Free Her Christmas Fantasy & The Winter Bride by Lynne Graham, Penny Jordan

else is a hot bath and a good night’s sleep.’
    â€˜I want to go home,’ Lisa insisted stubbornly.
    â€˜Why?’ he challenged her brutally, and reminded her, ‘You’ve already said yourself that there’s no one there. Look,’ he told her, ‘since it is Christmas, why don’t we declare a cease-fire in our…er…hostilities? Although by choice neither of us might have wanted to spend Christmas together, since we are both on our own and since it’s patently obvious that you’re in no physical state to go anywhere, never mind drive a car—’
    â€˜You’re spending Christmas on your own?’ Lisa interrupted him, too astonished to hold the question back.
    â€˜Yes,’ he agreed, explaining, ‘I was to have spent it entertaining my cousin and his girlfriend, but since they’ve made up their quarrel their plans have changed and they flew to theCaribbean yesterday morning. Like you, I’d left it too late to make alternative plans and so—’
    â€˜I can’t stay with you,’ Lisa protested. She was, she recognised, already starting to shiver as the now stationary car started to cool down, and she was also unpleasantly and weakly aware of how very unappealing the thought of driving all the way back to London actually was—and not just unappealing either, she admitted. She was uncomfortably conscious that Oliver had spoken the truth when he had claimed that she was not physically capable of making the journey at present.
    â€˜We’re strangers…’
    â€˜You’ve already accepted a lift in my car,’ he reminded her drily, adding pithily, ‘And besides, where else can you go?’
    All at once Lisa gave in. She really didn’t have the energy to argue with him, she admitted—she was too cold, too tired, too muzzily aware of how dangerously light-headed and weak she was beginning to feel.
    â€˜Very well, then,’ she said, adding warningly, ‘But only until tomorrow…until I can get some petrol.’
    â€˜Only until tomorrow,’ he agreed.

CHAPTER FOUR
    â€˜Y OU LIVE HERE ALL ALONE?’ Lisa questioned Oliver, breaking into his conversation as she curled up in one corner of the vast, deep sofa where he had taken her and told her sternly she was to remain until he returned with a hot drink for her.
    â€˜Yes,’ he said. ‘I prefer it that way. A gardener comes twice a week and his wife does the cleaning for me, but other than that—’
    â€˜But it’s such a big house. Don’t you…?’
    â€˜Don’t I what?’ Oliver challenged her. ‘Don’t I feel lonely?’ He shook his head. ‘Not really. I was an only child. My mother died when I was in my teens and my father was away a lot on business. I’m used to being on my own. In fact I prefer it in many ways. Other people’s company, their presence in one’s life isn’t always a pleasure—especially not when one has to become responsible for their emotional and financial welfare.’
    Lisa guessed that he was referring obliquely to his cousin, and she sensed that he was, by nature, the kind of man who would always naturally assume responsibility for others, even if that responsibility was slightly irritably cynical rather than humanely compassionate. It also probably explained why he wasn’t married. He was by nature a loner—a man, she suspected, who enjoyed women’s company but who did not want to burden himself with a wife or children.
    And yet a house like this cried out for children. It had that kind of ambience about it, that kind of warmth; it was a realfamily home for all its obviously priceless antiques. It had a lived-in, welcoming feel to it, Lisa acknowledged—a sense of having been well used and well loved, a slightly worn air which, to her, gave it a richness that far surpassed the sterile, elegant perfection of a house like