Christmas Eve: Doorstep Delivery

by Sarah Morgan

  When she’d been miles away in Chicago, Christmas with a bunch of strangers had seemed like a brilliant idea. Suddenly she wasn’t so sure.

  She was about to take a job with a family she’d never even met, in a part of the country she didn’t know. And all so that she could avoid her own agonising family Christmas and track down a gorgeous stranger she’d spent one night with.

  When she’d come up with the plan it had seemed bold and proactive.

  A plan worthy of a competent, twenty-first-century woman.

  Hayley swallowed. She didn’t need her step-siblings to point out that she wasn’t really a competent, twenty-first-century woman.

  If she were a competent, twenty-first-century woman she wouldn’t have slunk out of an impossibly sexy man’s swanky hotel room before he’d woken up, neither would she have been wearing the previous night’s dress and a scarlet face that announced her sins to anyone who happened to be looking. And she definitely wouldn’t have left her knickers on his bedroom floor! A twenty-first-century woman would certainly have been able to find her knickers in the dark. Except that a twenty-first-century woman wouldn’t have needed to. She would have woken up next to the impossibly sexy man, calmly ordered room service and then handed him her phone number or left with her head held high.

  She had slunk out like a criminal, ensuring that there was no chance he would ever call her, because he didn’t have her number.

  All he had was her knickers.

  At least Cinderella had had the sense to make it a shoe, Hayley thought gloomily as she picked her way through the snow to the front door. Losing a shoe made you seem slightly dippy and a little romantic—although it made it difficult to walk, of course. But losing knickers…

  She didn’t even want to think about how losing a pair of knickers made you look.

  Prince Charming would never have roamed his kingdom looking for the bottom that fitted the knickers, would he?

  Cross with herself, she kicked a lump of snow and watched it scatter. She’d met the man of her dreams and then she’d walked out! What an idiot. Her step-siblings would have laughed themselves sick. Soppy, romantic Hayley, always dreaming of marriage and happy endings.

  Hayley sighed. She wasn’t that old-fashioned. She had spent the night with him—although her embarrassingly quick surrender had had more to do with his superior seduction technique than her impressive decision-making abilities.

  But she wasn’t going to think about that now. She wasn’t going to think about his skilled hands, or his clever mouth or the way he knew exactly where to touch and how…

  Oh, God, please, please, don’t let him reject her. Please let him be dreaming of her right now. And most of all please let him have spent the past few weeks frantically calling detective agencies trying to track her down. All I know about her is that she has great taste in underwear.

  Surely he was going to be pleased to see her?

  Imagining his reaction to her unexpected arrival brought a smile to her face. Perhaps she’d better make sure that their first meeting took place in private in case he just hauled her into his arms and proposed on the spot.

  She wondered what her stepsister would say when she met him.

  How did our Hayley ever get herself a man like that?

  Smiling at her own fantasies, she reached towards the doorbell.

  Patrick pushed the haphazardly wrapped presents under the tree and looked at his ten-year-old son. ‘Alfie, why are you looking at the clock?’

  Alfie gave a guilty start. ‘I don’t keep looking at the clock.’

  ‘Yes, you do.’

  ‘Well, it’s Christmas Eve. I—I’m excited.’ Alfie’s gaze slid furtively to the door. ‘Daddy, don’t you wish you had someone to help cook the turkey?’

  ‘I can cook a turkey.’ Patrick added a strip of sticky tape to a parcel that was bursting out of its wrapping.

  ‘Last year you said if you ever saw a turkey again it would be too soon.’

  Patrick winced. Was Christmas ever going to run smoothly? ‘That was last year. I’ve studied a cookery book. I don’t foresee any complications.’ He tried to look confident. He could perform a Caesarean section in less than four minutes if the need arose. Why did he struggle to cook a turkey?

  ‘If you had a wife, she could cook the turkey.’

  ‘That isn’t a reason to get married. These days, women don’t always like doing that sort of thing.’ Patrick extracted himself from under the tree, his wide shoulders dragging through the branches and sending a shower of needles over the pale wooden floor. ‘Why are you talking about wives? We’re going to have a great Christmas. You, Posy and me.’

