Christmas Holiday Husband

by Kris Pearson

  “Hop on then. It’s further than you think.”

  “I really want to walk, thanks all the same.”

  “Oh, you’ll walk,” he said, with quiet deliberation. “But I’ll take you down as far as the shoreline.” He braked and waited; it appeared she had no option but to climb on behind him. She slung one leg over the seat and settled herself on the shuddering machine, trying to keep a little distance between their bodies. Impossible of course—was the bike made to carry one or two?

  “Sit close. Hold tight.”

  Difficult to do anything else, Ellie decided, raising her feet onto the stubby footrests and trying not to slide down the tilt of the hot black seat so she’d be glued against him. She turned her head and laid her cheek against the cottony fragrance of his shoulder rather than risk getting her nose bumped, then extended her arms around his waist, and linked her fingers.

  “Useless,” he drawled, looking down. “Hang onto me. And move exactly when I do. Have you ridden pillion before?”

  “Never,” she muttered, behind his ear.

  “Grab me around the waist. Lean hard against me. Your weight will follow mine.”

  He revved the engine while she fidgeted behind him. The vibrations rumbled up through her pelvic bones. Her thighs pressed around his hips. Her groin throbbed against the base of his spine. The bike was nothing more than a gigantic sex toy—no wonder young men enjoyed riding them.

  Tony revved the engine again and accelerated along the driveway. Ellie adjusted her grip a little further. A few seconds later the bike rattled over the cattle-stop bars and turned, tipped, dipped. She clutched him tightly then, and felt him chuckle. They angled onto a narrow bumpy path that soon ran out altogether. He picked up speed over one of the farm paddocks, avoiding the abundant cowpats, and then slowed to a stop.

  “Get the gate for me, can you?” he asked over his shoulder.

  Ellie inspected the nearby stock with caution. Big dark eyes stared back at her. She levered herself off the shuddering seat and jogged the few steps on noodle-weak legs, waited until Tony had chugged through, and closed the gate behind him. They dropped down over another couple of fields before he pulled up close to the shore.

  “I presume you were heading for the water, and not along there?” he asked. Some of the coastline was quite inaccessible. Tall yellow-brown cliffs rose straight from the sea, perhaps a mile away.

  “This is fine, thanks,” she said, hoisting her bag over her shoulder after she’d retrieved Ginny’s squashed sunhat from its depths. “I’ll be with you all in time for dinner. How long will it take me to walk back the way we’ve just come?”

  His mouth twisted in a sardonic smile. “Maybe half an hour from here. It’s uphill all the way. But don’t worry about that—I’m coming with you. I’ll take you back.”

  xxx

  Suddenly Ellie very much didn’t want him there. Some sort of sixth sense shimmered through her. What was he up to?

  Tony peeled off his shirt and tied it around the bike handlebars. He stretched and yawned, eyes closed against the glare of the hot sun. Ellie watched the muscles of his long arms tighten. Saw the sea breeze flicking across the crisp hair on his tanned chest. Couldn’t help enjoying the denim work shorts slipping a little lower on his hipbones as his belly became tautly concave. She bit her bottom lip and tried to turn away, but she was still admiring him when he opened his eyes again and reached for her hand.

  He grinned. “Tonight?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I can’t turn down your offer of marriage and then come back to bed with you.”

  “Silly of me to ruin things by proposing. You didn’t want a long term thing anyway, did you Ellie... You made that clear by the river.”

  “Yes,” she mumbled, thinking of how she’d teased him with the sunscreen lotion and then lewdly grabbed at his ready body.

  He tugged her hand so she’d walk with him. “No reason why we can’t...” He shrugged his shoulders, voice trailing off.

  Can’t what? Have sex? Jump each other’s bones? Sleep together? Certainly not ‘make love’. She knew love wasn’t part of his picture.

  “Stop it, Tony!” she said, trying to retrieve her hand from his and not succeeding.

  “Hope springs eternal,” he said. “You don’t ask, you don’t get. I was just starting to enjoy myself again.”

