A Christmas Affair Read online

  She stared frantically into Dominic's eyes. Were the pupils supposed to be dilated or not dilated if you were suffering from shock? She couldn't remember. And—

  'What are you doing now?' he demanded ir­ritably, straightening in his seat, putting up a tentative hand to his lip and chin, swearing profusely when the hand came away covered in blood.

  'Checking your eyes,' Cathy answered dis­tractedly, still trying to remember whether his eyes should be dilated or not. 'And you shouldn't get excited in your condition,' she tried to soothe his temper as he angrily wiped the blood away with a handkerchief.

  'What condition?' he scowled, releasing his seatbelt to flex his shoulders experimentally, obviously satisfied with the result as he began to test his limbs. 'And you've chosen a hell of a time to decide to gaze into my eyes!' He turned to push open the door with force, the snowdrift they had half driven into covering the front of the car.

  Cathy scrambled out after him as he stepped out into the snow, watching as he began to check the car over. 'And you really should sit down! Who knows what damage you've done to yourself?' she fumed worriedly.

  'The damage who's done?' He straightened from examining how the left front bumper was resting down against the wheel, preventing its movement in the immediate future. 'I wasn't the one who drove us into this snowdrift.'

  Had she really been overjoyed a few mo­ments ago when she'd realised he was still alive? Of course she had, but did he have to regain consciousness as the same bloody-minded, arrogant—

  'But laying the blame on anyone doesn't alter the fact that we're apparently stuck out here in the middle of nowhere.' Dominic looked about them disapprovingly. 'With a car that's com­pletely undriveable.' He glanced up at the heavily laden sky. 'And still a lot more snow to fall, by the look of it.'

  He seemed lucid now—in fact he seemed more than lucid!—and yet he had been talking so strangely when he came around…

  'I think the most important thing at the moment is to get you to a doctor—'

  'Doctor?' he repeated sceptically. 'I don't need to see a doctor for this little bump on the—'

  'It isn't only the bump,' Cathy cut in firmly. 'It's the bleeding from the mouth that worries me. Who knows what internal damage you've done? Your speech was completely disorien­tated when you regained consciousness—'

  'My dear Cathy,' he interrupted with forceful impatience, 'the bleeding from the mouth can be explained by the fact that my tongue is hurting like hell from the deep gash it has down the side of it where I bit into it on impact—that's the only internal damage I have. As for what I was saying when I regained con­sciousness—if you remember, you were crying all over me, and it was your tears that were salty.'

  Cathy stared at him disbelievingly. He managed to make her concern sound childish and unnecessary. Damn it, it was unnecessary; this man didn't need anyone's concern. And in future he wasn't going to get any from her!

  'I'm so sorry,' she said with only thinly dis­guised sarcasm. 'The next time we have an ac­cident I'll just sit by and let you bleed to death!'

  'There won't be any more accidents,' he rasped. 'Because in future I'll drive.'

  'You—' She broke off with a deep steadying breath, knowing the criticism was half de­served. 'There was another car driving towards us on the wrong side of the road,' she defended herself emotionally.

  'We both know I should have been driving at this stage in the journey.' His eyes were nar­rowed grimly as he began to take their luggage out of the boot of the car, anger emanating from him in hot waves.

  'You were asleep—'

  'I could have been woken.' He slammed the boot shut with a resounding bang, everything about them seeming unnaturally quiet in the darkness of the evening.

  Cathy knew she had no answer to the ac­cusations. She was well aware of the fact that she shouldn't have been driving when the ac­cident happened, that she had passed the point of tiredness long ago and quickly gone on to exhaustion. 'Where are we going now?' She frowned as Dominic brought their coats out from the interior of the car before locking the doors.

  He shrugged into his jacket. 'Wherever we can find shelter.' He tested the torch he had taken out of the boot with the luggage; as expected, it worked perfectly.

