Santa's Secret

by Serenity Woods

  “That is also true,” he agreed. “I used to love Christmas as a child, but I admit as an adult, I do not enjoy it as much.”

  “Likewise,” she said. “And that’s a shame. Perhaps that’s why we want to hold onto the magic for our children.”

  He nodded. Her dark lashes lifted as she looked up, and her dark brown eyes studied him. He was beginning to enjoy her calm manner, her lack of fuss about everything. Perhaps because she was an actress, Vanessa always heightened everything into a drama, and at his office everyone was busy and stressed. It was refreshing to spend time with someone so laid back.

  As if on cue, Oscar wailed, and they turned to see Isabel pulling him away from a large toy reindeer.

  “Let go!” he yelled, trying to tear his arm away from her grip.

  “Isabel!” Rudi said the words harder than he’d meant, embarrassed that she was restraining another person’s child.

  “He was going to run off with the toy,” she protested, letting the boy go.

  “Thank you, Isabel,” Eva said smoothly, crossing the room quickly to catch Oscar’s hand. “Come on, sweetie. Time to go.”

  Oscar threw a tantrum. Lay on the floor and screamed and kicked his feet, right in the middle of the shop.

  Isabel moved to Rudi side and he held her hand tightly, uncertain what to do. Didn’t only two-year-olds have tantrums? He hadn’t been around much when Izzy was that age and he could only remember her having an outburst once in a supermarket. Vanessa had been absolutely horrified and completely incapable of dealing with it, and he had been just as bewildered. He’d picked Izzy up and carried her out, but she’d fought him the whole way, pulling his hair and kicking him, and he’d found the whole thing terribly embarrassing and traumatic. He’d had to fight the urge to smack her, which had upset him even more because normally he would never have dreamed of laying a hand on her. And anyway, when they got outside and Vanessa had done just that, giving the shrieking girl a sharp tap on the backside to try and shock some sense into her, it hadn’t helped at all and had in fact only seemed to make things worse.

  Shortly after that he’d gone away again frequently on business, and with Vanessa working it would have been his mother who’d dealt with any other outbursts.

  People started to look over, Oscar’s screams loud enough to carry down the chain of stalls. Eva dropped to her haunches by his side, but she didn’t try to pick him up or restrain him. Instead, Rudi heard her tell the boy quietly that she would wait for him by the door, and when he was ready, she had some chocolate for him and he could have it outside. Then she just got up and walked the short distance to the door, leaving him in the middle of his paddy, and calmly flicked through a book from one of the stalls.

  Rudi and Isabel exchanged a glance, not sure what to do. He didn’t want to interfere in a situation that Eva had obviously handled before. So he turned away and pretended to look at the nearest stall, and Isabel joined him.

  “Is she just going to leave him screaming?” Isabel whispered in Finnish.

  “She knows what she’s doing,” he replied, hoping that was the case.

  And sure enough, after about another thirty seconds of screaming, Oscar obviously realised he wasn’t getting any attention, and he sat up, rubbed his face, pushed himself to his feet and ran over to his mother. She calmly took his hand and led him outside.

  Rudi followed, Isabel in tow, and saw them both sitting on a bench overlooking the snowy forest. Oscar sat picking chocolate buttons out of a packet, quiet as anything.

  Rudi walked over to Eva and sat beside her, while Isabel scrunched through the snow, making patterns with her footprints.

  “Are you okay?” he asked Eva quietly.

  She grinned at him. Her cheeks were just the tiniest bit pink, which told him that she was a little embarrassed. “I’m fine. Sorry about that.”

  “It happens.”

  Oscar tugged her hand. “Can I go and play with Isabel?”

  “Of course you can.”

  He got off the bench and ran off to join the girl, sticking sucking chocolate buttons, and he walked around behind her in her footsteps.

