One Winter's Day: A Diamond in Her Stocking / Christmas Where They Belong / Snowed in at the Ranch

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‘You know how theatre people are full of superstitions? So are restaurant people. No one would be surprised if I had the building blessed, maybe brought in a feng-shui expert. Or burned sage to get rid of any bad karma from the previous business on this site. Maybe even hung crystals in strategic places. And don’t even think about whistling in the kitchen. Especially a French kitchen.’

‘You’re kidding me?’

She shook her head. ‘A lot happens in restaurants. First dates. Break-ups. Celebrations. Illicit liaisons. They leave energy. We want good energy. Opening day of a new restaurant is rather like the opening night of a new play. The cast. The audience. The need to have butts on seats. So let’s just say I’m cautiously optimistic about how today went and leave it at that.’

He laughed. ‘Okay, I’ll grant you that. But I still say—’

Lizzie swiped her thumb and first finger across her lips to zip it. ‘Don’t say it or I’ll blame you if anything goes wrong.’

Jesse pretended to cower. Lizzie laughed and ushered him through the back door to the car park. She punched in the alarm code, followed him out and locked the door behind them.

For the first time an awkward silence fell between them. The door that led upstairs to her apartment was only a few metres to the left. Did she invite him upstairs? Be alone with him again? She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about how exciting his kisses had been. How much she’d missed him. How maybe she had misjudged him. Would it be wise?

She gestured to the door. ‘I can offer you a coffee but I suspect that might be the last thing you want to face right now.’

‘I wouldn’t say no to a beer,’ he said.

‘I’ve got some in the fridge upstairs. I could do with one too.’ She gave a sigh that was halfway to a moan of exhaustion. ‘There’s nothing I want to do more than take off these clogs and kick back.’

The apartment over the café was compact but Sandy had done a wonderful job of refurbishing it for her and Amy. With polished wooden floors throughout, it had been painted in muted neutral tones with white shutters at the windows. Furniture comprised simple, comfortable pieces in whitewashed timber and a plump sofa and easy chairs upholstered in natural linen. The living room window framed a magnificent view of the harbour. The effect was contemporary but cosy and Lizzie’s heart lifted every time she came through the door.

‘You’ve settled in,’ Jesse said as he followed her through to the small but well-equipped kitchen.

‘I just need to get a few more personal touches in place before Amy gets here. Is it “thank you number gazillion and two” if I say how much I appreciate the work you did here?’ she said. ‘Sandy told me how much of this place is due to your efforts.’

‘Enough with the grovelling,’ he said with a grin. ‘Just get me that beer.’

Lizzie grabbed two beers from the fridge and cut lime quarters to press into the bottle necks. She handed one to Jesse and carried her own through into the living room. ‘No food to offer you, I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘It’s all downstairs.’

‘I’ve been snacking on stuff all day,’ Jesse said. ‘I don’t need any more. How do you stay so slim working with all that delicious food?’ He cast an appreciative eye over her figure.

‘I learned early on to only have very small servings—just tastes really. Then there’s the fact that cooking is hard physical work. I’m standing all day every day.’

She flopped down onto the sofa and kicked off her clogs. ‘My feet are killing me. They’re always killing me. My feet, my knees, my back. It’s so good to sit down.’

She wiggled her toes, rotated her ankles, but it didn’t do much to ease the deep, throbbing ache in her feet. Damaged feet were an occupational hazard of being a chef.

Jesse sat down on the sofa next to her. ‘Let me rub your feet for you.’

Lizzie’s gaze met his and there was a question in his eyes that asked so much more than she knew how to answer.

She knew saying yes to his suggestion would be going beyond the bounds of their tentative friendship. But she longed to have his strong, capable hands on her feet, stroking and massaging to ease the pain. Stop kidding herself: she longed to have his hands on her body, full stop. She had gone beyond denying her attraction to him. But was this foot massage a good idea?

‘There’s some peppermint lotion in the fridge,’ she said. ‘It’s more soothing when it’s chilled.’

Jesse returned from the kitchen with the peppermint lotion. He sat down on the sofa again, put the container on the coffee table. ‘Swivel around on the sofa and put your feet across my legs.’

It seemed an intimate way to start a foot massage but she didn’t protest. The alternative was to have him kneeling at her feet and that wouldn’t do.

Her feet were so sore that Jesse’s first firm, sure strokes were painful and she yelped. ‘Just getting the knots out,’ he explained. He then settled into an easier rhythm, probing, stroking, squeezing with his strong fingers and thumbs, smoothing in the cool, sharply scented lotion.

