Page 71 of Snow Going Back

‘Actually, Sam’s selling himself short,’ she told him. ‘He has a successful business specialising in the design and build of affordable, sustainable eco houses and eco solutions.’ She smiled and turned Lance’s attention back towards Sam with a flourish before walking back out to the kitchen for the gravy. She took a moment around the corner to roll her eyes. This was the worst Christmas dinnerever.

‘Oh, how interesting.’ She heard the wind leave Lance’s sails as he discovered there was nothing about Sam’s business he could look down on without sounding like a complete idiot and cheered up slightly. ‘One-off sort of stuff or bigger sites?’

‘Yeah,’ Sam said, sounding resentful that he’d been outed for exactly who he was. ‘Both, but mainly bigger sites. I’ve got a couple going at the moment, so…’ He trailed off.

‘Great, great,’ Lance said glumly. ‘So when you saysolutions, what do you mean exactly?’

‘You know, like energy sources and facilities, a few of the appliances. I use solar panels, ground-source heat pumps, things like that. Put in filtered wells. Dishwashers here and there.’

‘You can make sustainabledishwashers?’ Lance asked, devastatingly impressed. ‘Did you design them yourself?’

‘After a fashion,’ Sam admitted reluctantly. ‘And yeah, I designed them.’

Kate grinned at how disappointed they both sounded, now she’d scuppered their passive-aggressive attempts to rub each other up the wrong way. Picking up the jug, she walked back into the room and sat down with a bright smile.

‘Gravy anyone?’

Over the course of the meal, Kate continued to direct the awkward conversation as best she could, but things became increasingly strained.

‘So you’re a lawyer, too, Lance?’ Sam asked, eventually slipping out from under Kate’s constant prompts towards his line of work. He wiped his mouth with a napkin and put it down on his empty plate.

‘I am, Sam, yes,’ Lance replied, leaning back and twisting the stem of his wine glass.

Sam nodded, obviously trying to be polite for Kate’s sake. ‘And do you do the same sort of thing as Kate? Is that how you two met?’

The arrogant smile returned to Lance’s face. ‘Er,noactually.Katherineworks in corporate law; I work in criminal defence. Thefunside of lawyering,’ he joked. ‘A lot more court, a lot less desk.’ He raised his eyebrows and lifted the glass of wine.‘Darling, have you got anything a bit stronger? I must admit, this isn’t really cutting it today.’

‘No,’ she said, feeling annoyed. ‘And for the record,Sam,myside of lawyering is quite fun,too.’ She pursed her lips.

‘Oh, you know I’m only messing around,’ he said jovially. ‘But you must admit, it’s definitely sexier solving high-drama murders in court than it is checking off clauses in a contract.’

She raised her eyebrows, feeling needled at the way he was putting her career down, even if it was justmessing around. She felt tempted to bite back for once, rather than ignore it the way she’d grown used to doing, but for Sam’s sake, she didn’t. This was his home, his first Christmas without Cora. Lance’s presence was already unfair on him, all things considered – he didn’t need her making it worse by starting an argument.

Seeing her annoyance at Lance’s putdown, Sam cleared his throat and spoke up. ‘You get some court action, too, though, don’t you, Kate?’ Lance laughed, and Sam frowned at his rudeness. ‘Well, you’ve got that one in January coming up, at least.’

Sam was just trying to stick up for her, she knew, but Kate closed her eyes as Lance turned to her with a flash of dark annoyance.

‘Where?’ he asked. ‘Here?’ He waited, his frown deepening by the second.

She sighed. ‘I was only served papers the night before last and I didn’t want to ruin your Christmas, so I was going to wait and tell you tomorrow.’

‘You havegotto be kidding me!’ He sighed loudly.

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Sam said awkwardly. ‘I didn’t realise. I apologise.’

‘Of course you didn’t.’ Lance stared coldly at him before he broke out a tight smile and let out a little laugh. ‘It’s fine,’ hesaid, looking back to Kate. ‘It’s fine. Whatever it is, we’ll deal with it. We’d better just hope we’re not on ourhoneymoon.’

Kate saw him watch for Sam’s reaction to his words, the slight squeeze of his eyes the tell-tale sign, and she saw Sam show his hand, looking down and away at Lance’s talk of the wedding. Lance noted this with interest and moved smoothly on, and Kate sighed internally.

‘Where do you want to go, anyway, Katherine?’ he pressed. ‘Your choice, darling, anywhere you want.’

‘I can’t think about that right now,’ she answered shortly. ‘We’ll talk later.’

There was an awkward silence, then Sam stood up, slapping his hands on his thighs.

‘Alright. We’ve sat here long enough, I think. Lance, are you a whisky man? I think I have some in the back of the cupboard.’

‘Nowyou’re talking,’ he replied.

---