'Tis the Season

by Carole Mortimer, Alison Roberts

  It was too late to tell herself that she shouldn’t have just left Jake that day. That she should have stayed and listened to what he had to say. That she should never have just disappeared in that way, let alone kept Magdalena’s birth a secret from him. It was far too late for that because she had already done all of those things.

  All those unforgivable things…

  Her throat moved convulsively as she tried to hold back scalding tears that refused to be denied as they fell hotly down her cheeks. She turned to bury her face against the warm strength of Jake’s shoulder as those sobs racked her body.

  ‘Hey.’ Jake shifted so that he could see her face. Her eyes were still closed, but the cascade of tears down her cheeks told him this was a de cep tion—that she was fully conscious now. And hurting. ‘Don’t cry, Caro,’ he pleaded, even as his arms tightened about her. ‘I can’t bear it!’

  ‘You can’t bear it?’ She sat up, her eyes deep blue wells of pain as she looked at him. ‘Jake, I thought—you must know what I thought! You see, the estate agent telephoned the apartment to let me know that the sale of this house had been completed.’

  ‘The idiot!’ Jake growled. ‘I gave him implicit instructions not to do that—I told him the house was a surprise for my wife. What the—’

  ‘Don’t you see, Jake? That isn’t the point!’ Caro wailed her distress. ‘From that single telephone call I made an assumption— Well, not that single telephone call,’ she recalled with a wince. ‘I also telephoned your hotel suite in New York, to let you know about the estate agent’s call. When a woman answered—a woman with a sexily husky voice—and told me that you couldn’t take the call because you were in the shower—’

  ‘Caro, could we go back a couple of steps?’ Jake cut in grimly. ‘Exactly what assumption did you make when that stupid estate agent told you about the house?’

  Caro swallowed hard before standing up to move away from him. ‘There was the woman in your hotel suite, too…’

  He nodded. ‘Who I can only assume was Mrs Williams…’

  ‘Your PA?’ Caro shook her head in denial. ‘It didn’t sound like Mrs Williams at all.’

  ‘She had a cold,’ Jake explained. ‘A single day in the below-zero temperature of New York and she caught what she assured me was the worst cold of her life. It was because I finally had to send her off to her bed, making it impossible for her to assist me with the paperwork on the deal I was making, that I was delayed in New York for that extra day.’

  This just got worse and worse! Caro realised achingly.

  The woman who had answered the telephone in Jake’s hotel suite in New York could have been Mrs Williams with a cold.

  No—it was no good trying to make excuses, Caro reproved herself; it had been Mrs Williams with a cold. As Jake had said it was. Just as he had bought this house for her as a wedding anniversary gift. As he said he had.

  ‘Caro,’ Jake spoke slowly, carefully, as if he wanted there to be absolutely no more misunderstandings between them, ‘are you telling me that you left me a year ago because you thought, you assumed from those two telephone calls, that I was involved in an affair with another woman?’

  Caro’s heart seemed to stop and she could no longer breathe; that was exactly what she had thought. What she had assumed!

  Jake would never forgive her. How could he when she had left him, denied him knowledge of his own daughter, because of a mistake? She didn’t deserve to be forgiven.

  ‘Caro, can you ever forgive me?’

  She blinked across at him dazedly. ‘Can I forgive you…?’ she whispered. ‘You mean it’s true after all?’

  ‘No, of course it isn’t true, damn it!’ Jake stood up suddenly to cross the room in two long strides, standing only inches away from Caro as he reached out to take both of her hands in his. ‘Caro, do you have any idea how much I love you?’ He looked down at her searchingly.

  Her lips moved, but she uttered no sound. Instead she could only stare up at him with wide, disbelieving eyes.

  ‘No, of course you don’t,’ Jake muttered in self-disgust. ‘I’ve never told you that, have I? Never once in all the time we were together.’

  The pink tip of her tongue moistened her lips before she spoke. ‘I— No, you haven’t.’

  ‘No,’ Jake acknowledged grimly. ‘Caro, I’ve been so busy protecting myself from the same heartache my parents suffered, because they really did love each other, but just couldn’t live together, that by not telling you I had fallen in love with you the moment I first saw you I actually created the situation that led to the two of us parting.’

