The Yuletide Child, Charlotte Lamb [best novels to read .TXT] 📗

into a wall. Don’t worry, the damage isn’t really serious, I’d say—scratches and bumps, mainly.’

‘Can you tell me where to find it?’ Ross opened the map he had just bought and spread it on the counter, his hands shaking. The postman leaned over to point.

‘Down that road—it’s a tiny lane, and still icy, so be careful. I’m not surprised they crashed your car; I nearly crashed myself. I skated down rather than drove. Lucky my brakes are good.

Ross thanked him and hurried off. He found the flower wagon twenty minutes later and parked behind it. Getting out, he looked around, and immediately noticed the lines of footprints in the snowy field, leading down to the house. He couldn’t walk across there in shoes, he would ruin them, and his trousers, too. Opening the back of his four-wheel drive, he fished out the boots he always carried; when you worked in the country you needed to be well prepared for any eventuality.

Locking his vehicle a few minutes later, he set offdown towards the house. As he passed a shed he heard a loud crashing sound, a high-pitched cry, and froze.

That surely wasn’t...? Dylan couldn’t have spent the night in there?

Hurriedly he opened the door, and reeled back as something rushed out, butting him out of the way. Ross grabbed the door to stop himself falling over, glad he was wearing lined leather gloves.

A goat! he thought, staring after it, then shut the door again before following the previous inhabitant, who by now was down in front of the house, staring through a glass door.

Joining it, Ross stared too, into a pretty kitchen. Was anyone in? he wondered, and tapped loudly on the glass.

There was a blur of blue in the room, someone in a velvet dressing gown walked towards him, and suddenly he couldn’t breathe; he felt sick and famt.

She opened the door and stared at him, her eyes wide in surprise.

‘Ross!’

He was so relieved he put his arms round her, held her tightly, against his heart, his face buried in her sweet-smelling hair, reminded by the shampoo she had obviously used of the scent of his forest in summer, of pine and fern in sunshine.

She didn’t put her arms round him, but her body softened, leaned on his yieldingly, her face against his coat.

But then his mood swung violently. For hours he had been thinking the worst, his head awash with terrifying images of what might have happened to her. He had been rent by guilt and fear. There were so many horrific possibilities—she might have been seriously hurt in a crash, might lose the baby, be maimed, dead, or dying.

And while he was going through hell about her, outof his mind with panic, she had been safe, here, in this cosy house, all the time.

Angry blood rushed to his head. He reddened, pushed her away and stared down accusingly, shouting at her. ‘How could you be so stupid? What on earth possessed you to drive all this way, on one of the worst nights of the winter, in that silly little car of yours? It’s a sardine can, even if it is painted with flowers—just a flimsy piece of tin, that damned car! You could have been killed. God knows why you weren’t!’

‘Don’t yell at me!’ Dylan threw back, just as furious, just as flushed, and trembling because a moment ago she had been in his arms again, had felt his mouth moving against her hair with a tenderness he had not shown her for a long, long time.

‘What do you expect when you behave like a halfwit!’ he muttered, staring at her in that soft blue velvet which made her eyes look bluer than ever, the deep warm blue of summer skies.

She was round and swollen as a pumpkin, but she was still very beautiful: her curly hair tied back from her face with a blue velvet scrunchie, her fine features so mobile and expressive that you could read every thought, every emotion unless she deliberately hid them.

He remembered how, when she danced, her body reflected her face, mood and reaction flowing through her throat and breasts, down her arms to her delicate, elegant hands, down through waist, hip and thigh to the long, slim legs. Every inch of her had been eloquent. Then. Until she became pregnant, tethered to the earth, slow-moving, heavy.

He had done that to her. His face darkened with rage and pain and Dylan read his reaction and shivered, lookingaway. Did he hate her now? Huskily, she asked, ‘How did you find me?’

He swallowed, his throat moving visibly. ‘Pure coincidence. Jenny rang me in York, because you hadn’t arrived at her place, so I drove over here last night. We were up half the night.’ His dark grey eyes were glittering points of ice. ‘Jenny is out of her mind with worry over you, by the way.’

Her lower lip trembled. ‘Oh...poor Jen... I tried to ring but the phone lines are down here.’

He ignored that. ‘At first light I started driving around looking for you, and I just happened to meet a postman who had noticed that crazy car of yours!’ His tone sharpened to a knife-point. ‘Which you had crashed into that wall up there—what were you trying to do, kill yourself and the baby?’

‘Don’t be so cruel! What a wicked thing to say . . . even think!’ Half in tears, half hating him, she turned on her heel and walked away into the kitchen.

Ross followed, banging the door behind him so that it rattled, but not doing so fast enough. Fred had got in, too, and was making for the heat of the range, standing in front of it, shaking himself.

He lowered his head to enjoy the warmth while showering the entire room with water from the snow that had been drenching his coat as if he had bathed in it. Maybe the stupid animal had rolled in snow, thought Ross, wondering how on earth they would get the goat out