What on earth had they been thinking, naming me Noel. Just because my birthday happened to coincide with the most famous birthday of all.
To hell with them and Christmas.
This year, like last and the ones before, I had it all planned. Drive from my totally lux inner-city penthouse to the western suburbs. Park my Jeep outside a cheap hotel fortuitously located within walking distance of half a dozen bars. Hopefully, it would still be there, waiting for my return. If not, well, buying a new car could be my sole Christmas present.
I loved the anonymity of the western suburbs. No one knew me and, in any case, were unlikely to recognize my slothernly self from business magazines and were less likely to care enough to post pictures of me on any newsfeed.
A week or so of solid, dedicated, and self-indulgent drinking. I couldn’t wait. I stopped at an ATM to collect my first days’ worth of drinking money before heading out of town.
Merry fucking Christmas to me.
JoJo
The jolt came out of nowhere.
I’d been innocently turning left on a round-about.
Suddenly and without warning, a car came from nowhere, striking my tiny Kia. The second and third thumps just as assaulting as the first. Sending my poor car and I into a final pirouette, until my passenger door became intimate with a light pole.
I was alive.
My car, not so much.
“Are you fucking kidding me!”
Okay, not my finest moment and luckily my mother wasn’t around to discuss my filthy mouth. But the string of expletives started before I even tried to heave open my crumpled car door which had borne the brunt of initial impact.
Furious with myself for agreeing to this stupid pact and the reason I was on the road; the asshole who hit me; and the whole messed up world.
Karma was a bitch and if I was going to be its slave, then I wanted to pull the bastard out of his car and slowly throttle him for being the reason I wouldn’t be home with my father for Christmas.
Nothing like having Christmas ruined for me to realize how much I looked forward to the Adelaide beaches and family love. Needed my mother’s hug and to see for myself that daddy would pull through.
“Damn, no, damn!” Attacking the stupid bastard would have to wait. No sooner than I tried to stand, and my right ankle crumpled under my weight. “Shit, shit, shit.” I could almost taste the bar of soap as mum washed teenage JoJo’s mouth from filthy language.
Tears of pain were too frightened to form in my eyes, yet. Damn, my ankle hurt. My steering wheel was folded in on itself. When I looked back, luckily the force from the initial hit had dislodged my foot from the accelerator, saving it from being trapped underneath the crumpled panels.
How could I get to Adelaide without a car?
I want my mummy! Daddy!
Christmas pact be damned. In an instant, independent, and grown up JoJo had been replaced by her ten-year-old self wanting cuddles after coming off her push-bike. I wanted my mummy and daddy to make it all better!
While I tried to ignore the pain down my right side, from shoulder to hips and ankle; the other driver in his expensive black Jeep took his sweet time in manning up to his stuff up. Without the ability to hobble over and scream in his face, I resorted to leaning on my mangled car door. Thinking with a decent shove, it would fall off its hinges and serve as a cheap yet inconvenient crutch. To hell with fight or flight; I chose to laugh not cry.
What was the saying—be careful what you wish for? Yeah, karma had me in her sights and it wasn’t pretty.
“Are you okay?” Snapping me out of my slightly hysterical laughter, a lumberjack of a man, wild eyes and scruffy beard and wearing clothes that a second-hand shop would reject, approached me with unwarranted caution. Seriously? He could snap me like a twig and still he approached as if I was the one twice his size?
Then again, a moment ago I wanted to rip his head from his shoulders, and he’d caught me in a hysterical laughter. Maybe he had every right to be nervous, what with his solid, firm, broad shoulders—what the hell was I doing? Needing to blame my reaction on being in shock—because it made no possible sense to crush on the guy who emerged unscathed from the Jeep after wiping out my little car.
Almost wiping out little ol’ me.
“Ma’am, are you okay?” He repeated as if I was a child. Seriously again, did I look old enough to be a ma’am?
“What do you think—my car.” I cried, forgetting about my ankle in my indignation at the word, ma’am. “Shit.”
