Mistletoe Marriage

‘If neither of us can have the person we really want, we could at least have each other.’ He tried to convince her. ‘It wouldn’t be like taking a risk on a stranger. We’ve known each other all our lives. You know what I’m like, and I know you. I’m not going to run away appalled when I discover all your irritating habits the way a stranger might do.’

Sophie paused in the middle of dunking a biscuit in her tea. ‘What irritating habits?’ she demanded.

‘Irritating was the wrong word,’ Bram corrected himself, perceiving that he was straying onto dangerous ground. ‘I should have said that I know your…quirks.’

She wasn’t going to let it go that easily! ‘Like what?’

‘Like the way you screw up your face when you’re trying to decide what you want to drink in the pub. The way you always say that you don’t want any crisps and then eat all of mine.’ He paused to think. ‘Those funny earrings you wear sometimes.’

Her mouth full of biscuit, Sophie put her hands up to her ears in an instinctively defensive gesture. Her friend Ella was a jewellery designer, and made all her earrings for her now. ‘What’s funny about them?’

Bram studied the feathery drops that trembled from her lobes. They were relatively restrained compared to the weird shapes and colours she usually wore. ‘You’ve got to admit they’re pretty unusual,’ he said.

Sophie sniffed and reached for another biscuit. ‘Anything else?’

‘Well, there’s the way you eat your way through a whole packet of biscuits and then spend the rest of the evening complaining that you feel fat,’ said Bram.

Freezing with the biscuit halfway to her mouth, Sophie saw too late that he was teasing. ‘Don’t you want to know what your irritating habits are?’

‘Tell me the worst,’ he invited.

‘You’re infuriatingly calm. You never make a fuss. You never get carried away.’ Sophie ate the biscuit anyway, with a certain defiance. ‘I can’t imagine a situation in which you’d lose your cool.’

Bram looked at her. ‘Can’t you?’

There was a tiny pause, and for some reason Sophie found herself picturing Bram making love with a vividness that was startling and more than a little disturbing in its clarity. He would be slow and sure to start with, but as the excitement built—yes, he might lose his cool then…

To her horror, Sophie realised that she was blushing. It didn’t seem right to be thinking of Bram in that way. She took another biscuit to give herself something to do.

‘OK, I’ll admit your habits aren’t as irritating as mine,’ she said, after a moment.

‘As irritating habits go, ours aren’t incompatible, though, are they?’

There was another pause while Sophie eyed Bram, still half convinced that he was joking. ‘You’re not thinking about this idea seriously, are you?’

Bram was turning his mug between square, capable hands, studying it thoughtfully. ‘I might be.’

His eyes lifted to her face once more, suddenly very blue and keen. ‘Why don’t we face reality, Sophie? Neither of us has got a chance of marrying the person we love. We can live alone and miserable, or we can live together. Our marriage might not be one of grand passion, but we would have friendship, companionship, comfort. They count for something.

‘I need help on the farm, to put it bluntly,’ he went on. ‘Sophie, I’d love to have you as my wife. I need someone who understands the moors and isn’t afraid of being up here on her own—someone who can help me run the place. A partner as well as a wife. Someone just like you. And you…you can’t have what you really want either, but you did say you wanted to come home. You’ve always loved it here. Well, you could live here all the time with me. Haw Gill Farm would be your home as well as mine. You could set up a wheel and a kiln in one of the barns and start potting again.’

The blue eyes rested on Sophie’s face. ‘Neither of us would have everything we wanted, but we would have some of it. Perfect happy-ever-after endings are for books and films, Sophie. We wouldn’t be the first people to compromise, to settle for good enough rather than the best.’

‘Compromising means giving up on your dreams,’ Sophie pointed out.

‘It means having something instead of nothing,’ countered Bram. ‘And it would solve your Christmas problem if nothing else,’ he added cunningly. ‘You said yourself that it would be easier to get through a family Christmas if you could produce a boyfriend. Why shouldn’t that boyfriend be me?’

‘Well…because they all know you,’ she said.

‘So?’

‘They know we’ve been friends all our lives. It doesn’t seem very likely that we’d suddenly decide to fall in love. Anyway,’ she remembered, ‘I’ve already told Mum that I’m in love with someone else.’

‘You didn’t say who it was, though,’ he reminded her. ‘Why couldn’t it be me?’

‘Because I would have told her if it had been you,’ said Sophie, a little baffled by his persistence and still more than half convinced that he was joking.

‘Not necessarily. If we’d only just realised that we were in love ourselves, I think we’d want a little time to get used to the idea before we told everybody. We wouldn’t rush out and spread the news straight away, would we?’

Sophie looked sceptical. ‘So we’d ask Mum and Dad and everyone else to believe that after all these years of being friends we suddenly looked at each other and fell in love?’

Bram shrugged. ‘It happens. I think it’s possible to look at someone familiar and suddenly see them in a completely different light.’

He remembered how startled he had been to realise how much she had changed when she was telling him about falling in love with Nick. Of course that wasn’t the same as falling in love with her, but still, it had been a shock. And look how conscious he had been of her leaning against him by the gate.

‘People change,’ he said. ‘Sometimes when you least expect it.’

