just needs a bit of organisation—’ Amanda began defensively, but Sue didn’t let her finish.

‘And what about that time I turned up on your doorstep in floods of tears when you were on your way to Venice? If you’d had real killer instinct you’d have tossed me a packet of tissues on your way out to the airport, instead of cancelling your whole trip to make sure that Nigel and I got back together.’

‘It’s because I want you to stay together that I think you should let me take your place,’ said Amanda cunningly, seizing her opportunity. ‘What’s Nigel going to think when you won’t give up a crummy temporary job so that you can go with him on this holiday he’s won? It’s the chance of a lifetime, and he can’t turn it down, but if he thinks you don’t care enough to want to spent Christmas with him in California, well...’ She shook her head sadly. ‘It’s not as if you’ll get many opportunities for a free trip to the States either,’ she persevered when Sue looked gloomily down into her glass. ‘And just think what he might get up to without you!’

It was obvious that Sue had already thought. ‘It’s not that I wouldn’t love to go...’

‘Well, then!’ Amanda spread her hands virtuously. ‘Here am I, offering to take your place so that you don’t let down the agency, and all you can do is think up objections!’

‘It’s the thought of you taking my place that worries me,’ said Sue frankly. ‘I’ve built up a good reputation with the agency, and if they hear that I’ve let you work for Blair McAllister under false pretences I’m finished. He’s a highprofile clienl I know you’ve never read any of his books but you must have seen his programmes.’

‘All that pitting-yourself-against-the-elements stuff doesn’t really appeal to me,’ said Amanda.

‘He doesn’t just do that,’ protested Sue. ‘Sometimes it’s true, he does take people out into challenging environments—you should have seen what they were doing in Guyana!—but usually it’s just his individual view of a country.’

‘Maybe, but it never sounds to me as if he goes anywhere with any good restaurants,’ said Amanda flippantly. ‘What’s he supposed to be like?’

‘I think he’s brilliant. If Nigel hadn’t won this holiday, I’d be really looking forward to meeting him.’

Sensing weakness, Amanda sat up straighter. ‘The agency won’t ever find out,’ she said, at her most soothing. ‘It’s not as if I’m going to do anything. All I want is to look round the castle and report back to Norris on its condition. He’s set his heart on it for his new health centre, but he only saw it from the outside when he drove past it a couple of months ago. He wants to know what it’s like inside so that he can make Blair McAllister a realistic offer.’

‘But I thought you said that Norris had already approached him about selling the castle and got a very rude reply telling him to forget the whole idea?’

‘Oh. they always say that at first,’ said Amanda with all the confidence of one who had been in property development for two whole weeks. ‘It’s just a way of forcing up the price. That’s why Norris needs a report on the inside. He’s given me four weeks to get up to the castle and find out what I can about Blair McAllister’s financial situation. It’s not the sort of place you can turn up to out of the blue, and I was just beginning to think that I’d have to admit that I couldn’t do it when you told me you’d been offered a temporary job there starting next week.’ Clutching her hands together, she leant pleadingly over the table. ‘It can’t just be a coincidence, Sue. It has to be meant.’

Sue had taken a lot more persuasion, of course, but in the end, as always, Amanda had got her own way. That very morning, she had driven Sue and Nigel to the airport and waved them onto the plane. ‘What if something goes wrong?’ Sue had wailed, losing her nerve at the last minute.

‘Nothing’s going to go wrong,’ Amanda had said gaily, kissing her goodbye and pushing her firmly towards passport control. ‘I’ll be able to handle Blair McAllister. It’ll be easy—just leave him to me!’

Now she wasn’t so sure. She slid a sideways glance at Blair from under her lashes. The dim light from the dashboard instruments was just enough to outline his forceful profile and hint at the inflexible set of his mouth. Watching it, Amanda was conscious of a hollow feeling that there was nothing easy about Blair McAllister and that if there was any handling to be done he would be the one to do it.

Sue’s opinion of him had been shared by all the friends whom Amanda had asked, and she had begun to think that she was the only person who hadn’t seen his programmes or read his books. He had led some famous expeditions in aid of charity but Amanda’s hopes that he would turn out to have a flamboyant personality to match had been firmly quashed. He was tough, intelligent and overwhelmingly competent, they had all agreed. ‘But gorgeous!’ Pippa, another friend, had added, sighing enviously when she heard where Amanda was going.

Amanda had been inclined to pooh-pooh that idea when she’d first seen a picture of Blair McAllister, but the longer she had studied his photograph, the more she had had to admit that there was something intriguing about that air of assurance. Still, he wasn’t what she would call gorgeous. There was something too unyielding about him, she decided, studying him covertly. He was too cold, too brusque to be really attractive. Then her eyes rested on his mouth and she found herself wondering what it would be like if he turned his head and smiled at her the way he had been smiling in that photograph.