“I don’t give a rat’s about your car—are you okay?” His polished vowels matched the monster of a car, but not the scruffy pale face or those clothes. Really? Did he steal them from some homeless guy? And what would he look like without them—another thought to blame on shock and pain.
In the faint recesses of my brain, I remembered the saying, insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. But, in an attempt to disprove years of academic brilliance, I tested the ground with my foot, again. Just in case it had miraculously healed in the last five minutes. Well, it was supposed to be the season for miracles.
“No, I’m not bloody okay.” I unleashed frustration, regret and more than a little pain. Was this going to be my punishment for not wanting to go home for Christmas. What if it really was dad’s last—at that, the gush of tears wanted permission to fall and I rubbed my face to hide the sole tear leading the charge. This was not the time to give into emotional bullshit. I needed to sort out my car and get to Adelaide by any means possible.
Daddy, I’m coming—I just don’t know how, yet.
“I need an ambulance. My car went through a roundabout …yes the other driver is conscious.”
What the!
I overhead Mr. Good-looking Bastard deciding my future in a call to emergency services. Before I could use my poor car as a crutch to get around to the front, Mr. Good-looking Bastard had already given my license plate number to emergency services.
“I don’t need a bloody ambulance.” I yelled. Really, the hide of him to even think about calling one before checking with me first. What if I didn’t have insurance—clearly anyone who could drive the expensive Jeep 4WD wouldn’t think that some people could be bankrupted by a do-gooder making the call.
“Wait?” He paused in reciting the details to face me. “What? I thought you said—”
Right—misunderstanding now understood. I had told him I wasn’t okay, and he thought—
“I don’t need an ambulance. I need to get home to Adelaide for Christmas, see my father and win a pact.”
In future years, I’d either deny everything; or blame it on the shock, my frustration, or the pain shooting up from my ankle the full length of my spine. I’d blame it on anything other than either weakness on my part, or a reaction to his looks.
Whatever.
Nothing could stop me from collapsing into the arms of a stranger.
Noel
The whole reason I spent weeks carefully selecting my intended drinking spot was so I wouldn’t need to drive and put other people at risk while drowning in my body weight of scotch and beer.
Their safety prioritized over mine.
Random strangers safely able to enjoy their Christmas lunches prioritized over my need to obliterate a week of my life.
Seemed a fair exchange to me. I was willing to travel miles—or kilometres depending on how you measured it—until I could be anonymous in my self-destruction and keep others safe.
Instead, a single momentary lapse in concentration totaled the matchbox of a car now blocking traffic on the outskirts of the eastern-Sydney suburb of Kogarah; and for bonus points I had a sexy as all shit woman screaming at me. Not in the way I preferred my women to be screaming.
And yes, this Goldie Hawn or Kate Hudson look-alike was exactly my type.
Except the victim of my inattention appeared so pissed off at me that her cheeks had turned as red as her full lips. Offset against her pale face—from shock or na
tural?
The avalanche of swearing ceased the moment she collapsed into my arms. Accidental, but not unwelcome. Mid-sentence, screaming she didn’t need an ambulance, her slight body fell to the ground without warning. I inwardly thanked my years of playing fullback for the reflexes to catch any moving object—or woman.
Cradling her, I needed to do something to fix this. But without a functioning engine to power the air-conditioning, laying her down in the twisted wreck of her car was out of the question. Mine would be cooler, but how would she feel waking up in a strange—
“What?” At least she didn’t come to, still yelling at me.
“You collapsed for a minute or so. You’re safe and the ambulance is on its way.”
Her blonde hair cascaded over my shoulder as she wriggled to get down. “Hold on, you just fainted, take it easy.”
As an aside, I wasn’t in any hurry to let her go.
Man, this woman was the perfect package and if I’d met her in any other circumstances, I’d be wanting more than her name and insurance details. At the same time, she’d barely made it out of a crumpled car that was my fault, before collapsing. She needed medical attention, a new car, and a ride to wherever she wanted to go.
I needed her name, number, and the chance to call her after the New Year, to make my apologies in person.
