She stirred against the warmth of his body and hers leapt to life once more. The hungry longing within her for him was far from sated. Last night’s lovemaking had only intensified it. As the lateness of Christmas Eve had slipped into the early hours of Christmas Day they had alternated between making love and sleeping. Now the grey light of a winter’s morning seeped around the edges of the thick curtains Max had drawn across the small window of the cottage late last night.
It was Christmas morning and she’d never expected to be waking up in Max’s arms or in such a wonderfully festive cottage. Suddenly her excitement couldn’t be contained any longer. Fate had brought them together and he’d given her the kind of Christmas she’d always longed for and she wasn’t going to ruin it now by dwelling on what was or wasn’t between them, trying to give it a name. She turned and faced Max in the bed, the covers sliding from her as she did so.
‘Happy Christmas.’ His eyes opened as she whispered the words.
‘Now I know what would have been missing from my Christmas morning.’ His dark eyes held the promise of more passion as he pulled her closer to his naked body. ‘You.’
‘But you don’t like Christmas,’ she whispered as memories ofhow this time last year, he had suggested they delay their honeymoon several weeks to avoid the festivities, convincing her that he wanted only to be with her. Instantly she regretted saying anything as the shutters of steel came down over his eyes, suffocating the passion she’d seen brewing there again.
‘I was simply referring to the fact that Christmas morning isn’t the same in Spain. We traditionally give gifts, but on Fiesta de Los Tres Reyes early in January. Twelfth Night here.’ She knew he was hiding something, holding back on her as he’d always done. Everything he’d just said was a cover for what he was really feeling—or not.
‘So why have you done all this?’ She looked around the room, at the subtle decorations that left her in no doubt she was in a cottage decked out for Christmas. She’d thought he’d done it to bring them together—and it had achieved that in the most spectacularly passionate way—but not in the way she really wanted. Perhaps she should do as she’d thought last night and accept that the man whose child she carried wasn’t capable of emotions and that nothing would change that, just as he’d told her when he first walked out on their new marriage.
He hadn’t wanted her to say what she felt, hadn’t wanted to hear those words spoken aloud.
‘Because it would make you happy, because even though I can’t say what you want me to say, I care about you.’
It wasn’t what she wanted to hear right now, but she certainly wasn’t going to spoil Christmas Day. Not when the things he’d done, the way he’d been last night, gave her hope.
* * *
Max could almost hear a pin drop in the room as Lisa listened then thankfully accepted what he’d said. He got up, enjoying the way her gaze lingered on his body, which still wanted her despite their night of passion.
He pulled on some jeans and a sweater. ‘The surprises aren’t over yet.’
‘They aren’t?’
‘No, I have arranged for us to have Christmas dinner at a nearby hotel, where, I’m reliably informed, we can relax afterward in comfort in front of a large open fire.’
She smiled at him, a smile full of genuine warmth and pleasure. Finally he was uncovering the real Lisa, breaking down her barriers. She’d tried to do the same to him, but over the years he’d made his defence impenetrable. Would she tell him what it was that had happened in her past to have made Christmas a bad time for her and her family?
‘What happened?’ he asked, knowing full well he was taking advantage of the unspoken truce between them, but if they stood any chance of building some kind of future together for their child he had to know.
‘Happened? When?’ She stood by the bed, wrapped in the faux-fur throw from the end, looking deliciously sexy but also very scared. He was intrigued and now he had to know.
‘When you were a child? To make you miss out on Christmas?’
‘I think that is a question I should be asking you.’ She smiled at him, but he could see the defence barrier beginning to slip into place again. ‘You are the one who doesn’t like this time of year. I’ve just never experienced it like this.’
She was right. He was also well aware that if he wanted to find out what it was she was hiding from him, keeping locked away, then he too would have to reveal who he really was.
‘I have a very good reason for not liking this time of the year.’ How had this been turned around to be about him?
Lisa sat down on the side of the bed, her long legs on display as she snuggled in the throw. Her red hair was tousled and she looked as sexy as she ever had. But there was something different about her. She looked vulnerable in a way she’d never appeared before. He’d always thought she was tough, the kind of woman who never let things get to her.
As he stood there, looking at her, he knew it was time to be honest, to let her know exactly who he was, the kind of man the father of her baby really was. She’d made it very clear she wanted a full-time father for her child, not one who visited every month or so, and he still didn’t know if he could be that man, but he’d damn well try. He certainly didn’t want to be the same as his father.
He turned and looked out of the window at the white frosted grass of the cottage’s garden. ‘Everything bad that happened in my childhood happened around this time of the year.’
‘Your father?’ Her voice was soft and he could hear her get up and move across the room toward him. He braced himself for her nearness. He wasn’t ready for that kind of sympathy yet.
‘He walked out just weeks before Christmas. I was eight years old and convinced he was punishing me. I had no idea he had another family—another son.’
He could feel her warmth, smell her perfume as she moved closer to him. It grounded him, kept him in the present instead of being dragged back into the past. ‘Did you ever see him again?’