At the thought, an odd, disquieting feeling stirred inside her, and she jerked her gaze away to concentrate on the rhythmic swish and slap of the windscreen wipers. She was supposed to be pretending to be Sue, she reminded herself, and Sue would be moreinterested in the children than in her employer. She cleared her throat. ‘Who’s looking after the children tonight?’

She thought her voice sounded a little odd, but Blair didn’t seem to notice. ‘Maggie—my housekeeper—said that she would spend the mght since we were going to be so late back. She usually goes home after she’s prepared the evening meal. Which reminds me,’ he went on tersely, ‘you’re going to have to help out with the cooking and cleaning. Maggie sprained her wrist very badly yesterday and she won’t be able to do much for a while.’

‘You want me to cook?’

‘I cleared it with the agency this morning,’ he said, oblivious to Amanda’s appalled expression. ‘Naturally your salary will reflect the extra work, but the agency said that you wouldn’t mind. They told me that you were a good cook.’

Sue was. Sue was calm and patient and didn’t work herself into a frenzy when all her pots started to boil at once. Amanda loathed cooking and blessed daily the invention of the microwave. ‘I’m not that good,’ she said nervously, wondering for one wild moment if she could sprain her wrist too.

‘It doesn’t need to be anything fancy. Good, plain food is all those children need.’

Amanda’s heart sank even further. If there was one thing she hated more than cooking, it was good, plain food. In cuisine, as in life, she liked things as fancy as possible. Lapsing back into glum silence, she contemplated the rain which was now slashing against the car while the wind whooped and swirled judderingly around them. It looked as if it was going to be a very dull Christmas.

CHAPTER TWO

‘WHY do you call yourself Amanda instead of Susan?’ asked Blair suddenly out of the darkness.

‘Amanda’s my middle name,’ said Amanda, who had anticipated that question.

‘What’s wrong with Susan? It’s not as if it’s an embarrassing name.’

Of course, she should have just said that she preferred Amanda and left it at that, but Amanda had always had a taste for the dramatic and had never been able to resist the temptation to embellish a story. Her elaborate excuses for being late had been famous at school. ‘All the girls in my family are called Susan,’ she improvised. ‘We use our middle names so that we don’t get confused.’

‘You’re all called Susan?’ She could feel the disbelief in the glance he shot her. ‘What on earth for?’

‘After my great-great-grandmother,’ said Amanda fluently, grateful as always for her ability to tell the most enormous fibs with a straight face. ‘She was a missionary.’ In the darkness it was impossible to read Blair’s expression, but she could sense his scepticism and it put her on her mettle. ‘In the South Pacific,’ she added as a bit of corroborative detail.

It was a mistake. ‘Oh?’ said Blair. ‘Where in the South Pacific?’

She had forgotten that he probably knew the South Pacific as well as she knew the Number 9 bus route. Feverishly, Amanda tried to think of the name of an island but, as so often when forced to call upon memory rather than imagination, her mind remained blank. ‘She moved around a lot,’ she saidvaguely instead, but as this sounded rather dull she was unable to resist adding a touch of drama to the story. ‘Family legend has it that she was eaten by cannibals,’ she added, lowering her voice to just the right touch of reverence. ‘One day she got into her canoe and paddled off to a new island, and she was never seen again.’

‘Really?’ Blair’s voice dripped disbelief and Amanda sighed inwardly. Perhaps it hadn’t been a very convincing story.

Oh, well, she had enjoyed it, anyway. As she had talked, the mythical Susan had become almost real to her, but it was clear that Blair lacked the fertile imagination that had been getting her into trouble since she’d been a child Life would be much simpler if she’d only learn to keep it under control, she acknowledged, but not nearly so much fun.

Outside, the storm was growing wilder, driving rain ferociously into the windscreen. Blair’s body was utterly relaxed, but his grip on the steering wheel was sure as he held the car steady against the gusting wind. Amanda wished that she could relax enough to fall asleep, but there was something unsettling about Blair’s massive, silent presence, like a barrier between her and the storm.

He had ignored her after the story about her supposed ancestor and Amanda, normally the most confidently chatty of people, had found herself unable to think of anything to say to break the silence. She was too aware of the cramped confines of the car. Outside it was very dark. The dashboard lights were reflected in her window, but otherwise there was nothing. Blair seemed very close, almost overwhelming, and she wished that she didn’t notice every time he moved his hand to the gear lever or glanced across to see if she was still awake.