  Suddenly he swirled her against him and held her trapped against his body. She opened her mouth to protest. He stifled the words with his lips. And proceeded to kiss her so thoroughly she had no chance to resist, and eventually no thought of escape. Her initial wriggles of annoyance gave way to deliberate grinding pressure—a slow and suggestive chafing of her body against his.

  “Come back to bed with me, Ellie,” he rasped when he released her. “We’re both adults. We still set each other on fire. We should make the most of it.”

  She sighed and laid her cheek down on his broad tickly chest, saying nothing. Not daring to. She shook her head—but not with any real conviction.

  They walked on, her fingers trapped warmly in his. The tide was low, the sand hard and flat. A fresh salty tang filled the air. It should have been a wonderful walk, but Ellie still felt uneasy.

  “Tell me about your life,” he said. “Your life in town. Where do you teach?”

  She relaxed a fraction; that was easier ground. “Wherever I’m wanted. I chose to go relief teaching because the money’s better. You take the chance you won’t get work every day, but I’ve been pretty lucky.”

  “And there’s just you?”

  “And my mother,” she said, too quickly. “She’ll come and live with me once I’m settled.”

  xxx

  Tony fell silent. The boy was the absolute image of him. Why wouldn’t she tell him? What was she hiding? Well—he knew what she was hiding, but why?

  He loved his girls. Adored them. But to find he had a son as well! And at ten the boy would be old enough to talk to and get to know. He very much wanted to do that,

  but Ellie was flinging up barriers at every turn. If he confronted her head-on, she might vanish and he’d have to waste time tracking her down again. Tracking them both down, he corrected. Softly softly catchee monkey.

  He squeezed her hand and changed the subject, knowing he was getting nowhere. “You’re seeing the beach at its best today. It gets pretty wild along this coast. Tearing winds sometimes. Don’t ever go swimming on your own here. Even when it’s as calm as this. There’s a rip out there that’s a real killer. You can see it from the cliffs.”

  She gazed out over the blue water with its lazy lace-edged waves and smiled as though she didn’t believe him. It certainly looked safe enough today.

  “Still waters run deep,” he said, thinking of Ellie and her hidden mystery.

  They walked on along the firm sand. She bent and picked up occasional shells and dropped them into her bag.

  “What are you planning to do with them?” he asked.

  “They might be handy for a school project. You never can tell.”

  “Indeed, you never can,” he said with heavy irony.

  xxx

  Once dinner was done, Ellie excused herself and went to her room. Ginny expected Tony would follow. They’d seemed more at ease with each other this evening, but he sat on, apparently having no intention of joining her.

  “Do you want to take Ellie another coffee?” Ginny asked.

  “In a minute,” he replied, sounding distracted. “You’ve got her home address somewhere, have you? I’ll need it for her tax form.”

  Ginny rose and walked across to the beautiful old mahogany desk where she kept her household and personal paperwork. “I’ve got her mother’s address, anyway,” she said, poking about. “Her old place burnt down of course. I don’t have the new house address yet.”

  “Her mother’s will have to do then,” Tony said. “Is there a phone number? Not that we’re ever likely to need that, I suppose...”

  Ginny wrote the details on a smal
l notepad, ripped off the page and handed it to him.

  He nodded his thanks and tucked the paper away in a pocket. “I’ll get her tax form organised while it’s on my mind. Down again in a few minutes.”

  He bounded up the stairs and Ginny heard the floorboards creak over the far end of the sitting room—nowhere near Ellie’s room. Plainly they’d not entirely resolved their problem, whatever it was.

  xxx

  Tony dropped into his black leather swivel-chair and slid the desk drawer open yet again. He wondered how many times today he’d inspected his son’s photo. Once again he ran a tender finger along the side of Callum’s face, enjoying the cheerful smile, the dimpled chin. He looked such a good kid. Such a boy. And Tony had hoped for a boy after the twins, but that had never happened.

  At lunchtime he’d made another copy, and smuggled Callum’s likeness back to his bedroom. Then he’d stood, holding it with fingers that shook a little, regarding himself and his son side by side in the big bright mirror. His boy. No doubt about it. And for all those years he’d had no clue he existed.

