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Bliss.
There was nothing like your own bed, he thought, closing his eyes with a long, unravelling sigh. And then he remembered he hadn’t taken the painkillers, and he needed to before he went to sleep or his arm would wake him in the night.
He put the light back on and got out of bed again, filled a glass with water and came back to the bed. He’d thrown the pills on the bedside chest, and he took two and opened the top drawer to put them in.
And there it was.
Lying in the drawer, jumbled up with pens and cufflinks and bits of loose change. Oh, Lord. Slowly, almost reluctantly, he pulled the little frame out and stared down at the faces laughing back up at him—Rachel, full of life as usual, sitting on the grass with Ben in between her knees, his little hands filled with grass mowings and his eyes alight with mischief. He’d been throwing the grass mowings all over her, and they’d all been laughing.
And six months later, five years ago today, they’d been mown down by a drunk driver who’d just left his office Christmas party. They’d been doing some last-minute shopping—collecting a watch she’d bought him, he discovered when he eventually went through the bag of their things he’d been given at the hospital. He’d worn it every day for the last five years—until it had been shattered, smashed to bits against an alpine tree during the avalanche.
An avalanche that had brought him home—to a woman called Amelia, and her three innocent and displaced children.
Was this Rachel’s doing? Trying to tell him to move on, to forget them both?
He traced their faces with his finger, swallowing down the grief that had never really left him, the grief that sent him away every Christmas to try and forget the unforgettable, to escape the inescapable.
He put the photo back in the drawer and closed it softly, turned off the light, then lay back down and stared dry-eyed into the night.
She couldn’t sleep.
Something had woken her—some strange sound, although how she could know the sounds of the house so well already she had no idea, but somehow she did, and this one was strange.
She got out of bed and checked the children, but all of them were sleeping, Thomas flat out on his back with his arms flung up over his head, Edward on his tummy with one leg stuck out the side, and Kitty curled on her side with her hand under her cheek and her battered old teddy snuggled in the crook of her arm.
So not them, then.
Jake?
She looked over the banisters, but all was quiet and there was no light.
Rufus?
Oh, Lord, Rufus. Did he want to go out? Was that what had woken her, him yipping or scratching at the door?
She pulled on a jumper over her pyjamas—because, of course, in her haste she’d left her dressing gown on the back of the door at her sister’s—and tiptoed down the stairs, glancing along to Jake’s room as she reached the head of the lower flight.
She’d brought his luggage up earlier while he was sleeping and put it in there, because he couldn’t possibly manage to lug it up there himself, and she’d had her first look at his room.
It was over the formal drawing room, with an arched opening to the bathroom at the bay window end, and a great rolltop bath sat in the middle, with what must be the most spectacular view along the endless lawn to the woods in the distance. She couldn’t picture him in it at all, there was a huge double shower the size of the average wetroom that seemed much more likely, and a pair of gleaming washbasins, and in a separate little room with its own basin and marble-tiled walls was a loo.
And at the opposite end of the room was the bed. Old, solid, a vast and imposing four-poster, the head end and the top filled in with heavily carved panelling, it was perfect for the room. Perfect for the house. The sort of bed where love was made and children were born and people slipped quietly away at the end of their lives, safe in its arms.
It was a wonderful, wonderful bed. And not in the least monastic. She could picture him in it so easily.
Was he lying in it now? She didn’t know. Maybe, maybe not—and she was mad to think about it.
There was no light on, and the house was in silence, but it felt different, she thought. There was something about it which had changed with his arrival, a sort of—rightness, as if the house had relaxed now he was home.
Which didn’t explain what had woken her. And the door to his room was open a crack. She’d gone down to let the dog out and tidy up the kitchen after she’d settled the children and finished unpacking their things and he must have come upstairs by then, but she hadn’t noticed the door open. Perhaps he’d come out again to get something and hadn’t shut it, and that was what had woken her, but there was no sign of him now.
She went down to the breakfast room, guided only by the moonlight, and opened the door, and she heard the gentle thump of the dog’s tail on the floor and the clatter of his nails.
‘Hello, my lovely man,’ she crooned, crouching down and pulling gently on his ears. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I take it you’re talking to the dog.’