Once they had turned off the Inverness road, they hardly saw another car, and to Amanda it seemed as if they were driving interminably into the darkness while the rain turned to sleet, zooming in at the windscreen like a meteor shower. In spite of herself, her head began to loll forward. She had no idea how much time had passed when the sound of the car splashing through a huge puddle along with the sound of Blair swearing under his breath jerked her into consciousness. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked blearily, struggling upright in her seat as the car began to splutter alarmingly.

‘Water in the petrol’ he said curtly. He changed down, but his attempts to rev the engine had little effect and not much further down the road the car coughed sadly to a halt.

Blair swore again and hauled on the handbrake. ‘That’s all I need,’ he muttered, and reached across Amanda without ceremony to rummage in the glove box.

Very conscious of his nearness, she shrank back in her seat so that she didn’t have to touch him more than necessary...not that he even seemed to notice that she was there! It was a relief when his fingers closed around a torch and he sat back, but the next minute he was opening his door.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Out for a stroll.’

Amanda stared stupidly at him as the rain slashed against the windows, wondering if she had fallen asleep after all and this was just a bizarre dream. ‘A stroll? In this?’

Blair gave a short, exasperated sigh. ‘Of course not!’ he said irritably. ‘I’m going to clean the filter, what do you think? And, what’s more, you’re coming with me.’

‘Me?’ She came to abruptly. ‘But I don’t know anything about cars!’

‘You don’t need to be a mechanic to hold a torch.’

‘But...’ Amanda glanced helplessly from the rain to her city suit. ‘I’ll get soaked!’ she wailed, but if she had hoped to rouse Blair’s chivalrous instincts she was doomed to disappointment.

‘I dare say, but the sooner we get out there, the sooner we can both get dry,’ he said. He had half closed his door, but now he made as if to open it again. ‘Now, are you coming?’

Amanda was looking nervously out at the wild night ‘Are you sure this is wise?’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Blair, exasperated.

‘I’ve seen horror films like this,’ she said. ‘You know the kind of thing... a couple break down in an isolated place on a night just like this, and as soon as they get out of the car you want to shout at them not to be so stupid, because you know that some monster is lurking in the darkness, and it’s going to creep up on them and grab the girl—no, the man,’ she corrected herself after a moment’s thought. ‘That way the girl has to cope by herself. Then you just hear the man screaming and lots of horrible crunching sounds, and then she starts screaming, and instead of being sensible and getting back inside the car and locking the doors she runs off into the darkness, and the monster stalks her and—’

‘Amanda?’

Carried away by her own story, Amanda had been unaware of Blair’s incredulous expression. Now she stopped in surprise as his deceptively gentle voice cut across her ramble. ‘Yes?’ she said, a little disorientated by the abrupt switch from imagination to reality.

He handed her the torch. ‘Shut up,’ he said, quietly but very distinctly, and got out of the car.

‘Don’t blame me when the monster gets you,’ grumbled Amanda, but she opened her door. A gust of wind and rain swirled into the car, and she shivered. It looked awfully dark out there. She could just make out Blair’s figure silhouetted against the headlights.

‘Come on!’ he shouted, beckoning irritably.

Completely unnerved by her own story, Amanda hesitated, but Blair seemed more of an immediate threat than the monster so she climbed awkwardly out of the car and tittuped round the front of the car in her unsuitable shoes, her face screwed up against the weather. Blinking the rain out of her eyes, she huddled under the meagre protection of the bonnet, where Blair was already leaning over the engine.

‘Over here,’ he ordered. He had to shout over the scream of the wind. ‘I can’t see a thing without the torch.’

Reluctantly, Amanda edged towards him. In the wavering light, she could see Blair regarding her with intense exasperation. ‘How am I supposed to see anything with you waving the torch around from over there?’ he demanded when she stopped uncertainly, and reached out a hard hand to grab her by the waist and drag her into his side.

Amanda half fell against him with a squeak of surprise. ‘Now, hold it there,’ said Blair, putting his hand around hers and pointing the torch at the filter. ‘This is a fiddly job and I need to be able to see what I’m doing.’

He turned back to the engine without another word. Amanda tried to hold the torch steady, but her hand was already numb with cold. She felt oddly breathless. Even through the buffeting wind and rain, she was very conscious of the granite solidity of Blair’s body where she was pressed against him.

‘We must stop meeting like this!’ she bent to shout in his ear, trying to make a joke of it.

‘What?’

Blair lifted his head to stare at her, and Amanda was disconcerted to find that his face was very close. The rain had already sleeked his hair against his head and a trickle of water was making its way from his temple down one lean cheek.

‘Joke,’ she explained. ‘Just trying to lighten the atmosphere.’

He sighed against her. ‘I’m glad you’re having such a good time, of course, but do you think you could keep the jokes until we’re back inside the car?’

‘Just trying to help,’ she muttered, sulking at his sarcastic response. Just as she had thought: no sense of humour.