  What had Ellie told Callum about his absent father? Dead? Deserted? Married to someone else? He compressed his lips, clamping his teeth together, biting down on the wasted years and the sharp yearning now flooding through him. He was raw with the loss of the boy he’d never known.

  He’d engineer a meeting, and soon. School was due to close for the summer holiday in two day’s time. He had the grandmother’s address and phone number now. He’d find him, even though Ellie plainly didn’t want him to.

  Was she ashamed of her son? Her unmarried status? Surely not. So why was she keeping Callum’s existence a secret from him?

  He turned the questions around and around as he swung the chair from side to side in a soothing mindless motion and hatched his plan.

  Somewhere in the house there’d be photos of himself as a child. He stood, considered for a few moments, then prowled around the landing to check the long selection of family shots there. He found some as a toddler, some as a teenager, but nothing quite the age he’d hoped for. He set off downstairs, remembering the photos in his parents’ bedroom.

  Among the snapshots in one of the old albums he found exactly what he needed; himself very close to the boy’s age, his head tipped on almost the same angle. His hair was rather longer, but the similarity of expression was unnerving. He eased it free from the page and took it upstairs. Couldn’t resist placing it next to his son’s photo and comparing the two of them side by side before laying it on the scanner bed, enlarging it to much the same size as Ellie’s, and printing a copy.

  Excellent—stage one complete.

  Xxx

  Fifteen minutes later he knocked on the Blue Room’s door. “Ellie? Ginny wondered if you wanted another coffee. I’ve brought a tray up, in case.”

  She opened the door and stood blocking his access to the room. She reached for the tray, smiling politely. “Tell her thank you. I’ll bring it down again later.”

  Tony backed away. That was pretty conclusive— she definitely didn’t want him in her bedroom while she had that photo beside her bed. And she wasn’t issuing invitations for later in the evening, either. Damn—he’d hoped their embraces on the beach had got around that little problem. Duplicitous she might be, but he still desired her.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  An anguished cry ripped from Ellie’s throat. Her hands clutched at her breasts. Her nails bit in, unheeded. She tightened her arms around her body, rocking herself for comfort where no comfort could possibly be found, and sank onto the bed.

  He knew.

  Cal’s photo still stood there, but now another boy’s likeness leaned against it. A boy so similar to Cal that no argument was possible. A boy with a hairstyle from a generation ago, but in every other way her son.

  The laughing eyes with their lush lashes...the cheeky smile...the olive skin—all Cal’s, and all Tony’s.

  The hot burn of vomit rose up her throat and she began to retch, bolting to the bathroom just in time to direct the remains of her breakfast down the toilet. Dropping to her knees she clutched the cold porcelain and heaved until she was empty—as empty as her wide scared eyes.

  What would he do? What could she say? Surely there was no way to salvage anything from such a horrendous situation?

  Tony must utterly despise her for never letting him know he had a son, even though she’d had no idea where in the world he’d been for years afterwards.

  Well, guess what Mister? I’ve managed this long without your money; I don’t need it now.

  But worse—far, far worse—would be Cal’s reaction. What had she done?

  “I had a Dad all the time, Mum, and you didn’t tell me. Even when you knew, you didn’t tell me. I hate you Mum. I want to be with my Dad.” She heard his voice so clearly he might have been in the room with her. And what could she say to refute his accusations? Nothing.

  She bowed her head, stricken, shamed, shaking, and finally rose to rinse the acrid taste from her mouth. Then she crept back to the bed, and curled up, aching and trembling, knees tight against her chest like a scared child.

  After a few minutes she reached out and separated the photos, setting them side by side to compare them. Huge tears blurred her vision, leaked down her face, and soaked into her pillow.

  She had no idea how long she lay there, desolate and inconsolable, but she stirred at the polite tap on her half open door.

  “Ellie? Are you all right, dear? Are you coming down for lunch?” Ginny’s kindly voice enquired.

