Christmas Eve: Doorstep Delivery

Chapter One

HAYLEY climbed out of the taxi, slipped on the ice and landed hard on her bottom in the snow.

‘Are you all right, love?’ The taxi driver peered at her and she gave a weak smile as she slithered and slid her way back onto her feet, clutching the door for support and mentally itemising the damage.

‘I’m fine,’ she lied, trying not to picture the bruise that was going to appear later. ‘Fortunately my bottom is big enough to provide a decent cushion. Which is useful because I’m not that great at walking on ice. Actually, I’m not that great at walking on pavements either. I’m the only person I know who can trip on a flat surface.’

The taxi driver chuckled sympathetically. ‘Uncoordinated, are you? I have a sister like that. Always falling over, she is.’ He flicked on the windscreen wipers to clear the snow. ‘It’s been great chatting to you, Hayley. Cheered up my Christmas Eve, you have. Feel as though I’ve known you for years.’

Remembering just how frank she’d been, Hayley squirmed with embarrassment. She’d said far too much. As usual. He knew everything about her except her bra size. Come to think of it, he probably knew that, too, because she had mentioned that she always felt nervous in strapless dresses. In her head she could hear her stepbrother’s mocking voice saying, Hayley doesn’t have an ‘off’ switch. But what was she supposed to do? She’d been in the car for twenty minutes and it would have been rude not to speak. ‘I’m glad you were the one who picked me up from the station, Jack. And I hope you get that hip of yours sorted out soon.’

‘I’m sure I will. The doctors are very clever around here. Good with their hands, you know?’ He gave her a knowing wink and Hayley blushed, wondering what had possessed her to confess that particular bit of her life history.

‘How much do I owe you, Jack?’

‘Nothing. Haven’t enjoyed a fare so much all year. You made me laugh so hard I almost had the car off the road at that last corner,’ he said cheerfully, setting his meter to zero. ‘And if you really want my opinion, I think your family should be ashamed of themselves. If my daughter were a midwife I’d be proud as punch—I wouldn’t be telling her she was wasting her talents and should have been a lawyer. Where would the world be if we all picked our jobs on the basis of how much they pay? No wonder you wanted to come up here and escape. Now, forget about the lot of them and have a good time. I hope the romance works out for you. With any luck he’ll propose by New Year and then you can invite me to your wedding.’

Wedding?

Had she actually confessed that bit of her fantasy?

‘If there’s a wedding, you’ll be there. I’ll need someone rooting for me on my side of the church,’ Hayley said weakly, holding onto the door and wishing she hadn’t revealed quite so much to someone she’d known for twenty minutes. It wasn’t so bad to have told him why she wasn’t going home to her family for Christmas, but it was probably a mistake to have told him about that night.

But she was excited! And happy! And it was all because of a man.

At least now she was in the same country as him, she thought dreamily. The thought that he might be within miles of her made her want to sing and dance. It was only the knowledge that dancing might leave her with two broken ankles that stopped her from twirling in the snow.

That and the fact that she didn’t want to make a bad impression on her new employer.

Brushing the snow from her coat, she thought to herself that for once—just once—it would be nice to be a naturally elegant and dignified person. She would have liked to arrive at her new job as housekeeper looking like one of those women you saw in magazines—long black coat, elegant boots, lipstick…

‘You’ve got snow in your hair, love,’ the taxi driver said helpfully, and then nodded at the house behind her. ‘Well, this is it. High Fell Barn. Nice place. Smart. Like something from one of those fancy architect designed home programmes you see on the TV. I know you haven’t met the family but I can tell you from looking at this that they’re loaded. I wouldn’t mind spending Christmas here myself. Starting to think you might be right to ditch the whole family thing.’

‘Oh, no, I think family is wonderful,’ Hayley said hastily, dragging snow out of her hair with her fingers. ‘Just not my family. And they’d probably be all right if I was different. They’re all scarily clever and co-ordinated and have really well-paid jobs and apartments with big windows and glass—you know the sort of thing. I was the runt of the litter. Well, actually I came from a different litter because they’re my step-siblings. My mum married their dad and they never forgave me for that.’ She was doing it again, talking, talking, talking. ‘Anyway, enough of that,’ she said lamely, and Jack smiled at her.

