Debbie Johnson - Cold Feet at Christmas

DEBBIE JOHNSON

A division of HarperCollins Publishers

www.harpercollins.co.uk

HarperImpulse an imprint of

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2014

Copyright © Debbie Johnson 2014

Cover images © Shutterstock.com

Debbie Johnson asserts the moral right

to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is

available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are

the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to

actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is

entirely coincidental.

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and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

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written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © November 2014

ISBN: 9780007594559

Version 2018-02-15

Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress.

For Jane and Mark – who renewed my faith in happy endings!

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Epilogue

If You Like Debbie Johnson You’ll Love Lynn Marie Hulsman…

Also by Debbie Johnson…

Debbie Johnson

About HarperImpulse

About the Publisher

Jimmy Choo’s finest. Pleated white satin. Four inch heels. £500 a pop. For that, you’d expect them to be waterproof, thought Leah Harvey. Or at least to come with jet packs so she could fly out of this godforsaken frozen wasteland, and off to the nearest hotel. Ideally one with a spa, hot and cold running chocolate and Greek god waiters who hand-feed you peeled grapes.

Instead, she was here. In the snow. On Christmas Eve. In the middle of Scottish countryside so remote even the bloody sheep looked like they’d need a sat nav to find their way home.

The lights on the dashboard flickered on and off, casting a final ghostly neon glow before fading into nothingness. She turned the key in the lifeless ignition for the fifteenth time; held her frozen hands in front of the now defunct heating vents, and swore. Long, loud, and with such creative use of foul language that eventually she honked the horn to drown herself out. A self-imposed bleep machine to hide the fact she could make a flotilla of sailors blush.

She undid her seatbelt, noticed that the elegant satin of her ivory dress was now crushed and creased beyond redemption. Not that it mattered. It’s not like she’d be using that particular piece of haute couture again.

Climbing out of the cocoon of the car, her feet immediately sank ten inches into freezing cold snow. Her bare shoulders shook with cold, and her fingers and toes decided they weren’t even connected to her body as the chill factor took hold. More swearing. This time without the bleep machine. Nearby foxes were probably holding their paws over their cubs’ ears.

Great, she thought, turning round to kick the broken-down piece-of-crap car that belonged to her cheating bastard husband-to-be, scuffing the Jimmy Choos in the process. Just great. The perfect end to a perfect day. A gust of icy wind howled up the skirt of her dress, frost nipping at places it had no right to be. Not on the first date, at least. She should be wearing bearskin in weather like this, not a skimpy stretch of silk masquerading as underwear.

She had two choices, Leah decided, teeth chattering loud enough to turn her into a one-woman percussion section. Option One: stay in the car. Wait for help that might never come, as nobody had a clue where she was. Including her. Freeze overnight, and potentially get pecked to death by starving crows she’d be too weak to fight off. The only things left of her would be satin stilettos and her engagement ring.

Option Two: do a Captain Oates and head off across the field to the light she could just about see in the distance. A light must mean habitation, which must mean a human being. Possibly a psychopathic serial killer, or maybe a sex-starved sheep farmer planning Christmas dinner with his collection of blow-up dolls, which, she decided, hitching up the soggy hem of her gown, was still preferable to the crows-pecking-out-eyeballs scenario. She headed for the light.

As she trudged through the fields of snow, she conjured up a playlist of Christmas songs in her head to try and cheer herself up. Or at least help her resist the urge to simply lie down in the ice and sleep. Feed the World. Santa Claus is Coming to Town. Chestnuts Roasting On an Open Fire. Merry Christmas, Everyone…Yeah, right, she thought, slinging her bag over her shoulder and continuing the slow, painful trek to her saviour.

A saviour who probably had one eye, a large collection of shotguns, and slept with his teeth in a jar.

***

Roberto Cavelli had just finished reading a letter from his mother when the knock came at the door.

The contents of the letter didn’t surprise him – mommy dearest urging him to move on, remarry and give her the grandchildren she so richly deserved. She’d been telling him the same thing for the last two years, and he’d come no closer to settling down. Plenty to bed, none to wed; which suited him fine. But this time she played all her guilt cards: she was getting older, she’d been so ill, she didn’t know if she’d even be here by next Christmas…As if , he thought, smiling. Dorothea Cavelli was about as ill as a prize-winning ox in the prime of its life. And she was equally full of bull.

Find a wife, she kept telling him. Pretty much every day, but with special intensity at Christmas, Easter and, her personal favourite, his birthday – because, quote, ‘you’re not getting any younger, darling’. Since when had 34 been declared officially old? Had there been some kind of United Nations ruling that he’d missed out on? Would he be euthanised at 35 if he hadn’t started to procreate? And how come the fact that his twin brother Marco was still playing the field seemed okay with her? He was only an hour younger, for Christ’s sake. How come he got a pass on the next-generation nagging?

Well, he didn’t want a new wife, thank you very much. He still missed the old one. And even if he did , even if he admitted he was starting to feel the slow spread of loneliness creeping across his heart like a silken cobweb, it wasn’t that easy. You couldn’t just go and buy one from Wives R Us. Well, you probably could, but that wasn’t the kind of marriage he’d ever be interested in.

Rob knew that not everyone found love behind every door; and not everyone found their soul mate…definitely not twice. He’d had it once, and he’d let it slip away. Some people just weren’t meant to have it, simple as that. And some people – like him – simply didn’t deserve it. He’d got used to the idea, learned to function alone, to fake a contentment that he didn’t feel. It was over for him. He understood that, and accepted it as part of his fate. His mother, apparently, hadn’t. She always had been a stubborn old coot.