CONTENTS

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER TEN

      CHAPTER ELEVEN

      CHAPTER TWELVE

      CHAPTER THIRTEEN

      CHAPTER ONE

      ‘SO IT’S going to be your usual quiet Christmas,’ Dawn stated from the depths of the armchair which was cosily close to the state-of-the-art kitchen range. ‘Poor old you! You really should learn to have fun, Matts—you never know, you might get to like it!’ Her soft, pretty mouth formed a small moue of condemnation as she wriggled her curvy body with barely suppressed excitement and Mattie, glancing across at her oldest and best friend, wondered if her mother would have loved her if she’d been more like Dawn, pretty and curvy, outgoing and bubbly, instead of—

      She pushed the thought roughly away. All that was over. Her mother had died nine years ago, for heaven’s sake, when Mattie had been just sixteen and there was no point at all in dwelling on the past—nothing would bring it back, or alter it.

      ‘Whereas your place will be bursting at the seams,’ Mattie put in through a gentle smile, sensing her friend’s excitement and knowing the reason for it. She reached for her reading glasses and peered at the recipe book. At Christmas time especially, The Old Rectory on the other side of the picture-book Sussex village would act like a magnet for the large and happily uncomplicated family Dawn’s parents had created. And the rambling, slightly shabby house would be filled with children and grandchildren, love and laughter.

      In stark contrast to the rather austere grandeur of this place, the home she shared with her widowed father.

      ‘The whole shooting match,’ Dawn agreed comfortably, her hazel eyes bright as she raised her left hand and gazed at the emerald sparkling on her ring finger. ‘Plus Frank and his parents,’ she added breathily. ‘They’ll be arriving tomorrow, Christmas Eve, so you’re invited for lunch on Christmas Day—bring your father—with Mrs Flax being away it will save you having to cook. And I won’t take no for an answer. I can’t wait to introduce my brand-new fiancé to my very best friend.’

      ‘Sorry.’ Mattie fed flour onto the kitchen scales. ‘But James is spending the holiday here; he phoned this morning and invited himself.’ Her heart squeezed painfully beneath her breast as she spoke his name. He must be feeling dreadful. His plans for Christmas would have been far more glamorous, much more romantic than a quiet few days out in the sticks. ‘I know you’re going to say bring him too, but I don’t think he’ll feel like partying—not under the circumstances.’

      More than half expecting her friend to persist, she tipped the flour into the mixing bowl with such a gesture of finality that airy clouds of it rose palely to the ceiling.

      But far from insisting that her invitation be accepted, Dawn said, ‘Wow!’ wriggling round in the chair, resting her elbows on the fatly padded arm, cupping her chin in her hands. ‘Major tear-mopping time coming up?’

      ‘I don’t think James Carter knows how to cry,’ Mattie stated, her tone matter-of-fact. In all the years she had known him, as the son of her father’s business partner, and later, at the relatively young age of twenty-five, stepping into his father’s shoes at his death around eleven years ago, she had never seen him show a strong emotion. He was always self-assured, completely collected, detached. Almost frighteningly remote at times, seeming to live in a world where nothing could touch him.

      But right now he must be hurting. Being so publicly jilted by the woman he’d intended to marry had to be a painful experience. But, knowing him as well as she did, she was sure he wouldn’t show it.

      ‘Well, he wouldn’t parade his feelings in public,’ Dawn conceded. ‘But with his parents both dead now, you and your dad are the closest thing to a family he has, so he might cry on your shoulders. And I guess his ego has taken a heck of a pounding if nothing else. I mean, when you look back a couple of months to those burblings in the gossip columns about the wedding of the year—“Society Beauty, the Hon. Fiona Campbell-Blair to Wed Business Tycoon,” and her quoted as saying it would be a marriage made in heaven and how besotted with each other they were, and then, only last week her ladyship announces that she’s called the whole thing off because, and again I quote, “Jimmy didn’t live up to her high expectations”—well, I mean, he’s got to be feeling absolutely gutted.’

      ‘Probably,’ Mattie responded tightly, wishing her friend would drop the subject. She hated to think of James being hurt and she wanted to take the wretched Fiona’s elegant neck in her own two hands and do her a serious damage! And she couldn’t imagine any woman who wasn’t certifiably insane jilting a man who was as starkly, compellingly male as James Carter.

      ‘Look,’ she suggested, ‘why don’t you make coffee?’ Anything to stop this post-mortem prattling. She peered again at the recipe book and began rubbing butter into the flour. ‘I’m trying to make pastry for mince pies here. I just wish Mrs Flax hadn’t decided to take her annual leave right now!’

      When their housekeeper had announced she wanted a winter break in the sun with her sister she had had their blessing. Mattie’s dad had never liked the festive season—not after his wife, Mattie’s mother, had walked out on them all those years ago—so they tended to treat Christmas as just another ordinary day. But with James expected she was going to produce all the trimmings. Even if it killed her!

      ‘Consider it done.’ Dawn unwound herself and wandered over to the table, casting her eyes over the recipe Mattie was so laboriously following. ‘It says add water, but you’ll get a much nicer result if you use beaten egg instead,’ she advised. ‘Want me to take over? I’ve been helping Mum with the cooking practically since I was born and you’re nothing but an academic. Brainy but a total fluff-head when it comes to anything practical.’

      ‘Then it’s time I mended my ways,’ Mattie responded lightly, resisting the impulse to clutch the mixing bowl jealously to her under-endowed chest. She couldn’t do much for James—she had enough common sense to be fully aware of that—but she could and she would, and with her own hands, make a proper Christmas for him.

      ‘On your own head be it—or should I say on your guest’s stomach lie it!’

      Mattie grimaced wryly as her friend swung away to fill the kettle. Although only a couple of weeks separated them in age, she sometimes felt a thousand years old around the ebullient Dawn. A point reinforced when the other girl tossed over her shoulder, ‘Play your cards right, Matts, and you could