  Eva sighed and gave Rudi a wry look. “I hate it when that happens. Everyone looks at me as if to say ‘why aren’t you dealing with him?’ I used to, you know, I used to try and force him to do whatever I wanted. Like sometimes he refuses to get in the car, and I’ve picked him up and tried to buckle him in, and I’ve yelled at him because people seem to expect you to do that, but it always ends up with me in tears and him in tears. I decided one day that I wasn’t going to do that anymore. So I deal with it my way. With chocolate.” She smiled.

  Rudi nodded. “It seems to work.”

  “It does. Bridget thinks it’s rewarding Oscar for his bad behaviour, but I don’t see it like that—I see it the chocolate as a reward for becoming calm again.”

  “If it works for you, then you are right, you should not listen to anyone else.” Her words felt like a revelation to him. She was so calm and relaxed about everything. She was like aloe vera, like a soothing balm to his frayed nerves.

  It had just started snowing again, the flakes fluttering down across the landscape, although they didn’t quite reach where they were sitting under the shelter. He watched Isabel go around the field in a figure eight, lit by the line of lamps that followed the path, Oscar following along behind her. Rudi smiled at them before turning back to Eva.

  She was looking up at him, and she gave a little shy smile as if embarrassed he’d caught her, but she didn’t look away. Her cheeks still had a light pink blush to them, and her lips were glossy, as if she’d applied lip balm again recently. If he pressed his own to them, they would be slightly sticky.

  Sexual awareness stirred within him, like a great bear unfurling after hibernation, stretching and yawning. He’d denied himself these feelings for a long time, even after his divorce, rusty with dating and unwilling to become involved again, to open himself up to being hurt. He’d concentrated on work instead, throwing himself into sport in the evenings and weekends, burning up his energy on the squash courts, cycling, or playing football.

  He was out of practice with women. And besides, this was hardly the right environment was it? They were only there for a few nights, and they both had kids. It wasn’t as if anything could happen.

  “Do you have a girlfriend?”

  The question surprised him, and he raised his eyebrows.

  “Sorry,” she added. “Did I say that out loud?”

  That made him laugh. He turned in the seat, leaned an elbow on the back of the bench and rested his head on his hand. “No, I do not have a girlfriend. Do you have a boyfriend?”

  She laughed. “No. I do not have a boyfriend.” She said it in the same sing-song accent he knew he used himself, and he grinned.

  “Are you making fun of me?”

  “Not at all.” She tipped her head to the side, eyes dancing. “Maybe. A little bit.”

  He smiled. “I do not understand why you are still single. I thought you would have been snapped up by all the eligible bachelors in England.”

  She looked down at her mittens. “Opinions vary on the length of time that’s required after your husband dies before you should date again.” Another wry look.

  “Your mother-in-law discourages it?”

  “Not openly. But she’d be horrified.” She blew out a breath and looked up at the sky, still a twilight blue, just a little lighter than its night time hue. “And now I sound callous and insensitive. I’m a terrible person.”

  He chuckled. “No you are not. Eva, you are very young. How old are you, twenty-seven, twenty-eight?”

  “Twenty-six.”

  “Goodness. So young! You cannot be expected to stay single for the rest of your life. If your husband had died last week I might agree with your mother-in-law, but a whole year has passed and, to be honest, I think it would be terrible for you to deny yourself future happiness.”

  Her brown gaze rested on him ag
ain. “I could say the same for you,” she said softly. “I get the feeling you haven’t exactly been Mr. Sociable since your divorce.”

  “True,” he admitted. “It is difficult to…how do they say it? To get back in the saddle again.”

  They both laughed.

  Eva’s calm gaze appraised him. “I just wish…”

  He looked at her pink lips, imagined them pressing against his. “What do you wish?”

  “Don’t you just wish, sometimes, that things didn’t have to be complicated? That there was a way to…I don’t know…” She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “Indulge, have fun, without any strings, without worrying about the future?”

