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

terms with what was happening to her. What exactly was happening to her? Something she didn’t want to give a name to… Not yet… Perhaps not ever. She shivered as she pulled on her seat belt.
    â€˜Cold?’ Oliver questioned her, frowning slightly.
    Lisa shook her head, refusing to give in to the temptation to look at him, to check and see whether, if she did, she would feel that heart-jolting surge of feminine awareness and arousal that she had just experienced in the car park for a second time.
    â€˜Stop thinking about him,’ she heard Oliver say harshly to her as she turned away from him and stared out of the window. It took her several seconds to realise that he thought that Henry was the reason for her sudden silence. Perhapsit was just as well he did think that, she decided—for both their sakes.
    Through the now drifting heavy snowflakes Lisa could see how quickly they had obscured the previously greeny-brown landscape, transforming it into a winter wonderland of breathtaking Christmas-card white.
    Coming on top of the poignant simplicity of a church service which to Lisa, as an outsider, had somehow symbolised all she had always felt was missing from her own Christmases—a sense of community, of sharing…of involvement and belonging, of permanence going from one generation to the next—the sight of the falling snow brought an ache to her throat and the quick silvery shimmer of unexpected tears to her eyes.
    Ashamed of her own emotionalism, she ducked her head, searching in her bag for a tissue, hoping to disguise her tears as a symptom of her cold. But Oliver was obviously too astute to be deceived by such a strategy and demanded brusquely, ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ adding curtly, ‘You’re wasting your tears on Henry; he isn’t—’
    â€˜I’m not crying because of Henry,’ Lisa denied. Did he really think that she was so lacking in self-esteem and self-preservation that she couldn’t see for herself what a lucky escape she had had, if not from Henry then very definitely from Henry’s mother?
    â€˜No? Then what are these?’ Oliver demanded tauntingly, reaching out before she could stop him to rub the hard pad of his thumb beneath one eye and show her the dampness clinging to his skin. ‘Scotch mist?’
    â€˜I didn’t say I wasn’t crying,’ Lisa defended herself. ‘Just that it wasn’t because of… It’s not because of Henry…’
    â€˜Then why?’ Oliver challenged, obviously not believing her.
    â€˜Because of this,’ Lisa told him simply, gesturing towards the scene outside the car window. ‘And the church…’
    She could see from the look he was giving her that he didn’t really believe her, and because for some reason it had suddenly become very important that he did she took a deep breath and told him quickly, ‘It’s just so beautiful… The whole thing…the weather, the church service…’
    As she felt him looking at her she turned her head to meet his eyes. She shook her head, not wanting to go on, feeling that she had perhaps said too much already, been too openly emotional. Men, in her experience, found it rather discomforting when women expressed their emotions. Henry certainly had.
    If Oliver was discomforted by what she had said, though, he certainly wasn’t showing it; in fact he wasn’t showing any kind of reaction that she could identify at all. He had dropped his eyelids slightly over his eyes and turned his face away from her, ostensibly to concentrate on his driving, making it impossible for her to read his expression at all, his only comment, as he brought the car to a halt outside the house, a cautionary, ‘Be careful you don’t slip when you get out.’
    â€˜Be careful you don’t slip…!’ Just how old did he think she was? Lisa wondered wryly as she got out of the car, tilting