His for Christmas

by Cara Colter

  She kicked at a tuft of grass, and then she moved up to the paling fence and slapped it—hard. Pain shot through her hand and up her arm in a satisfying wave, making it possible to ignore the ache in her chest for a tenth of a second. She clenched her hand to a fist, drew it back…

  ‘Whoa!’ Before she could punch the fence, Luke’s large, warm hand closed over hers, his other arm going about her waist and lifting her bodily off the ground.

  She tried to struggle free. ‘Put me down, Luke. I want to smash something!’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Don’t try and stop me. I—’

  ‘I’m not.’

  She stopped struggling. He was taking her towards the barn. ‘You’re not?’

  ‘No, but I’m not going to let you break your hand either.’ His voice was grim. ‘I think we’ve both had enough of hospitals for the moment, don’t you?’

  Anger hot and untempered rushed through her. ‘I’ll be happy if I never see another hospital as long as I live,’ she bit out.

  ‘Good.’

  He didn’t set her down until they were deep inside the barn. That was when she saw it, hanging from a low beam—a punching bag. She laughed, but her laugh didn’t contain an ounce of mirth.

  Intent, she moved towards it, but Luke grabbed her wrist and pulled her to a halt. ‘Put these on first.’ He handed her a set of thin leather gloves. They weren’t boxing gloves, but she didn’t care. She reefed them on and started towards the bag again.

  A growl of rage—a sound she hadn’t known she was capable of making—emerged from her throat when Luke pulled her to another halt. ‘What now?’ she all but yelled at him.

  ‘That bag—it’s heavy. It won’t move much when you punch it. That can be…unsatisfying.’ He held a wooden baseball bat out to her. ‘Try hitting it with this.’

  She gritted her teeth and took the bat. ‘Excellent.’

  She moved in close to the punching bag, drew the bat back, and then let fly with all her might. It hit with a dull thud, and the force of it vibrated through her arms and into her shoulders, making the bag shudder.

  That’s for my stupid body, with its ovary on the blink!

  She drew the bat back and took another swing. Thud! It set the bag swaying.

  That’s for making me wait almost a year before falling pregnant!

  Wind up, swing…thud.

  And that’s for making me lose my baby!

  She stared at the swaying, juddering punching bag and her legs started to tremble. The anger slid out of her and the bat slipped from her fingers. She backed up to a hay bale and sat, breathing hard.

  ‘Did you hurt yourself?’

  Luke was there, drawing off her gloves. She shook her head.

  ‘Keira?’

  ‘The miscarriage.’ She swallowed. ‘It wasn’t my fault.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s…it’s not fair that I lost my baby.’

  ‘I know.’

  Her face crumpled. She’d lost her baby—her beautiful baby—and all the plans she’d made for it.

  She hauled in a breath and did her best to smooth out her face, to push the pain, the darkness, away. But her face refused to co-operate, and the pain beat at her, breaking over her in wave after wave, making her head bow and her shoulders shake.

  The constriction around her chest tightened. She couldn’t draw breath. She knew the moment she did her defences would fall. She tried to hold it, but the burning in her lungs built and stretched and scalded her until she couldn’t fight it any longer.

  A sob burst from her. She dropped her face to her hands, her entire body shaking. Arms went about her, holding her and rocking her. Luke. His breath warm at her temple and his arms strong, supporting her as the sobs engulfed her. Being held in his arms didn’t make up for losing her baby—not one little bit—but it did help, which made her cry harder for a bit. Being here with him like this helped a lot.

  When her tears had finally spent themselves she lay in his arms, tired beyond belief. ‘You want to know what one of the hardest things is?’ she finally whispered.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘In the eyes of the world, my baby was nothing.’ She dragged in a shuddering breath, incapable of any other movement at the moment. ‘I feel as bereaved as if my baby had been stillborn, and yet I can’t even have a service for it. I can’t honour it in that way and—’

  She didn’t know the words to express how bad that made her feel. When she glanced up into his eyes, though, she knew she didn’t have to. He understood.