  ‘But I left you,’ she gasped. ‘I kept Magdalena’s existence from you.’ She shook her head. ‘In the circumstances, that was completely unforgivable!’

  ‘Caro, I think you should let me decide what is or isn’t for givable,’ he chided huskily. ‘Yes, I regret that I wasn’t at your side during your pregnancy, during Magdalena’s birth and the months since, but…’

  ‘You regret it?’ Caro echoed, still in shock. ‘Jake, I was wrong. About everything. Because of that I—’

  ‘Stop beating yourself up, Caro.’ Jake gave her hands a gentle squeeze. ‘Do you still love me?’

  She swallowed hard. ‘I— You—’

  ‘No, you probably don’t,’ he accepted heavily. ‘But will you give me a chance to try again, Caro? Not because of Magdalena, but because I love you more than life itself. This past year without you has been absolute hell,’ he admitted, lowering all his barriers and making himself completely vulnerable to her for the first time. ‘You could live here with Magdalena. I could come down and visit both of you. Perhaps spend weekends here. We could get to know each other all over again. At least think about it before saying no, Caro,’ he pleaded when she didn’t answer him.

  Caro couldn’t have spoken at that moment if her life had depended upon it. Jake loved her. He had always loved her. From the first moment he saw her.

  ‘I can’t—’ She stopped, not even knowing where to begin telling Jake how much she loved him.

  He gave a pained wince as he released her hands and stepped back. ‘You can’t love me again?’ he guessed sadly. ‘Perhaps I deserve that.’ He ran an agitated hand through the dark thickness of his hair as he turned away. ‘I should have told you how I felt when I asked you to marry me. Should have taken the risk and stopped protecting my own damn heart.’

  ‘No, Jake. I mean—yes, Jake. You should have told me how you felt when you asked me to marry you,’ she corrected as she saw the way his face had paled. ‘But you weren’t the only one to blame for the misunderstandings between the two of us. As you said, we—we’re both a product of our upbringing. Your parents spent holidays together because they sincerely believed it was the right thing to do for you. As you know, my own parents stayed married to each other because of Gavin and I.’

  ‘Neither is exactly good PR for the perfect family,’ Jake acknowledged ruefully.

  ‘No.’ Caro gave a humourless smile. ‘Jake, I— Did I ever tell you that my father had affairs? Oh, they were discreet enough. But nevertheless as Gavin and I got older we always knew whenever he’d become involved with someone new. He and my mother would get along better, and he would take Gavin and I out to the cinema and shows. All in an effort to salve his conscience because he was sleeping with another woman.’ She bit her bottom lip. ‘It isn’t an excuse for the way I’ve behaved, but I think—believe—that in my heart of hearts I always felt the same thing might happen to me. That if I ever married my husband would eventually grow tired of me and turn to other women. But when I met you, fell so deeply in love with you, I forgot all about those fears. I was so sure that we would have a good marriage. A happy marriage.’

  ‘And instead I never told you that I loved you, allowing those fears to resurface,’ Jake realised, clenching his fists in agony. ‘To the point that my buying this house and the presence of a woman in my hotel suite that day all pointed to my behaving in the same way your father h
ad.’

  ‘Yes…’ she whispered.

  Jake groaned and shook his head. ‘Caro, I haven’t so much as looked at another woman from the very first moment I set eyes on you! Damn it, I can tell you that until the end of time,’ he rasped. ‘It isn’t going to matter at all when you no longer love me!’

  ‘But of course I love you, Jake,’ Caro protested emotionally. ‘I’ve always loved you,’ she told him. ‘And I always will love you,’ she vowed. Then, because she could no longer bear to be apart from him, she launched herself into his arms. ‘I love you so much, Jake, that this past year apart from you has been absolute hell for me, too!’

  Jake kissed her long and deeply, trembling slightly minutes later as he drew back to rest his forehead against hers. ‘I really thought you would come back that day, you know. Believed you were just upset that I hadn’t managed to get back for our wedding anniversary.’ He smiled shakily. ‘After two days I went to see Gavin—was convinced you would be staying with him.’ He breathed raggedly. ‘Gavin didn’t even know you had left me, let alone where you were.’