She gave a little shriek and pressed her hand to her chest, then started to laugh. ‘Good grief, Jake, you scared me to death!’ She straightened up and reached for the light, then hesitated, conscious of her tired old pyjamas. ‘Are you OK?’
‘I couldn’t sleep. You?’
‘I thought I heard a noise.’
He laughed softly. ‘In this house? Of course you heard a noise! It creaks like a ship.’
‘I know. It settles. I love it—it sounds as if it’s relaxing. No, there was something else. It must have been you.’
‘I stumbled over the dog—he came to see me and I hadn’t put the light on and I kicked him by accident and he yelped—and, before you ask, he’s fine. I nudged him, really, but he seemed a bit upset by it, so I sat with him.’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry—he does get underfoot and—well, I think he was kicked as a puppy. Has he forgiven you?’
The soft sound of Jake’s laughter curled round her again, warming her. ‘I think so. He’s been on my lap.’
‘Ah. Sounds like it, then.’ She hesitated, wondering if she should leave him to it and go back to bed, but sensing that there was something wrong, something more than he was telling her. ‘How’s the fire?’
‘OK. I think it could do with more wood.’
‘I’ll get some.’
She went out of the back door and brought in an armful of logs, putting on the kitchen light as she went, and she left it on when she came back, enough to see by but hopefully not enough to see just how tired her pyjamas really were, and the spill of yellow light made the room seem cosy and intimate.
Which was absurd, considering its size, but everything was in scale and so it didn’t seem big, just—safe.
She put the logs in the basket and opened the fire, throwing some in, and as the flames leapt up she went to shut it but he stopped her.
‘Leave it open. It’s nice to sit and stare into the flames. It helps—’
Helps? Helps what? she wanted to ask, but she couldn’t, somehow, so she knelt there on the hearthrug in the warmth of the flames, with Rufus snuggled against her side, his skinny, feathery tail wafting against her, and waited.
But Jake didn’t say any more, just sighed and dropped his head back against the chair and closed his eyes. She could see that his fingers were curled around a glass, and on the table behind him was a bottle. The whisky?
‘What?’
She jumped guiltily. ‘Nothing.’
He snorted. ‘It’s never nothing with women. Yes, it’s the whisky. No, it doesn’t help.’
‘Jake—’
‘No. Leave it, Amelia. Please. If you want to do something useful, you could make us a cup of tea.’
‘How about a hot milky drink?’
‘I’m not five.’
‘No, but you’re tired, you’re hurt and you said you’d had enough caffeine today—it might help you sleep.’
‘Tea,’ he said implacably.
She shrugged and got to her feet, padded back through to the kitchen and put the kettle on, turning in time to see him drain his glass and set it down on the table. He glanced up and met her eyes, and sighed.
‘I’ve only had one. I’m not an alcoholic, Amelia.’
‘I never suggested you were!’ she said, appalled that he’d think she was criticising when actually she’d simply been concerned for his health and well-being.
‘So stop looking at me as if you’re the Archangel Gabriel and I’m going off the rails!’
She gave a soft chuckle and took two mugs out of the cupboard. ‘I’m the last person to criticise anyone for life choices. I’m homeless, for heavens’ sake! And I’ve got three children, only one of whom was planned, and I’m unemployed and my life’s a total mess, so pardon me if I pick you up on that one! I just wondered …’
‘Wondered what? Why I’m such a miserable bastard?’
‘Are you? Miserable, I mean? Kate thought—’ She broke off, not wanting him to think Kate had been discussing him, but it was too late, and one eyebrow climbed autocratically.
‘Kate thought—?’ he prompted.
‘You were just a loner. You are, I mean. A loner.’
‘And what do you think, little Miss Fixit?’
She swallowed. ‘I think you’re sad, and lonely. She said you’re very private, but I think that’s because it all hurts too much to talk about.’
