The Christmas Promise Read online

  ‘Would it be better if I left you to look after your celebrities?’

  He shifted his hand to her waist and altered her trajectory from table to bar. ‘No, it wouldn’t.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Thanks for taking the hint and giving me a minute back there. I had to make sure Tyrone won’t drink too much this evening. He’s a twat when he’s drunk and if he stuffs up my mother’s appeal and embarrasses my aunt in front of Rotarian bigwigs I’m going to be annoyed. As several of my associates are going to be working with his wife soon, if I get annoyed with him, they’re going to get annoyed with me. Also,’ he dropped his voice, ‘Tyrone’s the important client who has us on a media management retainer, which pays much of our monthly overheads. But even if I have to watch over him and Ruby for the agency’s sake, I refuse to give up my faux date with Ava Bliss entirely.’

  Ava laughed, as she knew he had meant her to, but was instantly empathetic. ‘People who can’t control their drinking have enormous potential to create embarrassment.’ She knew from Sam’s emphatic nod that she didn’t even have to say, ‘Like Harvey.’

  Then, seeing that Wendy and Vanessa had already reached the bar, she shut Harvey from her mind. Chilly was making introductions. Wendy and Vanessa were gazing at Ruby in her towering heels and spray-on dress with awed expressions and, as Sam and Ava joined the group, Ava felt as if everybody in the room was trying to watch them without appearing to.

  It was fun to be a part of a buzz but if anyone expected ‘sleb’ behaviour from Chilly or the Glennisters they were disappointed. Tyrone was quieter than she expected and Ruby chatted easily about her father having been a Rotarian who crossed to the dark side – Freemasonry. Wendy laughed, so Ava presumed that a joke had been made.

  Far more interesting was the subdued conversation that she could hear between Chilly and Sam.

  ‘Are we cool?’ Chilly was frowning uncertainly.

  Sam gave a kind of combined nod and shrug. ‘I just wasn’t prepared for him to be here. You know I’d normally make certain he was looked after one-on-one. And you know why. I like Ruby and I want to help her and I don’t want him screwing things up for her … or for the agency.’

  ‘Point taken,’ murmured Chilly. ‘I didn’t think it through. When they knew I was coming up the country for a few days they kind of invited themselves and so I suggested they come with me tonight. I’ll make certain he behaves.’

  Sam clapped Chilly’s shoulder in a ‘then we’re cool’ gesture.

  Vanessa claimed his attention. ‘Sam, we’ll do your mum’s charity thing in half an hour. The event manager’s arranging for the top table to be removed.’ She dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘People are going to love me for the guest line up tonight. May I bring Neale over to meet Chilly and the Glennisters? He’s footie mad. I won’t let him do anything gauche like suggest a selfie.’

  Sam’s shoulders moved as if upon yet another sigh, but he smiled and said, ‘OK with you?’ to Chilly.

  Chilly gave an easygoing smile. ‘Of course. Bring him over.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  Wendy gets a real buzz

  Almost midnight. Ava and Sam were still standing at the bar when Vanessa climbed back onto the main stage. She didn’t have to try too hard to get attention – with celebrities in the room everyone was waiting for something interesting to happen. As the music tailed away and the lights rose, the roar of conversation subsided to an excited hum.

  ‘So we’ve come to tonight’s appeal, headed by my sister, Wendy,’ Vanessa said into the hand-held microphone. ‘We’re raising money for research into ovarian cancer and for No Blame or Shame, an organisation that supports women who have at some time found themselves in jeopardy.’

  Unexpectedly, her voice caught in her throat. ‘I’ve only just found out about a surprise Wendy’s concocted for us but I think you’ll all understand her choice when you learn that she’ll be undergoing chemotherapy shortly after Christmas.’ She paused for a wave of sympathetic murmurs. ‘I hope that you’ll dig deep for the collection for these two worthy causes. Let me introduce Wendy and our honoured guests, Aidan Chiltern and Ruby Glennister.’

  ‘Shit,’ Sam muttered, as Ruby and Chilly began to thread their way between dinner jackets and sequinned gowns towards the stage, everyone craning to watch.

  Ava glanced up at Sam uncertainly. ‘Do you know what’s happening?’