  'I noticed a driveway about half a mile back. I think,' she added lamely. She had already made such a mess of things that searching for a non-existent driveway was sure to make Dominic's temper explode completely. But she was more or less certain she had seen one a short way back—hadn't she…?

  Dominic had already picked up the majority of their luggage, and Cathy couldn't help giving an inward groan as the beam from the torch he held illuminated the huge lump that had ap­peared on his forehead, a purple bruising already appearing on the swollen skin. It really should be professionally looked at, despite what Dominic said to the contrary, although she didn't dare suggest that at the moment. She didn't want to be accused of crying 'salty' tears all over him again!

  She just hoped she was right about that driveway!

  She was, although the distance was more like a mile, through snow that was knee-high in places, with the flakes still falling icily, and when they finally did find it the house at the end of the driveway didn't look inhabited, having not a single light shining in any of the windows.

  And they soon discovered why. 'Southview Holiday Cottage', the sign on the front door read. And obviously no one had rented it for the Christmas holiday!

  'Well, that's that, then.' Cathy sat down wearily on her case, too exhausted to walk any further for the moment. Besides, she hadn't seen any other driveways but this one for miles. And it was eerily dark now, and the snow just kept falling, with no traffic having passed this way during the time it had taken them to walk the mile. The police had been giving out warnings on the radio for the last hour about road closures; it would be just their luck if this was now one of them!

  Dominic turned to her in the darkness. 'Did you see any other houses nearby?'

  'No,' she answered without hesitation. 'I don't think so,' she amended doubtfully. 'I don't know,' she finished awkwardly.

  She was tired, exhausted actually, and if she was right about this being one of the roads that was now classed as impassable then she didn't know when they were ever going to get out of this cold and snow. She gave an involuntary shudder.

  'Then we have no choice,' Dominic said grimly, and the luggage he carried thudded into the snow at his feet.

  'What are you doing?' Cathy frowned as he turned away and she heard the tinkling of glass.

  'Breaking in,' he answered without the least trace of remorse.

  Her exhaustion became a thing of the past as she shot to her feet, her eyes wide in disbelief. 'You can't do that!'

  'I already have,' he mocked, the door swinging inwards seconds later. A flick of a switch and the light from the hallway shone golden out on to the snow. Dominic stood in the doorway looking back at her with the snow almost reaching her knees. 'Well, aren't you coming in?' he finally drawled when she made no move to go in out of the driving snow. 'Or do your obviously shocked sensibilities mean you intend staying out there all night?' He turned away uninterestedly, going off to inves­tigate the cottage on his own.

  'Dominic!' she halted him, stumbling in­elegantly through the snow. He was watching her with raised brows over amused green eyes by the time she finally reached the doorway. 'We can't simply—walk into someone else's property like this,' she protested lamely.

  'We didn't walk in, I broke in,' he corrected calmly before resuming his progress down the hallway, leaving wet footprints on the carpet behind him.

  'Where are you going now?' Cathy gasped. 'To see what, if any, provisions are in the kitchen,' he told her without pausing.

  They couldn't do this, not just break in— Dominic's description was the correct one!— and make themselves at home in someone else's house! Without the slightest qualm at doing so on Dominic's part, it seemed. He hadn't even hesitated, beyond that brief
question about other habitation. He could be the most ar­rogant of men, but she had never—

  'The way I look at it, Cathy, we have two choices.' The rasp of Dominic's voice harshly interrupted her troubled thoughts, and as she looked up and saw him standing darkly at the end of the hallway she realised that her shock over his actions had affected him after all. 'We can either sit outside in the snow and freeze to death while the shelter we need so badly is just a locked door away—' his voice remained hard and unyielding even though he must have seen the way her face blanched '—or we can break in—' his head was thrown back challengingly, his hair appearing raven-black in the dull overhead lighting '—and hope that there is an electric fire or alternatively that we can find something to burn so that we don't die of hypothermia anyway!'

  Typical Dominic; neither option held much appeal.