She moaned her pleasure and relief. ‘This is heaven, absolute heaven. Where did you learn to massage like this?’

‘Nowhere,’ he said. ‘I’m just giving you what you seem to need.’

‘Oh,’ she said, not meeting his gaze.

She didn’t know what to say to that. What she did know was she had to keep thoughts of other needs, and the way Jesse might meet them, on a very tight rein.

Her whole body thrummed with the pleasure of what his hands were doing to her heels, toes, soles. She’d never thought of feet as sensual zones but what Jesse was doing was nothing short of bliss.

‘I’m just going to lie back and enjoy every minute,’ she said, settling further back into the cushions, shifting her feet to fit more comfortably on his thighs.

‘You do that,’ he said in that deep, resonant voice that had become so familiar. Everything was beautiful about Jesse. His face. His voice. His hands—especially his hands. She moaned again as he massaged the pain away so that now his touch brought only pleasure.

She closed her eyes, zoned out into another world that focused on the rhythmical stroking of Jesse’s hands on her feet; the scent of peppermint mingled with the faint aroma of coffee that clung to him; the sound of their breathing, his strong and steady, hers becoming slower, calmer. She could hear the tick, tick, tick of the kitchen clock in the silence of the apartment. Please don’t stop—don’t ever stop.

Eventually, when her feet felt utterly boneless, he finished by stretching out her toes one by one, squeezing her feet one final time, then stroking right up to her shins. ‘Done,’ he said.

‘Mmm...’ she murmured as she drowsily sat up, swinging her feet away so she sat near him on the sofa. He might have been massaging her feet but her entire body felt relaxed. ‘You’re a man of many talents, Jesse Morgan. I guess that’s “thank you number gazillion and three”. I...’

Her voice got lost in her throat at the intensity of Jesse’s expression. She gazed into his face for a long moment, those incredible blue eyes fringed with black lashes, the dark eyebrows, his chiselled mouth. She knew she shouldn’t use the word ‘beautiful’ to describe a man but there wasn’t another word that worked as well. Handsome. Good-looking. Striking. He was more than all of those combined. A wave of intense longing for him surged through her.

Now was her chance to move away. To get off the sofa and make an excuse to go into another room. Even to yawn in an exaggerated manner and tell him she needed her beauty sleep and it was time for him to go home.

But she didn’t. Instead she reached out her hand and explored his face with her fingers, stroking the tousled hair from his forehead, tracing the line of his thick brows, the ridge of his sculptured cheekbones, the roughness of the dark shadow of his beard, until she reached his mouth. His lips were smooth and warm, the top one slightly narrower than the bottom. His eyes stayed locked on hers. He caught her fingers with his strong white teeth, nipped them gently and she gasped at the unexpected pleasure-pain.

She leaned forward and caressed his mouth with hers. His lips parted under hers and she gave herself over to the sensation of lips, tongue, taste in a slow, easy tender kiss. When he pulled her to him she sank into the embrace of his strong arms around her.

But what had started as gentle rapidly deepened into something more passionate, more demanding that had her winding her fingers through his hair to bring him closer, pressing her body to his hard strength, her heart hammering.

She had been so long without the touch of a man, of skin on skin, the heady delight of breathing in a man’s scent. And this was Jesse, who she liked so much, who she was growing to trust, who had appealed to her from the get-go. She wanted so badly to be close to him.

They were alone in the apartment. Anything could happen. But it shouldn’t. Not now. Not yet. Sex too soon with Jesse was not a good idea.

She harnessed all the willpower she could muster and pulled away from him. ‘That...that wasn’t a friend kiss,’ she said when she got her breath back.

‘No. No, it wasn’t,’ he said, his voice husky, his breath ragged. ‘I like you as much more than a friend, Lizzie. I’d be lying if I said otherwise.’

She shifted a little further away from him on the sofa. With their thighs touching she found it difficult to keep her thoughts straight. ‘Me too. I mean...there was a spark between us at the wedding. Now it...it’s grown.’

‘We got off onto a bad start with each other. You thought I was a guy who picked up and then discarded women just because I could.’

‘And you thought I was a...I don’t know what you thought I was. Someone too quick to jump to the wrong conclusion?’

‘Someone who’s trying so hard to protect herself she might not see what could be there,’ he said.

She paused to let the implication of his words sink in. ‘Perhaps,’ she said.

‘You seem to have a distorted idea of who I am based on gossip and innuendo. I want to prove to you I’m a decent guy.’

