One Christmas Morning & One Summer's Afternoon Read Online Free PDF Page A

The Fox, Briar Cottage felt eerily quiet. Only Peggy’s asthmatic snores broke the silence.
    ‘You must be exhausted,’ Laura babbled nervously. ‘Would you like a cup of hot chocolate before bed or should I—’
    Daniel stopped her with a kiss so forceful she toppled back onto the sofa. The next thing she knew he was on top of her, kissing her passionately and with a fervour she hadn’t experienced since … well, not for a long time. He smelled of wine and butterscotch and aftershave and sweat. The most delicious smell in the world. Laura felt a jolt of desire so powerful it made her gasp. Then, inexplicably, she blurted out, ‘I had a miscarriage. I was pregnant and he dumped me and I got fired and then I lost the baby. That’s why I came here.’
    Daniel stopped and looked at her for a moment, cupping her face in his hands. ‘Poor darling,’ he said softly. Without another word he scooped her up into his arms and carried her to her bedroom, laying her down gently on the bed.
    ‘Do you want to be alone? I can sleep in the spare room if—’
    ‘No,’ said Laura forcefully. ‘I want this. I didn’t know if I ever would again, after John. But I do.’
    Kissing her cheek, neck and collarbone, moving slowly down her body, Daniel murmured. ‘It was the same for me, after Rachel. I was the one who fucked it up, but that doesn’t make it any easier. Christ, you’re beautiful.’
    After that it was all a wonderful, erotic, semi-drunken blur. Daniel peeled off Laura’s clothes slowly, but slipped out of his own with the instant ease of a snake shedding its skin. Moments later he was inside her, his body stronger and more powerful than she’d imagined it, his erection gratifyingly large and as solid as oak. Daniel was twenty years younger than John Bingham and it showed. Laura had forgotten sex could be so fast and frenzied, so animalistic and hungry and … quick. Just as she was letting go and really getting into her stride, Daniel came, his fingers digging into her buttocks and pulling her hard against him as he yelled out in pleasure.
    She hadn’t come close to an orgasm herself, but she didn’t care. It felt incredible to be desired again, as if she’d been walking around in leg irons and someone – Daniel Smart – had broken the chains.
    Wordlessly she curled up in his arms and they both fell into a deep, sated sleep.

CHAPTER THREE
    November turned to December, and one of the coldest winters Fittlescombe had seen in a decade. Every morning, village children ran to their bedroom windows, hoping for the much-anticipated snow. Instead they saw a landscape frozen solid, sparkling white with frost like a newly glittered Christmas card. The days were short but dazzlingly bright, a pale winter sun lighting up a cloudless, crisp, sapphire-blue sky. And at night the deep winter blackness was lit by a carpet of stars so perfectly clear it was like sleeping beneath the ceiling of one’s own, private planetarium.
    For Laura Tiverton, it was the vivid colours of the countryside that most lifted her spirits. The holly leaves and pine trees seemed almost to glow green against the frosted white background of the frozen chalk hills. Berries and robins’ breasts seemed redder and the sky bluer than she could ever remember them. In the mornings, Laura would try to write by the fire, but the idyllic view outside her study window never failed to distract her, calling to her like a lover, tempting her from her work. Of course, the fact that she had a
real
lover probably had a lot to do with her revived spirits. Although still not officially an item (he wasn’t technically divorced yet), she and Daniel now spoke to each other daily and Daniel had spent all but one weekend since their first night together holed up with Laura at Briar Cottage. They made love, went for long walks and talked a lot about writing – Daniel’s writing, mostly. He’d recently finished another quite brilliant play, a comedy, that he was in the