Christmas Promises: The Christmas Eve BrideA Marriage Proposal for ChristmasA Bride for Christmas

by Lynne Graham

  * * *

  JENNY PULLED INTO the front yard of her parents-in-law’s farm, switched off the ignition, took a few deep breaths—how to explain all this to Lorna and Jack?—and a car pulled in behind her.

  A Ferrari.

  Ferrari engines were unmistakable. What are the chances of someone else with a Ferrari pulling into my yard? she thought, and decided she ought to head inside fast, close the door and not even look out to see whether Mr Guy Hotshot Carver was on her property.

  ‘Mrs Westmere,’ he called, and the moment was lost. She sighed, leant back on her battered wagon with careful insouciance—and folded her arms.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’d like to talk to you about your contract.’

  ‘It’s clear,’ she said, trying to be brusque. ‘I have the right to work for you for a year, and I also have the right to walk away any time I like. Your business manager seemed to think I’d be jumping all over myself to stay, but the obligation is on your side; not mine.’

  ‘I’d like you to stay.’

  ‘Nah.’ She should be chewing gum, she decided. She didn’t have the insouciance quite right. ‘You’re pleased to be shot of me.’ Then she broke a bit—she couldn’t quite suppress the mischief. ‘Or you were until I landed you with the wedding of the century. You’re going to have to cancel on the biggest wedding we’ve seen in this place. What a shame.’

  ‘I can’t cancel.’

  ‘Come on. You can afford to lose one wedding. All that hurts is your pride. And pride doesn’t matter to you. Just look what you did to Kylie.’

  ‘I—’

  ‘Is that you, Jenny?’ Jack’s voice interrupted, and Jenny hauled herself away from the wagon and abandoned the insouciance.

  ‘I need to go inside. You need to go...wherever rich entrepreneurs go when they’re not messing with this town. See you later.’

  ‘Do you have someone out there?’ Jack called.

  ‘Jenny, I need to talk to you.’

  ‘Mrs Westmere,’ she flashed. ‘It’s Mrs Westmere, unless I can call you Guy.’

  ‘Of course you can call me Guy.’

  ‘Bring your visitor in, Jenny.’

  ‘Go away,’ she said.

  ‘I need you.’

  ‘You don’t need anyone. You come waltzing into town in your flash car...’

  ‘It’s borrowed from a friend.’

  ‘You borrowed a Ferrari?’ she demanded incredulously. ‘Someone just tossed you the keys of a Ferrari and said, “Have it for a few days.” Like he has one Ferrari for normal use and another to lend to friends.’

  ‘His other car’s an Aston Martin,’ he said apologetically. ‘And his wife drives a Jag.’

  ‘I so much don’t need this conversation.’ She made to turn into the house, but he stepped forward and caught her shoulders. The action should have made her angry—and at one level it did—but then there was this other part of her...

  He really was a ludicrously attractive male, she thought. She wasn’t the least bit afraid of him. Well, why should she be when she had Lorna and Jack just through the screen door? But there was more than that. His grip felt somehow...okay.

  It wasn’t the least bit okay. This was those damned hormones working again, she thought. She’d been a widow for too long.

  But she had protection—against hormones as well as against marauding males. She hadn’t answered Jack, and Jack and Lorna had grown worried. Now the front screen slammed back and Jack was on the veranda. Jack was a wiry little man in his late seventies, tough as nails and belligerent to go with it. He was crippled with arthritis, but he didn’t let that stop him.

  ‘Who’s this?’ he growled, before Jenny could say a word. He stalked stiffly down the veranda, trying to disguise the limp from his gammy hip, trying to act as if he was going to lift over six feet of Guy Carver and hurl him off the property.

  Guy dropped his hands from Jenny’s shoulders. He didn’t step away, though. He stood a foot away from her, his eyes filled with quizzical laughter.

  ‘You have a security system?’

  ‘I surely do,’ she answered, taking a grip of her wandering hormones and turning to face her in-laws. ‘Jack, Lorna—this is Guy Carver.’

  Lorna was out on the veranda now. She’d pushed her wheelchair though the doorway, rolling to the edge of the ramp but no further. Lorna had once been a blousy, buxom blonde. Her hair was still determinedly blonde, and her eyes were still pretty and blue, but a stroke had withered one side of her body. One side of her face had very little movement and her speech was careful and stilted.

