A Yorkshire Christmas by Kate Hewitt Read Free Book Online Page A

this wasn’t how he wanted to be with his daughter. This wasn’t how he wanted his daughter to be with him.
    “What would you like to do?” he asked, his voice sounding just a little too loud. “The TV doesn’t work but I have Netflix on my computer…” Although the Internet connection was so damn slow they’d be waiting hours for something to stream. And maybe he shouldn’t have suggested they watch something; maybe he should have started a real conversation. But how?
    Molly shook her head, so her dark hair, the same color as his, flew out around her face. “I’ll just read my book,” she said.
    “Let me show you your room,” Noah said.
    He walked through the sitting room, as cramped and low as the kitchen, to the steep, narrow stairs that led upstairs. Molly paused on the bottom step, casting a glance around the sitting room with its faded sofas and blackened fireplace before turning to Noah in accusation.
    “You don’t even have a Christmas tree.”
    “That’s true,” Noah acknowledged as he struggled to find some way to explain his complete lack of Christmas spirit. He had nothing Christmassy in the house at all; December twenty-fifth was just another workday as far as he was concerned, and had been ever since his mother had died when he was little more than Molly’s age. But it couldn’t be a workday this year.
    “We could cut one down,” he suggested. Molly pursed her lips, unconvinced. “There’s a grove of pine trees on the other side of the fields. They’d be about the right size.” He cast a glance at the ceiling. “Eight feet tall, I’d say, at least. We don’t want some puny tree.” He saw the tiniest flicker of interest light her eyes, the same brown as his, and he felt a wild surge of hope, of need to show his daughter they could do this. They could have a good time together. “Have you ever cut down your own Christmas tree before?”
    “No,” she said, and frowned.
    “It’ll be fun,” Noah said, but he sounded desperate even to his own ears. “It’ll be loads of fun.”
    Molly didn’t answer, just walked up the stairs, shouldering past him. “Where’s my room?” she asked when she was at the top, staring down at him, her pillow still clutched to her chest.
    Any fledgling hope he’d been trying his damnedest to nurture sank like a stone. “Right down here,” he said, and headed down the hall.
    *
    Claire walked through the fields, the frozen snow crunching under her boots, the flashlight cutting a pale swathe of light through the darkness. The farther away she walked from Noah’s house the lonelier she felt; with nothing but the empty expanse of endless fields around her, she felt as if she were the last person on earth, or at least in England.
    Finally, after what felt like hours, but was in reality only about fifteen minutes, she saw Holly Cottage, the kitchen light she’d left on beckoning her with its comforting glow. She hurried towards it, climbing awkwardly over the stile that bridged the drystone wall that separated Noah’s property from Ruth Carrington’s, and then into the welcome warmth of the cottage.
    She kicked off her boots and shrugged out of her coat, trying not to feel how empty and silent the cottage was, with only her in it. This was what she wanted, she told herself firmly. What she needed. She microwaved one of the ready meals she’d bought and made a fire in the woodstove in the living room. She opened a bottle of wine and retrieved the final exams she needed to mark, brought everything in on a tray and curled up by the fire.
    Yes. This was perfect. This was exactly what she’d envisioned, what she’d longed for, when she’d left New York. Cozy solitude.
    With a soft sigh, Claire leaned her head back against the sofa, closed her eyes, and thought of Noah. She’d kept him out of her thoughts by sheer force of will during the walk back to Holly Cottage, but she couldn’t resist now, didn’t even want to.
    What were he and his daughter