  And that helped too. A little.

  When they returned to the house, Luke opened the back door to discover Christmas carols belting out from the sound system in the living room.

  He closed his eyes with a grimace. He knew what he and Jason had decided, and in principle he’d agreed with it. At the moment, though, it seemed the worse timing possible.

  He strode through to the living room and made silent motions, drawing his hand across his neck and shaking his head. Jason immediately leapt to his feet and all but dived across the room to hit the stop button.

  ‘No—don’t. Not on my account.’

  Luke swallowed. He hadn’t realised Keira had followed so close behind him. Jason hovered by the sound system and glanced from Luke to Keira, and then back at his dad. Luke didn’t know what to tell him, so he simply settled for a shrug. Keira sat. Jason contented himself with turning the volume down a couple of notches, and joined Keira on the sofa.

  She glanced up at Luke. ‘I told you—I like Christmas carols.’

  He found he didn’t quite know what to do with his hands and his feet. That hadn’t been a problem when Keira had been crying. He’d just held her, and ached right alongside her. ‘I know, but I wasn’t sure you’d find them appropriate today.’

  ‘Why not? It is Christmas.’

  He shuffled his feet, shoved his hands into his pockets. Keira and Jason looked comfortable, sitting on the sofa like that. Jason sprawled at one end in his typical lounging, slouching fashion. Keira rested her head back against the sofa’s softness at the other end.

  She turned to glance at Jason. ‘You like Christmas carols?’

  He grinned. ‘Only when my mates aren’t around.’

  It hit Luke then that they looked like a family.

  He tried to kill the thought before it could fully form. No peace—not for anyone—could be found in it.

  Another thought followed swiftly on its heels—he wanted to be sitting there on the sofa with them. There was room. It was a large sofa. He forced himself towards an armchair instead. He tried to push all thoughts of warmth and softness and the scent of vanilla from his mind. What he wanted was neither here nor there. What he should be focusing on was Keira and her wellbeing.

  He tried to study her as surreptitiously as he could. She was pale, and her eyes were red-rimmed, but she seemed calmer, steadier than she had been in the last three days. Letting out all that anger, followed by the crying jag—her acknowledgement of her grief—he knew was only the beginning of her grieving process. But if he and Jason could give her a nice Christmas—nothing fancy, just a bit of company and some fun—then maybe that would help her heal just a little bit more.

  It was the least he could do after hauling her off to her great-aunt’s house like he’d done. That had been a serious error of judgement. He’d thought it might provide her with something else to focus on—a new project. He bit back an oath when he recalled the stark whiteness of her face, the misery haunting her eyes. He should be shot for putting her through that.

  His mouth dried. He should be shot because he’d pushed her so hard to set up her clinic in Gunnedah, because he wanted her to stay. It was as simple as that.

  All the strength left his body, his back slumping in the armchair, his head suddenly too heavy for his neck. Keira smiled at him as if she understood exactly how he felt.

  Tension shot through him. He couldn’t let her misinterpret his actions. He couldn’t let
her rely on him for more than friendship. He’d told her it was okay to rely on other people and he’d meant it. As long as she didn’t count him as other people.

  He would let her down.

  To be free to love a woman like Keira, to build a family with her—whatever shape that family took—was what he wanted more than life itself.

  But he couldn’t have it. A man like him couldn’t be trusted with a woman’s heart. Especially not a woman as loving and giving as Keira. If he ever saw the hurt and disappointment that he’d caused in Tammy spring into Keira’s eyes…It would tear him to pieces inside.

  She deserved better. Much better. So had Tammy. He would not risk Keira’s happiness for his own selfish needs.

  ‘So, I guess you’ll be putting your great-aunt’s house on the market like you always meant to?’ He made his voice brusque and businesslike.

  The light in her eyes faded. He told himself this was the wise thing to do, sensible—to erect a wall that would protect her from his faithless heart. ‘You’ll have Christmas with us at Candlebark, sell the house, and then return to the city, where Gunnedah will become a faint memory.’

