“We’d better go in,” she murmured, but somehow her feet refused to move.
“Yes,” he said, staying where he was.
The snow fell, light and delicate on his dark blond hair where he’d removed his hat, touching his eyelashes, and one flake fell on his lips. He automatically sucked his bottom lip as the snowflake melted, and Eva caught her breath. The tingle running through her body magnified to a tremble at the thought of him pressing those lips to hers. She hadn’t been kissed in so long. And the notion of this magnificent Viking taking her in his arms and pulling her close made her breathless with desire.
His lips curved a little, and her eyes rose to meet his, finding them filled with warmth and amusement. He stepped a little closer, slowly, as if she were one of the reindeer ready to bolt at any second. Then he lowered his head and pressed his lips against her cheek.
“Goodnight, Eva.”
“Goodnight,” she whispered. How innocent—just a brush of lips against skin, and yet her heart pounded, her heated blood warming her as it raced around her body.
He turned and took Isabel’s hand, walked up the path and opened their door, and turned for a last wave before going in. The snow fell, their footsteps already beginning to disappear.
But the kiss would linger on her cheek for the rest of the night.
Chapter Six
The following morning dawned crisp and cold. It had snowed for a good portion of the night—Eva had watched it for a while when she awoke at two a.m. and couldn’t get back to sleep, Rudi’s kiss haunting her even in her dreams. But now the snow had stopped, and she gave Oscar breakfast and got him dressed with a buzz of excitement she hadn’t felt for a long time.
“Just two sleeps to Christmas!” she told Oscar. But deep inside, she knew that wasn’t the only reason she was excited.
The buzz faded a little when her mobile rang. Once again, she stared at the display, wishing she could just turn the phone off, but she pressed the green button as she always did and answered, “Hello?”
“It’s me,” Bridget said. “Just checking up on you.” Her voice was vaguely accusatory. Eva bristled. They hadn’t spoken the day before, and Bridget was obviously annoyed Eva hadn’t rung her. Was she supposed to ring every damn day?
“We’re fine,” Eva said, keeping her voice light. “Having lots of fun.”
“What have you been up to?”
“Oh, this and that.” Eva fought against her natural instinct to blurt everything out. “We went to the Exhibition Centre, and then we went to Santa’s Playground yesterday. It’s a small theme park. Oscar had a great time.”
“I’m glad,” Bridget said. “He deserves to have a little fun, all things considered.”
Eva kept her temper in check. Damon had died eighteen months ago. They’d had the first Christmas, the first birthday without him. Both had been hard, emotional times, and they’d consoled each other through the days. In spite of her words to Rudi, Eva had missed Damon so very much in those early months. Perhaps part of it had been more the thought that her husband had died and she was alone than truly missing him by her side as he had been absent for so much of the time. But still, she had been genuinely devastated at his death, even though anger simmered beneath the grief.
But she was ready to move on. She was only twenty-six—she couldn’t be expected to wear black forever and never go out again. She had a life to live, and Oscar was only three; he barely even remembered his father. Life went on, and she was tired of Bridget making her feel guilty for thinking that.
And then the usual cycle of shame kicked in, and Eva closed her eyes. It must be a terrible, terrible thing to lose a child. She had to remind herself of that fact whenever Bridget was maudlin, knowing it wouldn’t matter how old Oscar was; if something were to happen to him, she would still be devastated. Bridget was perfectly within her rights to miss her son, and to want her grandson near her, especially during holidays which were natural family times. Eva shouldn’t be too harsh on her.
“I’m sorry,” she said gently. “I should have called. But we’ve been so busy. The park is lovely, Bridge, and the snow is so thick you wouldn’t believe.” She talked for ten minutes, making her voice lively, making Bridget feel missed and wanted, and was rewarded with a heartfelt thank you and a warm wish to enjoy herself when they eventually ended the conversation.
She clipped the phone shut and stifled a sigh as Oscar climbed onto her lap. She must rein in her impatience. Everyone healed at different rates, and it just wasn’t Bridget’s time yet.