His face lost all expression, and he turned back to the fire, the only sign of movement from him the flex of the muscle in his jaw. ‘Why don’t you forget the amateur psychology and concentrate on making the tea?’ he said, his voice devoid of emotion, but she could still see that tic in his jaw, the rhythmic bunching of the muscle, and she didn’t know whether to persevere or give up, because she sensed it might all be a bit of a Pandora’s box and, once opened, she might well regret all the things that came out.
So she made the tea, and took it through and sat beside the fire in what started as a stiff and unyielding silence and became in the end a wary truce.
He was the first to break the silence.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve made the shopping list?’
She shook her head. ‘Not yet. I could do it now.’
‘No, don’t worry. We can do it over breakfast. I have no doubt that, no matter how little sleep we may have had, the kids will be up at the crack of dawn raring to go, so there’ll be plenty of time.’
She laughed a little unsteadily, feeling the tension drain out of her at his words. ‘I’m sure.’ She got to her feet and held out her hand for his mug, then was surprised when he reached up his left hand, the one in the cast, and took her fingers in his.
‘Ignore me, Amelia. I’ll get over it. I’ll be fine tomorrow.’
She nodded, not understanding really, because how could she? But she let it go, for now at least, and she squeezed his fingers gently and then let go, and he dropped his arm and held out the mug.
‘Thanks for the tea. It was nice.’
The tea? Or having someone to sit and drink it with?
He didn’t say, and she wasn’t asking, but one thing she knew about this man, whatever Kate might say to the contrary—he wasn’t a loner.
‘My pleasure,’ she murmured and, putting the mugs in the sink, she closed the doors of the fire and shut it down again. With a murmured, ‘Good night,’ she went upstairs to bed, but she didn’t sleep until she heard the soft creak of the stairs and the little click as his bedroom door closed.
Then she let out the breath she’d been holding and slipped into a troubled and uneasy sleep.
CHAPTER FIVE
IT WAS the first time in years he’d been round a supermarket, and Christmas Eve probably wasn’t the day to start—not when they even had to queue to get into the car park, and by the time they’d found a space Jake was beginning to wonder why on earth he’d suggested it.
It was going to be a nightmare, he knew it, rammed to the roof with festive goodies and wall-to-wall Christmas jingles and people in silly hats—he was dreading it, and it didn’t disappoint.
The infuriatingly jolly little tunes on the in-store speakers were constantly being interrupted with calls for multi-skilled staff to go to the checkouts—a fact that didn’t inspire hope for a quick getaway—and the place was rammed with frustrated shoppers who couldn’t reach the shelves for the trolleys jamming the aisles.
‘I have an idea,’ he said as they fought to get down the dairy aisle and he was shunted in the ankle by yet another trolley. ‘You know what we need, I don’t want to be shoved around and Thomas needs company, so why don’t I stand at the end with him and you go backwards and forwards picking up the stuff?’
And it all, suddenly, got much easier because he could concentrate on amusing Thomas—and that actually was probably the hardest part. Not that he was hard to entertain, quite the opposite, but it brought back so many memories—memories he’d buried with his son—and it was threatening to wreck him. Then, just when he thought he’d go mad if he had to look at that cheerful, chubby little smile any longer, he realised their system wasn’t working.
The trolley wasn’t getting fuller and, watching her, he could see why. She was obviously reluctant to spend too much of his money, which was refreshing but unnecessary, so he gave up and shoved the trolley one-handed into the fray while she was dithering over the fresh turkeys.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘They’re so expensive. The frozen ones are much cheaper—’
‘But they take ages to defrost so we don’t have a choice. Just pick one. Here, they’ve got nice free-range Bronze turkeys—get one of them,’ he suggested, earning himself a searching look.
‘What do you know about Bronze turkeys?’ she asked incredulously.
He chuckled. ‘Very little—but I know they’re supposed to have the best flavour, I’m ethically comfortable with free range and, anyway, they’re the most expensive and therefore probably the most sought after. That’s usually an indicator of quality. So pick one and let’s get on.’
‘But—they’re so expensive, Jake, and I feel so guilty taking your money—’
He gave up, reached over and single-handedly heaved a nice fat turkey into the trolley. ‘Right. Next?’
‘Um—stuffing,’ she said weakly, and he felt a little tug at his sleeve.