  ‘And the kittens.’

  ‘And the kittens.’ Remembering the kittens, Patrick frowned. ‘That woman who phoned earlier is coming to look at them any moment now. With any luck she’ll fall in love with them and that will solve one of our problems.’

  ‘The kittens aren’t a problem!’

  ‘Having four of them is a problem.’ Seeing the forlorn look on Alfie’s face, Patrick felt a flash of guilt and squatted down in front of his son. ‘Alfie, we cannot keep four kittens.’

  Alfie fiddled with a bauble on the tree. ‘What if the woman gets here and she doesn’t want the kittens?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t she want the kittens? That’s why she’s coming.’ Patrick scooped up a pile of discarded books and stood up. ‘Take this lot up to your bedroom, will you? We need to make room for all the new mess you’re going to make on Christmas Day.’

  Alfie looked up at him, a flash of desperation in his eyes. ‘Do you promise that whatever happens you won’t be angry?’

  Patrick frowned. ‘Alfie, what is going on?’ He forced himself to ask the question that always niggled at the back of his mind. ‘Are you missing Mum? Is that what this is about?’

  Alfie rubbed his foot along the groove in the floor. ‘Do you miss her?’

  How did you tell a child that divorce had come as a blessing?

  ‘Your mum and I made a mistake when we got married,’ Patrick said gruffly. ‘It happens. It has nothing to do with you. We both love you.’

  ‘But you didn’t really love each other.’

  Abandoning the books, Patrick squatted back down in front of his son. ‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘We didn’t. Not enough to make marriage work. We’d only known each other a month when we decided to get married.’ He didn’t add that Carly had become pregnant on purpose. ‘We didn’t know each other well enough and it’s important to take the time to get to know someone. I didn’t make your mum happy.’

  ‘Is that why she was always yelling at you?’

  ‘She didn’t always yell,’ Patrick said tactfully, but Alfie interrupted him.

  ‘She yelled all the time. And that day she left—two Christmases ago—she shouted at you because you went to deliver those triplets when she had lunch on the table.’

  Patrick knew from experience that there was no point in lying. ‘That’s right, she did. She was upset.’

  ‘She said she was thinking of getting pregnant again because that way she might at least get to see you in the damn antenatal clinic.’

  Patrick pressed his fingers into the bridge of his nose, knowing that this wasn’t the time to lecture on language. He was just relieved that neither of his children appeared to have inherited his ex-wife’s filthy temper. ‘She was very angry with me,’ he said evenly. ‘She’d made plans for a special Christmas, but I was on call at the hospital and I—well, in my job, I can’t always plan.’ Not for a moment would he tell the child that his mother had liked the idea of being married to a wealthy obstetrician, but not the reality. ‘Why are we talking about this now?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Alfie shrugged. ‘Because it’s Christmas and Mum left at Christmas.’

  ‘Christmas can be a difficult time for lots of families,’ Patrick said roughly, watching his son’s face. ‘Is it full of bad memories for you?’

  ‘No. I like being with you,
’ Alfie said honestly. ‘I like the fact that there’s no shouting because you never shout. Does it make me bad that I don’t miss her?’

  Was that what had been worrying the child? Guilt that he didn’t miss his mother? ‘It doesn’t make you bad.’ Anger towards his ex-wife shot through him like white heat and Patrick hugged the boy tightly, feeling his heart split in two.

  Alfie gave a croak of protest. ‘Daddy, you’re squeezing me!’

  ‘Sorry.’ His tone gruff, he released his hold. ‘I love you. You know that, don’t you?’ The words came easily, driven by a burning determination to be a better father to his son than his own father had been to him. To feel, and to express those feelings without embarrassment.

  ‘And I love you.’ Alfie was openly affectionate. ‘And you’re the best doctor in the world, everyone says so. If you have to go to the hospital this Christmas, I’ll come with you. We’re a team. Team Buchannan. Do you think they’ll have chocolates?’

  Touched by the hero-worship, Patrick smiled. ‘Stacks of them. Maggie is saving you the best. And, Alfie, I’m not the best doctor in the world.’

