after someone like Jake Larsen?
She’d been a trainee receptionist in the Larsen offices when they’d first met. Only nineteen, yet brimming with determination to better herself after her difficult start in life, she’d been so grateful for the chance of such a ‘glamorous’ job when she’d barely had any qualifications under her belt. But she’d been studying hard at her local adult education facility to remedy that. When Jake had walked through the revolving glass doors one day, wearing a single-breasted black cashmere coat over his suit, his lightly tanned skin and blond hair making him look like some kind of mythical hero from one of those magical folk tales that had at their roots the trials and travails of life and the story of how the handsome hero and beautiful heroine overcame them together, Ailsa almost forgot to breathe.
As he’d walked up to her and her colleague, her much more confident fellow employee had whispered under her breath, ‘It’s the boss’s son … Jake Larsen. He’s come over from Copenhagen.’ But even before her colleague had told Ailsa his identity her heart had already turned over inside her chest at the arresting sight of all that sculpted Viking beauty and the spine-tingling charisma that Jake exuded. She’d never been so fascinated by a man before. And especially not a man who was clearly light years out of her league, who wore the mantle of authority and power as though it was a natural component of his DNA. Yet he’d warmly introduced himself to her, the most junior and in-experienced of his staff, as though she were no less important than one of the firm’s directors, she recalled. When he had followed up his welcome to her with a near-incandescent smile—a smile that had wiped every thought clean from her head—she’d found herself well and truly under his spell …
‘Blast!’ She dropped a stitch, patiently unravelled the multi-coloured wool, then cast on again. The logs in the burner hissed and spat and she glanced mournfully across at the beautiful Norwegian pine standing in the corner. It poignantly reminded her of a shy young girl at a party, waiting to be noticed by a boy and asked to dance … Once upon a time, in another life, Jake would have happily volunteered to help her dress the tree, singing lustily along to the carols playing in the background and teasingly increasing the volume of his voice when she protested he was singing out of tune.
It hurt that he wouldn’t discuss the baby’s death with her. Ailsa had hoped such a discussion would help them be a little easier around each other and truly be able to move on. They hadn’t had a prayer of being able to do that after the accident and then leading up to their divorce, when they’d both been so wounded, hurt and angry, blaming each other for everything. She’d even hoped that such a mutually frank discussion might at last help her to sleep better at night.
‘Oh, well …’ Murmuring under her breath, she sighed softly. When he leaves tomorrow I’ll just carry on as normal. It’s not all bad … I’ve still got Saskia. And the business is doing well … better than ever, in fact.
She bit her lip, trying hard not to cry. Sniffing determinedly, she wiped her eyes and lifted her gaze to the tree again. Her daughter might not be around to share in the joy that decorating a Christmas tree could bring but it wouldn’t stop Ailsa from taking on the task herself. After all, it was something she excelled at. She ran a very successful business designing and making beautiful things—everything from tree decorations to hand-knitted sweaters and patchwork quilts. Plus, she and Saskia had been collecting and making decorative odds and ends the whole year for this season.
Feeling her spirits lifting a little, she put her knitting away and instead of dozing in the armchair, as she normally did, for the first time in months she went upstairs to bed …
His hand fumbling for the clock beside the bed, Jake groaned when his sleep-fogged brain registered the time. Realising that he must have slept the sleep of the dead, he tried to fathom why. Like Ailsa, he had become a veritable insomniac over the years following the accident. Sitting up and arranging a plump pillow against the iron-bedstead to support his back, he was just in time to hear the radiator in the room click and hum into life. Breathing out deliberately heavily, he wasn’t surprised to see the plume of steam that hit the icy air.
Was the house usually this perishingly cold in the morning? He couldn’t help feeling a spurt of annoyance shoot through him at the thought that Ailsa could have chosen to live in much more luxurious surroundings, with under-floor heating and every available comfort. Instead she had stubbornly opted for this too isolated cottage. Charming as it was, it wasn’t the home he wanted his daughter to grow up in …
Rubbing his hands briskly together to warm them, he diverted this disturbing line of thought by wondering how soon he could get a flight back to Copenhagen today. Mulling over the possibilities—or not as the case might be—he shoved aside the patchwork quilt that covered the silk-edged woollen blankets and strode over to the window. Lifting a corner of the heavily lined floral curtain, Jake stared out at the incredible scene that confronted him with a mixture of frustration, disappointment and sheer bewildering astonishment.
As far as the eye could see and beyond everything was deeply blanketed in brilliant diamond-white. And fierce gusts of wind were making the still falling snow swirl madly like dervishes. Unless he could sprout wings and fly there’d be no getting out of here today. In any case, all the planes at the airport would surely be grounded in such Siberian weather.
‘Damn!’
He stood there in black silk pyjama bottoms, his hard-muscled chest bare, and willed himself to come up with a plan. But even as he seriously considered phoning his helicopter pilot back in Copenhagen he remembered the lack of service yesterday for both landlines and mobiles in the area. The current extreme weather conditions didn’t bode well for the service returning any time soon. The helicopter option was clearly off the agenda. As he bit back his increasing frustration, a tentative knock at the door made Jake’s heart race.
‘Jake, are you up and about yet? I was wondering if you’d like a cup of tea?’
Instead of answering, he crossed to the door and pulled it wide. Her dark hair flowing down over her shoulders, slightly mussed as if she’d had a restless night, Ailsa stood in front of him like some wide-eyed ingénue in a kimonostyle red silk dressing gown. She barely looked out of her teens, let alone the mother of a nine-year-old. Disconcertingly, that old sense of fierce protectiveness that he’d always felt around her came flooding back.
‘Never mind me. You look like you could do with a hot drink to warm you up,’ he told her gruffly. ‘Why doesn’t your heating come on earlier? Have you seen the weather outside? It’s freezing in here.’
‘The boiler is on a timer. And, yes, I have seen the weather. I don’t think the snow has let up all night. But it’s not surprising you’re cold, standing there with barely a stitch on!’
Jake couldn’t prevent the grin that hijacked his lips. ‘You know I don’t sleep with much on. Or had you forgotten that?’
‘You didn’t say whether you wanted a cup of tea or not,’ she persisted doggedly, clutching the sides of the silk dressing gown more closely together and concealing her face by letting her hair fall across it.
But not before Jake saw that she was blushing. He experienced a very male sense of satisfaction at that. It was good to know that he could still get a reaction from her, despite all the muddied water flowing under the bridge between them …
‘I definitely wouldn’t say no to a hot drink of some kind. But let me take a shower first and dress before I join you downstairs.’
‘Okay.’ The slim shoulders lifted, then fell again before she turned away. As Jake closed the door on Ailsa’s retreating back, she swung round again. ‘Shall I cook breakfast