‘Stepfamilies can be complicated. Everyone knows that. Lots of jealousy there.’

‘I don’t think my step-siblings are jealous,’ Hayley said humbly. ‘More embarrassed to be officially associated with me, I think.’

Whoops—here comes Hayley. How many babies has she dropped this year?

Not for the first time Hayley indulged in a swift fantasy about her acid-tongued stepbrother choking on a chicken bone and her saving his life with a skilfully performed Heimlich manoeuvre. Of course, he’d be blubbering with gratitude, her whole family open-mouthed with awe at her hidden talents, begging her forgiveness for having so grossly underestimated her.

We had no idea, Hayley.

Trying not to dwell on how inadequate her family made her feel, Hayley stared at the huge glass windows and the snow-covered roof of the barn. Despite the size of the place, it was the most welcoming building she’d ever seen. Lights twinkled along the front of the barn and through the window she could see a haphazardly decorated Christmas tree standing guard over piles of brightly wrapped parcels.

To the side of the barn was a wide stream in full flow, the winter silence disturbed by the roar and rush of white water as it frothed down from the top of the icy fells.

‘That’s the beck.’ The taxi driver nodded. ‘That’s what we call it in these parts. In summer it’s no more than a trickle of water but now, with the snow melting…’

‘It’s fantastic.’ After the urban chaos of Chicago, Hayley savoured the sound of the water smashing over the rocks on its way down the mountain.

Behind the barn stretched acres of fields, sparkling white with snow, and beyond that the forest and the mountains. Pine trees stood tall and straight as sentries either side of the barn, tiny twinkling lights twisted through their branches.

It was like something from a Christmas card. She half expected to see Santa and a team of reindeer hauling a large sack towards the gently smoking chimney.

‘It’s enough to lift your spirits, isn’t it?’ The taxi driver grinned at her. ‘Talking of which, it’s time I went home and lifted spirits with the wife. Brandy is her tipple. You never know—I might get lucky. Hope you do, too.’

‘I don’t know—I’m starting to think this might have been a mistake,’ Hayley confessed, cautiously letting go of the car door and pushing her hands into her coat pockets for extra warmth. ‘I don’t even know where the guy lives. I just know it’s the Lake District.’

‘But you know he works at the hospital so he should be easy to track down once Christmas is over.’

Desperate for reassurance, she bit her lip. ‘Do you think it’s crazy to have come all this way to find a guy I’ve only met once?’

‘I think it’s brave.’

‘Brave as in stupid or brave as in courageous?’

‘If you hadn’t done it, you would have spent the rest of your life thinking, What if he was the one? And what if he was? You’d have thrown it all away. What’s the worst that can happen? He can reject you and you’ll be a bit embarrassed. So what?’

Feeling her nerve seep out of her like air from a punctured tyre, Hayley decided that if she was going to find the courage to carry out this plan, she needed to end this conversation. ‘Thanks for the lift, Jack. Merry Christmas.’

‘Merry Christmas to you.’ His eyes twinkled. ‘Will you make it to the door without slipping?’

‘Probably not, but don’t worry—bruises suit me. I look good in blue and purple.’ Hayley smoothed her hair, even though she knew that without a pair of straighteners and half an hour in front of a mirror her attempts to look groomed wouldn’t make an impact.

With a final wave and toot of his horn, Jack drove away and Hayley was left staring at the house.

A pair of child’s red Wellington boots were tipped over in the snow, and a tiny shovel had been discarded on the path, as if the owner hadn’t been able to wait to run back inside this wonderful house and prepare for Christmas.

It wasn’t a house, Hayley thought wistfully. It was a home.

A dream home.

And inside was a family who needed her—a family who wasn’t going to spend the whole festive season treating her as the entertainment.

So why was she suddenly nervous?

Well, because she was always the same about decisions. Right thing, wrong thing? This or that? Invariably she jumped in with both feet and then realised that the other way was the better way. In fact, she’d spent most of her life unravelling the consequences of decisions she’d made.