‘You said we could have sausages and cook them and have them on sticks,’ Kitty said hopefully.
‘Here—traditional chipolatas,’ he said, and threw three packets in the trolley, thought better of it and added another two for good measure. ‘Bacon?’
‘Um—probably.’ She put a packet of sausagemeat stuffing in the trolley and he frowned at it, picked up another with chestnuts and cranberries, which looked more interesting, and put that in, too.
‘You’re getting into this, aren’t you?’ she teased, coming back with the bacon.
So was she, he noticed with relief, seeing that at last she was picking up the quality products and not the cheapest, smallest packet she could find of whatever it was. They moved on, and the trolley filled up. Vegetables, fruit, a traditional Christmas pudding that would last them days, probably, but would at least be visible in the middle of the old refectory table in the breakfast room, and a chocolate log for the children. Then, when they’d done the food shopping and filled the trolley almost to the brim, they took it through the checkout, put it all in the car and went back inside for ‘the exciting stuff’, as Kitty put it.
Christmas decorations for the tree they had yet to buy, little nets of chocolate coins in gold foil, crackers for the table, a wreath for the door—the list was nearly as long as the first and, by the time they got to the end of it, the children were hungry and Thomas, who’d been as good as gold and utterly, heart-wrenchingly enchanting until that point, was starting to grizzle.
‘I tell you what—why don’t you take the kids and get them something to eat and drink while I deal with this lot?’ he suggested, peeling a twenty pound note out of his wallet and giving it to her.
She hesitated, but he just sighed and shoved it at her, and with a silent nod she flashed him a smile and took the children off to the canteen.
Which gave him long enough to go back up the aisles and look for presents for them all. And, because it had thinned out by that point, he went to the customer services and asked if there was anyone who could help him wrap the presents for the children. He brandished his cast pathetically and, between that and the black eye, he charmed them into it shamelessly.
There was nothing outrageous in his choices. There was nothing outrageous in the shop anyway but, even if there had been, he would have avoided it. It wasn’t necessary, and he didn’t believe in spoiling children, but there was a colouring book with glue and glitter that Kitty had fingered longingly and been made to put back, and he’d noticed Edward looking at an intricate construction toy of the sort he’d loved as a boy, and there was a nice chunky plastic shape sorter which he thought Thomas might like.
And then there was Amelia.
She didn’t have any gloves, he’d noticed, and he’d commented on it on the way there when she was rubbing her hands and blowing on them holding the steering wheel.
‘Sure, it’s freezing, but I can’t do things with gloves on,’ she’d explained.
But he’d noticed some fingerless mitts, with little flaps that buttoned back out of the way and could be let down to tuck her fingers into to turn them into mittens. And they were in wonderful, ludicrously pink stripes with a matching scarf that would snuggle round her neck and keep her warm while she walked the dog.
He even bought a little coat for Rufus, because he’d noticed him shivering out on their walk first thing.
And then he had to make himself stop, because they weren’t his family and he didn’t want to make them—or, more specifically, Amelia—feel embarrassed. But he chucked in a jigsaw to put on the low coffee table in the drawing room and work on together, just because it was the sort of thing he’d loved in his childhood, and also a family game they could play together.
And then he really did stop, and they were all wrapped and paid for, together with the decorations, and someone even helped him load them into the car and wished him a merry Christmas, and he found himself saying it back with a smile.
Really?
He went into the canteen and found them sitting in a litter of sandwich wrappers and empty cups. ‘All set?’
She nodded. ‘Yes. We were just coming to find you. Thank you so much—’
‘Don’t mention it. Right, we’d better get on, because we need to take this lot home and then get a tree before it’s too late, and at some point today I need to go to the hospital and have a proper cast put on my arm.’
‘Wow! Look at the tree. It’s enormous!’
It wasn’t, not really, but it was quite big enough—and it had been a bit of a struggle to get it in place with one arm out of action in its new cast, but just the look on the children’s faces made it all worth it—and, if he wasn’t mistaken, there was the sheen of tears in Amelia’s eyes.