  Caro winced. ‘I thought at first that if you did bother to talk to Gavin after I left, it would be easier for him to deny all knowledge if he really didn’t have any idea where I was.’

  ‘If I bothered?’ Jake repeated incredulously. ‘Once I realised you weren’t coming back I was frantic! I spoke to all your friends. Your work colleagues. I checked with Gavin several times a day to see if he had heard from you. But no one had any idea where you were.’ His face was haggard with the memory of those days and weeks of searching for her. ‘Then Gavin said something to me that forced me to stop making a damned nuisance of myself…’

  ‘Gavin did?’ Caro frowned.

  Jake nodded. ‘He pointed out, quite bluntly, that if you had wanted me to find you then I would have done so.’ He gave a shuddering sigh. ‘I realised that he was right. That as far as you were concerned our marriage really was over.’

  ‘Oh, Jake!’ Her arms tightened about his waist and she clung to him. ‘How can you ever forgive me?’ she choked.

  ‘Quite easily, when I love you so much,’ he assured her firmly. ‘And by knowing that there’s two ways we can do this. I can lose my temper because you dis trusted me,’ he explained as she looked up at him questioningly, ‘and we can waste another year—or two—until either you’ve forgiven me or I’ve forgiven you. Or we can both just accept, hard as this last year apart might have been for both of us, that without it we might never have got to this point.’

  Tears glistened in Caro’s eyes. ‘I don’t understand…?’

  ‘Don’t you see, Caro, that without that telephone call from the estate agent, without the mistake you made about Mrs Williams, you would have flown to New York that day and surprised me, told me about your pregnancy, given birth to Magdalena? And all without my ever feeling any need to tell you how much I love and cherish you.’

  ‘Well…yes. But—’

  ‘Just think about it for a moment, Caro,’ he encouraged huskily. ‘I’m more than willing to forget the pain of this last year for what we have here and now—how about you?’

  Could they do that? Could they really start again and forget all the past heartache?

  If he could do that, then so could she!

  ‘Oh, yes, Jake,’ she said brokenly. ‘Let’s do that. Let’s start again,’ she pleaded as she clung to him. ‘Let’s live in this house together from now on. Fill it with love and children and—’

  ‘God, I love you, Caro!’ Jake groaned as his arms tightened about her like steel bands. ‘In future I intend telling you that a dozen times a day. A hundred times!’ he vowed fiercely. ‘I never, ever want you to doubt my love for you again—let alone even think of leaving me!’

  Caro gave a shaky laugh as she looked up at him, with her own love for him shining brightly, clearly in her eyes. ‘Now that I know you love me I won’t ever doubt you again, Jake. Or leave you,’ she promised. ‘From now on we’ll make every day as happy as this Christmas now promises to be.’

  Jake reached up to cradle each side of her face as he looked down intently into her eyes. ‘I’ll love you until the day I die, Caro Montgomery. Longer! You’re the air that I breathe. The sun, moon and stars to me.’

  ‘As you are to me, Jake Montgomery,’ she whispered emotionally.

  It was more than enough.

  Much, much more than enough…

  TWINS FOR CHRISTMAS

  Alison Roberts

  Dear Reader,

  Christmas… Merry Christmas. Happy Christmas. Christmas blessings. The word invokes emotion, doesn’t it? A sense of caring. Being able to show that you care for the people you love and for others who might be in trouble.

  An emergency department is not where anyone wants to be on Christmas Eve. This particular emergency department on the outskirts of London is certainly not where my hero, Rory, wants to be because…well…Kate’s there, isn’t she? And she’s pregnant, and clearly he isn’t the father.

  It’s not where a busload of orphans want to be either, but there’s magic in the air.

  Christmas magic. I hope some rubs off on you.

  Happy reading!

  Love,

  Alison

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘GOOD GRIEF! IT CAN’T BE—’

  Kate Simpson glanced up from the computer screen in time to see the back of a tall man who must have climbed out from the back of the ambulance in the bay to give the crew space to unload their patient.

