Mistletoe Proposal On The Children's Ward

CHAPTER TWO

HEADACHE? JAMIE THOUGHT on Friday night. No, because that could be easily fixed with a couple of paracetamol. Bubonic plague? Strictly speaking, that did still exist, but the last case he’d heard of had been in Colorado and that wasn’t quite near enough to London to be plausible; plus if the condition was diagnosed properly it could be cured by the right antibiotic. Held up in traffic? No, because the bowling alley was within walking distance of his flat.

He didn’t have a single believable excuse not to turn up to the team night out.

He did have Anna’s number, so he could just call her and admit that he didn’t want to go. But it felt too mean-spirited and he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it.

And so he found himself outside the bowling alley at five minutes to seven. There was a group of people he recognised in the foyer; Anna detached herself from them and came over to greet him. ‘Hey, Jamie! Glad you could make it.’

He’d seen her several times at work during the week, wearing a smart shirt and skirt beneath her white coat. In jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt, and with her dark wavy hair loose, she looked very different: younger and very, very approachable. He was suddenly aware of her curves and how the faded denim clung to her.

Oh, for pity’s sake. He wasn’t a hormone-laden teenager. He’d seen plenty of women dressed casually.

But they didn’t make him feel suddenly hot all over, the way Anna Maskell did.

Tonight was definitely a mistake. Even if she wasn’t involved with someone, he was only here in Muswell Hill for three months, and then he’d move on. He wasn’t in the market for a relationship, even a temporary one. He could never give his heart again. He’d buried his capacity to love right there in the grave with his wife and his daughter.

But he forced himself to smile back. To fake a semblance of being a normal member of the team. He let her introduce him to the people he hadn’t yet met from their ward, swapped his shoes for bowling shoes, paid for his games, and chipped in his share of the food and drink order. He played the frames along with the rest of the team, sitting squarely in the middle of the scoring and being neither spectacularly good nor spectacularly bad.

Though Anna was playing on his lane, and she’d been right on the money when she’d told him that she was terrible at bowling. Without the bumper bars being put up, her ball would’ve gone straight into the gutter every single time; as it was, she seemed to have a strategy of zig-zagging the ball between the sides of the lane in the hope of hitting the pins in the middle, more by luck than by judgement.

‘Yes! Six pins! Best roll of the night for me so far,’ she whooped as the pins went down.

‘Best roll of the last four years, by my count,’ one of the others teased.

‘I know! How cool is that?’ She punched the air and then grinned. ‘Go, me.’

Everyone else on the team high-fived her, so Jamie felt he had to follow suit.

But when the palm of his hand grazed briefly against hers, it felt like an electric shock.

He was pretty sure she felt it, too, because those beautiful sea-green eyes widened briefly. And for a second it felt as if it was just the two of them in a bubble: the sound of bowling balls thudding against pins on the other lanes, of the electronic scoreboard, of music playing and people laughing and talking, simply melted away.

Then he shook himself. This wasn’t happening. Anna was his colleague for the next few weeks, and then he’d be moving on.

But he couldn’t shift his awareness of her. The tall, energetic, human dynamo of their department. The woman who was definitely attracting him, despite his common sense.

When their food order arrived, they took a break, and Jamie found himself sitting next to Anna. His fingers accidentally brushed against hers as they reached for a piece of pizza at the same time, and again it felt like an electric shock. He was going to have to be really careful.

‘So have you had a chance to look at the Christmas menu yet?’ she asked.

The Christmas meal he really didn’t want to go to. ‘Sorry, no.’

She looked disappointed. ‘Well, we’ve still got a bit of time,’ she said. ‘And maybe I can talk you into being Father Christmas for me.’

He shook his head. ‘Sorry. Absolutely not.’

‘Don’t tell me—you’re allergic to red suits and big white beards?’

If she’d been pushy or snippy or sarcastic, it would’ve been easy to resist. To push back. But this, the jokiness underlain by a sweetness—this was much harder to resist.

He was going to have to tell her the truth.

‘I really don’t like Christmas,’ he said, and waited for her to start probing.

To his surprise, she didn’t.