“Are you ready?” she asked Oscar, who was bouncing up and down on her legs. “Want to go out?”
“Yes!” He jumped down and attempted a forward roll—his new trick, falling to the side as usual, then standing up with arms raised as if he’d scored a perfect ten. “Ta da!”
“Wonderful!” She clapped him, then got up to retrieve her coat, boots and all the usual paraphernalia. “Come on. I think it’s time to feed some reindeer.”
“Will Rudolph be there?”
“Oh I’m sure he will.” She started laughing as he tried to pull on his coat and put his arm in the wrong hole, then stared in confusion at the item. “Come here, silly.” She helped him put it on, glad he wasn’t completely independent yet, that he still needed help. One day he wouldn’t need her and that would be hard enough whenever it happened. But just like Bridget, she wasn’t ready yet.
They left the cabin and walked along the path towards the village. She couldn’t help but give a little glance at Rudi’s cabin as they left, wondering whether he was up yet and if they’d already gone out. They hadn’t arranged to meet today, but it was such a small place, they were bound to bump into each other. Her heart picked up its pace at the thought, and she scolded herself silently, half-annoyed and half-amused at the way he seemed to linger in her thoughts.
She glanced up at the sky as they walked, still finding the lack of sunshine strange. It was great for a novelty, but she couldn’t imagine living this far north all the time. It would be weird to not see the sun for a good few weeks every year. But then again, she supposed, they also had the period in the summer of the midnight sun, where it never went down and it didn’t get dark. So there were definite benefits.
They circled the central cluster of buildings that included the Exhibition Centre and the restaurants, and approached the large reindeer pen. She was pleased to see it nearly empty with no queues; it was still early, the two of them up and about before most of the complex.
Someone stood in the pen with the handlers, though. She stopped and stared in surprise as she saw it was Rudi, with Isabel watching on the viewing platform outside. Rudi was talking to the handler, and the way he held the reindeer and stroked its neck told her it wasn’t the first time he had done so.
“Hyvaa huomenta,” she said as they approached, pronouncing it the way he had corrected her before.
He looked across and his face lit with such a genuine smile that she knew she hadn’t imagined it the day before—he did like her. “Good morning,” he replied. “You have come to see the reindeer?”
“Yes. Oscar wants to meet Rudolph.”
He laughed, and Isabel smiled as Oscar tried to scramble up onto the platform beside her. “Here,” she said, holding out a hand, and she helped him up. “Come and look at all the lovely animals.”
Eva leaned on the railing and watched as Rudi turned the reindeer he was holding and brought it over to the fence. “Do they bite?” she asked.
“Oh, very very rarely, and these ones are used to being with children.” He handed Oscar a tiny bag. “Here is some food for him, Oscar. Put it in the middle of your palm and let him take it.”
Oscar tipped the moss onto his hand and held it out, then squealed as the reindeer nibbled it. Isabel laughed. “He has a big tongue!”
Eva watched as Rudi stroked the deer’s neck. “You seem very at home here.”
He scratched behind the reindeer’s ear. “I am embarrassed to admit that
my father used to keep them for meat.”
“Why embarrassed?”
He shrugged. “Lots of people are offended by the fact that people eat reindeer.” He leaned close and whispered, “Sorry,” into the deer’s ear before he straightened and smiled at Eva. “It is a very traditional meat in Finland, still served in restaurants, and it is actually quite expensive. But I can understand why the thought offends people. It is one reason why, when my father died, I sold the farm. I did not want to be associated with it.”
Oscar reached out a tiny hand to touch the reindeer’s nose, and Rudi brought the animal a little closer.
“His nose is so long because it has to warm the icy air before it gets to his lungs,” Rudi explained.
“He’s hairy,” Oscar said, stroking the deer’s nose.
“Yes, he is. And he has special knees that make a clicking sound when he walks, so when it snows really hard the other reindeer know where he is.”