  ‘Mr Carver,’ she managed.

  ‘He says we can call him Guy.’

  ‘Why are you manhandling my daughter-in-law?’ Jack barked, and the lurking laughter behind Guy’s eyes was unmistakable.

  ‘I was just turning her in the right direction. Towards you.’

  ‘It’s okay, Jack,’ Jenny told him. ‘Mr...Guy’s just leaving.’

  ‘Look at the car,’ Lorna said, suddenly distracted. ‘What is that?’

  ‘A Ferrari,’ Guy said, bemused, and at that the screen door swung open again.

  ‘Don’t come out, Henry,’ Jenny said quickly, but it was too late. Henry was already on the veranda.

  She winced. She badly didn’t want Guy to see Henry. He’d already shown himself to be insensitive. How much damage could he do now?

  For the crash that had killed his father had left Henry so badly burned that for a while they’d thought he might not live. The six-year-old was slowly recovering, but the scars on the right side of his face were only a tiny indication of the scars elsewhere. His chest and his right leg bore a mass of scarring, and he was facing skin graft after skin graft as he grew.

  Henry should be a freckle-faced kid facing life with mischief and optimism. There were signs now that he could be again, but the scars ran deep. His thatch of deep brown curls stopped cruelly where the scarring began, just above his right ear. His brown eyes were alive and interested—thank God his sight had been untouched—but he’d lost so much weight he looked almost anorexic compared to most six-year-olds. His right leg was still not bearing weight, and he used crutches. His freckles stood out starkly on his too pale skin. Standing on the veranda in his over-big pyjamas—Lorna was sure he’d have a growth spurt any minute, and she sewed accordingly—he looked a real waif. The surgeons said that in time they’d have his face so normal that, as he matured, people would think of him as manly and rugged, but that time was a long way off from now.

  ‘I want to see the car,’ Henry said.

  She held her breath, waiting for Guy to respond. If she had her druthers Jenny would keep her private life absolutely to herself. A private person at the best of times, these last two years had been hell. She’d been forced to depend on so many people. The locals had been wonderful, but now she was finally starting to regain some control of her shattered life, and the look of immediate sympathy flashing into Guy Carver’s eyes made her want to hit him.

  What’s wrong with your little boy...?

  How many times had that been flung at her since Henry had recovered enough to be outside the house? It was never the locals—they all knew, and had more sense than to ask about his progress in front of him. But the squillionaires who arrived for a week or two were appalling, and she wanted to be shot of the lot of them.

  Maybe now she’d sold the business she could move, she thought. She could get a great place if she was prepared to go inland a little. But Jack and Lorna had lived here all their lives. She and Henry were all they had.

  She couldn’t leave.

  So now she flinched, waiting for Guy to say something like they all did. What’s wrong? or, Gee, what happened to your kid? Why is he so scarred? Or worse, Oh, you poor little boy...

  But
Guy said nothing. He had his face under control again, and the shock and sympathy were gone. Instead he glanced at the Ferrari with affection. ‘It’s a 2002 Modena 360 F1,’ he told Henry, man to man.

  ‘It’s ace,’ Henry whispered, and something in Guy’s face moved. Something...changed.

  ‘If it’s okay with your mother, would you like a ride?’

  Henry’s small body became perfectly still. Rigid. As if steeling himself for a blow.

  ‘I... Mum...?’

  ‘You’re kidding,’ she said to Guy.

  ‘I don’t kid,’ he said, and his voice had changed, too. It had softened. ‘I mean it. I’m assuming this is your son?’

  ‘Yes, but...’

  ‘I’m Guy,’ he told Henry. ‘And you are...?’

  ‘Henry,’ said Henry. ‘Is this your car?’

  ‘It’s borrowed.’

  ‘Do you have a car like this?’

  ‘I have a Lamborghini back in New York.’

  ‘Wow,’ Henry breathed, and looked desperately at his mother. ‘Is it okay if I take a ride with him?’

  ‘It’s dinnertime.’

