Holiday for Two (a duet of Christmas novellas) (3 page)

She knew perfectly well it was a sixty-something XK-E. Her question prompted Lord Archer to bound over to it rather like an exuberant Labrador puppy, his damp golden hair flopping onto his forehead. “It’s a Series 1 Jaguar E-type.” He pronounced it “jag-u-ar” instead of “jagwar” and Carrie was instantly smitten. He touched the pouncing cat on the hood—bonnet?—with a gloved fingertip. “My father had one for a time. Lovely ride.”

“Too bad we won’t be going anywhere in it.” Wouldn’t Lord Archer look dishy behind the steering wheel, his wavy blond hair blown back by the wind? Carrie mentally gave him a light tan and Ray-Bans. Wayfarers, since he seemed to be a classic kind of guy.

“Certainly not. I’m not going to add grand theft auto to the list of charges against us.” He turned to her. “Surely you realize we cannot spend the night here.”

“I can’t see why not. I can sleep in a bucket seat—it’ll be like being on a transatlantic flight without the hot towels and customs forms.”

Lord Archer scowled at her. “You have an answer for everything, don’t you?”

“Usually. I get paid to find solutions to things. I was a Girl Scout, you know—I’m very resourceful.” While her friends were wearing belly-baring shirts to the mall and getting extra ear piercings, Carrie was earning her merit badges and reading to old people in nursing homes. Damn, but she’d been a good girl.

Looking at the lanky, luscious man before her, Carrie itched to be bad. It had been a very long time since she’d even been kissed, and Lord Archer’s lips were seriously kissable. But that wouldn’t be prudent—he was related to her employer. Carrie was much too smart to act on her impulses, no matter how tempting a twenty-first century viscount was. She liked her job, and wouldn’t want to get mixed up in some sordid upstairs/downstairs debacle, even if Lord Archer was not her direct supervisor.

Plus, he was engaged.

“We call them Girl Guides in Britain.”

“I know. Isn’t it interesting how Americans and the English use two different words to mean the same thing? Like biscuit and cookie. Boot and trunk.”

Lord Archer was giving her the look now. She was babbling in an attempt to banish a Jane Eyre/Rochester scenario from her mind. In Carrie’s opinion, there had been more hanky-panky going on in that book than was on the page. Why else would Jane go insane on the moors if not lamenting the lack of her prized virginity? Such nonsense over a bit of membrane, though. Carrie had read there was surgery where you could re-virginize, unavailable in poor Jane’s time.

Lord Archer was not anything like dark, brooding Mr. Rochester. He was blond and bespectacled and incredibly proper. She would bet her life he’d never had a French mistress or a bastard daughter, or taken a virgin, for that matter.

“How are you adjusting to the states?” she asked, unzipping her coat. She was finally defrosting.

“As Shaw might have said but probably didn’t, we are two countries divided by a common language. Terminology’s a bit different in my field, but I’m a quick study.”

“Just what is it exactly that you do?”

He took off his gloves and combed his hair back over his forehead with long fingers, though his jacket was still resolutely zipped up. “The company renovates existing office space, mostly, with a bit of new construction on the side. We are committed to insuring our buildings are sympathetic to their historic neighborhoods, yet have first-rate amenities. ”

“You’re an architect?”

“Project manager. I suppose you’d call me more of a go-between between the design team, contractors, financiers and the commercial clients. It’s my job to make sure all the suites are leased before construction, determine the clients’ requirements, and make sure everyone is happy during and after.”

And Carrie bet everyone was. Just listening to him speak made her purr inside. He could be talking absolute rubbish but she wouldn’t care.

Carrie, Carrie, she chided herself. She was not in the middle of a romance novel, but in a barn on Christmas Eve with an uncomfortable stranger. Lord Archer looked ready to bolt out into the storm any minute. Perhaps she should divest him of his car keys. Stumble into him, rub against him, reach into his pocket.

Mrs. Stephens had interviewed an actual pick-pocket this summer for The Book That Would Not End. It had been very educational. Add one more skill to Carrie’s PA repertoire.

However, cooking wasn’t really one of them.

“Are you hungry? We can have a picnic.”

He glanced down at the wet dial of his watch. “At home, it would be tea-time.”

“We’ll just call it the cocktail hour instead.” Suddenly she remembered the twenty-five pound turkey. She bent and wrestled it out of the bag. “I’ll just stick this in a snowbank before it starts to smell.”

