‘Yeah, Mam takes these things in her stride,’ he said. In fact, if it hadn’t been for her relentless optimism, he wasn’t sure how they would have got through the last year. ‘How did your call home go?’
‘Not well.’
Her grimace said it all really, and he resisted the urge to wrap an arm around her shoulders.
‘They’ll miss you?’
‘They’ll miss... My sister died. Charlotte. Just before Christmas, when I was a teenager,’ she said, and looked surprised at herself. ‘It’s a difficult time of year, and this makes it worse.’
‘I’m so sorry, about your sister.’
‘Thanks. It was a long time ago. But Christmas has never really got any easier.’
‘I can imagine.’
He could, actually. More realistically than was comfortable. When they’d all sat vigil around his father’s bedside last year, waiting to see if he would recover from his heart attack, from the massive surgery that had followed, he’d tried to picture a Christmas without his father there. Had tried to imagine how his family would work around the huge void that he would leave.
But his dad had pulled through against the odds, and the loss hadn’t been him, but their home. When Rufus had taken the reins on the family finances while his dad was sick, he’d found debt after debt. The family was in financial crisis, and their biggest asset was Upton Manor. Which was far too big and too grand to be a family home when that family was in debt up to their eyeballs. So he’d convinced his mam and dad to move to the one small cottage they still owned on the estate, and he’d put the big house to work as a luxury rental, a filming location, a corporate getaway. Anything he could think of to get some money coming in. And it still wasn’t enough. The bookings had been steady, but he needed them to be spectacular. And he hadn’t managed to fill the key Christmas booking slot, with all the extra revenue that should have brought. So he’d gambled his whole marketing budget on Lara—and had been scuppered by the snow. Now the only option he had to get the social media exposure he needed was to make the best of Lara’s suggestion that he take some photos of Jess that he could use.
He looked at her more closely now, trying to draw on what little photographic knowledge he had. The light in here was pretty, if he could find the right setting on his phone to capture it. But the composition was all wrong.
‘You mind?’ he asked, picking up the camera from his desk and pointing it towards the wing-backed chair by the fire.
‘Me?’
‘Well, no one’s going to want to look at me.’
She frowned, but sat in the chair, pulling the blanket he’d abandoned off the back of it and wrapping it around her shoulders.
He looked at her objectively, tried to imagine the image popping up on someone’s social media feed. The picture still needed something. He plucked a leather-bound book from the shelves behind his desk and handed it to her. Nearly there.
‘Wait there,’ he told her, then disappeared down to the kitchen.
He pulled together some ingredients—cream, chocolate, sugar—and picked out an old Denby cup and saucer that he thought was similar to one he’d seen on Lara’s Instagram feed.
Once he’d added whipped cream, chocolate shavings and an amaretto biscuit to the hot chocolate, he snapped a couple of shots of the drink and then carried it upstairs.
He stopped in the doorway, watching Jess for a moment. She turned a page of the book and settled deeper into the chair.
Then he must have given himself away because she looked up. And maybe she was flushed from the fire, but it looked quite a lot like she was blushing.
‘Good read?’ he asked. He’d pulled it from the shelf without really looking but wondered now what she had been sitting here reading while he was downstairs.
‘That looks amazing,’ she said, obviously spotting the hot chocolate. It wasn’t the only thing that did, he thought, watching her for a moment longer than was comfortable.
‘Here.’ He handed her the drink, and as her face lit up he snapped a quick picture with his phone.
‘Don’t drink it yet,’ he warned, concentrating on the settings menu. He took another couple of shots, playing with the different levels to try and make the most of the light from the candles, the fire and the wall sconces.
‘Okay,’ he said when he was happy. And then fired off a couple more as she took her first sip, her eyes closing sensuously as she cupped the drink in her hands. There was a smudge of cream on her top lip, and he couldn’t stop looking at it, until her tongue flickered out and caught it.
He was staring. Any second now she was going to look up and catch him. And he couldn’t drag his gaze away.
‘What?’ she asked, when she finally glanced up and saw him watching her.
‘Nothing.’ He shook his head. ‘These should sync with Lara’s account. Let me know if she messages you about them.’
‘This hot chocolate is seriously good,’ she said, after another long sip. ‘Did you make one for yourself? You should. You still need to warm up.’