  Although he was right about the cold inside the cottage: it wasn't much of an improvement on the outside. But then it was just a holiday cottage, and probably hadn't been rented out for months.

  'For God's sake, woman,' Dominic bit out impatiently. 'If we survive this I'll make sure the owner is suitably recompensed for the damage I've done, and for the use of the place.'

  Of course he would; he could easily buy the cottage if it came to that.

  But the way he kept mentioning that there was a possibility they wouldn't make it out of this storm made her feel awash with guilt; after all, if it hadn't been for her they wouldn't be here at all. And Dominic wouldn't have that discoloured lump on his forehead, that faint trace of dried blood at the corner of his mouth, and they wouldn't be in danger of freezing to death before morning.

  Knowing how brutally honest Dominic could be, Cathy was surprised he hadn't pointed that out to her before now!

  'I'm not about to argue with you,' he dis­missed tersely as she still didn't make any reply. 'I intend to spend the night in this cottage, such as it is. You'll just have to do your own wres­tling between your common sense and your conscience.'

  Put in such blunt terms—the way only Dominic could!—what choice did she have?

  One of the first things they were going to have to do, Cathy realised as she closed the door behind her, was block up the hole Dominic had made in one of the small panes of glass at the top of the door so that they could get in; the wind and snow whirling through it at the moment certainly weren't going to do anything to alleviate the cold that already ex­isted inside!

  It was quite a pleasantly decorated and fur­nished cottage, Cathy noticed abstractedly as she glanced in doorways on her way down the hall to the kitchen. Only the bare essentials, like most of these types of places, but ad­equate, none the less. And, she noticed with some relief, there was an electric fire standing in front of the open fireplace in the lounge. Now all she had to hope for was that it worked.

  It did!

  Their situation instantly began to seem im­proved as the artificial coals glowed cheerfully and the two elements began to glow red.

  Dominic was still poking about in cup­boards when she bounded gleefully into the kitchen to clasp his arm and pull his resisting form towards the sitting-room. 'Come and see,' she said persuasively.

  'This is serious, Cathy—'

  'I know that,' she said exasperatedly. 'But look!' She proudly showed off the glowing electric fire that had already taken the chill off the room in the few minutes she had been gone. 'What are you doing?' she demanded disbe­lievingly as he strode across the room-to switch the fire off.

  He looked grim as he straightened. 'I no­ticed the fire when I first entered the cottage.'

  Then—'

  'I also saw,' he continued forcefully, 'the electricity meter in the hallway where you have to put fifty-pence pieces to get the electricity supply,' he explained derisively. 'I don't have enough fifty-pence pieces to keep that,' he nodded in the direction of the cooling fire, 'running for very long—do you?'

  Heated colour flooded her cheeks at his withering tone. She might have the odd one or two fifty-pence pieces in her handbag, but she doubted she had any more than that. How was she supposed to have known it wasn't the normal electricity supply? The same way Dominic had, a mocking little voice in her head tormented: by observation.

  Dominic's mouth twisted as he looked through the change from his pocket, finding two of the necessary coins. 'Obviously the owner only put enough money into the meter to keep the thing ticking over until the next rental, because when I checked there were only a couple of units left on it.'

  'The lights…?' she suddenly realised with dismay, expecting at any moment to be plunged into darkness again.

  'The lights are fine,' Dominic dismissed. 'They hardly use any electricity at all; it's just the fire we'll have to use sparingly.' He put the coins in the meter and turned the handle. 'Come into the kitchen and I'll show you what I've found in there so far.'

  It couldn't be very much; it was a very small kitchen!

  In that, at least, she was correct. For all that she was, in all modesty, an excellent personal assistant, she would have made a lousy Girl Friday!

  Only a small supply of tea and coffee had been left in the cottage, obviously in readiness for the next holiday season; there was no food at all.

  'And I found these in the cleaning cupboard under the sink.' Dominic held up a box of candles.

