He was far from bored and he’d encouraged the sales assistant to select more than the two dresses Grace had chosen. The assistant had been eager to please, no doubt seeing the dollar signs.
Grace had initially been awkward about the whole exercise. But, under the guidance of the sales assistant, and with Jack’s undisguised appreciation of her appearance, Grace went from exiting the dressing room self-consciously to bouncing out playfully. Then, she’d paraded in front of him like a model on a catwalk at a Parisian fashion show.
‘My gosh!’ Her laugh was pure excitement. ‘I feel like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.’
As soon as the words were out, her cheeks flamed, her eyes widened and she clapped her hands over her mouth.
Looking straight at the sales assistant who’d been helping her, she said, ‘I didn’t mean … That is, he’s not paying for my clothes and I’m not a prostitute.’
Jack burst out laughing and the sales woman sounded as though she choked back her amusement.
‘We’ll take everything she’s tried on,’ he told the woman who was obviously trying to keep a deadpan expression.
‘No, we won’t, Jack!’ Grace protested. ‘I only need one outfit for tomorrow night and I’m not letting you buy it.’
He looked over her head and gave the sales woman a nod. Wisely, the woman raced off to do his bidding before Grace could talk him out of it and make her lose the sales.
‘I’d like you to wear the deep green dress for the office party and I forgot to mention that Amadeo and Vanessa have asked us to dine with the two of them the following evening. You’ll also need clothes for any other event we’re invited to.’
‘It’s too much.’
‘You make every single one of those outfits look so incredible, the designers should be paying you to wear them.’
‘You say the most wonderful things.’
‘All of them are true.’
She tilted her head and he watched her eyes narrow. ‘Is Imogene still phoning you?’
‘No, but I’m not convinced she’s given up. Are you still okay with our arrangement?’ He held his breath as he waited for her reply. He couldn’t imagine being without her, but he knew there’d come a time when he’d have to let her go.
It was a bittersweet realisation that tomorrow night he was about to gift her the opportunity to grow the wings that’d have her fly away from him.
She put her hand on his arm. ‘Is it still an arrangement based on Imogene, Jack? Haven’t we gone past that now we’re lovers in reality, or are we just taking advantage of the fringe benefits of a pretence?’
Damn but it was real for him, even though he knew it shouldn’t be. ‘We agreed to take things day by day.’
‘I know. But I’d like to think each day we have together means as much to you as it does to me.’
‘Every day with you is special, sweetheart.’ It was all he could tell her.
She beamed up at him. ‘That’s all I need to know.’
Grace was selling herself short. She should be demanding so much more from him and he wanted her to realise her worth—to understand she had so much to offer a man that she shouldn’t accept anything less than undying declarations of love.
A declaration he couldn’t make.
He’d failed Lizzie.
He couldn’t live with himself if it happened again.
‘Will you take everything with you or would you like the garments delivered?’ the sales woman asked.
‘We’ll take them, thank you.’ He turned back to Grace and placed his finger against her gorgeous lush lips to silence her protest.
Bad move. Touching the soft flesh of her lips had the same effect as receiving a jolt of electricity. The store, everything and everyone in it faded away as his mouth dried and he acknowledged he wanted to kiss her.
Her pupils dilated and her lips parted.
The pulse point at the base of her neck became visible and once again the strong pull of attraction consumed them.
Back off, Jack.
Step back.
Break this connection before you forget where you are and you end up lifting her up onto the counter and taking her there.
‘Sir, would you like to settle the account now?’
The cool inquiry had the desired effect, reminding him they were in a public place, even if the spell between Grace and him still thrummed in the air like the approach of a summer storm.
‘Of course.’
‘Jack?’ Grace’s hand on his arm arrested his movement when he would’ve turned and followed the sales person to the counter. ‘Thank you.’
Even though it’d been there in her eyes, he wasn’t prepared when she took a step towards him, stood on her tiptoes, lifted her arms and drew his head down to meet hers in a kiss. It started out as a tentative, sweet caress but soon deepened and would’ve raged completely out of control if the sales assistant hadn’t cleared her throat.
‘Let’s get home,’ he just about moaned out next to Grace’s ear.
‘You read my mind,’ she whispered back.
Chapter 16
‘You’re tense again,’ Grace told Jack the following night as she strapped up her shoes in readiness for the office Christmas party.
Jack had never understood why people said shoes could be sexy until he saw these on Grace. They drew attention to her fine ankles, her shapely calves and those long, toned, killer legs that wrapped around him as he plunged into her.
‘Jack?’ Her eyes questioned him.
‘You’re way too perceptive, Miss Robertson.’ He secured his cufflinks. ‘Yes, I’m a little tense but I’ll be fine.’ He held out his hand to her. ‘Come on, let’s get going to your performance.’
She straightened up from her shoes but made no attempt to move.
‘I’m looking forward to hearing you play.’
‘No.’
What? He shook his head as his outstretched hand fell to his side. ‘You’ll be fine, sweetheart. This is no time to get cold feet.’