  ‘You are. You’re so cool. You saved Matt’s little sister’s life when she was born—she would have died if it hadn’t been for you. And Jenna’s mum says she’d marry you if you asked her.’

  Startled, Patrick lifted his eyebrows. ‘You heard her say that?’

  ‘Yes. I heard her talking to another mum on the phone. She said you were really hot. But I don’t see how she could have known what temperature you were because you weren’t there and, anyway, it had just snowed. You made me wear a vest. How could you have been hot?’

  Patrick let out a long breath and made a mental note to keep his distance from Jenna’s mum. ‘Well—I—’

  ‘Do you want to get married again, Dad?’

  Patrick felt the conversation spiralling out of control. ‘Marriage is a big thing,’ he said carefully, ‘and when you’ve been wrong once, it makes you wary about doing it again. But maybe one day. If I know someone really, really well.’ He wouldn’t be making the same mistake he’d made with Carly. No more whirlwind relationships. Trying not to think about the girl he’d met in Chicago, he concentrated on his son. ‘Do you want me to get married again?’

  ‘It would be nice to have someone on our team who can cook.’

  ‘I can cook.’ Patrick picked up the books again. ‘Just wait until tomorrow.’

  Alfie looked unconvinced. ‘Will you poison us? Uncle Daniel said the emergency department is always full on Christmas Day of people being poisoned with salmon—something, but I don’t get how a turkey can turn into a fish.’

  ‘Salmonella. It’s a bacterium. And I’m not going to poison you.’ Patrick dropped a kiss on his son’s head. ‘Time to wake Posy from her nap.’ He lifted his head as the doorbell sounded. ‘Ah—that will be the lady who wants the kittens.’

  Alfie gulped and the guilt was suddenly back in his eyes. ‘I’ll get the door. You get Posy.’

  Hayley stood on the doorstep, trying to look the way a competent housekeeper was supposed to look.

  Fingering the advert in her pocket, she suddenly felt nervous. Must like children and be able to cook turkey. What exactly was this family expecting? A cross between Mary Poppins and a celebrity chef?

  Thumps and childish shrieks came from behind the door and suddenly it was tugged open and a young boy stood there. There was a large blob of chocolate on his sweatshirt.

  ‘Hi.’ He gave her a tentative smile and then glanced nervously over his shoulder. ‘You’ve come about the advert?’

  ‘Yes.’ Hayley took an instant liking to him. ‘You must be Alfie. You look exactly the way you sounded on the phone.’ Sweet, bright, bouncy, straightforward—nervous?

  ‘I wasn’t sure you’d come.’

  Hayley wondered why he was nervous. Was he scared his new housekeeper was a dragon? ‘I’ve been dying to meet you.’ She gave him a friendly smile. ‘I spoke to your dad briefly—is he in?’

  The anxiety in the child’s eyes bordered on panic. ‘Yes. But there’s something I need to—’

  ‘Alfie?’ A deep male voice came from behind him and a man strolled towards the door, a little girl in his arms. ‘Is it the lady who rang about the advert?’

  ‘Sort of.’ Throwing Hayley a desperate look, Alfie shrank to one side and Hayley frowned slightly, disturbed that he seemed to be afraid of his father.

  Hoping that she wasn’t about to spend Christmas with a family even more dysfunctional than her own, she turned to introduce herself and gave a gasp of shock.

  It was him!

  Here. And every bit as good looking as she remembered in a rough, male I-can-kill-a-lion-with-my-bare-hands sort of way.

  The smile started inside her and spread to her lips. What a fantastic coincidence! She wouldn’t even have to take the trouble to track him down. He lived right here, in this beautiful barn with two beautiful children, and—

  Her thoughts came crashing to a halt.

  He lived with two beautiful children?

  His two beautiful children?

  Oh, God, he had children.

  He wasn’t an indecently handsome sex god, he was a faithless rat.

  The shock was like a fist punching her hard in the stomach. Hayley gave a whimper of disbelief. Please let it be a mistake. Please. Don’t let them be his children. Let him be looking after them for someone else.