When she’d been miles away in Chicago, Christmas with a bunch of strangers had seemed like a brilliant idea. Suddenly she wasn’t so sure.

She was about to take a job with a family she’d never even met, in a part of the country she didn’t know. And all so that she could avoid her own agonising family Christmas and track down a gorgeous stranger she’d spent one night with.

When she’d come up with the plan it had seemed bold and proactive.

A plan worthy of a competent, twenty-first-century woman.

Hayley swallowed. She didn’t need her step-siblings to point out that she wasn’t really a competent, twenty-first-century woman.

If she were a competent, twenty-first-century woman she wouldn’t have slunk out of an impossibly sexy man’s swanky hotel room before he’d woken up, neither would she have been wearing the previous night’s dress and a scarlet face that announced her sins to anyone who happened to be looking. And she definitely wouldn’t have left her knickers on his bedroom floor! A twenty-first-century woman would certainly have been able to find her knickers in the dark. Except that a twenty-first-century woman wouldn’t have needed to. She would have woken up next to the impossibly sexy man, calmly ordered room service and then handed him her phone number or left with her head held high.

She had slunk out like a criminal, ensuring that there was no chance he would ever call her, because he didn’t have her number.

All he had was her knickers.

At least Cinderella had had the sense to make it a shoe, Hayley thought gloomily as she picked her way through the snow to the front door. Losing a shoe made you seem slightly dippy and a little romantic—although it made it difficult to walk, of course. But losing knickers…

She didn’t even want to think about how losing a pair of knickers made you look.

Prince Charming would never have roamed his kingdom looking for the bottom that fitted the knickers, would he?

Cross with herself, she kicked a lump of snow and watched it scatter. She’d met the man of her dreams and then she’d walked out! What an idiot. Her step-siblings would have laughed themselves sick. Soppy, romantic Hayley, always dreaming of marriage and happy endings.

Hayley sighed. She wasn’t that old-fashioned. She had spent the night with him—although her embarrassingly quick surrender had had more to do with his superior seduction technique than her impressive decision-making abilities.

But she wasn’t going to think about that now. She wasn’t going to think about his skilled hands, or his clever mouth or the way he knew exactly where to touch and how…

Oh, God, please, please, don’t let him reject her. Please let him be dreaming of her right now. And most of all please let him have spent the past few weeks frantically calling detective agencies trying to track her down. All I know about her is that she has great taste in underwear.

Surely he was going to be pleased to see her?

Imagining his reaction to her unexpected arrival brought a smile to her face. Perhaps she’d better make sure that their first meeting took place in private in case he just hauled her into his arms and proposed on the spot.

She wondered what her stepsister would say when she met him.

How did our Hayley ever get herself a man like that?

Smiling at her own fantasies, she reached towards the doorbell.

Patrick pushed the haphazardly wrapped presents under the tree and looked at his ten-year-old son. ‘Alfie, why are you looking at the clock?’

Alfie gave a guilty start. ‘I don’t keep looking at the clock.’

‘Yes, you do.’

‘Well, it’s Christmas Eve. I—I’m excited.’ Alfie’s gaze slid furtively to the door. ‘Daddy, don’t you wish you had someone to help cook the turkey?’

‘I can cook a turkey.’ Patrick added a strip of sticky tape to a parcel that was bursting out of its wrapping.

‘Last year you said if you ever saw a turkey again it would be too soon.’

Patrick winced. Was Christmas ever going to run smoothly? ‘That was last year. I’ve studied a cookery book. I don’t foresee any complications.’ He tried to look confident. He could perform a Caesarean section in less than four minutes if the need arose. Why did he struggle to cook a turkey?

‘If you had a wife, she could cook the turkey.’

‘That isn’t a reason to get married. These days, women don’t always like doing that sort of thing.’ Patrick extracted himself from under the tree, his wide shoulders dragging through the branches and sending a shower of needles over the pale wooden floor. ‘Why are you talking about wives? We’re going to have a great Christmas. You, Posy and me.’

‘And the kittens.’