  Cathy stared at them blankly for several seconds, frowning as she accepted that, instead of their intended use in an emergency if there was an electricity failure, these candles could become their only source of lighting as soon as the electricity meter ran out. For the first time she wished she had followed Penny's example and joined the Girl Guides; at least then she might have had some idea of how to survive in a situation like this, would perhaps know how to light a fire without matches—

  'Oh, God, matches!' She groaned her dismay as realisation dawned that neither of them smoked and so were unlikely to be carrying matches around with them.

  They were next to the candles, fortunately.' To her relief Dominic pulled a box of matches out of the cleaning cupboard too. 'In fact,' he added drily, 'this cupboard is the most well-stocked in the room: polish, washing-up liquid, some sort of fluid to clean the floor—'

  'I don't suppose they wanted to give anyone the excuse not to clean up after their stay here,' Cathy derided.

  'If that's another dig at me—'

  'It wasn't,' she assured him wryly. 'But I'm sure that all the owners would be interested in was receiving their money and making sure the cottage was kept in a clean condition for the next lot of people to stay here.'

  Dominic's expression was grim. 'Then let's hope we aren't stuck here for too long; we don't appear to have any food,' he explained at her questioning look. 'And while the steak I had at lunchtime was adequate, that was several hours ago.'

  'Dominic—'

  'By breakfast tomorrow you'll be impossible to live with,' he realised with a frown.

  'Dominic—' She patiently tried to talk again, ignoring his reference to her eating habits.

  'You know you will, Cathy.' He sighed heavily. 'If you aren't fed at regular intervals your temper suffers—and so does everyone around you.'

  'Dominic!' She spoke more firmly this time.

  'It's ridiculous how we know more about each other in ways like that than a lot of married couples seem to do.' He scowled.

  Because for the past five years they had lived closer together than a lot of married couples were ever able to, Cathy acknowledged achingly. But a married couple was something they weren't and never would be…

  'I have been trying to tell you for the last few minutes,' she spoke sharply in her agitation, 'that the immediate problem about food is easily solvable.'

  He nodded abruptly. 'I realise we'll have no trouble surviving for a couple of days—'

  'That is, of course,' Cathy continued as if he had never spoken, 'if you don't mind living on cold roast ham and other assorted meats, plus some fine cheeses and wines, and—'

  'C
athy, what are you babbling about?' he interrupted impatiently. 'It's much too soon for you to be delirious!' he added dismissively.

  'I'm not delirious.' She chuckled softly. 'Just grateful that Simon has a weakness for cooked meats and fine cheeses—'

  'Cathy—'

  'Dominic,' she returned mockingly. 'Tell me, just what did you think I had in that wicker case you so kindly carried here for me?'

  'How the hell would I know?' he scowled. 'Although, from the weight of it, I presumed it had to be clothes!'

  'For your information, we have our supper and breakfast in there at least,' she announced triumphantly, relieved to feel that she was at last contributing something constructive to what could so far only be called a disaster.

  She lifted the wicker case up on to a worktop, slipping the clasps to lift the lid. Inside the hamper it was like an Aladdin's cave of food and wines.

  She turned back to Dominic excitedly. 'I stopped and bought this for Penny and Simon on my way in to the office this morning. I wasn't supposed to be in today at all,' she told him defensively at his raised brows. Honestly, she had just presented him with food for their unexpected stopover here, and all he could think about was the fact that she had been late getting in because of it!

  'No, only to hand in your notice, it seems,' he rasped. 'So,' he bit out tersely, 'at least we stand a chance of not starving to death before help arrives. Now we just have the problem of hypothermia.'

  The elated realisation that she had been able to supply them with the much-needed food faded as she looked about the stark desolation of the cottage.

  It was a far cry from the Christmas she had imagined for herself this year.

  She knew she would have been missing Dominic very badly by now if she had made it to Penny and Simon's, but she would have the consolation of family and loving friends, something she had been away from for too long. Now she had Dominic alone for Christmas instead, but a Dominic just as cold and hard as he was the rest of the year.