  No, no no…

  But even as she stared in horror at her fantasy man, the little girl burrowed sleepily into his shoulder.

  ‘Want to go back inside, Daddy,’ she mumbled, and Hayley felt her happiness evaporate in an instant.

  All that was left of her bright, shiny new life was the bitter, grey sludge of melted dreams.

  So much for her fantasy man.

  So much for imagining that he’d been thinking about her.

  No wonder he hadn’t contacted her.

  He had another life. A family.

  What now? How on earth was she going to get out of this mess she’d made for herself?

  Hi, there, I came to find you but you’re not the man I thought you were, so I’m going home now. And, by the way, I hope you trip and bash your head on something really hard.

  A cold sweat of panic drenched her skin. What if his wife was in the house? Dear God, how was she going to face the woman? There was no way she’d ever threaten anyone’s family.

  Horrified, Hayley started to back away but her feet shot in different directions and she ended up flat on her back in the snow.

  ‘Ow.’ Pain mingled with humiliation as she stared up at the grey winter sky. And then she was being hauled to her feet—easily, as if she weighed nothing, the strength in his muscular grip making her feel light and feminine.

  ‘Hayley?’ His tone was guarded and his sexy blue eyes held a glimmer of disbelief. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Well, obviously it isn’t that easy to walk in the snow,’ she said defensively, and he frowned slightly.

  ‘I meant—what are you doing here?’ he said gently, and Hayley realised that he hadn’t yet worked out that she was the one who had answered his advert for a housekeeper.

  What a nightmare.

  How was he going to react when he discovered that his dirty little secret was supposed to be spending Christmas with them?

  Looking at the two vulnerable children clinging to him, she felt a flicker of anger. It would serve him right to have a moment of panic. It might make him think twice before he did the same thing again.

  He reached out a hand and touched her hair and all her violent thoughts faded away. Hayley gazed up at him for a moment, completely disorientated by his touch, oblivious to the snow that had managed to find its way inside her clothes. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Removing a pine cone from your hair.’ He held up the small brown cone that was dusted with snow. ‘I thought it might be uncomfortable.’

  Nowhere near as uncomfortable as realising that y
our dream of the future had just crashed and burned.

  ‘Dad? What’s going on?’ Alfie’s puzzled enquiry drew nothing more than a lift of an eyebrow from his father.

  He showed no sign of guilt. His handsome face wasn’t shifting into a sheepish look. He wasn’t sending her silent messages. He was as relaxed as if he’d just opened the door to a carol singer.

  Maybe he had affairs all the time. Maybe that was why he’d been so good at it—lots of practice.

  The thought made her want to stuff a handful of freezing snow down the front of his trousers. She was sure that Diana, her stepsister, would have slapped his face at this point and then turned and stalked away. But Hayley had never hit anyone in her life and really effective stalking required good balance so that was out of the question.

  But the thing that was really keeping her rooted to the spot were the two children hovering close to Patrick—was that his name or had he lied about that, too? It wasn’t their fault that their father was fuelled by high-octane testosterone levels and a superstud sex drive. They shouldn’t have to suffer. She wasn’t going to be responsible for breaking two little hearts on Christmas Eve. And if he had any sort of decency he’d help her find a polite excuse and leave, otherwise she had a fairly good idea of what she was going to do with the carving knife and her plan didn’t require a turkey.

  ‘I told your dad my name on the phone.’ Proud of her improvisation, she locked gazes with Patrick, giving him her best I-know-what-you’re-up-to-but-I’m-not-going-to-drop-you-in-it-yet look but his features remained impassive.

  She envied his composure. His face revealed nothing. Nothing. Not a glimmer. Definitely not the sort of man who would reveal his bra size to a taxi driver.

  ‘You’re the woman who phoned? It was you?’

  ‘Yes.’ And she was wondering why she hadn’t recognised his voice. Presumably because she hadn’t expected to hear it. It hadn’t occurred to her that he had anything to do with the advert she’d answered.

  The coincidence was ridiculously unfair.

  It couldn’t happen to anyone but her.