Page 34 of Christmas at Sturcombe Bay (Sturcombe Bay Romances #3)

“Mmm. I think all my Christmases must have come at once.”

Jess was perched on the top of a stepladder, hanging baubles on the magnificent Christmas tree at the front of the ballroom.

It was twelve feet tall — the angel on top almost touched the ceiling — draped with gold tinsel, hung with large gold and purple baubles, and sparkling with twinkling golden fairy lights.

Glancing down over her shoulder, her mouth twisted into a crooked smile. “Huh! I might have known it would be you.”

“Ah, don’t come down yet. I’m enjoying the view.”

As it was her backside in her slim-fitting black slacks that Paul Channing was admiring, she wasn’t going to thank him for the compliment — it would only encourage him.

After making sure the bauble was secure, she started to climb carefully back down. Paul took hold of the stepladder and held it until she reached the bottom.

“Thank you,” she rapped sharply. “But there was really no need. I’ve been up and down this ladder half a dozen times with no problem.”

“I didn’t want you to fall,” he explained blandly. “Health and safety. I’m your employer, so I’d be liable for any accidents.”

She glared at him, and shifted the stepladder around to the other side of the tree.

“The place is looking good,” he remarked, glancing around the room. “Very festive. You’ve all been working hard.”

“Of course, boss. The new owners are slave drivers.”

“Make you work from dawn to midnight for tuppence a week?”

“Uh-uh. We start at two in the morning, work our fingers to the bone for thirty-six hours a day knitting Christmas trees, all for a stale sausage roll and half a cup of weak tea.”

“A whole sausage roll, eh?” His eyes glinted with amusement. “We’ll have to take a look at our wages bill. We’re obviously paying you far too much.”

Jess was forced to laugh as she climbed the ladder again to hang more baubles.

She had to agree with him that the ballroom was looking good. The walls were all draped with curtain falls of twinkling golden fairy lights. There were half a dozen smaller Christmas trees down each side of the room, their sharp, piney scent already drifting through the air.

In the lounge there was another large tree, and several pots of tall twisted willow branches, sprayed gold and hung with more baubles. A third large tree stood at the foot of the stairs in the reception hall, the walls were festooned with tinsel and pine garlands.

There were fairy lights and a couple of bunches of mistletoe in the conservatory, and the dining room sparkled with gold and silver and pretty table centre-pieces of holly and tall slim scarlet candles.

And outside beside the steps was the biggest tree of all, sixteen feet tall and glowing with multi-coloured lights.

“Phew!” Jess sighed as she climbed down the stepladder for the last time. “That’s it. All done.”

“You deserve dinner for that.”

“Oh?” She eyed him warily.

“At mine. I’ll cook for you.”

“You can cook?”

“Of course. I live alone. If I want to eat, I have to cook. Or pop down to my mum’s,” he added with a mischievous grin.

She rolled her eyes. “Which is just three doors down. Convenient.”

“You were paying attention.”

“Of course. I was taught to have good manners.”

“So what do you say? Are you going to let me show off my culinary skills?”

She hesitated. She really ought to say no. Wasn’t she supposed to be off men? Especially men like Paul Channing. But somehow the message from the sensible part of her brain hadn’t reached the part that formed speech, and she heard herself say, “Okay.”

“Great. See you at seven. Number twenty-two, Cliff Road.”

And before the sensible part of her brain could catch up he had strolled away to chat to Alex Crocombe.

* * *

Dammit, she must have been mad to agree to this. Had she learned nothing from experience? Another good-looking, arrogant man — just like Glenn.

Although . . . maybe not really like Glenn.

It wasn’t quite fair to call him arrogant.

He was certainly confident, self-assured, but then he had good cause to be.

He had reached very close to the top as a professional footballer, and had gone on to forge a second successful career in the equally competitive world of finance.

Whereas Glenn . . . His arrogance had been that of a big fish in a small pond. Why had she put up with him for so long? Five years . . . She’d been pretty down at the time when they had first got together, having been in a nasty accident on her motorbike and fracturing her wrist.

He’d been fun and charming and very, very sexy, and he’d given her a real boost when she’d needed it most. It had been easy to fall in love with him in those early days — and much harder to fall out of it as she had gradually come to see the other side of him.

She shook her head. Tomorrow was the eighteenth of November. The day she had been supposed to marry him. She couldn’t even imagine that now — it seemed like another lifetime.

