Marion Lennox - Christmas with her Boss

Maybe his whole life had been building to this kiss.

That was a crazy thing to think-but how could he think it was crazy when his hands were cupping her face and he was drawing her in to meet him? How could he think he was crazy when his mouth was lowering to hers and she was so sweet, so beautiful, so right?

She melted in to him, her mouth seeking his, her hands taking his shoulders so she could centre herself, be centred. Her need was as great as his. He could feel it in the urgency of her hold, in the fire he felt the moment he found her mouth.

She wanted him. He felt her need and his whole body responded. Their kiss was suddenly urgent, hard, demanding. It was as if a magnetic field had been created, locking them to each other, two force fields meeting as they must, with fire at the centre.

He wanted her. He wanted her fiercely, with a passion that rocked him. He felt…out of control.

Maybe he was out of control. It was Christmas Eve. He was in the centre of a paddock somewhere in Australia-he didn’t truly know where-with a woman he’d thought he knew but he now realised he hadn’t known at all.

His Meg.

No. Just Meg. Her own beautiful self.

He deepened the kiss and she responded with heat and need, her lips opening, her tongue searching. Oh, but he wanted her… His hands were on her breasts, but she was wearing overalls. How did you get through overalls?

She was buttoned to the throat. No. Not buttons. Studs. They unfastened with satisfactory pops. Underneath the overalls was a lacy bra, and underneath the bra… His breath drew in, with awe and wonder.

His hands were cupping her, and he’d never felt such beauty. He’d never wanted a woman so much as he wanted Meg right now.

No woman before had been Meg.

He rolled back with her and she came, smiling down into his eyes. They were lying full length, wanting each other with a desperate heat they could read in each other’s eyes.

She was above him, smiling in the moonlight. Meg, his beauty. Her skin was pale and luminous, she almost seemed to shine.

They were on a horse rug or somesuch, something she’d spread in the middle of a cow paddock. No pillowed bed could feel better. No bed could feel more right.

‘You’re not taking your overalls off,’ she whispered and he realised with a shock that she was laughing. ‘Not fair.’

His overalls were all in one. He’d pulled them on in a rush. Underneath… Well, there wouldn’t be a lot of finesse in his undressing.

‘You’re wearing a bra,’ he managed. ‘I don’t believe I’m wearing anything.’

Her chuckle was so sexy it took his breath away. ‘I think that’s good.’

‘You don’t want me out of my overalls,’ he said but he couldn’t say it with any degree of certainty. This night…anything was possible this night.

‘And if I do?’

There was a statement to take his breath away. But a man had to have sense, even if finding it almost tore him in two. ‘I’m not…’ Hell, it was so hard to get his voice to work. ‘I’m not carrying condoms.’

She paused at that. She stilled. He kissed her again, a gentle, wondrous exploration that left him wanting more. Much more.

Why hadn’t he thought of condoms? Of all the stupid…He didn’t even have them in his bag back at the house.

He’d hardly packed thinking he was about to seduce his PA.

And Meg was tugging away, propping herself up on her arms, considering him in the dim light. ‘How big’s your head?’ she asked and he blinked.

‘Pardon?’

‘Millicent operated with no condoms,’ she said, her voice husky and shaken. ‘Look what happened to her.’

He laughed, but it was a shaken laugh. He pulled away a little, sense returning. A little.

‘We can’t,’ he managed. ‘Unless Santa arrives right now.’

‘I didn’t put condoms on my Santa list,’ she whispered, her voice laced with a thousand regrets.

‘That’s not efficient of you.’

‘I’m not feeling efficient.’

‘You don’t look efficient,’ he said and he tugged her to him again and held. He just held. ‘My obstetrician extraordinaire.’

‘Hey, you turned the leg. Maybe you’ve found your new calling.’

‘I’m not ready for a new career. If it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll stick to the old one,’ he said. But, the moment he said it, he knew it was a mistake.

Or maybe it wasn’t a mistake. Maybe it was simply the truth, which had to be put out there.

It had killed the moment. Meg moved back, squatted back on her heels and looked at him for a long moment, as if searching his face. And, whatever she was looking for, she didn’t find it. She smiled again, a wry little smile with all the regret in the world, and she tugged her overalls up to decency.

‘Well, that was fun,’ she said and suddenly he had Miss Jardine back-clinical, cool, ready to move on. ‘Birth does crazy things to your head. Imagine how I’d feel if ever I was around a human birth. Lucky I’m not. But enough. It’s three hours till milking. I need some sleep.’