  ‘Dinner can wait,’ Jack growled. Jenny’s father-in-law was looking at the car with an awe that matched his grandson’s. ‘If anyone offered me a ride in such a car I’d wait for dinner ’til breakfast.’

  ‘You’re next in the queue,’ Guy said, and grinned. ‘I’d take you all at once,’ he added apologetically, ‘but it’s hard to squeeze three people in these babies. Jenny, you can go third.’

  ‘I don’t want to go.’

  ‘Is it okay if I take Henry?’

  ‘Of course it’s okay,’ Jack snapped, as if astounded that anyone could ask that question. ‘Isn’t it, girl?’

  ‘Fine,’ she said, defeated, and Henry let out a war-whoop that could be heard back in Main Street. Then he paused.

  ‘You don’t mean just sit in it?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Can we go out on the coast road?’ Henry asked, eyeing his mother as if she’d grown two heads. Never go with strangers... Her consent meant she knew this guy and trusted him. His mother had a friend with a Ferrari. She could see she’d just raised herself in his estimation by about a mile. ‘The coast road winds round cliffs. With this car...it’ll go like it’s on rails.’

  ‘You won’t go fast?’ She knew her voice was suddenly tight, but she couldn’t help it.

  ‘We won’t go fast,’ Guy told her, and there was that tone in his voice that said he understood.

  How could he understand?

  The remembrance of his hands on her shoulders slipped back into her mind. Which was dumb.

  ‘Henry’s in his pyjamas,’ she said, too quickly, but suddenly that was how she felt. As if everything was too quick. ‘Does he need to change?’

  ‘No one notices who’s in a Ferrari,’ Guy told her. ‘They only notice the Ferrari. If you’re in a Ferrari you can wear what you d— Whatever you like. You’re cool by association. Are you ready, Henry?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Henry breathed, and tossed aside his crutches and looked to his mother for help to go down the ramp. ‘Yeah, I am.’

  * * *

  ‘HE SEEMS LOVELY.’

  ‘He’s not.’ Back inside, Jenny was trying to explain the extraordinary turn of events to her in-laws. ‘He won’t do Kylie’s wedding. She’s not good enough to be a Carver Bride.’

  ‘Kylie is a bit...’ Lorna said, and Jenny glowered and tossed tea into the pot with unnecessary force.

  ‘Don’t you come down on his side. Kylie and Shirley were great to us.’

  They had been. All of those dreary months when Jenny had needed to be in the hospital—for three awful weeks Henry had not been expected to live—Kylie and Shirley and a host of other locals had run this little farm, had ferried Lorna and Jack wherever they’d wanted to go, had filled the freezer with enough casseroles to feed an army for years, had even taken over the organisation of local weddings. The town had been wonderful, and Jenny wasn’t about to turn her back on them now.

  ‘I know they’re fabulous,’ Lorna told her. ‘And of course I promised we’d do Kylie’s wedding. But they won’t hold us to more than that. I was just so upset. With Ben dead, and we thought we’d lose Henry...’

  ‘You would have promised the world,’ Jenny said. ‘Shirley knows that. She tried it on with Guy this afternoon—and why wouldn’t you? But I will do Kylie’s wedding for cost, and Guy can’t stop me. I’ll just organise it from here.’

  ‘And the rest?’

  ‘He can have the society weddings. I don’t want them.’

  ‘They’re the only ones that make us money.’

  ‘We’ll survive. He paid heaps for the business—more than its worth. But I don’t want Guy Carver as my boss.’

  ‘There’d be worse bosses,’ Jack said, and Jenny sighed.

  ‘Just because the man has a Ferrari...’

  ‘What’s he driving Henry for?’

  ‘To wheedle his way into getting me to work for him,’ she snapped. ‘The man’s a born wheedler. I can see it.’

  ‘He doesn’t look like a wheedler to me,’ Lorna said. She’d been laying plates on the table, but now she stilled her wheelchair and turned to face her daughter-in-law. ‘Jenny, it’s been two years. We know you loved Ben, but maybe it’s time you moved on?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘He looks quite a catch,’ Jack said, crossing to the door to look—hopefully—out. With a bit of luck there’d be time for a ride for him before dinner was on the table. ‘A Lamborghini at home, eh?’