  Ellie moaned—a hopeless terrified sound. Ginny hurried in and laid a concerned hand on her brow. “Oh my dear girl, whatever’s wrong? Please—whatever’s wrong?”

  She flapped a hopeless hand toward the two photographs. “My son is Tony’s child,” she choked. “Tony’s found out about him. He’s left me this to show me he knows...” She collapsed into wracking sobs again.

  Ginny drew a fast breath and lowered herself onto a nearby chair. Ellie continued to sob. A few minutes later the distant beat of the helicopter intruded into the strained atmosphere of the room.

  “You’ll have to be very brave, Ellie,” Ginny said, standing again. “We need to smarten you up. That’s Tony bringing your son back to the farm. He swore me to secrecy. Said he’d arranged it as a surprise for you now school’s out because you were missing Callum so much.”

  She reached for the photos and inspected them more closely. “I had no idea about the relationship of course, but they’re peas from the same pod, all right.” She raised an eyebrow and looked at Ellie with motherly compassion. “Can you do it? Can you manage to look pleased for your boy?”

  She set the photos down again, crossed to the bathroom, turned on a tap, and returned with a cold, damp flannel. She briskly washed Ellie’s face and smoothed her hair back as though she was one of the twins. “Lie there a minute with this over your eyes.” She folded the cool cloth into a pad and handed it to a stunned Ellie.

  “I’ve been sick,” Ellie muttered, obediently reclining and pressing the welcoming dampness over her face.

  “Some perfume then,” Ginny said. “Have you brushed your teeth?”

  The helicopter throbbed raucously close now. Ellie listened until it settled, then levered herself up from the bed. She staggered to the bathroom, gave her teeth a rapid minty scrub, heaved a huge sigh, applied some lip gloss, and stood there blinking at Ginny. “Will I do?” she quavered.

  “Quite a transformation. Have you time for a lick of eye-shadow? Just to disguise the redness in your eyes?”

  Ellie fumbled amongst her small cosmetic collection and smoothed on some grey-blue frosted powder. “God help me,” she groaned at her reflection. “Thank you Ginny. I couldn’t have managed it without you. What the hell happens now?”

  “Let’s watch for them from the balcony—it’ll give you a little more time, and the fresh air will help.”

  “I don’t think anything much will help.” But she follow
ed Ginny out through the French doors and leaned on the surrounding parapet until Cal and Tony came into view.

  The breeze blew down from the hills. The scent of the pine forest wafted strong and fresh. Any other day she’d have breathed it in with pleasure; today it barely registered. She’d fixed her whole panicked attention on the two figures below.

  Tony’s stride was long and purposeful. His eyes were hidden by sunglasses, and he prowled like a beast after prey. Callum was the prey—skipping ahead of him, full of eager anticipation, and never knowing the havoc his sudden appearance had caused.

  Tony said something, and Cal glanced upward and waved. “Mum! Mum! We came in the helicopter!”

  “I heard you land,” she called back. “I’ll be right down.”

  She and Ginny turned together.

  Ginny paused by the telltale photographs and nodded. “Not much doubt, is there?”

  “No doubt at all,” Ellie replied. “Tony was the only man I ever slept with. Even if Callum had turned out short and fat and blond, he’d still be Tony’s.”

  Ginny let out an amused squawk at the reply, and the two of them descended the stairs, spluttering helplessly, although more from nerves than mirth.

  xxx

  She couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t meet whatever accusations his dark gaze held. Her eyes went straight to Callum as he ran toward her under the shady portico. She hugged him close. “What a fantastic surprise for me, Cal! I’ve only just found out you were on your way. We’ll have to make your bed up, won’t we?”

  She turned her back on Tony, tucking an arm around her son, hoping to put on a good enough show to fool him. But still Tony’s menacing presence intruded.

  Fingers of unease ran up and down her spine as she led Cal into the entrance hall. Tony paced close behind, carrying a small suitcase that Ellie recognised as her mother’s. He eased ahead as the boy stood staring at the curving timber staircase with obvious awe.