“Allow me.”

Ever the gentleman, Lord Archer took the unwieldy object from her and got as far as the door. The turkey proved impossible to juggle as he tried to turn the knob, and Carrie sprinted to open the door. She was impressed as he bowled it quite a ways into a drift.

“Good riddance,” Carrie said. Though if it hadn’t been for the turkey, she wouldn’t be here right now looking up into Lord Archer’s blue, blue eyes and thinking about rubbing against him to steal his keys.

Or a kiss.

Chapter 2

W
HAT WAS THAT
hideous Tim Burton movie about Christmas that had given him nightmares when he was a boy? Griffin felt as if he’d been dropped into it.

He hated Christmas anyway. When he was six, his mother had run away with an Argentinian polo player—such a cliché—and Griffin’s father had drunk his holiday dinner every ensuing year and usually forgot (or was too broke) to buy decent presents. For the last two Christmases, Griffin had gone skiing with Alice. Her family was just as dysfunctional as his, and it was a delight to stay in a well-regulated Swiss resort where only the clocks were cuckoo.

But here he was stranded in Maine, standing in a late nineteenth century carriage house, snowflakes sliding down the windows. Cool blond sophisticated Alice was not here. Instead a disheveled pixie of a girl, choppy mahogany hair standing on end, was offering him a plastic tub of olives.

“No thank you,” he said as repressively as he knew how.

“I didn’t have lunch. Sorry, but I’m just starving.” She skipped across the concrete floor and ripped open plastic packages of cups and plates that were on the well-stocked shelves. Griffin mentally began to tally an expense list up. He may as well leave his American Express card down on the bare workbench and hope for the best. Could one put one’s bail money on a charge card?

“Can you reach that plaid blanket? We can lay it on the floor.”

At least she wasn’t proposing to eat in the Jaguar. Griffin would have forbidden that.

He pulled the blanket down, shook it out, and spread it near the door. They would see the police coming from that vantage point.

Griffin felt the beginnings of a headache. The drive up Route 1 through the blizzard had been stressful to say the very least, and he hadn’t slept well for days. Weeks. Months really. Not since—

No. He wasn’t going to think about it. One didn’t cry over spilt milk, after all. There was nothing to be done but soldier on and try to resuscitate the Archer name and fortune.

“You wouldn’t happen to have a corkscrew on you, would you?”

Of course he did. Griffin had a rather magnificent Victorinox Swiss Army knife, a souvenir of all those ski vacations. Knowing it was pointless to withhold it from the pixie, he took it out of his pocket.

“Brilliant! Will you do the honors? I always get the cork stuck if I’m not using one of those plunger thingies with the handles.” Miss Moore handed him a bottle of wine from her bottomless bag. Griffin read the label. Expensive. But then Aunt Rosemary could afford the best.

Griffin hadn’t seen the old girl since she’d ended her last European book tour at Archer Hall last year. She complained of chilblains the whole week she spent there and it was in the middle of the hottest August on record. The house was always cold, but Griffin had big plans to remedy that.

Plans that required money. Plans that had included an earl’s daughter.

He opened the wine. How many bottles did Miss Moore have? Not enough.

She plunked herself and the bag down on the blanket and shimmied out of her fake-fur trimmed down coat. The building really was sufficiently warm, but for some stubborn reason he didn’t follow suit. If he took his jacket off, he’d be acknowledging that he was staying with this maddeningly upbeat girl. If he sat and swallowed even one sip of wine, Miss Moore would win.

Griffin would go exploring instead, inspect the structure as if it were a renovation project. These old Yankee carpenters were famous for their construction techniques—they’d honed their skills on clipper ships and it always gave him joy to see their fine craftsmanship when it applied to houses and outbuildings.

“Where are you going?” He saw she’d already poured wine into two red plastic cups.

“Just taking inventory.”

Aside from the usual items to be found in a twenty-first century garage, there were more paper products and canned items along the wire shelves. He wouldn’t tell her about the tin-opening tool on his knife or she’d probably make him dine on institutional-size cans of cold baked beans and peaches later. Someone had gone quite mad at Sam’s Club. The toilet paper alone would last until next Christmas even if the inn was fully booked all year long.