Again she realised that some of her reactions to him might have hurt him. She hastened to reassure him. ‘You’ve shown me that in so many ways. The fact you went off and trained to be a barista just to help me is the latest example.’ She looked away and then back. ‘It’s just...just the other women thing.’

Jesse sighed. She didn’t like the sound of it. ‘I saw the way you watched me as I talked to Evie’s friend.’

‘Dell.’

‘Were you jealous?’

‘A...a little. She’s very attractive.’

‘Is she? I didn’t notice. She’s friendly, pleasant.’

‘How could you not see how cute she is?’

‘Contrary to that bad old reputation of mine, I don’t look with lust at every female I meet because I want to bed her and run.’

She managed a weak smile. ‘I never thought that for a minute.’ Though she’d certainly been told that was what Jesse was capable of. She was beginning to realise the gossips had got him wrong.

Jesse shifted on the sofa, a movement that brought him closer to her. ‘I haven’t spent much time in Dolphin Bay in recent years. I don’t like people knowing my business. It’s suited me to let them think Jesse the player has waltzed through life unscathed. If I’d brought Camilla home to marry her it would have been a triumph. But when it turned out such a disaster I was glad I’d never mentioned her. I didn’t want anyone to know I’d been brought down so low.’

Lizzie was shocked at the slight edge to his voice. ‘Camilla?’ she asked.

‘She was a photojournalist who came to do a feature story on our team. We were rebuilding tsunami-ravaged villages in Sri Lanka a few years back. I wasn’t attracted to her at first but she singled me out for a lot of one-on-one photography.’

‘I bet she did,’ Lizzie murmured under her breath.

‘What was that?’ asked Jesse.

‘Nothing,’ she said and decided to keep her comments to herself. She couldn’t be jealous of someone in Jesse’s past and it sounded petty to criticise the unknown woman.

‘I spent a lot of time with her being interviewed, being photographed.’

‘And you fell for her.’

‘Hard and fast.’

Lizzie jumped down hard on an unwarranted twinge of jealousy. Her imagination was running crazy wondering what kind of photos Camilla had taken of Jesse and whether he’d been wearing any clothes. But she couldn’t ask.

‘Her time with us was limited,’ Jesse continued. ‘It was a pressure cooker environment. I managed to get hold of a sapphire ring. I proposed. She laughed. Then turned me down.’

‘She laughed?’ Indignation for Jesse swept through Lizzie.

‘Seemed what I’d thought was a serious relationship was a casual fling to her. She already had a fiancé at home in London. That was the first I’d heard of him. She had never told me she was anything other than single.’ The delivery of his words was matter-of-fact, emotionless, as if he didn’t care. But the rigid line of his mouth told Lizzie otherwise.

‘You must have been devastated.’

He shrugged. ‘You could say that.’

‘So what happened?’

‘She went home to London to marry the poor sucker.’

‘And you never saw her again?’

He paused. ‘Not from choice.’

‘What...what do you mean?’

‘She showed up in India at the start of this year to do a follow-up feature.’

‘On you?’

‘On the organisation I worked for. I wanted nothing to do with her.’

Something about the tone of his voice made her ask, ‘But she wanted you?’

‘To take up where we left off. Another fling. She was married by then and prepared to betray her husband.’

Under her breath, Lizzie uttered some choice swear words in French.

‘I don’t dare ask what that meant,’ Jesse said with a shadow of his grin.

‘Don’t,’ said Lizzie.

‘Probably nothing I wouldn’t have said myself,’ he said. ‘I told her what I thought of her and got transferred to another site.’

Lizzie put her hand on his arm. ‘I hate her on your behalf,’ she said vehemently. ‘How dare she do that to you? And what an idiot to...to have let you go. I would have...’ Her voice tapered off as she realised what she had said. What she had revealed. ‘I...I mean—’

Jesse cradled her face in his hands, dropped a kiss on her mouth. ‘That’s sweet of you,’ he said.

She managed a weak smile. ‘I...I think you’re kinda wonderful. I can’t imagine every other woman wouldn’t think so too.’

‘I’m glad you think I’m wonderful.’ He rolled his eyes in self-mockery.

‘You...you must know I do. I don’t mean that as a joke.’

Her breath hitched with awareness of how attractive she found him but it was so much more than the way he looked. ‘I missed you terribly while you were away in Sydney. It...it scared me. The thought of what it would be like when you leave for your job.’

‘I missed you too. I thought about you every minute of that four-hour trip to Sydney and all the way back.’