For Christmas, Forever: The Yuletide Engagement / The Doctor's Christmas Bride / Snowbound Reunion

‘Sarah Delacorte.’ She gave Toby a considering look as she shook his hand. ‘Yes, I can see the likeness.’ She smiled warmly. ‘You work with Patrick, don’t you?’

‘For him, actually,’ Toby corrected dryly.

Sarah’s smile widened. ‘Of course. Well, it’s very nice to meet you,’ she added sincerely. ‘I hope you’ll both excuse me while I go and find Gareth?’

Ellie looked up impatiently at Toby once they were alone. ‘Shouldn’t you go and warn Patrick?’

Her brother shrugged unconcernedly. ‘One thing I’ve learnt from working for Patrick—he’s quite capable of taking care of himself. Now, let’s go and get some food; I’m starving!’ With his hand under her elbow he guided her through to the dining room.

Toby had learnt something else from working for Patrick, Ellie realized: how to take charge of a situation with the same arrogance!

Somewhere along the way, she realised dazedly as she put food on her plate without even noticing what she had chosen, her little brother had grown up…

She had spent so long thinking of him as her younger brother, that she just hadn’t noticed him grow into a man almost as confident as the one he worked for.

He was a handsome man too, Ellie had to acknowledge as a girl of about twenty who stood helping herself to the buffet—probably yet another relative of Patrick’s—gave him more than a cursory glance from beneath lowered dark lashes.

At twenty-six and over six feet tall, with short dark hair, laughing blue eyes, a pleasantly handsome face and a healthily fit body from his visits to the gym several times a week, her brother wasn’t the boy she had always thought him; he was a man who was obviously attractive to women.

When had that happened? She—

‘You aren’t eating, Ellie.’

She turned sharply to find Patrick standing at her side, and quickly checked his face for signs of a fight. Thankfully she didn’t find any.

‘How was I supposed to eat when for all I knew you might have been lying unconscious in the hallway?’ she came back, her sharpness due to her worry concerning his welfare.

Like a mother when her child came back to her unharmed after doing something she considered dangerous? Or like a woman worried about the man she loved…?

Patrick’s reply didn’t exactly calm her impatient anger. ‘Not very likely,’ he drawled confidently.

Ellie’s eyes sparkled angrily. ‘That’s okay for you to say, but—’

‘Ellie!’ Toby cut in laughingly. ‘I told you that Patrick is more than capable of taking care of himself.’

She glared at them both—Toby laughing, Patrick amused, one dark brow raised mockingly. ‘Men!’ she finally muttered frustratedly, turning away to pile more food haphazardly onto her plate.

‘Are you sure you’re going to eat all that?’ Patrick murmured close beside her. ‘Maybe we should just share the plate,’ he added teasingly.

Ellie turned to find that she and Patrick were alone. Toby had wandered off, was now standing across the dining room chatting to the dark-haired girl who had given him such an admiring look a few minutes ago. He hadn’t wasted much time!

She looked up at Patrick, some of her anger abating in the face of his teasing look. ‘I had visions of a brawl in the hallway,’ she admitted ruefully.

He shrugged. ‘I very rarely resort to violence, Ellie. Although in Davies’s case,’ he added hardly, his expression becoming grim, ‘I could be willing to make an exception. As it is, I’ve made it very clear what I will do to him if he so much as comes near you again, let alone touches you.’

Ellie raised dark brows. ‘Oh?’

Patrick nodded abruptly. ‘I think we need to discuss your continued involvement in all this.’

Ellie felt her heart stop for a moment. What did he mean? Was he suggesting that it was no longer necessary for her to be involved?

She might have decided minutes ago that she needed to rethink her life, to perhaps consider giving up her position at Delacorte, Delacorte and Delacorte as a way of avoiding accidentally bumping into Gareth any more. But she hadn’t included not seeing Patrick any more in that rethinking…The very thought of that filled her with desolation.

A week ago Patrick had just been her brother Toby’s boss—a man she had once shared an embarrassing experience with—but he was now so much more than that. How much more she still didn’t want to admit to herself. She just knew she couldn’t bear the thought of not seeing Patrick again!

Her mouth tightened. ‘You can manage without me now—is that it?’ She was waspish in her disappointment.

‘I didn’t say that.’ Patrick gave her a reproving look. ‘I just think that it might be better for you—’

‘I’ll decide what’s best for me, if you don’t mind,’ Ellie told him shortly. ‘And while I can still be of any help in preventing Sarah making a terrible mistake I intend staying very much in Gareth’s face!’ she announced firmly—in complete contradiction of what she had decided minutes ago!

But the only way she could continue to see Patrick was to remain a thorn in Gareth’s side.

And she very much wanted to continue seeing Patrick…

Chapter Seven

‘I’M SORRY, how did you say Toby was getting home?’ Ellie yawned tiredly as Patrick drove her home a couple of hours later.

He shrugged dismissively. ‘Someone he met at the party is driving him back later, I believe.’

Ellie would take a bet on it being that pretty darkhaired girl who had looked at him so interestedly as they stood at the buffet table; she certainly hadn’t seen much of her brother during the rest of the evening.

Oh, well, good luck to him, Ellie thought slightly enviously. She had spent the whole evening with Patrick glued to her side—but for completely the wrong reason!

‘I felt so sorry for George and Mary this evening.’ She sighed heavily. The older couple’s unhappiness at their daughter’s choice of future husband had been perfectly obvious to Ellie as they’d looked at Sarah so wistfully. She frowned. ‘Does Sarah really have no idea how they feel about Gareth?’

‘George has voiced his—reservations concerning the speed of the engagement.’ Patrick grimaced. ‘Anything else is sure to just make her all the more determined to have her own way.’

Ellie turned to smile at him in the semi-darkness of the illuminated streets they were driving through. ‘Runs in the family, does it?’ she teased.

He gave a slight smile. ‘Something like that.’ She could believe it. They were certainly an attractive family, but stubbornness seemed to be one of their less endearing characteristics.

‘Gareth is going to cling like a leech,’ Ellie warned heavily.

Patrick’s mouth tightened. ‘I agree. He’s a parasite.’

How embarrassing it was for her that she had been the previous woman taken in by Gareth’s charm! In fact, she would rather not talk about Gareth at all.

‘So what’s the next move?’ she prompted briskly.

‘Dinner on Tuesday, I thought,’ Patrick came back lightly.

Ellie turned to him frowningly. ‘What’s happening on Tuesday evening?’

‘I just said—dinner,’ he dismissed.

‘Yes, but—what’s it for?’