Griffin walked around the car to the stairs that led to the storage space above. The banister was original and well-worn, though a few stair treads had been replaced. He noticed a door set under the stairway and opened it.

By God, a loo. Without thinking, he ran water in the tiny sink and flushed the toilet. A
working
loo. If he used it, he’d better be careful—a man his height would knock himself unconscious on the underside of the stairs.

What an unexpected amenity. Should he tell Miss Moore? He’d never get her out of here.

Too late to keep his secret. She popped up behind him, holding a red cup in each hand.

“Wow! All the comforts of home. We really lucked out, didn’t we? Here’s to Santa—I mean Father Christmas—and his elves!” She handed him the cup and it would have been churlish to refuse.

“Cheers,” he said, not feeling cheerful at all. The wine was as excellent as he’d expected. Griffin wondered if he had any Advil in his suitcase.

Maybe he was hungry, too. Like Miss Moore, he hadn’t had lunch, hoping to get ahead of the storm. That had proved to be impossible. He’d finally stopped on the turnpike to use the rest room and wound up buying only the orange monstrosity of a hat. He had not been one bit tempted by the greasy fried chicken or industrial hamburger patties on offer.

Griffin seldom found himself ahead of any storms except when it came to work, and there he seemed to be inordinately blessed. As for the rest of his life—

“This is really excellent, isn’t it? I’m not much of a wine connoisseur. I bet you’ve got a wine cellar at Archer Hall.”

Yes, and it was mostly empty save for the dust and spiders. Griffin’s father had sold the last of the wine to pay for roof repairs. Griffin supposed he’d developed his interest in the renovation of old buildings by living in one and praying the ceiling wouldn’t cave in.

He took another sip. “I’m not much for wine, either. I can’t afford the good stuff, and there’s no point to the other.”

Miss Moore raised an eyebrow. “Oh, I don’t know. Cheap wine has its charms.”

“If one cannot afford the best, one should go without.” Or so his father had always said. Of course, the man had never gone without anything as far as Griffin could remember.

“Really? Do you believe that? I can’t afford an original Klimt, but I’ve got some postcards on a bulletin board in my office. They give me great pleasure.”

“Wouldn’t you rather have one of his paintings?”

She shook her head. “I’m not sure I would. The responsibility of housing a priceless masterpiece, you know. I probably couldn’t pay the insurance premiums. And why should I be the only one to see it? That seems selfish. Art should be available to everyone.”

“You’re a Bolshevik, then.”

“A what?”

“Never mind. I don’t wish to argue with you.” Griffin pinched the bridge of his nose, hoping to distract himself from his headache.

“Wait a second. I did study history along with my art. Are you calling me some kind of communist? I hate to tell you, but communism is completely unfashionable here. People throw the word around, but they haven’t the faintest idea what it means. Communist News Network. Honestly.” She actually snorted.

“I’d prefer we didn’t discuss politics.” Or anything. Griffin thought about the plaid blanket. There were some boat cushions tucked up in the rafters. Why shouldn’t he go to sleep at four o’clock? It was not as if he wanted to be awake.

“I don’t want to discuss politics either. Or religion. My parents told me not to, particularly with people who seemed—” She paused, a faint tinge of pink on her cheeks.

He raised his eyebrow now, feeling certain the pixie was about to insult him. “Seemed?”

“Difficult.”

“You think I’m difficult?”

Miss Moore nodded. “Admit it. You’re not in a very good mood.”

“Of course I’m not in a good mood! I’m stuck trespassing in a bloody barn in a snowstorm.”

She looked up at him, her brown eyes magnified by her lenses. She wasn’t really bad-looking, just somewhat ordinary except for her crazy hair. That dull beige jumper did nothing for her, either. “Well, so am I.”

“Yes, but you live here.” How stupid and stuffy he sounded.

“Not really. I’ve only been in Maine six months. No native would ever call me a Mainer. Not Mainiac, by the way. You know what they say. ‘Just because the cat has her kittens in the oven, it doesn’t make them biscuits.’”

It took him a minute to work that out, and then he couldn’t help but laugh. “All right. We’re both fish out of water, to use another aphorism. I suppose we should make the best of it.”

“Stiff upper lip and all that.”

When she looked at him with that mischievous expression, he decided she was rather cute. Not a haughty beauty like Alice, who had been born to land on the Frontispiece page of
Country Life
. And had, when their engagement had been announced.