Her Christmas Fantasy & The Winter Bride Read Free Page A

quarrel—it’s a very volatile relationship. She walked out on him, vowing never to come back—they’d had an argument about her decision to go on holiday with a girlfriend, without him apparently—and in a fit of retaliatory anger he gave her clothes to the dress agency. It was animpulse…something he regretted virtually as soon as he’d done it, and when Emma rang him from Italy to make things up he asked me to help him get her things back before she comes home and discovers what he’s done.’
    â€˜He asked you for help?’
    There was very little doubt in Lisa’s mind about whose girlfriend the absent Emma actually was, and it wasn’t Oliver Davenport’s fictitious cousin.
    The look he gave her in response to her question wasn’t very friendly, Lisa recognised; in fact it wasn’t very friendly at all, but even though, concealed beneath the sensual elegance of her newly acquired trousers, her knees were knocking slightly, she refused to give in to her natural apprehension.
    It wasn’t like her to be so stubborn or so unsympathetic, but something about him just seemed to rub her up the wrong way and make her uncharacteristically antagonistic towards him.
    It wasn’t just the fact that he was demanding that she part with her newly acquired wardrobe that was making her combative, she admitted; it was something about the man himself, something about his arrogance, his…his maleness that was setting her nerves slightly on edge, challenging her into a mode of behaviour that was really quite foreign to her.
    She knew that Henry would have been shocked to see her displaying so much stubbornness and anger—she was a little bit shocked herself.
    â€˜He was about to go away on business. Emma’s due back at the end of the week. He didn’t want her walking into the flat and discovering that half her clothes are missing…’
    â€˜No, I’m sure you…he…’ Lisa corrected herself tauntingly ‘…doesn’t…’
    She saw from the dark burn of angry colour etching his cheekbones that he wasn’t pleased by her deliberate ‘mistake’, nor the tone of voice she had delivered it in.
    â€˜You have no legal claim over those clothes,’ he told her grimly. ‘The shop sold them without the owner’s permission.’
    â€˜If that’s true, then it’s up to the shop to get in touch with me,’ Lisa pointed out. ‘After all, for all I know, you could want them for yourself…’ She paused. His temper was set on a hair-trigger already and although she doubted that he would actually physically harm her…
    â€˜Don’t be ridiculous,’ she heard him breathe softly, as though he had read her mind.
    Inexplicably she realised that she was blushing slightly as, for no logical reason at all, she remembered exactly what she had been thinking about him—and his body—earlier in the day. Just as well he hadn’t second guessed her private thoughts then !
    â€˜So you’re not prepared to be reasonable about this?’
    She be reasonable? Lisa could feel her own temper starting to rise.
    â€˜Doesn’t it mean anything to you that you could be putting someone’s whole relationship at risk by your refusal?’
    â€˜ Me putting a relationship at risk?’ Lisa gasped at the unfairness of it. ‘If you ask me, I’m not the one who’s doing that. If your relationship is so important to you, you should have thought of that before you lost your temper and decided to punish your girlfriend by selling her clothes—’
    â€˜Emma is not my girlfriend,’ he told her with ominous calm. ‘As I’ve already explained to you, I am simply acting as an intermediary in all of this for my cousin. But then I suppose it’s par for the course that you should think otherwise. It goes with all the rest of your illogical behaviour,’ he