Eva laughed. “You’re making it up.”
He gave her a mock affronted look. “It is the truth!”
“Yeah, yeah,” she teased.
“His nose isn’t red,” Oscar complained.
“Rudolph is not real,” Isabel said. “Real reindeer do not have red noses.”
Eva’s heart seemed to stutter to a halt as Oscar looked up at her and blinked. Rudi barked something at Isabel in Finnish, and she looked down, her pale cheeks reddening.
“What Izzy means is that this is not Rudolph,” Rudi said smoothly. “He is busy at the moment gathering up presents for Christmas Eve.” He held out his hand. “Come here and I will lift you over, and you can come and see some of the baby reindeer, if you like.”
Eva steadied Oscar while he climbed the fence, and Rudi lifted him over. The two of them walked off, talking all the way.
She looked down at Isabel, who was clearly fighting back tears. Eva rested a hand on her back and rubbed it. “Are you okay?”
Isabel said something in Finnish, then corrected herself. “Daddy is angry with me. He told me last night that Oscar is too young to learn about Santa.” She looked up then, her blue eyes—so like her father’s—blazing. “But he always tells me not to lie as well. And I would be lying, wouldn’t I, if I said Rudolph was real?”
Eva hesitated, touched by the girl’s genuine bewilderment. “I understand why you’re confused. And you’re right; it’s good not to lie. But we grownups tell children stories because when you’re a child, it’s nice to believe in magic and fairy tales.”
“But they are not real,” she said. “They are all lies. Silly stories about Santa and the Easter bunny and the tooth fairy. And Daddy promised God in the church that he would love Mummy until he died, and he lied about that, too.”
Ah, there’s the root of the problem. Isabel’s bottom lip trembled, and Eva’s heart went out to her.
“It’s true that reindeers don’t really fly. And Santa doesn’t really come down the chimney. But Christmas can still be magical, all the same.”
A tear tipped over Isabel’s lashes and trickled down her cheeks.
Eva dug a tissue out of her pocket and handed it to the girl and then carried on as if she hadn’t noticed. “And I understand completely why you’re upset about your parents getting divorced. It must be very hard.”
“Do not say you understand because you do not,” Isabel snapped, clearly tired of adults’ platitudes.
“That’s true,” Eva said easily, “but my mother died when I was young, so I know that feeling of being lost. The thing is, Izzy, your father would have meant it when he stood there in the church and promised to love your mother forever. But people change. It’s not nice, and we all wish it didn’t happen. We all want to be married forever. But as time goes by, we realise that the person we married maybe isn’t as perfect for us as we thought, and we come to see they actually want different things in life to ourselves. And we compromise—that means we change a little too, so that we do a bit more of what the other person wants. And sometimes it works. And sometimes it doesn’t.”
She tugged Isabel’s braid. “It’s a bit like your lovely long hair. A girl may see it and think she’d love shiny long hair like that, and she may take a whole year to grow it, but when it’s long she realises how much care it takes and how you have to wash it every night to keep it so clean, and how long it takes to brush it. She realises she never understood how difficult it was to keep it so long, and perhaps it’s not quite right for her after all.”
Isabel sniffed and brushed off the remaining snow on the barrier. “I do not ever want to marry.”
“Well of course you don’t. Seven year old boys are icky—they burp and fart and smell.” Isabel giggled and Eva grinned. “But one day you will. And you’ll understand then how difficult it is to love a person sometimes.”
“Grandma said it is easy to fall in love,” Isabel said.
“That’s true,” Eva replied, thinking that Rudi’s mother had probably tried very hard to persuade her granddaughter that not all marriages ended in failure. “But you know, being in love and loving someone are two very different things. One can happen the moment you first lay eyes on someone. But the second takes a long time to grow.”