  ‘You think I should jump him because he owns a Lamborghini?’ Jenny asked incredulously, and Jack had the grace to look a bit shamefaced.

  ‘I just meant...’

  ‘He just meant don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,’ Lorna said decisively. ‘I’m asking the man to tea.’

  ‘You can’t.’

  ‘Watch me,’ Lorna said, plonking a fifth plate on the table. ‘I just know the nice man will stay.’

  * * *

  THE NIGHT WAS interminable. Jenny couldn’t believe he’d accepted Lorna’s invitation. She couldn’t believe he was sitting at her dining table with every appearance of complacency.

  This was a man international jet-setters regarded as ultra-cool—the epitome of good taste. If they saw him now...

  For a start he’d walked in the front door without even appearing to notice Lorna and Jack’s decorations. The Christmas after Ben had been killed, when Henry’s life had hung by a precarious thread, Lorna had decreed Christmas was off. ‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ she’d declared. ‘I’m tossing all my decorations.’

  Twelve months later she’d rather shamefacedly hauled out her non-tossed decorations. Jack and Jenny had been desultorily watching television, with Henry on the sofa nearby. They’d been miserable, but they’d fallen on the decorations like long-lost friends. That night had been the first night when ghosts and fear and sadness hadn’t hung over the house, and this year Henry had demanded his grandparents start sorting the decorations on the first day of November.

  So there was a reason why the decorations were just ever so slightly over the top, Jenny conceded. She’d hauled Henry’s chair close beside her. He was leaning on her, still lit up after his ride in Guy’s wonderful car. He was tired now, but Jenny thought there’d be trouble if she tried to send him to bed. Lorna and Jack were chatting to Guy as if they were entertaining an old friend, and Henry was soaking in every word.

  He had a new superhero.

  As for Jenny...Jenny was trying to block out the flashing lights from the real-sized sled in the front yard. The house and the yard were chock-full of Christmas kitsch. She loved every last fluffy pink angel, she decided defensiv
ely, trying not to wonder what he was thinking of her. If Guy didn’t like them, then he could leave.

  Guy Carver would be a minimalist, Jenny thought, watching Lorna ladle gravy over his roast beef and Jack handing him the vast casserole of cauliflower cheese. He’d like one svelte silhouette of a nativity scene in a cool grey window.

  Jenny could count five nativity scenes from where she was sitting.

  ‘The decorations are wonderful, Mrs Westmere,’ Guy told Lorna, and Jenny cast him a look of deep suspicion as Lorna practically purred.

  ‘Jenny thinks maybe the front yard is a bit over the top.’

  ‘How could you, Jenny?’ Guy said, and cast reproachful eyes at her.

  She choked.

  ‘Are you staying until Christmas?’ Jack asked, and Guy said he wasn’t sure.

  ‘Why I’m asking,’ said Jack, obviously searching for courage, ‘is that every year Santa comes to Sandpiper Bay.’

  ‘If you’re asking me to wear a Santa suit...’ Guy said, suddenly sounding fearful, and Jenny looked at Guy’s Mediterranean good looks and thought, Yeah, right. Santa—I don’t think so. ‘Then, no.’

  ‘No, no,’ Jack assured him. ‘We have a very fine Santa. Bill went to a training course in Sydney and everything. But the thing is that every Christmas morning Santa drives through the town tossing lollies—’

  ‘From the fire truck,’ Henry interrupted, which just about astounded Jenny all by itself. Normally when visitors came Henry was seen but not heard. Henry had been a happy, cheerful four-year-old when his father’s car had collided head-on with a kid spaced out of his brain on cocaine. Now Henry’s world was limited to hospital visits, physiotherapy clinics and his grandparents’ farm. For Henry to go with Guy tonight had been astonishing, and the fact that he was chirping away like a butcher’s magpie now was even more so.

  ‘See, there’s the problem,’ Jack explained, growing earnest. ‘The problem with Christmas in Australia is that it’s at the height of summer. In summer there’s fires. Last year the fire truck got called away. One minute Santa was up top, handing out lollies, the next he was standing in the middle of Main Street with a half-empty Santa sack while the fire truck screamed off into the distance to someone’s burning haystack.’