‘No.’ He couldn’t stop it and slipped back to that moment. He’d watched as his mother had stood proudly in the middle of the room and his father had opened the door of the apartment and looked back at her. She’d kept her chin up, defiance and anger in her stance that he’d recognised as pain, even as the young boy he’d been.
They’d said nothing to one another. All that had been done with an angry argument that he’d witnessed as he’d sat on the cool marble staircase, wishing they would stop, wishing it didn’t sound as if they hated one another.
He had come to stand by his mother, knowing even at that age that this was very real, very permanent. His father had looked at him for the briefest of seconds and the annoyed disgust in his eyes that day still haunted Max now, still made him feel insignificant and totally despised. He’d glared angrily at his father and now he knew that had been his first step toward becoming a man—challenging his father.
‘I wished mine had never come back, never used me as a weapon against my mother.’ Lisa’s words rushed him back to the present, away from the dark memories he’d successfully locked away until the newspaper headlines had freed the skeletons from the closet, allowing them to run wild. Uncatchable and untouchable.
He turned and looked down at her, but she was staring out at the frosty countryside, although he knew it wasn’t what she was seeing. The past had a hold on her too. It was pulling at her just as his was.
‘He left when I was five.’ She spoke softly, her voice almost a whisper but there was an undertone of anger swirling through it. ‘And I didn’t see him for two years. Two years of my mother struggling to make ends meet. Two years of wondering why, of blaming myself. I didn’t know the reasons at the time, of course, I just wondered why she was sad. Then he came back.’
A heavy silence fell in the room, as if snow were falling around them, covering everything, hiding the present so that only the past was there—for both of them. Max could feel her pain, her sense of rejection. He’d been a bit older, but
it had still hurt and as a boy he’d had to be tough, had to man up and be there for his mother.
‘What happened then?’ He tried not to think about his past, how in some ways it mirrored Lisa’s, how they’d both tried to hide from it but for very different reasons.
‘He wanted to see me, wanted to play happy families and take me out.’ She turned from the window and he watched her as she walked back to the bed, sat down and drew her knees up to her chest, hiding her body from him with the throw, hiding from her past.
‘That was good,’ he said, but as she looked up at him, sadness in her eyes, he knew it wasn’t.
‘Not when you are a young child being used as a weapon to cause hurt and pain.’ The answer flew at him, the pain of her past echoing in each word. ‘He didn’t want me any more than my mother did. I was just an inconvenience, but when it suited them I was their weapon of choice. Other than that, they didn’t give a damn.’
‘Surely your mother—’ Max began, realising how lucky he was to have been kept out of his parents’ arguments apart from that very last day.
‘My mother didn’t want me, the baggage from her bad marriage, and my father walked out.’ Lisa wrapped her arms tighter around her and something clenched in his heart. She looked so lost, so vulnerable and now he was adding to her pain because of all that had happened in his past.
He wanted to go to her, to hold her, to make her feel better, to put everything right. How could he when he was in the same dark place, haunted by the rejection of his father?
‘At least he came back,’ he said as he sat on the edge of the bed, physically close to her but so far away. ‘At least he wanted to know you, see you grow up.’
The green of her eyes flared so bright with anger as she looked instantly up at him that he leaned back away from her. Her face was pale and he wondered if she was feeling ill because of what they were talking about or because of the pregnancy. Thoughts of his mother clouded in. She’d been ill carrying his little sister, Angelina. Very ill.
With a huff of angry irritation he pushed that thought away and marched back to the window. History wouldn’t repeat itself. Would it? He couldn’t take losing another person he was close to. That was why he kept himself as emotionally distanced from Angelina as he could. A tyrant of a brother, she’d called him last time they’d spoken on the phone, finalising the last-minute details of her party. What would she say to him about the baby? That he had no right to be a father when he was such a cold, hard brother? And wasn’t that the truth? He had no right.
‘So you would rather your father had never come back into your life?’ The words were rough and feral as he pushed back all his past demons, determined to lock them away. It was Christmas Day after all and this wasn’t what he’d planned it to be.
‘You have no idea how much.’
He turned to look at her. How could she look so vulnerable and hurt, yet so angry at the same time? As she held his gaze, her eyes so vivid and green as she fought back tears he knew exactly why she wanted to walk away from him, deny him the chance of being a father. ‘And that’s why you don’t want me in our child’s life? Why you have given me such an ultimatum, demanding all or nothing?’
* * *
The fury in Max’s voice cut through Lisa’s heart, making her shiver as she realised her words had given everything away. She’d practically told him why she didn’t want him in his child’s life unless he could give her and the baby total commitment.
She looked up at him, unable to respond as she processed all they’d shared over the last hour. She’d never been able to talk to anyone about such things. Most women had good relationships with their mothers, were able to talk, but that had never been an option with her mother. Not when she was the unwanted child that had stopped all her partying and fun.
‘It’s Christmas Day, Max.’ Finally, she could piece together a sentence. ‘We shouldn’t be talking about this now.’
He walked back toward the bed, sat down and looked straight into her eyes. After what they’d shared last night she wanted him to take her in his arms and tell her it was all going to be all right, that the past didn’t matter, that she’d got it all wrong and he’d be there for her and the baby.
