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

‘Now look what you’ve done!’ Dylan wailed. ‘Shoo... Fred... you can’t come in. Go out. Shoo.’

Fred ignored her flapping hands and agitated cries, didn’t even glance at her.

‘He’s dripping all over the floor!’ she complained.‘And so are you! Take those boots off, for heaven’s sake!’

Ross grabbed Fred’s leather collar and heaved him towards the door, with Fred wriggling and digging his heels in every inch of the way. Ross was stronger, however, he finally pushed Fred out, slamming the door behind him. Fred glared viciously over his shoulder, his yellowy-blue eyes homicidal, then charged away, up the garden, and butted the shed walls, making them shiver violently.

‘You just have to be firm with animals,’ Ross said.

Dylan grabbed a mop from a cupboard and dealt with the wet marks of Fred’s hooves and Ross’s boots. ‘If Ruth gets back to see her floor in this mess she’ll be furious. Fred isn’t allowed indoors; he eats everything, even dishcloths.’

Ross took the mop away from her and finished the work. ‘You shouldn’t be doing that, not in your condition... and who’s Ruth?’

Crossly, Dylan said, ‘I’ve been doing my housework all through my pregnancy—I’m not going to collapse because I mop a wet floor! And, will you please take those boots off?’

He rinsed the mop out in the kitchen sink, shook it, then put it away in the cupboard where she had found it, the wet head upwards. Then he pulled off his boots and stood them on the kitchen mat by the door.

Dylan sat down by the table, trembling and feeling sick. ‘This is Ruth’s house. After I crashed she took me in—she’s a very nice woman; she’s been very kind to me.’ Her blue eyes lifted to his face, dark with reproach, telling him silently that he had not been kind yesterday morning, before he left for York.

Ross felt a familiar stab of guilt, but anger drownedit out. She had risked her life and that of their baby in a fit of temper because he had gone away for one night—if anyone felt guilty it should be Dylan herself. It was only by pure luck that she had survived that crash. It could have been fatal.

‘Does she live here alone?’

‘Yes, she isn’t married. She lived here with her widowed mother until the mother died—poor Ruth. I think she must be very lonely; she doesn’t seem to have any friends. Her phone was out of order all night, or I would have rung Jenny, to tell her what had happened. It’s still dead this morning, so Ruth is walking to the village to try to get the garage to come and get my car back on the road.’

‘The roads are like ice rinks,’ snapped Ross. ‘Let’s hope she makes it safely to the village. I suppose it never occurred to you that that walk could be dangerous for her? How old is she, this Ruth?’

Dylan bit her lip, knowing there was some truth in what he had said. She should never have let Ruth leave.

Defiantly, though, she told him, ‘She’s not old! In her forties. And of course I tried to talk her out of going! You don’t think I asked her to go? I told her it would be better to wait until the phone was working again, but she had run out of bread and milk and she said she would have gone to the village even if I hadn’t been here.’

‘And you really think she was telling the truth?’ he grated, frowning. ‘Anyone with any sense is staying indoors this morning and waiting for a thaw. That’s where I would be if you hadn’t forced me to come looking for you!’

‘Don’t tell me you give a damn what happens to me!’she muttered, not looking at him. ‘If you had cared you would never have left me alone in that house!’

He ran a hand through his thick dark hair, face tense with guilt and anger at himself which somehow converted into anger with her. ‘Dylan, it was an important meeting. I needed to be there. As it was, in the end, I had to leave before it started, to come searching for you! So you won—okay? You won! I hope that makes you happy.’

She looked at him with angry reproach in her eyes. ‘It wasn’t a win-lose situation, Ross! I was scared; I needed you.’

He groaned. ‘I’m sorry, Dylan. I believed the forecasts. I didn’t think the weather would deteriorate so fast. I wish I’d listened to you.’

‘You only had to look at the sky, those clouds, feel the way the temperature was dropping!’

‘I know. I admit it. You were right; I was wrong. Your instincts were better than mine, as far as the weather was concerned.’ He was trying to soften her mood, but his anxiety and fury with her surfaced again a second later. ‘A pity you were so stupid about not staying put in the house!’ he burst out. ‘You were much safer there—what on earth put it into your head to drive off to visit your sister without even letting me know you were going?’

She looked bitterly at him, eyes dark as night skies. ‘Does Suzy mean anything to you?’

‘Suzy?’ he repeated, face changing, no doubt with consternation. He didn’t say anything else—he was giving himself time to think, not sure how much she knew.

‘Oh, don’t bother to lie! She rang you on your mobile just before lunch yesterday. Of course I answered it, and before I got a word out she was talking. Purring, actually, like some cat on heat.’ she bitterly imitated theother woman, her face flickering with pretended sweetness. ‘“Ross, darling, Alan hasn’t left yet so I can’t get away to meet you!”’

It hadn’t occurred to him that Suzy might have rung him earlier, especially on his mobile—she hadn’t mentioned having done so when they’d talked later on the hotel phone.

Eyes hard, grim, he bit out, ‘So you jumped to the worst possible conclusions, decided I was having an affair? But you