They’d put it in pride of place in the bay window in the drawing room, and lit the fire—a great roaring log fire in the open hearth, with crackling flames and the sweet smell of apple-wood smoke—and, between the wood smoke and the heady scent of the tree, the air just smelled of Christmas. All they had to do now was decorate the tree, and for Jake it was a step too far.
‘I’m going to sit this out,’ he said, heading for the door, but Kitty shook her head and grabbed his good hand and tugged him back, shocking him into immobility.
‘You can’t, Jake! You have to help us—we’re all too small to reach the top, and you have to put the lights on and the fairy and all the tinsel and everything!’
Why was it, he wondered, that children—especially earnest little girls—always talked in italics and exclamation marks? And her eyes were pleading with him, and there was no way he could walk away from her. From any of them.
‘OK. I’ll just go and put the kettle on—’
‘No! Lights first, because otherwise we can’t do anything until you get back, and you’ll be ages!’
Italics again. He smiled at her. ‘Well, in that case, I’ll put the lights on first, but just the lights, and then we’ll have a quick cup of tea and we’ll finish it off. OK?’
She eyed him a little suspiciously, as if she didn’t trust his notion of quick and wasn’t quite sure about the emphasis on the words, because there was something mildly teasing in them and he could see she was working it out, working out if he was only teasing or if he was being mean.
And he couldn’t be mean to her, he discovered. Not in the least. In fact, all he wanted to do was gather her up into his arms and tell her it would all be all right, but of course it wasn’t his place to do that and he couldn’t make it right for her, couldn’t make her father step up to the plate and behave like a decent human being.
If he was the man he was thinking of, Jake knew David Jones, had met him in the past, and he hadn’t liked him at all. Oh, he’d been charming enough, but he’d talked rubbish, been full of bull and wild ideas with no foundation, and at one point a year or two ago he’d approached him at a conference asking for his investment in some madcap scheme. He’d declined, and he’d heard later, not unexpectedly, that he’d gone down the pan. And it didn’t surprise him in the least, if it was the same David Jones, that he’d walked out on his family.
So he couldn’t make it right for David’s little daughter. But he could help her with the tree, and he could make sure they were warm and safely housed until their situation improved. And it was all he needed to do, all his conscience required.
It was only his heart that he was having trouble with, and he shut the door on it firmly and concentrated on getting the lights on the tree without either knocking it over or hurting any more of the innumerable aches and pains that were emerging with every hour that passed.
‘Are you OK doing that?’
He turned his head and smiled down at Amelia ruefully. ‘I’ll live. I’m nearly done.’
‘I’ll put the kettle on. You look as if you could do with some more painkillers.’
‘I’ll be fine. It’s just stretching that hurts—’
‘And bending over, and standing, and—’
‘Just put the kettle on,’ he said softly, and she opened her mouth again, closed it and went out.
He watched her walk down the hall, watched the gentle sway of her hips, the fluid grace of her movements, the lightness in her step that hadn’t been there yesterday, and he felt a sharp stab of what could only be lust. She was a beautiful, sensuous woman, intelligent and brave, and he realised he wanted to gather her up in his arms, too, and to hell with the complications.
But he couldn’t, and he wouldn’t, so with a quiet sigh he turned back to the tree and finished draping the string of lights around the bottom, then turned them on and stood back.
‘How’s that?’
‘Really pretty!’ Kitty whispered, awed.
‘It’s a bit crooked,’ he said, wondering if there was any way he could struggle in under the tree and right it, but Edward—typically—rushed in with reassurance.
‘It doesn’t show,’ he said quickly, ‘and it looks really nice. Can we put the rest of the things on now?’
‘We have to wait for Mummy!’ Kitty said, sounding appalled, and so Jake sent them off to the kitchen to find out what she was doing and to tell her to bring biscuits with the tea. He lowered himself carefully on to the sofa and smiled at Thomas, who was sitting on the floor inside a ring of fat cushions with a colourful plastic teething ring in his mouth.
‘All right, little man?’ he asked, and Thomas gave him a toothy grin and held out the toy. It was covered in spit, but it didn’t matter, he was only showing it to Jake, not offering it to him, so he admired it dutifully and tried oh, so hard not to think about Ben.