‘A lot of people find Christmas hard,’ she said. ‘And it’s really rough on our patients and their parents. The patients who are old enough to want to be home with their families and are still young enough to believe in Father Christmas all want to know if that’s what he’ll give them: the chance to go home for Christmas. I hate telling them he can’t do that. The ones who are too old to believe in Father Christmas—for them it’s seeing their families and knowing how much it hurts them to be apart at Christmas, especially when they’re trying to juggle family celebrations with hospital visits and kind of splitting themselves in two. Christmas can be horrible.’

The way she said it made him realise how she felt. ‘But you don’t think it is?’

‘No. I love Christmas,’ she said. ‘I love the way it breaks down barriers and makes people kinder to each other, if only for a few hours. And I love the look of wonder in our younger patients’ faces when Father Christmas strides onto the ward, saying, “Ho-ho-ho,” and hands them a special gift from the Friends of the Hospital. It’s nothing hugely expensive, usually a book or some art stuff or a teddy bear, but enough to show them that Christmas in hospital isn’t completely bad. I bring my guitar in and we sing a few Christmassy songs; being part of that is just amazing. Despite all the worry and the fear, there’s still hope and love.’

Hope and love. Things he’d lost a long time ago.

‘I’m sorry for being pushy. I completely understand that you’d rather not be Father Christmas.’ She gave him a wry smile. ‘It’s really starting to look as if it’s going to be Mother Christmas this year.’

He suddenly realised what she was getting at. ‘You’re going to dress up in the Santa suit?’

‘I haven’t been able to talk anyone else into it,’ she said, ‘so it’s either no Father Christmas at all, or me. I guess at least I’m tall enough to get away with it.’ She spread her hands and grinned. ‘I might be able to borrow a voice-changer from my nephew or someone and hide it behind the beard. That, or I’m going to be channelling a Shakespearean actor and learning how to do a deep, booming voice.’

Anna Maskell was tall, yes, but there was nothing remotely masculine about her. She wouldn’t convince anyone that she was Father Christmas.

Jamie knew he should be nice and offer to help. But he just couldn’t get the words out.

Why did Jamie Thurston dislike Christmas so much? Anna wondered.

Maybe he’d had a difficult childhood, one where his family had rowed all the time and Christmas just made things worse—people being forced together for longer periods of time than they could stand each other. The Emergency Department was testament to how bad Christmas tensions could get. Add alcohol to the mix, and it was often explosive and painful.

But it would be rude and intrusive to ask.

She switched the conversation to something lighter. ‘There’s a team football thing in the park next weekend. Partners and children included, if you’d all like to come along.’

‘No children and no partner,’ he said, and the bleakness in his eyes shocked her.

Maybe he was divorced, and his former partner had moved away so he never got to see the children. In which case it was no wonder that he didn’t like Christmas. The festive season was a time for children, and not being able to see your kids at Christmas must be like rubbing salt into a very raw wound.

‘Sorry. I wasn’t trying to pry. Or to come on to you,’ she added, realising that he might have taken her words the wrong way.

And she really wasn’t trying to come on to him. Yes, Jamie Thurston was gorgeous; he reminded her of the actor in one of her favourite historical dramas, all dark and brooding and with those amazing cornflower-blue eyes. But she wasn’t risking her heart again. Johnny had made it very clear that nobody would want to tie themselves down to her, not once they knew the truth about her. She was pretty sure he’d said it to make himself feel better; the man she’d fallen in love with had been one of the good guys, but the shock of learning that they couldn’t have a family without a lot of medical intervention had changed him. It had made him look elsewhere; and then the guilt of knowing how badly he’d treated Anna had pushed him into saying unforgivable things that had hurt her even more than his betrayal.

‘I’m just not very good at social things,’ Jamie said.

‘Though the football isn’t a Christmassy thing.’ She winced even as the words spilled out of her mouth. Oh, for pity’s sake. The poor man had made it quite clear that he didn’t want to do the team thing next week. Why didn’t she take the hint and just get off his case?

Thankfully then their session on the bowling lanes started again, and she had to concentrate on trying to make the ball go straight. Not that she managed it. And this time she only knocked down one pin from each end. How pathetic was that?

Jamie said to her, ‘It’s your follow-through.’

‘Follow-through?’ she asked, mystified.