Eva glanced up as Rudi came out of the shed where the baby reindeer were kept and walked towards her, Oscar bouncing next to him. When she was younger, she’d thought that if she met a gorgeous guy and fell in love, staying in love would be easy. But obviously it wasn’t, otherwise why would Rudi’s ex-wife have ever let him go?
Chapter Seven
Rudi walked across the yard, making sure Oscar didn’t alarm the reindeer, to see Eva and his daughter watching them. He felt a little calmer now. He wasn’t really angry with Isabel—it was hardly her fault that she’d found out about Santa at such a young age, although he was a little cross because he’d tried to explain the night before that she had to pretend for Oscar’s sake, and he didn’t want to ruin the little boy’s Christmas.
Part of him wished he’d prolonged the fantasy a little longer for her. In the big scheme of things, of course, it was nothing—what did it matter whether Isabel believed in Santa or not? She would still get presents, could still enjoy the festive season, and although they weren’t particularly religious as a family, the true meaning behind Christmas and the Nativity story would still be a part of their lives.
But it was a bigger problem than that. Seeing Oscar so excited and caught up in the magic, and listening to Eva talk about trying to keep Oscar’s innocence for as long as she could, made Rudi feel that between them, he and Vanessa were forcing Isabel to grow up too quick. He didn’t know if he’d ever have any more children—Isabel might be his only chance to bring a child into this world, and he wanted her to hold onto her innocence as long as she possibly could. You spend a long time grown up, he thought, a peculiar ache developing inside him as he watched her standing quietly, the image of respectability compared to Oscar, who climbed onto the barrier, fell off and started wailing. His mother was right—he’d spent too long apart from her. Surely he hadn’t missed out on her childhood altogether?
He pulled Isabel towards him and kissed her forehead. “What would like to do now, rakas?”
“We’re going to have a look around the shops,” Eva said, a little shyly. “If you’d like to join us.”
Isabel nodded, brightening, and so all four of them walked into the village and entered the large building containing the shops selling all manner of souvenirs for the tourists.
Rudi followed Eva as she led the way around the stalls with a carefully controlled Oscar as they passed the fine ceramics, the intricate gold and silver jewellery, the reindeer furs and handmade hide products, and the local delicacies. Rudi smiled and nodded each time they pointed something out to him, and he tried to take in how the place looked with regard to the sale of the site, but he found it difficult to concentrate and felt flat, lacking in enthusiasm.
He watched Eva bend down to talk to Oscar, pointing out the stitchi
ng on a reindeer toy, full of love and attention for her son, and his throat tightened. The whole crumbling mess of his marriage—indeed his whole life—washed over him, and he stopped walking, overwhelmed for a moment by the bleakness of his future. He was not normally an emotional man; usually he would die rather than reveal his innermost feelings, preferring instead to keep them clamped tight behind a façade of controlled composure, and the sudden wave of emotion took him by surprise.
Eva stood, watched Isabel lead Oscar over to inspect a huge basket of toys, and came to stand beside him. “Are you okay?”
He looked down at her, startled that she had picked up on his feelings. “Just tired I guess.”
She said nothing for a moment, and they walked on slowly along the line of stalls. She reached out to touch a sparkling piece of embroidery, let her fingers brush across a woven rug, and he let his gaze brush over her in the same way. She’d clipped up her hair today, and he admired the curve of her neck and jaw, her neat ears, the white skin lying just behind them. He could imagine placing a kiss there, nuzzling his nose into her hair.
“Christmas is such a strange time,” she said. “I love it in so many ways—it is magical, even as a grown up, perhaps because it tends to remind us of how we felt as children—that time before we had any worries.”
“True.” He tried to drag his attention away from her lips as they moved, and focus on what she was saying.
“But I think it also brings with it a huge amount of pressure,” she continued. “We’re told that we’re all supposed to be joyous, and we have to spend lots of money to make it a success. That we have to cook huge dinners and spend hours in the kitchen. That it’s a time to play happy families, and if you’re not part of the standard two-point-four family, then you’re made to feel as if you’ve somehow failed.”
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