  Chapter Eight

  Eva’s heart pounded, and she silently cursed her runaway mouth. What an incredibly slutty thing to say. Now he was going to think she was easy and slept around whenever she felt like it, when the truth was that Damon was the only man she’d ever been with. After her mother died, her father had become incredibly over-protective with her and her sisters, and as a result she’d not had her first boyfriend until she went to university. The guy had tried to push her to go to bed with him but, shy and nervous, she’d backed away, and after that she’d concentrated on her studies and hadn’t dated again until she’d met Damon in England. By that stage, she was over being a virgin and had thrown herself into a physical relationship with abandon, and of course that had ended with a baby and marriage, so there hadn’t been any chance to sleep around.

  And now? She looked up at Rudi, embarrassed and yet filled with a strange longing she couldn’t contain any longer. She was lonely, and although for a while after giving birth her body had belonged to Oscar and sex had been the last thing on her mind, sitting there next to Rudi, almost in the circle of his strong arms, close enough to see the faint stubble on his cheeks and smell his aftershave, she felt more awake than she had in a long time. Her senses seemed sharpened; she was aware of the surge of blood through her body, conscious that every hair seemed to stand on end, and the tingle in her lips and other more private parts had nothing to do with the cold.

  Rudi continued to stare at her for a moment, face carefully blank. What was going through his mind? Should she apologise, backtrack? Try to say the words had come out wrong?

  But then something wonderful happened. His lips curved, and a rather naughty, very sexy twinkle appeared in his eyes.

  “Hmm,” he said.

  Eva swallowed, caught more off guard by the sexy twinkle than if he’d reacted in a negative way. “I…um…I think…I…” But her brain refused to work, melted by the spreading smile and his obvious warm amusement.

  He glanced at the field, and Eva followed his gaze. Isabel and Oscar had moved a bit further away—still well within the boundaries of the park and in the circle of the lamps, but engrossed in making patterns in the snow with their footsteps.

  Eva looked back at Rudi to find his gaze had already returned to her. The hand he’d been leaning on came up to touch her cheek, just a brief brush of gloved fingers, but somehow incredibly intimate considering no man had touched her for an eternity.

  Then he leaned forwards and kissed her.

  She caught her breath, lips slightly parted, and sat frozen as he pressed his lips against hers. Once, twice, and then a slightly longer third time. Gentle and playful. His lips were surprisingly warm considering the temperature, and they were firm and dry. Due to the lip balm, they peeled from hers a very tiny bit as he finally moved back.

  Rudi touched his tongue to his lips, tasting the remnants of the lip balm. “Cherry,” he remarked. He still looked amused, although now the look in his eyes had intensified.

  Desire. He wanted her.

  Maybe almost as much as she wanted him.

  She glanced back at the kids, but they were still going around in circles and hadn’t noticed anything. It wasn’t surprising really, she thought. The kiss had been very brief, and to an onlooker it had probably looked very innocent, maybe only a tad more romantic than shaking her hand.

  And yet it had been the gentlest, most romantic, sexiest kiss she thought she’d ever had.

  She looked back up at him. A brief breath of wind brought a flurry of snowflakes dancing across them, dusting them both with white, and they laughed and brushed them off.

  “Thank you,” she said sincerely. “You have absolutely made my day.”

  He laughed again. “You are very welcome. It was my pleasure.”

  “I mean it.” It felt important that he know how much she appreciated that he’d understood what she wanted—some human contact, some proof that she wasn’t just a mother and dutiful daughter-in-law. Proof that she was a woman, still desirable. Deserving of love and affection.

  He brushed his fingers against her cheek again. “So do I. You are a very beautiful woman. I feel very lucky to have met you—almost as if it were magic.” He smiled. “My Christmas Eva.”

  He dropped his hand as the children ran up to ask them to come and look at the patterns they’d made, and Eva rose and let Oscar take her hand and lead her over to the haphazard star shape they’d created in the snow, but as she walked, and while she listened to their excited chatter, and then while they slowly began their walk along the path, her heart continued to race and her lips tingled with the memory of Rudi’s pressed there, warm and firm.