‘Where your hand points, that’s where the ball ends up.’

She laughed wryly. ‘Straight in the gutter, if I didn’t have the bumper bars up. But I guess my zig-zag approach is a bit too haphazard.’

‘Keep your arm straight and let the ball go when your hand’s pointing to the middle of the pins,’ he said. ‘Watch me.’

She did. ‘Wow. You got a strike.’

‘Because I aimed for the middle.’

‘I aim for the middle,’ she protested.

‘But you let the ball go too late,’ he said. ‘I take it you don’t go ten-pin bowling with your partner?’

Johnny hadn’t really been into ten-pin bowling. ‘No partner,’ she said.

He winced. ‘That wasn’t a come-on.’

‘I know.’ She smiled at him. ‘You sounded like someone who wants to help. A friend. And I appreciate that.’

He stilled, and she wondered if she’d gone too far.

But then he smiled. The kind of smile that lit up the whole room, and it transformed him utterly. It was as if he’d stepped out of the shadows he seemed to keep round him. When he smiled, Jamie Maskell was breathtakingly handsome.

‘I’ll help you with the next frame,’ he said.

‘Whatever you do, I’m still going to come last on our lane,’ she warned. ‘But it would be nice to actually do this right, for once.’

‘I can help you do that.’

She looked at him. ‘You’re like me, aren’t you? A fixer at heart.’

‘It’s kind of the definition of a surgeon, fixing things,’ he said dryly.

It was more than that, she thought. He was a fixer who wasn’t going to admit it.

Whatever had made Jamie Thurston put distance between himself and the world—and between himself and Christmas—maybe she could help him with that, the way he was helping her with the bowling.

She thought about it while they chatted with the others in their lane.

She stopped thinking for a little while when Jamie helped her with the bowling, standing close to her but not close enough to be sleazy or awkward. Because then he slid his arm along hers, showing her how to angle the ball correctly. The touch of his skin against his flustered her so much that she nearly forgot to let the ball go.

‘You went slightly to the left,’ he said when she’d knocked six pins down. ‘So this time you need to go slightly to the right.’

Again, he guided her through the procedure. And this time her ball hit the four pins in the middle, and they all went down.

‘There you go. You got a half-strike.’

‘That’s amazing.’ She flung her arms round him and hugged him.

When was the last time anyone had hugged him? When he’d actually let a woman hug him, because he’d pushed his mum and his sisters away, not to mention Hestia’s family and her best friend?

Probably at the funeral.

And now Anna Maskell had ignored all his usual barriers and hugged him. Briefly, because she stepped back almost immediately and said, ‘Sorry. That was a bit over the top. But I don’t think I’ve ever managed to get all the pins down like that before and I got a bit overexcited.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Let me be more appropriate. Thank you for your help, Mr Thurston,’ she said more formally.

‘You’re most welcome, Dr Maskell,’ he replied, equally formally. Though he could feel himself withdrawing again. Going back into the dark little hole where he’d lived for the last three years. But that hug had made him feel odd. As if there was a little flare of light, far in the distance. A light that drew him and beckoned him—if he had the courage to go and find it.

It took enough courage for him simply to exist from day to day. Going in search of a new life still felt too hard. But now he knew it was out there, and the little light wasn’t going to let itself hide again. It stayed put, telling him it would still be there when he was ready to look for it properly.

He managed to focus on the bowling for the rest of the evening. But then it was over, everyone was spilling outside, and his new colleagues all seemed to be heading off in different directions.

He’d walked a few steps when he realised that Anna was beside him. ‘It looks as if we’re going the same way,’ she said. ‘Do you mind if I walk with you?’

‘That’s fine.’

‘Thank you for the bowling lesson,’ she said.

‘Pleasure.’ The word was polite and automatic, but Jamie was shocked to realise that he actually meant it. He’d enjoyed helping Anna, seeing her confidence grow along with her ability.

She’d said that she thought he was a fixer at heart.

He had been, once. Before the thing had happened that he hadn’t been able to fix. And he had to admit that it had been good to feel that way again, however briefly.

‘I was thinking,’ she said. ‘Maybe I can help you.’

He frowned. ‘How?’

‘Christmas,’ she said.