  He shook his head, the muscles of his jaw bunching, his eyes fixed on the action. ‘No. I’d guess I’ve been carefully kept out of the loop. Which gives me a bad feeling.’

  Returning her attention to the stage, Ava watched Wendy, holding hands shyly with Chilly on one side and Ruby on the other, join Vanessa to loud applause. Ruby and Chilly wore professional smiles and Wendy a nervous one.

  Chilly took over Vanessa’s microphone and raised his hand for quiet. ‘We have a very brave lady here tonight and I know that we’re going to make a great collection out of admiration for her.’ More applause. Vanessa brought out a tall bar stool and set it down centre stage.

  Helping Wendy up onto it, Chilly patted her shoulder, returned the microphone to Vanessa and held out his hand towards Ruby.

  Then Ruby brought out from behind her back something that appeared at first glance to be another microphone. But, when she flicked a switch, a mosquito-like drone filled the room.

  Ava realised, with a jolt of horror, what Ruby held, and her hand flew to her mouth. ‘Wendy’s going to have her hair buzzed. Ruby’s got electric hair clippers.’

  ‘Oh … shit,’ said Sam, hoarsely.

  A sudden silence fell as everybody saw what was about to happen. Ava found herself fumbling for Sam’s hand and holding it tightly as Chilly asked Wendy kindly, ‘Ready?’

  Dumbly, Wendy nodded. Her hands were clasped tightly in the lap of her pretty mulberry gown.

  ‘Sure?’

  Wendy nodded again. ‘Go for it,’ she said clearly.

  The buzz of the clippers was surprisingly piercing in the hush. Gently, Chilly ran the clippers in a first pass over Wendy’s head. As if in slow motion, locks of her shoulder-length hair began dropping to the ground. Her smile wavered but somehow she held it all together.

  The audience began to clap, first quietly, then gaining momentum as the clippers left neatly shorn rows. Women shook their heads in admiration and fished tissues from their bags. Vanessa covered her mouth with her fingers.

  Ava’s heart was thumping and her hand was sweating in Sam’s as Chilly finished the right side of Wendy’s head and passed the clippers to Ruby, who took care of the left side, methodically and carefully, her lips moving as she kept up a stream of chat.

  The naked head being revealed was hard to look at. Ava found herself screwing up her eyes and watching through the slits as Wendy’s smile wobbled and broke until she was somehow both laughing and crying.

  Sam’s lips were pressed together so hard they’d all but disappeared.

  ‘So brave of her,’ Ava whispered but her heart ached for the grief she saw on the face of the man beside her. She brought up her other hand and held his in both of hers as if it would somehow take some of his pain away.

  By the time the deed was done Vanessa was unabashedly weeping. Wendy rose slowly and dusted the last remains of her once-crowning glory from her shoulders and onto the floor.

  Chilly took back the mic. ‘Let’s hear it for a valiant lady!’ The applause rose to new heights, Chilly and Ruby clapping with their hands high in the air.

  Then Ava found her hand discarded and the space beside her empty. Rising on tiptoe she followed Sam’s progress as he shouldered through the crowd and leaped up onto the stage, his arms open to sweep his mother into his embrace.

  The two clung together like survivors from a shipwreck.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Mixed messages

  Sunday 16 December (early hours)

  The Rotary Ball was due to end at one. It was twelve-thirty and Sam hadn’t achieved what had been his goal for the evening
– to get Ava up against him for the slow dances. He scanned the room but couldn’t even see her. He was usually pretty good at hitting targets but the Glennisters turning up and his mother having her head publicly shaved had definitely made him take his eyes from the prize.

  At least Ruby and Tyrone had caused no issues. Tyrone had limited himself to a few beers and Ruby had behaved like the nice person he knew lay underneath the overdrawn WAG exterior.

  Maybe she’d allowed her head to be not so much turned as swivelled by the lifestyle that came with Tyrone’s rise to the premier league but the real and warm Ruby was re-emerging from the ashes of her humiliation-by-media. As she appeared to have had no motive in turning up tonight other than to hang out with Chilly and possibly do something for the causes, Sam’s confidence had increased that Jermyn’s would be able to show the world that she was more than a pair of surgically enhanced breasts and a celebrity-by-marriage. She’d been kind and caring during the head shaving and Wendy, beaming self-consciously from under her newly visible scalp, had confided to Sam, ‘Ruby’s really nice. Just like a proper person. She was ever so sweet on stage.’

