Under the Boss's Mistletoe by Jessica Hart

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    She turned her attention firmly back to the other cars.‘Ooh, now…’ she said, spying a single middle-aged man looking harassed at the wheel of his car, and instantly wove a complicated story about the double life he was leading, naming both wives, all five children and even the hamster with barely a pause for breath.
    Jake shook his head. He tried to imagine Natasha speculating about the occupants of the other cars, and couldn’t do it. She would think it childish. As it was, thought Jake.
    On the other hand, this traffic jam was a lot less tedious than others he had sat in. Cassie’s expression was animated, and he was very aware of her beside him. She had pushed back the seat as far as it would go, and her legs, in vivid blue tights, were stretched out before her. Her mobile face was alight with humour, her hands in constant motion. Jake had a jumbled impression of colour and warmth tugging at the edges of his vision the whole time. It was very distracting.
    Now she was pulling faces at a little boy in the back seat of the car beside them. He crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue, while Cassie stuck her thumbs in her ears and waggled her fingers in response.
    Jake was torn between exasperation and amusement. He didn’t know where Cassie got her idea that she was ordinary. There was absolutely nothing ordinary about her that he could see.
    He glanced at the clock as they inched forward. It was a bad sign that they were hitting heavy traffic this early. It wasn’t even midday, and already they seemed to have been travelling for ever.
    Cassie had fallen silent at last. Bizarrely, Jake almost missed her ridiculous stories. Suddenly there was a curdled growl that startled him out of his distraction. He glanced at Cassie in surprise and she blushed and folded her arms over her stomach.
    ‘Sorry, that was me,’ she apologised. ‘I didn’t have time for breakfast.’
    How embarrassing! Cassie was mortified. Natasha’s stomach would never even murmur. At least Jake seemed prepared to cope with the problem.
    ‘We’ll stop and get something to eat when we get out of this,’ he promised, but it was another twenty minutes before the blockage cleared, miraculously and for no apparent reason, and he could put his foot down.
    To Cassie’s disappointment they didn’t stop at the first service-station they came to, or even the second. ‘We need to get as far on our way as we can,’ Jake said, but as her stomach became increasingly vocal he eventually relented as they came up to the third.
    After a drizzly summer, the sun had finally come out for September. ‘Let’s sit outside,’ Cassie suggested when they had bought coffee and sandwiches. ‘We should make the most of the sun while we’ve got it.’
    They found a wooden table in a sunny spot, away from the ceaseless growl of the motorway. Cassie turned sideways so that she could straddle the bench, and turned her face up to the sun.
    ‘I love September,’ she said. ‘It still feels like the start of a new school year. I want to sharpen my pencils and write my name at the front of a blank exercise-book.’
    Perhaps that was why she was so excited about transforming Portrevick Hall into a wedding venue, Cassie thought as she unwrapped her sandwich. It was a whole new project, her chance to draw a line under all her past muddles and mistakes and start afresh. She was determined not to mess up this time.
    ‘It’s great to get out of London too,’ she went on indistinctly through a mouthful of egg mayonnaise. ‘I’m really looking forward to seeing Portrevick again, too. I haven’t been back since my parents moved away, but the place where you grow up always feels like home, doesn’t it?’
    ‘No,’ said Jake.
    ‘Really?’ Cassie was brushing egg from her skirt, but at that she looked up at him in surprise. ‘Don’t you miss it at all?’
    ‘I miss the sea sometimes,’ he said after a moment. ‘But Portrevick? No. It’s not such a romantic