The time of year he really disliked.

‘This isn’t a come-on,’ she added. ‘Just to be clear, I’m not looking to date anyone.’

She’d said earlier that she didn’t have a partner; though Jamie could imagine Anna Maskell right at the heart of a family. A large one. Why didn’t she have a partner, and why didn’t she want to date anyone?

Though it was none of his business and he wasn’t going to ask; if he started asking personal questions, then it was tantamount to an invitation for other people to ask him the same sort of things. Things he didn’t want to discuss.

‘I’m not going to pry,’ she said, echoing his own thoughts. ‘But Christmas is a fairly big thing at Muswell Hill Memorial Hospital, so it’s going to be in your face all the time. Maybe I can help show you that Christmas has its good side, so you don’t feel you have to try to avoid it all the time and it makes life feel a bit less pants at work.’

Maybe he should tell her why he disliked Christmas, so she’d back off.

Then again, he didn’t want to see the pity in her face once he told her what had happened.

‘Show me that Christmas has its good side,’ he echoed.

‘Yes. And, just in case you think I’m pitying you, I will admit that I have an ulterior motive.’

He frowned. ‘Doesn’t that kind of ruin any scheming, if you warn me that you have an ulterior motive?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘because I believe in what you see is what you get.’

He was going to have to ask now. ‘What’s your ulterior motive?’

‘I help you, and you help me.’

Oh, no. He knew exactly where this was going. ‘You mean, if you show me that Christmas isn’t the worst time of the year, then I’ll play Father Christmas for the ward?’

She grinned. ‘Thank you, Jamie. That’s an offer I’m very happy to accept.’

Hang on. He hadn’t offered. He’d just said out loud what he was pretty sure she was thinking. ‘But I—’ He couldn’t finish the sentence. She’d shocked him into silence.

‘Sometimes,’ she said gently, ‘when you avoid something, you give it more power than it deserves. Facing it head-on can cut it back down to its proper size and make it manageable again.’

He didn’t have an answer to that.

‘I’ve had days when I’ve had to fake it to make it,’ she said. ‘Days when I haven’t wanted to get out of bed and face the world—days when all I’ve wanted to do is curl into a little ball and let it all wash over me.’

He knew exactly how that felt, and it made him look at her. Really look at her. And there wasn’t any pity in her expression. Just empathy. Understanding. Clearly someone or something had hurt her enough that she’d been through an emotional nightmare, too.

‘I’m not going to pry,’ she said, ‘but I think Christmas is like that for you. I’m a fixer, just like I think you are. I can’t fix everything, and neither can you. But I reckon we might be able to fix a problem for each other, because we’re on the same team.’

Of course she couldn’t fix his problem. Nobody could bring anyone back from the dead.

He was about to say no. But then he remembered this evening. How she’d steamrollered him into joining in with the ten-pin bowling, and he’d actually ended up enjoying the evening. He’d felt part of a group of people—something he’d told himself he never wanted to do again. But that momentary closeness had managed to do what he’d thought was impossible; it had temporarily lifted the cloak of misery from round him.

If she could take the bits he hated about Christmas away, too, then maybe this was worth a shot. And if she could do that, he’d very happily wear that Father Christmas outfit to help her in return. ‘So what exactly are you suggesting?’ he asked.

‘Doing Christmassy things together,’ she said. ‘It’s the middle of November now. Give me a month. If I can convince you that Christmas has its good side, then you agree to be Father Christmas for the ward.’

‘And if you can’t convince me?’

‘Then there’s a bit of padding and a voice-changer in my very near future,’ she said. ‘And I’ll also apologise for not being able to make this time of year more bearable for you.’

He could walk away now. Stay wrapped in his shroud of misery.

Or he could say yes.

Anna had made it clear that she wasn’t asking him because she fancied him. The pull of attraction he felt towards her was clearly one-sided, and he had no intention of acting upon it anyway. She was merely suggesting that they could help each other.

He could almost hear Hestia’s voice in his ear. Say yes. The petite ballet teacher he’d fallen in love with had adored Christmas. She’d loved all the snowflakes and the fairy lights and the joy that her favourite ballet brought to her students and their parents alike. He’d loved it as much as she had, because her joy had been infectious.