  ‘Of course it isn’t,’ she told Judy.

  Her colleague’s eyebrows rose at her tone. ‘Looked like him for a sec, though, didn’t it?’

  Kate shrugged, pretending interest in the screensaver that had just kicked in on the screen in front of her. Santa’s sleigh, being pulled by ridiculously happy-looking reindeer, emerged from one side of the screen and then took a circuitous route to the other side amidst snowflakes and the soft jingle of bells. A clock in the bottom right corner of the screen ticked off the countdown until Christmas Day. Five hours and fifty-nine minutes to go.

  Of course it wasn’t him.

  How many times, she reminded herself, had she caught a glimpse of a masculine figure with some feature familiar enough to make her heart miss a beat? Broad shoulders, perhaps, or dark hair. Even a hand with elegantly long fingers or a way of moving with quiet confidence.

  How many times had she taken a second glance and felt the weight of disappointment? An echo of the loss she’d never really had the right to feel in the first place.

  ‘You OK, Kate?’

  ‘I’m fine. Why?’

  ‘I dunno. You look kind of…sad.’

  ‘Bored, more like. I’m not cut out to be a receptionist, and it’s so qu—’

  ‘Don’t!’ Judy held up her hand in a stop signal and the quick movement of her head made her festive bell earrings jingle. ‘Don’t you dare say the Q word! I’m off duty in an hour and I’ve still got Christmas shopping to finish.’

  Kate smiled. ‘OK. So far I’ve logged in one broken ankle, a kid with tonsillitis and a septic finger. It’s…shall we say…restful?’

  ‘Restful is exactly what you need. You should be at home with your feet up.’

  ‘I’d rather be doing the job I’m trained for, thanks.’

  ‘You can’t get close enough to a bed to take a pulse unless you turn sideways. Anyone would think you were carrying triplets instead of just twins.’ Judy turned to look out through the double doors ringed with bright red and green tinsel that led to the ambulance bay. ‘They’re taking their time.’

  ‘Probably finishing their patient report form or something. Can’t be urgent.’ Kate had been resisting taking that second glance. The one that was such an ingrained habit after so many months. Her soft sigh was an admission of defeat. It was too compelling to resist. What was it about the man still standing out there as the paramedics finally lifted a stretcher from the back of the vehicle? The sense of him listening, for
want of a better word, she decided. Standing so patiently when it had to be freezing, with the sleet that now appeared to be thickening into real snow falling heavily just beyond the overhang. He gave the impression of waiting but still being active. Absorbing everything happening around him. Ready to act on information instantly if necessary. A sense of control. That was what it was. He might be wearing civvies, but you’d pick him as the person in charge.

  No. Kate gave herself a mental shake. It couldn’t be him. She didn’t want it to be. Not now. Not when she finally felt in control of her life enough to be looking forward to the future. She transferred her gaze to the patient propped up on the stretcher as the double doors slid open to admit the new arrivals to the emergency department of St Bethel’s Hospital—a choice made easy by the fact that the paramedics were now blocking the figure of the man accompanying the frail-looking, elderly female patient.

  Judy moved to the other side of the reception desk to do her assigned task of triage, which meant that she would greet the patient, listen to the hand-over and decide where the patient should be taken first.

  Kate’s job was to collect the copy of the patient report form that had the patient details, input them into the computer program, then order sticky labels and request notes from previous admissions if appropriate.

  Except that the small entourage had moved enough to reveal the man again, and she couldn’t stop staring because it was him.

  Rory.

  He was staring back at her, his expression unreadable. He couldn’t be as shocked as she was because he’d had the advantage of being prepared for the possibility of this encounter, hadn’t he? No surprises there. He’d always had the advantage over her.

  He looked…as gorgeous as ever. A little thinner, perhaps. Different. But that could be because he was wearing clothes he would never have come to work in. Black jeans. A leather jacket over a black fisherman’s jersey. His hair was longer than she remembered, and there were beads of moisture caught in the dark waves. Melting snowflakes? No wonder they were melting. Had something gone wrong with the heating in here?