‘Meg…’

‘No,’ she said.

‘No?’

‘No.’ She met his gaze, calm and cool in the moonlight, and if there was bleakness behind it there wasn’t anything he could do about it. ‘This was moon madness. We both know it, and it bears out my decision that I need to quit. What if there’d been a condom round tonight? We’d have been lost.’

Lost. The word hung between them, loaded with too many meanings.

‘Will you help me pack up?’ she said. ‘Millicent will be fine for what’s left of the night. It’s lovely and warm. She has a fine heifer calf to clean and she’ll do it better without us.’

‘Heifer?’

‘A little girl. I think we’ll call her Milly. Millicent, mother of Milly. It has a fine ring to it, don’t you think?’

She was talking for the sake of talking, he realised. She was putting emotion aside.

‘I don’t want to leave you,’ he said simply and she looked at him for a long moment, considering, and then she shook her head.

‘You can’t take me with you. I don’t fit. I did when my role was PA. No more. Somehow we’ve messed this and all there is now is for us to get on with our lives. You’ve got Ned and Pip and Elinor waiting for you back in New York, and you have your life there. I have a grandma and a little brother, and dairy cows and dogs and one brand new calf. That’s enough to keep any girl happy.’

‘Is it?’

’Yes,’ she said, rising and dumping ropes into buckets. ‘Yes, it is. Yes, it must be.’

WILLIAM woke to an operatic soprano belting out Silent Night right underneath his attic. Letty was singing along, almost louder than the soprano. A couple of dogs were joining right in.

Five-thirty. He’d been in bed for what-two and a half hours-and he’d lain awake for at least one of them.

He groaned and put his pillow over his head and then Scotty started singing too, and more dogs joined in, full howl.

Christmas. Hooray.

Feeling more like Scrooge every minute, he hauled his jeans on and staggered downstairs. The kitchen table was groaning with food in various states of preparation. Letty was wearing a truly astonishing crimson robe and a Santa hat. Scotty was sitting in his pyjamas, shelling peas. The difference between now and yesterday was astonishing.

‘Happy Christmas,’ Letty said, beaming. ‘Great pecs.’ Then, as he tried to figure whether to blush, she motioned to the sound system in the corner where, mercifully, Silent Night had just come to an end. ‘My favourite carol. You want us to play it again?’

‘She’ll make you sing,’ Scotty warned and William looked at the pair of them and saw exactly why Meg loved them to bits. A blushing adolescent and an old lady with her arm bandaged to her elbow, a lady who had almost died yesterday, who was now stirring something vaguely alcoholic, or possibly more than vaguely.

‘Eggnog,’ Letty said, following his gaze. ‘Just on finished. You want first glass?’

‘At five-thirty in the morning?’

‘Yeah, it’s late,’ Letty said. ‘Meg’s already milking, without her eggnog. You want to take some over to her?’

‘No,’ he said, revolted.

‘What’s wrong with my eggnog?’

‘If I’m going to help her milk, I need to be able to count teats.’

‘He has trouble getting to four, Grandma,’ Scotty said kindly. ‘We’d better let him off eggnog till the girls are milked.’ He hesitated. ‘You will help milk, won’t you? Meg said you helped so much last night that she wouldn’t wake you, but she’ll be ages alone.’

‘I could help,’ Letty said darkly. ‘Only she won’t let me.’

‘With your arm? You’re as dodgy as I am,’ Scott retorted and once again William was hit with the sensation that he was on the outside, looking in. Family?

‘Okay, toast and coffee and no eggnog until afterwards, but there’s home-made raspberry jam,’ Letty told him, moving right on. ‘And real butter. None of that cholesterol-reducing muck this morning.’

‘Grandma…’ Scott said and Letty grimaced and held up her hands in surrender.

‘I know. Back to being good tomorrow. You needn’t worry, young man; I intend to be around to boss you for a long time to come.’

‘So no more Santa rescues.’

‘I’ll be good,’ she said and William saw a flash of remembered terror from yesterday and he thought she wasn’t as tough as she was making out. She was brave, though. And he saw Scott worrying about her and he thought that courage came in all guises.

They were all brave. And Meg… What she’d been trying to do for all of them since her parents’ death…

‘So you know about Millicent’s calf,’ he ventured, feeling really off centre, and they both grinned, happiness returning.

‘Of course we do,’ Scott said. ‘She’s gorgeous. And Meg said you got a backward hoof out. I wish she’d called me. I could’ve have helped.’