‘If you want to help, Amanda, I suggest you keep that torch still and stop distracting me!’ said Blair unpleasantly.

She was left staring resentfully down at the back of his head. It was very cold and the sleet was rapidly turning to snow. Her teeth were soon clattering together uncontrollably. To distract herself, she began mentally rewriting the blurb about Blair that had appeared on the dust-jacket of his book. ‘Brilliant’, ‘extraordinary’ and ‘stimulating’ could go for a start, to be replaced by ‘grumpy’, ‘boring’ and ‘downright disagreeable’.

Her eyes rested crossly on what she could see of his face as she thought of a few more adjectives to describe the real Blair McAllister. Unaware of her regard, he was frowning down at the engine, his expression absorbed. The dim glow of reflected torchlight caught the sheen of wet skm and glimmered over the hard line of his cheek.

Suddenly, Amanda found that instead of thinking about how much she disliked him she was thinking about the feel of his body, about the strength of his arm pulling her against him, about the warmth of his fingers around hers as he steadied the torch. She tried to distract herself by thinking about the wonderful career that Norris had promised her, but the slick city office with its frantically bleeping phones and constant buzz of pressure seemed unutterably remote from this moment, as she huddled against a man she had met only a couple of hours ago while the wind plastered her wet skirt against her legs and the rain ran coldly down her neck and the only warmth and security in the world lay in the hard strength of Blair McAllister’s body.

With an effort, she looked away from him, but the wind blew the rain in her eyes if she faced in any other direction, and although she tried staring down at the engine instead her eyes kept skittering back to his face. He had turned his head slightly as he squinted at the filter and she could see the corner of his mouth. It gave her a strange feeling. She had forgotten that she was rehearsing all the things she disliked about him. All she could do was watch his mouth and wonder if it would feel as cool and firm as it looked.

Aghast at the direction of her thoughts, Amanda stiffened. What on earth had made her think about that? All at once, her senses were jangling with a humiliating awareness of the oblivious man beside her. He wasn’t bothered by the feel of her body pressed close against him, or distracted by the curve of her mouth. As far as Blair was concerned, she was just an irritating extension of his torch. She shifted her feet so that she could hold herself rigidly away from him but she doubted whether he even noticed, and it didn’t stop her tensing with every move he made.

Shaking with cold, Amanda stood awkwardly arched over the engine like a lamppost. She was so ridiculously, inexplicably nervous that when Blair suddenly reached across her to the other side of the engine she jerked back in an instinctive attempt not to come into contact with the body that had left her feeling so on edge. The sudden movement knocked the torch against the edge of the bonnet and out of her nerveless fingers, and before she had a chance to retrieve it it crashed down onto the tarmac where it promptly went out.

‘What the—!’ Blair straightened furiously to glare at her. ‘Where’s the torch?’

Amanda groped around on the road until she found it, but when she tried to click it on again nothing happened.

‘That’s a great help!’ He snatched it from her, cursing under his breath as he shook it savagely. ‘Damn! The bulb’s gone. I’ll have to go and get another one. You stay here,’ he added as an afterthought. ‘And try not to do any more damage if you can help it!’

Mortified, Amanda hunched wretchedly under the bonnet as Blair made his way round to the driver’s seat. She could see the sleet driving across the straight beam of the headlights but beyond that there was only the howling wind and pitchdarkness, and she thought of the monster that she had described so glibly in the safety of the car. She hadn’t thought of it at all when she had had Blair beside her, but now she felt cold and scared and very vulnerable.

The seconds stretched interminably. What was Blair doing? He could at least say something to let her know that he was still there. Anything might have happened to him; anything might have snuck up in the darkness. Amanda’s imagination, always vivid, spun out of control, and she had worked herself into such a state that when the lights snapped abruptly off, plunging her into blackness, she gasped and began to grope her way frantically round the bonnet in the direction where Blair had disappeared.

Gibbering with fear, she had just made it to the corner when she came slap up against a hard body. In spite of herself, she shrieked.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Blair’s voice demanded furiously.

Amanda clutched at him in relief. ‘Oh, thank God it’s you! What happened?’

‘What do you mean, what happened? Nothing happened!’

‘But the lights went out!’

‘I switched them off to save the battery.’ Blair had obviously never watched any films where the hero put his arms comfortingly around the heroine. He put Amanda away from him in an irritable gesture. ‘I couldn’t find another bulb, so we’ll have to wait until it’s light now.’

Amanda stood feeling rather foolish and wishing she could forget how reassuring it had been to hold onto him. ‘I thought something had happened to you,’ she tried to explain.

‘What could possibly happen to me between the engine and the steering wheel? And don’t start on that silly monster business!’ he added in an acerbic voice before she had a chance to answer.