‘We should and we will.’ The firmness of his voice flattened any hope of that kind of sympathy. ‘My father left when I was eight. I blamed myself but, worse than that, I couldn’t help my mother. I couldn’t make her smile again.’
‘Oh, Max.’ She reached out, the wrap slipping from her shoulder as she touched the side of his face with her palm. ‘You weren’t to blame. You were just a child.’
‘I felt even more of a failure when she met my stepfather after we moved to Madrid. He brought the life back to my mother’s eyes.’ Lisa could hear the hurt in his voice and her heart went out to him and the eight-year-old boy he’d been.
‘That was love that did that, Max. Your stepfather’s love, but it would have been your love that kept her going, kept her strong.’
He sprang back from her, from her touch, his eyes so dark and so very hard. She was confused. What had she said that was so wrong?
‘Love?’ The word snarled out into the room as he once again paced to the window and she wished he could just sit and talk. Only then would she be able to break through the wall of pain he was barricaded behind. ‘Not my love.’
‘Of course it did,’ she implored as she joined him at the window. How she wished they could go back to where they’d been when she’d first opened her eyes this morning. To the moment before their pasts had collided with the first Christmas that held the promise of something other than upset and tears.
He turned to her, towering over her, his anger taking her breath away, making her light-headed. ‘Love didn’t stop any of that for me and I’m damn sure it didn’t help you either.’
‘I-I,’ she stammered and stepped back from his overbearing anger. ‘I...no.’
The room began to sway and her body became heavy, making standing upright almost impossible. She stumbled back to the bed and flopped down on it, closing her eyes as everything began to spin and turn.
‘Lisa,’ Max demanded as he crouched beside the bed and looked into her eyes. ‘Are you ill?’
If she wasn’t mistaken his face was stricken, as if he thought she was really ill. For the briefest of seconds she wanted to smile and reach out to him, but the fury of moments earlier was still there in his eyes and the affirmation that he despised love and any sentimental emotions burned in her mind.
‘I’m fine.’ She forced herself to sit up, clutching at the soft faux-fur throw as if it were a lifeline. ‘I think I just need something to eat.’
Relief rushed over his face and for a moment he looked unguarded and she wondered what he hadn’t yet told her. What it was that haunted him so much, because she was certain it wasn’t just his father walking out, that it was more than that, much more.
He stood up slowly. ‘Then I will fix you something light before we go out for dinner.’
‘Thanks.’ The moment of openness had passed. He was behind the shutters once more and even though she didn’t want to, she could feel herself retreating there too. ‘I’ll have a shower then come down.’
* * *
Max sat in the kitchen, the tea and toast he’d decided would be best waiting as he heard Lisa come down the stairs. He watched her as she walked along the small hallway, looking about her like a child in a toy store at all the decorations, and he hated that things had gone wrong this morning. At least now he understood her reservations about him as a father. She didn’t want her child to be emotionally messed around as she had been, never knowing if her father wanted her or not.
Anger simmered inside him as he thought of her being used that way by the very man who was meant to protect her from hurt—from anything. And then she’d married him, a man incapable of any kind of love or protection.
‘Better?’ He kept his voice casual as she entered the small rustic kitchen.
‘Y
es, thanks, and this looks good.’ She sat with him at the small table and gingerly ate the toast and sipped at the tea.
‘Do you feel well enough to go out for Christmas dinner?’ Now he wondered at the wisdom of having arranged it. He hadn’t given any thought to her condition. It was the very thing he’d avoided thinking about as it unleashed the past, the pain of losing his mother. The anger and injustice that she had chosen Angelina over herself—over him.
‘You bet I do. I wouldn’t miss this for anything.’ There was a new lightness in her voice and he relaxed. Maybe all they’d discussed had cleared the air.
‘Very well.’ He stood up from the table and took her hand, pulling her gently to her feet. ‘Then before we go, we have to see what gifts are beneath the tree.’
‘Gifts?’ She laughed lightly. ‘You mean Santa has been?’
‘If you like, yes.’ With happiness he hadn’t felt in a long time, he took Lisa into the living room. The fire he’d lit while she was in the shower now filling the room with warmth and the lights of the tree gave it all a surreal feel.
‘Oh, but I haven’t anything to add to this.’ She looked up at him, genuine worry in her eyes. ‘For you, I mean.’
He thought of his child growing within her as he looked at her gently. He must be going soft with all this Christmas stuff, because he wanted to hold her, to place his hands on her stomach and tell her that their baby was the perfect gift.
He shook himself free of such thoughts. ‘So Santa didn’t bring me anything, but he did for you. Shall we open them before we go out?’
Before she could get all sentimental on him he picked up a flat box, beautifully gift-wrapped. ‘This is for you, as I have a suspicion you will need them over the next few days.’
She took the present from him and looked at him, as if trying to read his thoughts, find out just what this really meant. Then she sat down in front of the fire and slowly opened the wrapping, and lifted the lid on a large silver box.
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