‘I don’t have cold feet.’ She dismissed the notion with a flick of her hand. ‘I’ve practised and practised and I know I’m absolutely ready for tonight.’
It was his turn to send her a look of query. ‘Then why aren’t we leaving?’
‘I’m ready, but you’re not.’
‘I’m ready. Tuxedo on, bow-tie done up.’ He winked at her. ‘I promise after our recent lovemaking, I’ll last until we get home. But if I don’t, we can always escape to my office.’
‘You’re not ready for tonight, Jack,’ she told him firmly. ‘That’s why you’re tensing up again and steeling yourself to go outside and get into the car. Don’t bother denying it. It’s obvious.’
Hell! ‘Whether it’s obvious or not, there’s nothing for it. We have to get going.’
‘No.’ She crossed her arms over her chest.
He was already tense, he didn’t need any resistance now from the one person he was counting on to help get him through tonight. ‘Grace.’
Uncrossing her arms she used her hands to gesture as she spoke. ‘You’ve told me this time of the year holds bad memories for you and I was there yesterday afternoon when you totally froze the second you clapped eyes on the Christmas tree in the shopping centre. I’m betting there are going to be plenty of Christmas decorations in the main party room tonight—and, by the way, I’ve figured out you’ll be avoiding that area like the plague and I’m guessing the whole reason for asking me to be there playing anything but Christmas carols is your way of opting out of the real party.’
He looked away before he walked over to where she sat on the bed. It was amazing how intuitive she was. ‘It will help me enormously to know you’re there.’ He held out a hand to her.
When he would’ve pulled her to her feet, she tugged at his hand and patted a spot on the bed, urging him to sit next to her. Grace was impossible to resist and he complied.
‘Before I set foot out this door with you, I want you to trust me enough to te
ll me what happened yesterday afternoon. Can you do that, Jack?’
‘You’re giving me an ultimatum?’ Shit!
She cradled his face in both hands and looked deeply into his eyes, every one of her features pleading with him and full of nothing but care. ‘I’m sorry it came out that way. I just think if you talk about your reservations or the difficulties you have before you get to the party, you might put the ghosts to bed—at least for this evening. Please know you can trust me.’
Jack covered her hands with his own then drew them down from his face, holding them while he weighed up what he realised now was a request rather than an ultimatum. Grace was so far from a demanding woman it wasn’t funny. With every day they were together, he grew closer to her to the point that she was fast becoming a part of him. It hardly seemed right to hold back any part of himself from her.
‘Apart from Amadeo, and a friend I had once, there’s no-one else I’ve trusted as much as I trust you, Grace. If I didn’t, I’d never have asked you to move in with me.’
‘I don’t ask out of morbid curiosity, I’m asking because I truly believe you need to talk about this worry so you can move forward. I want to be the person who can help you move forward, Jack,’ she coaxed. ‘Besides the fact that I genuinely care about you, I have the utmost respect for you and you’ve done so much for me it’d mean a lot to me to be able to help you in some small way.’
He closed his eyes briefly in frustration and then opened them again on a sigh. She’d already helped him far more than she knew and made his life so much happier—so much richer. ‘I should be able to get over it because it happened years ago.’
‘You can’t expect to get over something if you never talk about it and acknowledge what happened.’ She moved her thumbs in his grasp and rubbed them soothingly over his hands. ‘That’s like expecting an infection to heal without ripping off the scab and letting out all the muck inside. The muck just keeps building and getting more putrid.’
‘Gross!’ He pulled a face and actually managed a smile. ‘You really have a way of painting a picture, don’t you?’
‘C’mon, Jack. It’ll hurt initially to rip it open, but my bet is your wound will heal a lot quicker once you let out the infection and give it some air.’
***
He looked at her and she saw his indecision. Gosh, his indecision was so palpable it made the whole room throb.
‘I was four when my mother abandoned me in a busy shopping centre on Christmas Eve.’
Oh Lord! She wasn’t sure what she’d expected but it hadn’t been this.
For a few moments, Grace simply sat and tried to comprehend the awfulness of his blunt words. Then, when the magnitude of what he’d said sank in, she couldn’t begin to grapple the fear he must’ve known. She couldn’t think of a single thing to say to help him through it.
When words failed her, Grace had a track record of communicating through touch. Now, she shuffled closer along the edge of the bed and disengaged one hand from his so she could loop her arm around his shoulders and draw him against her. ‘That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.’
His features tightened. ‘I don’t want your pity, Grace.’
‘I don’t pity you, Jack. What’s to pity about a man who’s a very brainy, very handsome and very sexy self-made billionaire?’ She shook her head and reiterated, ‘I don’t pity you, but I do feel sad for the four-year-old boy you were and the awful confusion and loss you must’ve experienced.’
Some of the tension left his shoulders as she began to half-rub, half-knead them with her thumb and fingers.
‘When the memories hit, I stop being a man and go back to being a boy.’
‘Which is why you need to let everything out—let all those horrible memories go by airing them. What happened after your mother left you?’ she pushed as she continued to work her fingers along his shoulders trying to massage more of his tension away.