  She suddenly smiled, as if she’d worked out the subtext to his words. ‘Are you trying to tell me that you’ll miss me?’

  Hell, no! Even if the answer to that question was a resounding yes!

  ‘If you invite me to visit, I’ll come,’ she said.

  ‘Sweet,’ said Jason.

  ‘You’ll be welcome any time.’ Luke made his voice deliberately neutral—polite. It made the frown spring back into her eyes.

  When she left, he’d allow himself the comfort of a couple of phone calls—just to make sure she was okay—but he wouldn’t invite her to visit and she wouldn’t suggest it. The time between phone calls would lengthen until they eventually dwindled to nothing. He’d make sure of it. In the long run it was what would be easier for everyone.

  ‘To be honest, Luke, I have to admit I’m not focusing on anything much beyond Christmas.’

  He was pushing her again! His hands clenched. Just because he couldn’t get the thought of holding her, touching her, kissing her, out of his head, it didn’t mean she felt the same way.

  Selfish—that was what he was, he suddenly realised. Because the boundaries were for him—for his benefit, his protection. He ground his teeth together. He shouldn’t be concerned with anything other than providing her with whatever she needed while she remained at Candlebark. Not with what would be best and easiest for him.

  In his heart he knew she’d return to the city. She knew that she didn’t belong with him.

  He would give her Christmas…and there was one more thing he could do for her too.

  In the eyes of the world, my baby was nothing.

  His jaw locked for a moment. He unlocked it to ask, ‘Keira, do you have a favourite poem?’

  She cocked her head to one side. ‘My favourite poet is Robert Frost. The Road Not Taken was my mother’s favourite poem. What about you?’

  ‘Banjo Patterson’s Clancy of the Overflow.’

  She turned to Jason. ‘Anything by Spike Milligan,’ he said promptly.

  He reeled off a nonsense verse that had sudden laughter rising through Luke. ‘You used to recite that when you were five or six.’

  Keira smiled. It was slow, but it had the same impact as the sun coming out from behind a bank of stormclouds. Luke couldn’t look away as she recited a nonsense verse back at Jason. Then she and Jason shot nonsense verse back and forth until they both started to laugh.

  Luke rested his head back and feasted his eyes on the sight. It was beyond anything to see some of her vivacity and colour returning. It eased something inside him to hear his son laughing.

  ‘Oh, that was fun!’ Keira turned back to Luke. ‘But what on earth made you ask such a question?’

  ‘Oh…uh…a poetry programme I caught on the radio,’ he improvised, recalled to his original purpose. ‘What’s your favourite plant?’

  ‘Let me guess—you caught a gardening programme on the radio too?’

  ‘Every Saturday morning from eight till nine.’

  ‘No prizes for guessing yours, I suppose?’

  ‘Wheat,’ he and Jason said in unison.

  ‘There’s lots and lots that I love. Flowers are wonderful, but scents are the best. And my favourite smelling plant is…’

  She flipped out several fingers. Luke found himself leaning towards her, elbows resting on knees. ‘What are you deciding between?’

  ‘Freesias and frangipani…’

  Heck, where would he get a frangipani tree out here?

  ‘Gardenias…Oh, and roses, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ he echoed. He could do a rosebush.

  ‘Wattle,’ she finally decided. ‘Wattle is my favourite plant. It smells divine, and it looks wonderful.’

  He filed that information away.

  She stared at him for several moments, as if awaiting another out of the blue question. ‘What? Not going to ask me my favourite song?’ she teased.

  He straightened. He hadn’t thought of that. ‘Yeah.’

  But with a laugh and a shake of her head she turned to Jason. ‘What’s your favourite Christmas memory?’

  ‘That’s easy.’

  Luke’s head shot up. It was?

  ‘The year I was seven I woke up really, really early to find Santa had left me a bike.’

  The breath whooshed out of Luke as the memory swept over him. ‘Man, you should’ve heard him. He made enough noise to wake the neighbours.’

