Liz Fielding: Christmas Angel for the Billionaire

She stopped. It was, she discovered, easy to be charming when everyone treated you with respect but she had to take a deep breath before she turned, very carefully, to face him.

‘Mr Saxon?’ she responded politely.

‘Shut the damn door!’

She blinked.

No one had ever raised their voice to her. Spoken to her in that way.

‘In your own time,’ he said when she didn’t move.

Used to having doors opened for her, stepping out of a car without so much as a backward glance, she hadn’t even thought about it.

She wanted to be ordinary, she reminded herself. To be treated like an ordinary woman. Clearly, it was going to be an education.

She walked back, closed the door, but if she’d expected the courtesy of a thank you she would have been disappointed.

Always a fast learner, she hadn’t held her breath.

‘Take no notice of George,’ Xandra said as he drove away to park the truck. ‘He doesn’t want to be here so he’s taking it out on you.’

‘Doesn’t…? Why not? Isn’t he the “and Son”?’

She laughed, but not with any real mirth. ‘Wrong generation. The “and Son” above the garage is my granddad but he’s in hospital. A heart attack.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that. How is he?’

‘Not well enough to run the garage until I can take over,’ she said. Then, blinking back something that looked very much like a tear, she shrugged, lifted her head. ‘Sorry. Family business.’ She flicked a switch that activated the hoist. ‘I’ll take a look at your car.’

Annie, confused by the tensions, wishing she could do something too, but realising that she’d been dismissed-and that was new, as well-said, ‘Your father mentioned a waiting room?’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake. It’ll be freezing in there and the drinks machine hasn’t worked in ages.’ Xandra fished a key out of her pocket. ‘Go inside where it’s warm,’ she said, handing it to her. ‘Make yourself at home. There’s tea and coffee by the kettle, milk in the fridge.’ Xandra watched the car as it rose slowly above them, then, realising that she hadn’t moved, said, ‘Don’t worry. It won’t take long to find the problem.’

‘Are you quite sure?’ she asked.

‘I may be young but I know what I’m doing.’

‘Yes…’ Well, maybe. ‘I meant about letting myself in.’

‘Gran would invite you in herself if she were here,’ she said as her father rejoined them.

In the bright strip light his face had lost the dangerous shadows, but it still had a raw quality. There was no softness to mitigate hard bone other than a full lower lip that oozed sensuality and only served to increase her sense of danger.

‘You shouldn’t be in here,’ he said.

‘I’m going…’ She cleared her throat. ‘Can I make something for either of you?’ she offered.

He frowned.

She lifted her hand and dangled the door key. ‘Tea? Coffee?’

For a moment she thought he was going to tell her to stay on her own side of the counter-maybe she was giving him the opportunity-but after a moment he shrugged and said, ‘Coffee. If there is any.’

‘Xandra?’

‘Whatever,’ she said, as she ducked beneath the hoist, clearly more interested in the car than in anything she had to say and Annie walked quickly across the yard, through a gate and up a well-lit path to the rear of a long, low stone-built house and let herself in through the back door.

The mud room was little more than a repository for boots and working clothes, a place to wash off the workplace dirt, but as she walked into the kitchen she was wrapped in the heat being belted out by an ancient solid fuel stove.

Now this was familiar, she thought, relaxing as she crossed to the sink, filled the kettle and set it on the hob to boil.

This room, so much more than a kitchen, was typical of the farmhouses at King’s Lacey, her grandfather’s Warwickshire estate.

Her last memory of her father was being taken to visit the tenants before he’d gone away for the last time. She’d been given brightly coloured fizzy pop and mince pies while he’d talked to people he’d known since his boyhood, asking about their children and grandchildren, discussing the price of feedstuff, grain. She’d played with kittens, fed the chickens, been given fresh eggs to take home for her tea. Been a child.

She ran her hand over the large, scrubbed-top table, looked at the wide dresser, laden with crockery and piled up with paperwork. Blinked back the tear that caught her by surprise before turning to a couple of Morris armchairs, the leather seats scuffed and worn, the wooden arms rubbed with wear, one of them occupied by a large ginger cat.

A rack filled with copies of motoring magazines stood beside one, a bag stuffed with knitting beside the other. There was a dog basket by the Aga, but no sign of its owner.

She let the cat sniff her fingers before rubbing it behind the ear, starting up a deep purr. Comfortable, it was the complete opposite of the state-of-the-art kitchen in her London home. Caught in a nineteen-fifties time warp, the only concession to modernity here was a large refrigerator, its cream enamel surface chipped with age, and a small television set tucked away on a shelf unit built beside the chimney breast.

The old butler’s sink, filled with dishes that were no doubt waiting for Xandra’s attention-George Saxon didn’t look the kind of man who was familiar with a dish mop-suggested that the age of the dishwasher had not yet reached the Saxon household.

She didn’t have a lot of time to spare for basic household chores these days, but there had been a time, long ago, when she had been allowed to stand on a chair and wash dishes, help cook when she was making cakes and, even now, once in a while, when they were in the country, she escaped to the comfort of her childhood kitchen, although only at night, when the staff were gone.

She wasn’t a child any more and her presence was an intrusion on their space.

Here, though, she was no one and she peeled off the woolly hat and fluffed up her short hair, enjoying the lightness of it. Then she hung her padded jacket on one of the pegs in the mud room before hunting out a pair of rubber gloves and pitching in.

Washing up was as ordinary as it got and she was grinning by the time she’d cleared the decks. It wasn’t what she’d imagined she’d be doing this evening, but it certainly fulfilled the parameters of the adventure.

By the time she heard the back door open, the dishes were draining on the rack above the sink and she’d made a large pot of tea for herself and Xandra, and a cup of instant coffee for George.

‘Oh…’ Xandra came to an abrupt halt at the kitchen door as she saw the table on which she was laying out cups and saucers. ‘I usually just bung a teabag in a mug,’ she said. Then, glancing guiltily at the sink, her eyes widened further. ‘You’ve done the washing-up…’

‘Well, you did tell me to make myself at home,’ Annie said, deadpan.

It took Xandra a moment but then she grinned. ‘You’re a brick. I was going to do it before Gran got home.’

A brick? No one had ever called her that before.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ she replied, pouring tea while Xandra washed her hands at the sink. ‘Your gran is at the hospital with your grandfather, I imagine?’

Before Xandra could answer, George Saxon followed her into the kitchen, bringing with him a metallic blast of cold air.

He came to an abrupt halt, staring at her for a moment. Or, rather, she thought, her hair, and she belatedly wished she’d kept her hat on, but it was too late for that.

‘Has she told you?’ he demanded, finally tearing his gaze away from what she knew must look an absolute fright.