‘I suppose so,’ said Sophie doubtfully. ‘I can’t really imagine falling in love like that.’

What would it be like? She couldn’t imagine it. With Nick it had been love at first sight. One look and she had tumbled helplessly in love with him. How could it be the same if you had known the other person all your life?

Imagine falling in love with Bram, for instance. How weird would that be? Her eyes rested on him speculatively. He had all the right bits, all in the right working order, but they looked exactly the same as they had always done. Eyes, nose, mouth—nothing wrong with any of them, but nothing special either. Nothing to make you stop and think Hello?

Although, to be fair, she had always loved Bram’s eyes. They were the deep, clear blue of a summer sea, and they gleamed with understated humour.

And actually, now that she looked at him properly, he did have rather an intriguing mouth. Funny that she had never noticed that before, thought Sophie. It must be something to do with all this talk about falling in love. She couldn’t remember ever noticing Bram’s mouth before. It was cool and quiet, as you might expect, but there was something about it that made her feel vaguely…what was the word? Not excited. Not definitely not that. No, disturbed. Did it make her feel just a tiny bit unsettled?

Just the teensiest bit sexy?

Horrified by the thought, Sophie shook the feeling aside. This was Bram. It felt all wrong to be studying him like this. She shouldn’t be thinking about his eyes, and definitely not about his mouth. Not that way, anyway.

‘If we were engaged you’d have the perfect excuse to stay here with me rather than at Glebe Farm at Christmas.’ Bram returned to the point of the discussion. ‘You’d still have to face Nick, of course, on your father’s birthday and at Christmas lunch, but it wouldn’t be for long. You’d be able to leave whenever you wanted, instead of having to wait for them to decide to go. We can always say that there’s a crisis here. We’re never short of those,’ he added, with a gleam of humour.

It would be easier to get through Christmas if Bram were there, Sophie had to admit. He had a quiet self-assurance that lent him an impressive manner. Bram was never rude, never showed off and, more importantly, he never let Sophie’s mother rile him. You could always rely on him to ease an awkward silence or defuse tension with humour—qualities which were likely to come in very handy indeed at the Beckwiths’ Christmas dinner.

His presence might make things easier for Melissa, too. Sophie was very conscious of how guilty her sister felt about the situation. Perhaps if Melissa thought that she had found happiness with Bram she would be able to relax and enjoy being married to Nick.

And Nick? How would he feel? Would he be glad to think that Sophie had found someone else and was finally over him?

No prizes for guessing how her mother would feel if she and Bram announced their engagement. Harriet would be delighted. Not only would she get the family Christmas she had planned, but she would have another wedding to plan in the New Year. It would be the best Christmas present Sophie could possibly give her.

Her father would be pleased, too, to have both his daughters at his seventieth birthday party.

Yes, it would be easier for everyone if she said that she was marrying Bram.

But could she marry him just to make her family happy?

Sophie turned the mug of tea between her hands.

Could it work? What would it be like to marry Bram? She had never thought of him as anything other than a friend before. What would he be like a husband? As a lover?

She studied him from under her lashes. His mouth was firm, cool, quiet. How would it feel against her own? What would his kiss be like? And those square, capable farmer’s hands. She had seen them gently easing a lamb into the world, running assessingly down the flank of a heifer, fixing an engine with deft fingers. She had never felt them smoothing over her skin. What would that be like?

The very thought made her uncomfortable.

‘This is crazy,’ she said, embarrassed. ‘I can’t believe we’re seriously talking about getting married just to save a bit of awkwardness at the Christmas dinner table!’

‘I was thinking more about saving awkwardness in life generally,’ said Bram lightly, sensing that the moment had gone.

‘We could never go through with it,’ Sophie said, still torn.

‘Couldn’t we?’

‘No.’ Her tentative smile faded. ‘No, we couldn’t. It’s not that I can’t see the advantages, Bram. I don’t really want to go through life on my own, watching from the sidelines and wasting my time feeling bitter. Of course I don’t. But it wouldn’t be fair. I care about you too much to marry you knowing how I still feel about Nick. You deserve better than that.’

‘Better in what way?’ he asked wryly, surprised at the strength of his disappointment.

It was funny. An hour ago the thought of marrying Sophie would never have crossed his mind, but now that it had it seemed like one of the best ideas he had ever had.

‘You deserve more than second best, Bram,’ said Sophie in a gentle voice. ‘You deserve someone who believes in you and loves you completely for yourself, and I know that you’ll meet her sooner or later. She’ll be real and warm and kind, and you’ll wonder how you could ever have loved anyone else. You’ll be her rock, and she’ll be your star, and you’ll be so happy together that you’ll wake every morning with her and be grateful to me for not marrying you now.’

Getting up, she moved round the table until she could put her arms around him from behind and bend to kiss his cheek. ‘You’re my best friend,’ she whispered in his ear, and Bram closed his eyes briefly, shocked at the jolt of awareness he felt at her nearness and her warmth.

‘I know you’re just trying to find a way out for me, but you’ve got to think of yourself too. I just wish things could be different for both of us.’

Bram put his hand up to cover hers, where they were linked on his chest, and wished that his throat didn’t suddenly feel so tight and uncomfortable.

‘So do I,’ he said.

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