  ‘Dad took me down to the local park, probably so Mum could sleep in, and he taught me how to ride it. It was brilliant! I fell over a lot, but it didn’t matter, ‘cos the grass was soft. And Dad would always pick me up, dust me off, and away we’d go again.’

  Luke remembered that morning and grinned. At seven, Jason had had boundless energy.

  ‘And when we got home Mum was cooking blueberry pancakes, and I remember this huge glazed ham sitting on the table. One of my other presents was this compendium of board games, and I think we ate and played board games and watched Christmas stuff on the telly all day. And then on Boxing Day we got up really early and drove here. Candlebark was my favourite place in the world.’ Jason paused. ‘So that Christmas I got the best presents and we had the best fun…and I knew that the next day I’d be going to my favourite place.’

  ‘That’s a great memory,’ Keira said.

  ‘It was a beaut Christmas,’ Luke agreed.

  And it had been. But a few short years later Luke had destroyed all that. He’d made promises he couldn’t keep. Tammy hadn’t deserved that, and neither had Jason.

  He glanced at Keira and resolution gelled in his stomach. He would do all he could to make this Christmas special for her, but he wouldn’t make her any promises. He wasn’t the kind of man who could be trusted to keep his word.

  Chapter Ten

  ON WEDNESDAY morning, four days after her miscarriage, Luke set a beautifully carved oak box on the table beside her cereal bowl. Keira stared at it, and wondered how long before she stopped counting off the days.

  ‘What’s this?’

  She glanced up at Luke. Just for a moment he looked touchingly uncertain. She didn’t know what it was about his rich brown eyes that could have her melting into a puddle in no more than the blink of an eye.

  He crouched down beside her. ‘Keira, I don’t think your baby was nothing. Neither does Jason. What you said about not being able to have any kind of memorial service—that struck me as pretty important. If Jason and I hadn’t been able to have a service for Tammy I don’t know how we could’ve moved on.’

  She abandoned her cereal to lean back and press both hands to her chest.

  ‘Jason and I thought that if it’s okay with you, if it’s something you’d like to do, we could hold a service in the garden for your baby. I know it’s not the same as one in a church or a cemetery, but…we’d like to honour your baby, to remember it.
But only if that’s okay with you.’

  Her eyes filled, and hot tears spilled onto her cheeks. For a moment she couldn’t say anything. Finally, she nodded. ‘I’d like that very much…thank you.’

  ‘Both of us wanted to give your baby something…a token.’ He leant out to stroke the box with one tanned finger. ‘This held all my boyhood treasures.’ He set a carved ebony figurine of a horse beside it. ‘And this was Jason’s most treasured possession when he was younger.’ He added a spray of rosemary to the pile without another word.

  Rosemary for remembrance…

  Her face crumpled. She buried her face in the hanky he handed her. When she was sure of herself again, she lifted her face, blew her nose, and stared at those simple treasures. ‘That’s very kind of you and Jason.’

  ‘I figured you might like to add one or two things of your own.’ He rose when she nodded. ‘We’ll be out in the garden when you’re ready.’

  Keira placed the three sets of knitted booties she’d bought from the women’s auxiliary stall, a Christmas bib she hadn’t been able to resist buying when she’d been waiting for the estate agent one day, and the most colourful of the pictures books, into the oak box. She added the horse and the rosemary. With a kiss, she sealed it. Then she put on her prettiest summer dress and joined Luke and Jason in the garden.

  The service was simple but it poured balm on the wound stretching across her heart. Luke said a few words about how much her baby had been wanted and loved…and how much it would be missed. Then he read out a Robert Frost poem, and it was perfect. So perfect that for a moment she couldn’t see because tears made the garden blur. Jason read a psalm from the bible, and then Luke pressed a button on the portable CD player he had sitting nearby and the sweet strains of ‘Amazing Grace’ filled the garden.

  They all sang—not always in key—but Keira didn’t care. A fierce love for her baby and for the two males standing either side of her filled her. When the hymn came to an end Luke gestured, and she placed the oak box with all their treasures into the fresh earth Luke and Jason had turned over. And then they covered it in and planted a wattle tree to mark the spot.