‘And the kittens.’ Remembering the kittens, Patrick frowned. ‘That woman who phoned earlier is coming to look at them any moment now. With any luck she’ll fall in love with them and that will solve one of our problems.’

‘The kittens aren’t a problem!’

‘Having four of them is a problem.’ Seeing the forlorn look on Alfie’s face, Patrick felt a flash of guilt and squatted down in front of his son. ‘Alfie, we cannot keep four kittens.’

Alfie fiddled with a bauble on the tree. ‘What if the woman gets here and she doesn’t want the kittens?’

‘Why wouldn’t she want the kittens? That’s why she’s coming.’ Patrick scooped up a pile of discarded books and stood up. ‘Take this lot up to your bedroom, will you? We need to make room for all the new mess you’re going to make on Christmas Day.’

Alfie looked up at him, a flash of desperation in his eyes. ‘Do you promise that whatever happens you won’t be angry?’

Patrick frowned. ‘Alfie, what is going on?’ He forced himself to ask the question that always niggled at the back of his mind. ‘Are you missing Mum? Is that what this is about?’

Alfie rubbed his foot along the groove in the floor. ‘Do you miss her?’

How did you tell a child that divorce had come as a blessing?

‘Your mum and I made a mistake when we got married,’ Patrick said gruffly. ‘It happens. It has nothing to do with you. We both love you.’

‘But you didn’t really love each other.’

Abandoning the books, Patrick squatted back down in front of his son. ‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘We didn’t. Not enough to make marriage work. We’d only known each other a month when we decided to get married.’ He didn’t add that Carly had become pregnant on purpose. ‘We didn’t know each other well enough and it’s important to take the time to get to know someone. I didn’t make your mum happy.’

‘Is that why she was always yelling at you?’

‘She didn’t always yell,’ Patrick said tactfully, but Alfie interrupted him.

‘She yelled all the time. And that day she left—two Christmases ago—she shouted at you because you went to deliver those triplets when she had lunch on the table.’

Patrick knew from experience that there was no point in lying. ‘That’s right, she did. She was upset.’

‘She said she was thinking of getting pregnant again because that way she might at least get to see you in the damn antenatal clinic.’

Patrick pressed his fingers into the bridge of his nose, knowing that this wasn’t the time to lecture on language. He was just relieved that neither of his children appeared to have inherited his ex-wife’s filthy temper. ‘She was very angry with me,’ he said evenly. ‘She’d made plans for a special Christmas, but I was on call at the hospital and I—well, in my job, I can’t always plan.’ Not for a moment would he tell the child that his mother had liked the idea of being married to a wealthy obstetrician, but not the reality. ‘Why are we talking about this now?’

‘I don’t know.’ Alfie shrugged. ‘Because it’s Christmas and Mum left at Christmas.’

‘Christmas can be a difficult time for lots of families,’ Patrick said roughly, watching his son’s face. ‘Is it full of bad memories for you?’

‘No. I like being with you,’ Alfie said honestly. ‘I like the fact that there’s no shouting because you never shout. Does it make me bad that I don’t miss her?’

Was that what had been worrying the child? Guilt that he didn’t miss his mother? ‘It doesn’t make you bad.’ Anger towards his ex-wife shot through him like white heat and Patrick hugged the boy tightly, feeling his heart split in two.

Alfie gave a croak of protest. ‘Daddy, you’re squeezing me!’

‘Sorry.’ His tone gruff, he released his hold. ‘I love you. You know that, don’t you?’ The words came easily, driven by a burning determination to be a better father to his son than his own father had been to him. To feel, and to express those feelings without embarrassment.

‘And I love you.’ Alfie was openly affectionate. ‘And you’re the best doctor in the world, everyone says so. If you have to go to the hospital this Christmas, I’ll come with you. We’re a team. Team Buchannan. Do you think they’ll have chocolates?’

Touched by the hero-worship, Patrick smiled. ‘Stacks of them. Maggie is saving you the best. And, Alfie, I’m not the best doctor in the world.’

‘You are. You’re so cool. You saved Matt’s little sister’s life when she was born—she would have died if it hadn’t been for you. And Jenna’s mum says she’d marry you if you asked her.’