  His mother was a hell of a lady – even if she’d put his heart through the mangle this evening – so if Ruby was OK with Wendy then she was more than OK with him.

  Wendy was finally sitting down, periodically lifting a hand to stroke her scalp as she talked quietly with Vanessa, Neale and their friends. Sam could see that if she was scheduled to begin losing her hair during chemo then a public buzzing wasn’t an unreasonable way to raise money for causes, but he hoped that in future her work for No Blame or Shame would entail speaking on local radio or at women’s groups. The way she’d laid herself and her situation bare in front of two hundred people had rendered him a mess of admiration and anguish.

  ‘Don’t think that having your guts publicly wrenched out excuses you from those dances you promised me.’ Ava had come up behind him.

  He swung around, heart lifting. ‘And don’t think that acting like an emotional moron means I’ve forgotten.’ He offered her his arm so that they could thread their way in amongst the dancers. In moments, Ava’s hands were resting lightly on Sam’s shoulders and her body drifting against his for the end-of-evening smooches.

  Like most men, Sam didn’t mind shuffling around a dance floor if it meant that he got this close to someone he wanted to get this close to. He’d had so much opportunity to watch her tonight that he felt pretty certain he’d be able to pick out her shape from a line up of silhouettes, and undo the black ribbon that criss-crossed her back with his eyes shut. He focused in on Ava, the smell of her hair, the movement of her hips, until he began to feel as if they were the only three-dimensional people in the room. Everyone and everything else seemed merely sketched in, like a backdrop.

  He cleared his throat. ‘I hardly ever cry on dates, by the way.’

  Her eyes danced but she kept her tone grave. ‘I’m sure most girls would forgive you, under the circumstances.’

  He noted that she hadn’t trotted out her usual ‘But this isn’t a date’.

  ‘Your mum was very brave,’ she went on.

  He blew out a breath. ‘I’m so proud of her. She apologised for keeping me in the dark but when she first decided on the stunt she didn’t expect me to be here and she didn’t want me to try to stop her.’

  ‘You had to be brave, too.’

  ‘It was certainly an intense way of facing the facts about my mother’s cancer.’

  ‘When I last saw the collection buckets they looked pretty healthy. Chilly and Ruby were fantastic.’

  ‘Even Tyrone behaved himself,’ he observed, drily. He drew Ava a little closer.

  She tipped her head back and wound her arms around his neck. Her eyelids were heavy. She looked tired. But still mega hot. ‘I was surprised how much you didn’t want to see the Glennisters.’ A song ended on a long drawn-out Christmassy mix of violins and sleigh bells and the DJ announced the very last dance of the night.

  ‘I minded having to switch from leisure mode to business mode, assessing the situation, looking for pitfalls and worrying about Tyrone getting laddish.’

  ‘But now they’ve disappeard and you can take your Sam the Big Important Man hat off.’ A dimple appeared in her cheek. ‘I used to get sick of hearing about you from Tod and Izz, you know. Then when we met you seemed so suave and kind of smug—’

  ‘Smug?’ he protested.

  ‘—but actually I’m beginning to see what the others see in you. You’re quite sweet; thinking of a great – not to mention expensive – Christmas present for your mum, showing everyone here tonight how much you love her with that big hug.’

  ‘I’m not sweet,’ he protested again. Sweet? Therein lay only a pat on the head and Ava treating him as she treated Tod – like a friend: safe, fuzzy, and definitely not to be slept with. There was nothing sweet about the way he wanted her.

  He’d normally have shrugged off anyone who blew so hot and cold by now, but she was proving hard to give up on. If she was playing some game, no one had sent him a copy of the rules, but at least tonight she’d unbent enough to take his hand, hug him, and had even been vaguely complimentary. Now she was grinning up at him, loosened tendrils of her hair tumbling down to brush his hands, obviously waiting for him to come back at her over that ‘sweet’ remark.