  The children declared themselves hungry, so they all went back to the family restaurant, and as it wasn’t quite lunch time, they ordered croissants and milk for the kids and coffee for themselves. Oscar polished off two croissants, pulling them apart with his fingers and dipping them in a spoonful of strawberry jam, and then he paused just long enough to let Eva wipe his fingers before running off to the children’s play area. Isabel rolled her eyes, but happily bounded after him, and Eva was pleased to see the pleasure on the girl’s face as she followed him down the slides and into the ball pits.

  “They get on well,” Rudi said. “That surprises me. I thought she would have found such a young child boring.”

  “Girls like playing mummy,” Eva said. “They like bossing the little ones about. And I think it gives her chance to act like a child too, you know?”

  Rudi nodded. “You are right. Perhaps Oscar is teaching her to be a child again.”

  “That pleases you,” Eva commented, seeing the light in his eyes.

  “It does. Perhaps she can pretend to believe in the magic a little, just for Oscar.” He smiled.

  Eva held his gaze. She felt like she wanted to say so much, but she didn’t know where to start, and part of her felt foolish. She hardly knew the guy—what on earth did he think of her? Society tended to portray men as physical rather than emotional or mental, suggesting they didn’t actually think anything beyond the obvious. Perhaps he’d kissed her because she’d looked like she’d needed kissing, and since then he hadn’t given it a second thought.

  She should do the same, she supposed. Move on, not dwell on it. But it was difficult, because it had been so lovely, and at that moment when she’d mentioned no strings and having fun, an understanding had flickered in his eyes that had warmed her right through. He’d seem to realise she wasn’t talking about something as perfunctory as raw sex; she wasn’t just saying she wanted the physical release and none of the commitment. She was saying that she missed the physical contact, the touching, the caring for someone and being cared about, and that she wasn’t sure she was ready to start a long term relationship, but that she liked him, and it was time for her to take a step out of the bubble of grief she’d erected around herself and just be a woman again.

  Had he gotten that? Or had he just thought Woman needs kissing. Man kiss woman, and then looked at her breasts? Somehow she didn’t think that was the case. He seemed thoughtful and genuine. But there was no doubt he’d looked amused at her outburst, and part of her was horrified to think he thought she slept around.

  She swallowed, not knowing what to say, and then thought she might as well just be honest and go for it
. “I’m sorry about earlier,” she said. His blue eyes appraised her, and she dropped her gaze and fiddled with the half-full cup of coffee in front of her. “I was very forward, and I don’t quite know what came over me. I’m not normally like that.”

  “You do not have to explain yourself to me,” he said softly.

  “I know. And I know in this day and age women are supposed to be all forward and to know what they want, and to just go and take it, but…well…I’m not like that. I haven’t…you know…since Damon, and he was my first, and…” Her cheeks were growing warmer and warmer. “Jeez, I’m just digging myself further and further into this hole, aren’t I?”

  He reached out and slid a finger under her chin, and he raised it so her eyes came up to meet his. “I understand,” he murmured. “I am the same, Eva. There have been no woman since my divorce, and I was faithful to Vanessa. It is hard, losing someone, the ending of a marriage, however it comes to pass. I miss the closeness of being with someone, of having that security and comfort of living together and just being there for each other, even though we have not actually been close for many years.” Regret flittered across his features, then disappeared.

  He stroked her cheek with his thumb. “It is difficult not to keep thinking about the past, not to feel like you are cheating on your partner, even though the relationship is done. But I do not think we should be so hard on ourselves. We are single and have been single for a long time. We are not hurting anyone by just being here, being together. I really like you; I like spending time with you. You make me laugh. You are gentle and kind.” His thumb brushed across her lips. “And very, very sexy.” His eyes lit with that mixture of amusement and desire that had given her such goose bumps outside. And…yes, there they were again, rising all over her skin, including her nipples, which she felt tighten beneath her jumper.