Jessica Hart
Under the Boss’s Mistletoe
© 2009
PROLOGUE
‘I WANT a word with you!’
Cassie almost fell down the steps in her hurry to catch Jake before he zoomed off like the coward he was. The stumble did nothing to improve her temper as she stormed over to where he had just got onto his motorbike.
He had been about to put on his helmet, but he paused at the sound of her voice. In his battered leathers, he looked as dark and mean as the machine he sat astride. There was a dangerous edge to Jake Trevelyan that Cassie normally found deeply unnerving, but today she was too angry to be intimidated.
‘You broke Rupert’s nose!’ she said furiously.
Jake observed her approach through narrowed eyes. The estate manager’s ungainly daughter had a wild mane of curls, a round, quirky face and a mouth that showed promise of an interesting woman to come. Right now, though, she was still only seventeen, and reminded him of an exuberant puppy about to fall over its paws.
Not such a friendly puppy today, he observed. The normally dreamy brown eyes were flashing with temper. It wasn’t too hard to guess what had her all riled up; she must have just been to see her precious Rupert.
‘Not quite such a pretty boy today, is he?’ he grinned.
Cassie’s fists clenched. ‘I’d like to break your nose,’ she said and Jake laughed mockingly.
‘Have a go,’ he offered.
‘And give you the excuse to beat me up as well? I don’t think so.’
‘I didn’t beat Rupert up,’ said Jake dismissively. ‘Is that what he told you?’
‘I’ve just seen him. He looks awful.’
Cassie heard the crack in her voice and pressed her lips together in a fierce, straight line before she could humiliate herself utterly by bursting into tears.
She had been so happy, she had had to keep pinching herself. For as long as she could remember she had dreamed of Rupert, and now he was hers-or he had been. It was only three days since the ball, and he was in a vicious temper, which he’d taken out on her. It was all spoilt now.
And it was all Jake Trevelyan’s fault.
‘He’s going to bring assault charges against you,’ she told Jake, hoping to shock him, but he only looked contemptuous.
‘So Sir Ian has just been telling me.’
Cassie had never understood why Sir Ian had so much time for a thug like Jake, especially now that he had beaten up his own nephew!
The Trevelyans were notorious in Portrevick for their shady dealings, and the only member of the family who had ever appeared to hold down a job at all was Jake’s mother, who had cleaned for Sir Ian until her untimely death a couple of years ago. Jake himself had long had a reputation as a troublemaker. He was four years older than Cassie, and she couldn’t remember a time when his dark, surly presence hadn’t made him the kind of boy you crossed the road to avoid.
It was a pity she hadn’t remembered that at the Allantide Ball.
Now Cassie glared at him, astonished by her own bravery. ‘But then, I suppose the thought of prison wouldn’t bother you,’ she said. ‘It’s something of a family tradition, isn’t it?’
Something unpleasant flared in Jake’s eyes, and she took an involuntary step backwards, wondering a little too late whether she might have gone too far. There was a suppressed anger about him that should have warned her not to provoke him. She wouldn’t put it past him to take out all that simmering resentment on her the way he so clearly had on Rupert, but in the end he only looked at her with dislike.
‘What do you want, Miss Not-So-Goody Two Shoes?’
Cassie took a deep breath. ‘I want to know why you hit Rupert.’
‘Why does it matter?’
‘Rupert said it was over me.’ She bit her lip. ‘He wouldn’t tell me exactly what.’
Jake laughed shortly. ‘No, I bet he wouldn’t!’
‘Was it…was it because of what happened at the Allantide Ball?’
‘When you offered yourself to me on a plate?’ he said, and her face flamed.
‘I was just talking,’ she protested, although she knew she had been doing more than that.
‘You don’t wear a dress like that just to talk,’ said Jake.
Cassie’s cheeks were as scarlet as the dress she had bought as part of a desperate strategy to convince Rupert that she had grown up.
Her parents had been aghast when they had seen it, and Cassie herself had been half-horrified, half-thrilled by how it had made her look. The colour was lovely-a deep, rich red-but it was made of cheap Lycra that had clung embarrassingly to every curve. Cut daringly short, it had such a low neckline that Cassie had had to keep tugging at it to stop herself spilling out. She cringed to think how fat and tarty she must have looked next to all those cool, skinny blondes dressed in black.
On the other hand, it had worked.
Rupert had definitely noticed her when she’d arrived, and that had given her the confidence to put Plan B into action. ‘You need to make him jealous,’ her best friend Tina had said. ‘Make him realise that you’re not just his for the taking-even if you are.’
Emboldened by Rupert’s reaction, Cassie had smiled coolly and sashayed up to Jake instead. To this day, she didn’t know where she had found the nerve to do it; he had been on his own for once, and watching the proceedings with a cynical air.
The Allantide Ball was a local tradition revived by Sir Ian, who had been obsessed by Cornish folklore. Less a formal ball than a big party, it was held in the Hall every year on 31st October, when the rest of the country was celebrating Hallowe’en, and everyone in Portrevick went, the one occasion when social divisions were put aside.
In theory, if not in practice.
Jake’s expression had not been encouraging, but Cassie had flirted with him anyway. Or she had thought she was flirting. In retrospect, her heavy-handed attempts to bat her lashes and look sultry must have been laughable, but at the time she had been quite pleased with herself.
‘OK, maybe I was flirting,’ she conceded. ‘That was no reason to…to…’
‘To kiss you?’ said Jake. ‘But how else were you to make Rupert jealous? That was the whole point of the exercise, wasn’t it?’
Taking Cassie’s expression as an answer, he settled back into the saddle and regarded her with a mocking smile that made her want to slap him. ‘It was a good strategy,’ he congratulated her. ‘Rupert Branscombe Fox is the kind of jerk who’s only interested in what someone else has got. I’ll bet even as a small boy he only ever wanted to play with someone else’s toys. It was very astute of you to notice that.’
‘I didn’t.’
She had just wanted Rupert to notice her. Was that so bad? And he had. It had worked perfectly.
She just hadn’t counted on Jake taking her flirtation so seriously. He had taken her by the hand and pulled her outside. Catching a glimpse of Rupert watching her, Cassie had been delighted at first. She’d been expecting a kiss, but not the kiss that she got.
It had begun with cool assurance-and, really, that would have been fine-but then something had changed. The coolness had become warmth, and then it had become heat, and then, worst of all, there had been a terrifying sweetness to it. Cassie had felt as if she were standing in a river with the sand rushing away beneath her feet, sucking her down into something wild and uncontrollable. She’d been terrified and exhilarated at the same time, and when Jake had let her go at last she had been shaking.
It wasn’t even as if she liked Jake. He was the exact opposite of Rupert, who was the embodiment of a dream. Secretly, Cassie thought of them as Beauty and the Beast. Not that Jake was ugly, exactly, but he had dark, beaky features, a bitter mouth and angry eyes, while Rupert was all golden charm, like a prince in a fairy tale.