  The thought floated into his mind that maybe he could make something happen tonight.

  The music tailed away for the last time and he dropped his voice. ‘Why don’t you let me show you whether I’m “sweet”?’ The dance floor began to clear as people dispersed, yawning and chattering their way to collect purses and coats.

  Ava’s eyes blazed as she silently returned gaze for gaze. He waited for a smile to curl her lips, waited for her to agree.

  But, instead, she turned to look over at where his mother sat with his aunt. ‘We’re being watched,’ she said, softly.

  ‘Does it matter?’

  The lights came up and her pupils shrank, making her look suddenly distant.

  Then she answered his question in totally the wrong way. ‘I think it matters. We can’t faux date to please your mum forever. When are you thinking of ending the pretence?’

  He let his hold on her slacken. If she’d been teetering on the brink of showing interest, the moment had passed. She’d flung up a wall with no warning or regard for how snubbed it made him feel. Disappointment washed through him and made his response blunter than good manners dictated. ‘Either when she’s so ill from the chemo that she won’t care or when she’s better and will accept that we’ve each moved on. If you have a preference, state it now.’ He let his arms fall away completely, breaking contact to let her see that she’d trespassed too far. ‘Or if you want it over I’ll manufacture a row right here, as you seem to be trying to provoke one. I’m not sure what’s best and definitely not sure I should have ever suggested “the pretence” because Mum has enough going on without being lied to. But at least it was a desire to make her happier that made me reluctant to correct her misapprehension about us.’

  Frustrated irritation made him add, ‘And if you didn’t understand why I told you earlier that you can be annoying, rerun the past few minutes in your head.’

  An answering anger flared in her eyes as her chin came up. ‘“Fucking annoying”, I think.’

  They were now alone on the dance floor and, stinging from this new rejection, he barely lowered his voice. ‘However annoying you are, when I think of fucking, I do think of you.’

  Her eyes glittered but she didn’t drop her gaze. ‘You were right. You’re not sweet.’ She moved back a step.

  Disappointment and irritation escalating at the realisation of how badly things had just gone off track, he stepped back, too. The way he felt right now, a bit of space between them was probably a good thing. ‘Let’s get your stuff together and get out of here.’

  Anger crackling where seconds ago there had been excitement, they marched over to the hat dis
play. Shocked at how quickly the atmosphere had changed, Sam yanked hatboxes from under the table, flipping off the lids so that Ava could nest the hats in her preferred order while he gathered up the hat stands. They worked in taut silence, Ava yawning behind her hand.

  Wendy and Vanessa bustled up onto the stage with Ruby Glennister a step behind. ‘Guess what?’ burst out Wendy, who looked tired but elated. ‘Ruby’s offered to be our special guest at the village Christmas Fayre tomorrow!’ She grabbed Ava’s arm. ‘Oh, Ava, you are staying with us, aren’t you? Middledip’s only a ten-minute drive from here but it would be about half-three before you got home to London – and even later for Sam.’

  Anger taking second place to amusement, Sam hid a smile at the cornered look in Ava’s eyes.

  But then her expression gradually turned to one of resignation as she glanced at her watch and saw the truth of Wendy’s assertion. ‘If you’re sure it’s not putting you out, it would be a lot fairer on Sam.’ She shot him a look as if to say that such consideration was more than he deserved.

  Vanessa nudged her sister meaningfully. ‘Perhaps they want to go home to their own bed.’ Ava blushed and fumbled over closing one of the hatboxes.

  Although she giggled, Wendy brushed Vanessa’s remark aside. ‘If you’re staying, can I coax you to do another hat show at the Fayre tomorrow afternoon?’ She drew in a long breath to add impressively, ‘Ruby says she’ll come too and be your model if you do! It will be so fab, Ava. Please say yes!’

  Sam glanced at Ruby, who was grinning, her eyes as clear and bright as if this were the middle of the day rather than what it was fast becoming – the middle of the night. ‘What d’you think, babes?’ she demanded of Ava. ‘I used to be a model. It was perfume ads in magazines, not catwalk, but I think I can swan up and down while you tell people about your fab hats. Then maybe Wendy can add a bit more to her charity fund.’