‘A huge mountain of a guy dressed in a Santa suit saw me crying out for my mother and hauled me up into his arms and told me to stop crying—promised he’d find my mother for me.’
‘Judging by your description of him, I’m guessing he only served to scare a bewildered boy even more.’
‘I’ve hated Santa Claus ever since. Not only did he carry me kicking and screaming through the shopping centre, but he didn’t deliver on his promise and he handed me over to store management, who then called the police.’
So much of his reaction yesterday afternoon at the shopping centre made sense now.
‘The police didn’t find your mother?’
‘Days later, they found her body in a dumpster.’
Grace stifled a gasp of horror.
Jack got up from the bed and took a few steps away from her, agitation emanating from every pore. ‘It was only when I was much older I was able to access police records and learn how she died.’
‘You’ve told me before she was murdered by a loan shark.’ His experience of Christmas kept getting worse, but Grace wasn’t going to let him think too long on any aspect of his tragedy. Intuitively, she believed she needed to push him through this recount and get to the other side of it. ‘Your father?’
‘Unknown.’
‘A four-year-old boy left alone on Christmas Eve.’ She clicked her tongue against her palate. ‘Did they find a foster family for you?’
His short laugh was grim. ‘Many a time in the following years I was shuffled from one foster family to the next.’ Despite recounting the sad fact, his lips tugged into a rueful smile. ‘I always got into loads of trouble at Christmas time for telling the other children in the families that Santa was nothing but a big liar.’
She grimaced. ‘I can see how that would’ve been popular.’ But she could also see how Jack would believe it—how the magic of Christmas had been ruined for him as a very young boy.
‘They took me from the shopping centre to the police station. A social worker from the Department of Social Services explained to the police that she couldn’t find an emergency foster home for me on Christmas Eve, so I was handed over to the minister at St Michael’s Parish church on Chester Square.’
‘I know where that is.’
He sat back down next to her and rubbed one hand absently against the nape of his neck. ‘Years later I found out I’d been in all the newspapers—the little boy who’d been abandoned at the Grosvenor Shopping Centre in Chester. I’d been able to tell them my name was Jack, but I didn’t know my surname. They dubbed me “Jack St. Michaels” because I spent two weeks at St. Michael’s Parish Church before they could settle me with my first foster family.’
It was a sad tale.
She couldn’t even begin to imagine how it would’ve impacted on him to have never known his father and to not even be aware of what his surname had been prior to his adoption.
‘When I reached adulthood I discovered the nation had wept for Jack St. Michaels when the story of my abandonment broke on Christmas day. People across England cried for me again four days later. Although I knew nothing of it at the time, at the end of the public holidays, police were called to an alleyway close to the shopping centre because rubbish collectors discovered a woman’s body.’
Grace’s chest hollowed out.
She squeezed his hands then drew them to her mouth and kissed them. But nothing could erase the pain scored deeply into the lines which bracketed his mouth and she knew he was still angry, still bitter, even if he didn’t even recognise it himself.
‘How did the police know it was your mother? Please don’t tell me they showed you photographs.’
‘Nothing so macabre.’ His smile was grim. ‘Homicide detectives came to visit me at St. Michael’s. I didn’t understand back then why they put something in my mouth and scraped the inside of my cheek.’
‘A DNA sample.’
‘Yes.’ He let out a breath and stared straight ahead. ‘It was only when I’d been living with Amadeo for a couple of years that I wanted to find out about my mother
.
‘Combing through newspaper articles I read that my DNA had matched the woman’s and my mother had been strangled. Further investigation had uncovered that she and her partner were in debt to the loan shark and that my mother had been murdered as a warning to her partner to pay his debt. The loan shark was tried and committed for her murder.’
Grace leant her head against his shoulder. ‘We’ve both lost parents in tragic circumstances.’
‘We have.’ He removed one of his hands from hers, and shifted to put his arm around her, so her head rested against his chest. ‘The coroner said my mother died very soon after she’d abandoned me. The police theorised that she may have realised she was being pursued by the criminals and left me at the shopping centre so I wouldn’t come to any harm.’
She angled her head so she looked up at him. ‘So you weren’t so much abandoned as protected?’
‘Perhaps. When I found all this out I at least stopped asking myself what I’d done wrong. For years I’d grown up thinking I must’ve been extremely naughty or annoying—unlovable. There was nobody else at any of the schools I went to whose mothers hadn’t wanted them.’
Her heart twisted a little more. It hurt her to breathe because her chest constricted thinking about the sense of abandonment and unworthiness he’d felt.
‘Weren’t any of the foster mothers you had loving?’ She blinked hard to disperse the moisture forming in her eyes and tried to keep her voice even so as not to betray the grief she felt on his behalf.
‘To say I was a difficult child would be a gross understatement,’ he told her with a wince of embarrassment. ‘I look back now and wonder that any of the families who took me as a foster child kept me for as long as they did.’
‘You must’ve been anxious and confused being shipped from one family to the next.’
The Magic of Christmas Page 12
