Fiona Harper - Kiss Me Under the Mistletoe

As a child, FIONA HARPERwas constantly teased for either having her nose in a book or living in a dream world. Things haven’t changed much since then, but at least in writing she’s found a use for her runaway imagination. After studying dance at university, Fiona worked as a dancer, teacher and choreographer, before trading in that career for video editing and production. When she became a mother, she cut back on her working hours to spend time with her children and, when her littlest one started pre-school, she found a few spare moments to rediscover an old but not forgotten love—writing.

Fiona lives in London, but her other favourite places to be are the Highlands of Scotland and the Kent countryside on a summer’s afternoon. She loves cooking, good food and anything cinnamon-flavoured. Of course, she still can’t keep away from a good book or a good movie—especially romances—but only if she’s stocked up with tissues, because she knows she will need them by the end, be it happy or sad. Her favourite things in the world are her wonderful husband, who has learned to decipher her incoherent ramblings, and her two daughters.

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For Mum again. Still love you.

Most women would have given at least one kidney to be in Louise’s shoes—both literally and figuratively. The shoes in question were hot off the Paris catwalk, impossibly high heels held to her foot by delicately interwoven silver straps. The main attraction, however, was the man sitting across the dinner table from her. The very same hunk of gorgeousness that had topped a magazine poll of ‘Hollywood’s Hottest’ only last Thursday.

Louise stared at her cutlery, intent on tracing a figure of eight pattern with her dessert spoon, and eavesdropped on conversations in the busy restaurant. Other people’s conversations. Other people’s lives.

Her dinner companion shifted in his seat and the heel of his boot made jarring contact with the little toe of her right foot. She jerked away and leaned over to rub it.

‘Thanks a bunch, Toby!’ she said, glaring at him from half under the table.

Toby stopped grinning at a pair of bleached blonde socialites who were in the process of wafting past their table and turned to face her, eyebrows raised.

‘What?’

‘Never mind,’ she muttered and sat up straight again, carefully crossing her ankles and tucking them under her chair. Her little toe was still warm and pulsing.

The waiter appeared with their exquisite-looking entrées and Toby’s eyebrows relaxed back into their normal sexily brooding position as he started tearing into his guinea fowl. Louise’s knife and fork stayed on the tablecloth.

He hadn’t even bothered with his normal comments about the carbs on her plate. She was supposed to be getting rid of that baby weight, remember? Never mind that Jack had just turned eight. His father was still living in a dream world if he thought she was going to be able to squeeze back into those size zero designer frocks hanging in the back of her wardrobe.

But then Toby had emotionally checked out of their marriage some time ago. She kept up the pretence for Jack’s sake, posed and smiled for the press and celebrity magazines and fiercely denied any gossip about a rift. He hadn’t ever said he’d stopped loving her, but it was evident in the things he didn’t do, the things he didn’t say. And then there was the latest rumour …

She picked up her cutlery and attacked her pasta.

‘Slow down, Lulu! Good food like this is meant to be enjoyed, not inhaled.’ Toby said, eyes still on his plate.

Lulu . When they’d first met, she’d thought it had been cute that he’d picked up on, and used, her younger brother’s attempts at pronouncing her name. Lulu was exotic, exciting … and a heck of a lot more interesting than plain old Louise. She’d liked being Lulu back then.

Now she just wanted him to see Louise again.

She stopped eating and looked at him, waiting for him to raise his head, give her a smile, his trademark cheeky wink—anything.

He waved for the waiter and asked for another bottle of wine. Then she saw him glance across and nod at the two blondes, now seated a few tables away. Not once in the next ten minutes did he look at her. Her seat might as well have been empty.

‘Toby?’

‘What?’ Finally he glanced in her direction. But where once she had been able to see her dreams coming to life, there was only a vacancy.

He rubbed his front tooth with his forefinger and it made a horrible squeaking noise. ‘Why are you looking at me like that? Do I have spinach in my teeth?’

She shook her head. What spinach leaf would dare sully the picture of masculine perfection sitting opposite her? The thought was almost sacrilegious. She was tempted to laugh.

The words wouldn’t come. How could she ask what she wanted to ask? And how could she stand the answer when it came?

She tried to say it with her eyes instead. When she’d been modelling, photographers had always raved about the ‘intensity’ in her eyes. She tried to show it all—the emptiness inside her, the magnetic force that kept the pair of them revolving around each other, the small spark of hope that hadn’t quite been extinguished yet. If he’d just do it once … really connect with her …

‘Jeez, Lulu. Cheer up, will—’

A chime from the phone in his pocket interrupted him. He slid it out and held it shielded in his hand, slightly under the table. The only change in his features was a slight curve of his bottom lip. Now he made eye contact. He searched her face for a reaction, and then returned the mobile to his jacket pocket and his gaze to his plate.

She waited.

He shrugged. ‘Work stuff. You know …’

Unfortunately, she had the feeling she did know. And she kept on knowing all the way through dinner as she shoved one forkful after another into her mouth, tasting nothing.

The rumour was true.

All afternoon, since she’d spoken to Tara on the phone, she’d hoped it was all silly speculation, someone putting two and two together and coming up with five. Six years ago, when the tabloids had been jumping with the stories of Toby’s ‘secret love trysts’ with his leading lady, she’d refused to believe it. She had given interview after interview denying there had been any truth in it. During the second ‘incident’ she’d done the same but while her outward performance had been just as impassioned, inside she’d been counting all the things that hadn’t added up: the hushed phone calls, the extra meetings with his agent. Never enough to pin him down, but just enough to make her die a little more each time she shook her head for the reporters and dismissed it as nonsense.