Fiona Harper - Kiss Me Under the Mistletoe

‘Then promise to come again.’

Ben didn’t want to turn round. He’d told himself he wouldn’t respond this time. After all, he’d had enough of high-maintenance women. But …

She stood on the lawn watching him, her hair whipped across her face by another surly gust of wind. Once again, her eyes held him captive. Not for their dark beauty, but because something deep inside them seemed to be pleading with him. His friends had told him he was a sucker for a damsel in distress, and he’d always denied it, but he had the awful feeling they might be right. Hadn’t he tried—unsuccessfully—to rescue Megan?

Louise tugged a strand of chocolate-brown hair out of her mouth. ‘The garden. It does need looking after. You’re right. It would be a shame to …’

Once again, the eyes pleaded. He should have a sign made, reading ‘sucker’, and just slap it on his forehead.

He’d do it. But not for her. For Laura. Just until he was sure this new owner was going to care for the place properly. And then he’d pass it on to one of his landscaping teams and charge her handsomely for the privilege. After all, he reminded himself, life was complicated enough already without looking after somebody else’s garden.

Or somebody else’s wife.

11th June, 1952

It was both better and worse than I’d feared.

Today we finally shot the scene in the boathouse—the one I’d both been anticipating and dreading. The basic story was this …

Charity had realised she was utterly in love with Richard, but his parents announce his engagement to the highly suitable Margaret. Heartbroken, she runs through the woods on a glorious summer afternoon and hides away in the cool of the boathouse, the one place she can be alone and think of him.

He comes to find her.

She’s on the balcony, crying, and he pulls her into his arms and kisses her tears away. It’s the first time she knows he feels the same. Before then he’s been trying to keep the peace with his parents, despite their growing attraction, but when they push the engagement issue, it makes him realise what he really wants. Who he really wants.

Thank goodness for incompetent sound recordists, that’s all I can say.

Just like that first time, we might have only needed one take otherwise. I forgot to fake it totally, thereby giving Sam exactly what he wanted. Dominic came towards me. I could hardly see him through the glycerine the make-up woman had put round my eyes, but I didn’t need to see much. Just the look in his eyes.

Whether it was Richard’s eyes or Dominic’s I wasn’t sure at first.

I shook. Literally felt myself rattle in my shoes when his lips first touched mine. It was what I’d always thought kissing should be like.

When I kiss Alex, it’s different. At first it was nice. Warm. Comforting. Now I do it because I think I ought to, because it’s what husbands and wives are supposed to do. I’m not even sure Alex notices the difference. Maybe that’s because he always seems to be in such a rush.

Dominic wasn’t in a rush.

He was soft, gentle. Patient. I know it was all supposed to be about Richard and how he felt about Charity, but I couldn’t help feeling as if he was gently reaching inside me to see what no one else has ever seen before. All the bits I hide. All the bits that are too precious to let anyone see. It was utterly, utterly bewitching.

I fluffed the next three takes on purpose.

But then I think Sam got wise to me. He gave me one of his looks. The ones I’ve learned to pay attention to. It doesn’t do to cheese the great Samuel Harman off, not if you want a career that lasts longer than a fortnight, so I steeled myself to make the last take count.

Dominic walked onto the balcony, placed his hands on my shoulders and turned me to face him. The shaking started again. I couldn’t help it. This was going to be it—the take Sam wanted, and my very last kiss with a man who felt like my perfect match. It was almost too much. I nearly fluffed it for real.

He stared down at me, looked deep into my eyes in a way that made my insides both churn and come to rest at the same time. I felt as if I was flying. And then he pressed the softest of kisses to my eyelids. I hung onto him, taking all I could. Giving everything back.

And then his lips were on mine. Sweet, sweet heaven. I started crying for real. No need for the glycerine.

And then something wonderful happened. Dominic had been leaning against the balcony, pulling me close against him, and he lost his balance, stumbled slightly because of the way he’d turned his body to kiss me more deeply. I knew the camera was in really close on us, and I heard Sam swear when we both lurched out of shot.

‘Cut!’ he yelled, and Dominic and I broke apart.

I looked up at him and I thought my heart was going to pop right out of my chest.

‘Sorry,’ he said, but there was a glimmer of humour in his eyes, a sense of being co-conspirators in some wonderful secret.

And that’s when I realised that Dominic Blake had messed up on purpose.

Louise watched Ben go. She kept watching until long after his tall frame disappeared round the side of the house into a tangle of grass and shrubs and trees that were now, technically, her back garden. Not that she’d had the courage to explore it fully yet.

She forced herself to turn away and look back at the greenhouse.

Was she mad? Quite possibly.

In all seriousness, she’d just given a man she knew nothing about permission to invade her territory on a regular basis. Yet … there’d been something so preposterously truthful about his story and so refreshingly straightforward about his manner that she’d swallowed it whole. Next time she’d have to frisk him for a long-lens camera and a dictaphone, just in case.

She’d left the greenhouse door open. Slowly, she closed the distance to the heavy Victorian glazed door, with its beautiful brass handle and peeling, off-white paint. On a whim, she stepped inside before she closed the door and stood for a few moments in the warm dampness. It smelled good in here, of earth and still air, but very real. She liked real.

The assorted plants lining the shelves by the windows really were quite exquisite. She’d never seen anything like them. Venus fly-traps sat next to frilly, sticky-looking things in shades of pink and purple.

She walked over to the little plant that the gardener had saved. She felt an affinity with this little plant, recently uprooted, thin, fragile. Now in a foreign climate, reaching hungrily heavenwards with an appetite that might never be satisfied. She reached out and touched the soil at its base. It did feel good. She pulled her hand away, but didn’t wipe it on the back of her jeans.

Near the door were the stubby, brown plants that had started to hibernate. Just like her. All those years with Toby now seemed like a time half-asleep. Her mind wandered to a photo of a famous actress who had graced the pages of all the gossip magazines a few years ago. She’d been snapped whooping for joy when the papers finalising her divorce had arrived. Since then she’d lost twenty pounds, received two Oscars and had been seen with a string of hot-looking younger men.