But like an idiot, here she was again. Fun, charming and very, very sexy — far too easy to fall in love with.

Lisa had warned her, Cassie had warned her, Julia had warned her. None of his . . . liaisons — you couldn’t really call them relationships — had lasted more than a couple of months. Then it was ‘goodbye and thank you, don’t leave your toothbrush on the shelf when you go’.

When everyone was pointing and shouting ‘shark’, it was probably a good idea to stay out of the water.

Instead, she was walking up Cliff Road, past the row of elegant Victorian townhouses.

Each had stone steps leading up to their front doors, with bay windows on each side.

They were the sort of houses that would have been converted into holiday flats, but she knew that number nineteen was where Lisa’s parents lived.

And three doors up was Paul’s, with his gleaming Aston Martin on the hard standing at the front.

The front door was painted a traditional glossy dark blue, with a smart brass knocker, but tradition gave way to twenty-first-century technology with the neat security camera on the wall.

She rapped on the knocker, struggling to keep her heartbeat steady as footsteps approached. The door opened. And breathe . . .

He was wearing a charcoal-grey cashmere sweater, smooth across his wide shoulders, the V-neck revealing a smattering of dark hair at the base of his throat, the sleeves pushed up over strong forearms.

“Good evening.” Oh, that smile . . . “Come on in.”

She wasn’t sure what she had expected, but as she stepped into the hall her first reaction was surprise.

And disappointment. The walls were covered in a flowery wallpaper, slightly faded and scuffed in places.

The paintwork would have once been white but was now yellowed, and the wooden floor was covered with a dull red-and-green runner.

“Ah.” She glanced around, a hint of sardonic humour curving her mouth. “Nice place you’ve got here.”

He laughed, untroubled by the barb. “My grandmother’s taste. I haven’t got round to decorating all of it yet.”

“I thought you said you’d lived here for a while?”

“Five years, since Nanna moved down to live with my mum and dad. But as I was only renting it from her, it didn’t seem right somehow to make any big changes.”

Ah, that was a sensitivity she hadn’t quite expected from him. “And now?”

“I’ve made a start on doing it up how I want it. Come and see the sitting room.”

He opened a door on one side of the hall and flicked on the lights.

It was a huge room running from the front to the back of the house.

Above the ivory-cream marble fireplace the wall was painted a soft pale grey and was hung with a large abstract painting — wild swirls of blue and grey, with a pop of vivid yellow.

On each side of the fireplace the alcoves were a darker grey with gleaming ebony sideboards. There was a television the size of a small cinema screen, two long sofas upholstered in pale-grey leather with grey and yellow scatter cushions, and a large cream wool rug on the pale wooden floor.

The effect was cool and modern, but comfortable. It was a bold thing to do in a Victorian house, but it worked.

“I like it,” she approved. A large Christmas tree stood in the bay at the front, its white fairy lights winking and making the silver baubles and stars sparkle. She moved over to look out of the window. “You must have a fabulous view from here.”

“I do.” He moved over to stand beside her. “It’s the view I grew up with from my bedroom window.”

The moon hadn’t yet risen. It was too dark to see the sea, and the high ground on the far side of the bay was invisible against the dark sky. The village, by contrast, was sparkling with lights, along the Esplanade and rising against the surrounding hills.

“You never wanted to move away from Sturcombe?”

“I moved away while I was playing, but I always intended to come back. Why wouldn’t I?”

“Why indeed.”

“Would you like to see the rest of the house?”

She turned to smile up at him. “Yes, I would.”

He was clearly very proud of it. He opened the door on the other side of the hall. “This is the dining room. I haven’t touched it yet. I haven’t decided what to do with it.”

A large walnut dining table dominated the room, gleaming with polish. Clearly Paul wasn’t neglecting it, even if he didn’t use it. Matching walnut sideboards flanked the marble fireplace, but the faded floral wallpaper and heavy old-fashioned crystal-drop chandelier dated the room badly.

“The furniture looks like it’s antique.”

“It is. It was bought by my great-grandfather. If I decide to keep it, I’ll do the room in a traditional style, like my mum and dad’s. When Nanna lived with them she had the dining room, but after she died they put the furniture back and painted the walls dark green. It really works.”

“Sounds nice.”

“The alternative is to sell all this stuff and go modern. But . . . I don’t know. I’m still thinking about it.”

“I can see why you don’t want to rush. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.”