Startled, Patrick lifted his eyebrows. ‘You heard her say that?’

‘Yes. I heard her talking to another mum on the phone. She said you were really hot. But I don’t see how she could have known what temperature you were because you weren’t there and, anyway, it had just snowed. You made me wear a vest. How could you have been hot?’

Patrick let out a long breath and made a mental note to keep his distance from Jenna’s mum. ‘Well—I—’

‘Do you want to get married again, Dad?’

Patrick felt the conversation spiralling out of control. ‘Marriage is a big thing,’ he said carefully, ‘and when you’ve been wrong once, it makes you wary about doing it again. But maybe one day. If I know someone really, really well.’ He wouldn’t be making the same mistake he’d made with Carly. No more whirlwind relationships. Trying not to think about the girl he’d met in Chicago, he concentrated on his son. ‘Do you want me to get married again?’

‘It would be nice to have someone on our team who can cook.’

‘I can cook.’ Patrick picked up the books again. ‘Just wait until tomorrow.’

Alfie looked unconvinced. ‘Will you poison us? Uncle Daniel said the emergency department is always full on Christmas Day of people being poisoned with salmon—something, but I don’t get how a turkey can turn into a fish.’

‘Salmonella. It’s a bacterium. And I’m not going to poison you.’ Patrick dropped a kiss on his son’s head. ‘Time to wake Posy from her nap.’ He lifted his head as the doorbell sounded. ‘Ah—that will be the lady who wants the kittens.’

Alfie gulped and the guilt was suddenly back in his eyes. ‘I’ll get the door. You get Posy.’

Hayley stood on the doorstep, trying to look the way a competent housekeeper was supposed to look.

Fingering the advert in her pocket, she suddenly felt nervous. Must like children and be able to cook turkey. What exactly was this family expecting? A cross between Mary Poppins and a celebrity chef?

Thumps and childish shrieks came from behind the door and suddenly it was tugged open and a young boy stood there. There was a large blob of chocolate on his sweatshirt.

‘Hi.’ He gave her a tentative smile and then glanced nervously over his shoulder. ‘You’ve come about the advert?’

‘Yes.’ Hayley took an instant liking to him. ‘You must be Alfie. You look exactly the way you sounded on the phone.’ Sweet, bright, bouncy, straightforward—nervous?

‘I wasn’t sure you’d come.’

Hayley wondered why he was nervous. Was he scared his new housekeeper was a dragon? ‘I’ve been dying to meet you.’ She gave him a friendly smile. ‘I spoke to your dad briefly—is he in?’

The anxiety in the child’s eyes bordered on panic. ‘Yes. But there’s something I need to—’

‘Alfie?’ A deep male voice came from behind him and a man strolled towards the door, a little girl in his arms. ‘Is it the lady who rang about the advert?’

‘Sort of.’ Throwing Hayley a desperate look, Alfie shrank to one side and Hayley frowned slightly, disturbed that he seemed to be afraid of his father.

Hoping that she wasn’t about to spend Christmas with a family even more dysfunctional than her own, she turned to introduce herself and gave a gasp of shock.

It was him!

Here. And every bit as good looking as she remembered in a rough, male I-can-kill-a-lion-with-my-bare-hands sort of way.

The smile started inside her and spread to her lips. What a fantastic coincidence! She wouldn’t even have to take the trouble to track him down. He lived right here, in this beautiful barn with two beautiful children, and—

Her thoughts came crashing to a halt.

He lived with two beautiful children?

His two beautiful children?

Oh, God, he had children.

He wasn’t an indecently handsome sex god, he was a faithless rat.

The shock was like a fist punching her hard in the stomach. Hayley gave a whimper of disbelief. Please let it be a mistake. Please. Don’t let them be his children. Let him be looking after them for someone else.

No, no no…

But even as she stared in horror at her fantasy man, the little girl burrowed sleepily into his shoulder.

‘Want to go back inside, Daddy,’ she mumbled, and Hayley felt her happiness evaporate in an instant.

All that was left of her bright, shiny new life was the bitter, grey sludge of melted dreams.