“Who the hell are you and what did you do to my car?” At least she hadn’t lost her spunk. But heaven help me, I couldn’t get past her blonde curls and blue eyes that had me wanting to shut her up by crushing that noisy mouth with my own.
Yeah, like she’d let me. Perhaps if I’d been wearing one of my tailored suits and offering her my platinum credit card, she’d be more amenable. Instead, I came dressed to drink, and she had every right to demand a police escort to the nearest hospital and an AVO issued against my thoughts.
“There was an accident. My fault and I’ve called it in. I know you don’t believe me right now, but I’m sorry.”
Her blue, no aquamarine, eyes blinked through her pain and her lips were no longer visible through gritted teeth. Shit. I still couldn’t hear the ambulance and this girl needed someone to take control.
“At least come and sit in my car, you need to get out of this heat.” The Australian summer had already been brutal, and my Vans were no protection from the bitumen road. This girl only had a single flip flop, the other lost in her car but I’d fix that once she was safe and sorted.
A silent nod as I adjusted my hold, trying to ignore how easily she fit into my arms. Light enough for me to open the passenger door one-handed. Strong, or perhaps stubborn enough to bite down on her lip as I settled her into the seat. Not wanting to show emotion—or let a stranger see the pain.
The pain you caused, dickhead. Guess that first drink is gonna have to wait.
After making sure the air-conditioning was adjusted for the passenger side, not that I usually had one, I left the girl to check out her car. Finding her handbag in front of what used to be her passenger seat, and an overnight bag in the back. I extracted a cute denim jacket that would sit just above her slight hips from in between what was left of her side back door and seat.
Shit. This could have been a lot worse. I shuddered to think what would have happened if there had been passengers.
Negligent driving causing vehicular homicide.
I almost threw up my morning bagel in disgust and relief.
Still, I needed to find all her personal effects and return them before the tow-truck arrived to claim the evidence from my stupidity.
A couple of suitcases in the back trunk, the only part of the car left unscathed. However, whatever brownie points I got for not destroying her cases would be overturned by the handing over of her phone remnants. No woman wanted to be parted with her connection to life, and little Miss Kate Hudson-look-alike was probably going to take longer to forgive me for her phone than for her car.
“I think this might have lost its life along with your car.” With more courage than most board meetings required, I cradled the broken wires and plastic in my hands, offering it to her with my most solemn expression. “I’ll be happy to pay for a new one—just tell me what you want.”
“Don’t bother. Ouch.” The woman rubbed her right shoulder. Of course, I’d hit the driver’s side of the car. Not that she’d thank me for the truth, but if I’d been going at the speed limit there would have been as little left of the woman as there was of her car. Somehow, I must have hit it near the front and spun it to be sideways before hitting it again, sending it into the light pole.
Again, I swallowed the bile. Realization smacking me down harsher than any public service announcement.
My actions. A single moment of inattention. My damn stupidity could have killed her.
Wouldn’t that have been a fucking Christmas joy.
Grandma would say that the two of us walking away was a Christmas miracle. Right now, I’d be prepared to clean out my credit card until this blonde vision saw it as a miracle and not the ruination of her Christmas.
“The ambo is on its way. At least let them check you out. Again, any out of pocket expenses are on me.”
“You’ve done enough. As soon as they get here, you can go.”
Un-fucking-believable!
Women never talked to me this way. Either they were enamored of my credit card or by the social status they thought was theirs by association. Their natural bite only came out after a couple of dates in the mistaken believe beauty could hide personality flaws. Not likely, darling!
Little Miss-not-Kate’s words and attitude triggered a hundred false dates, but before I made a scathing comment about beautiful women only being skin deep, I actually looked at her. She was whiter than before, if that was possible. Luminescent. Blonde hair, pale skin and fighting the shock but still succumbing to the leather seats in the front of my car. Wincing with any movement.
“Can I get you anything?” I didn’t wait for a response, finding an unopened bottle of water down the side of the driver’s side door. “Here.”
“I can wait in my car.” She grimaced, trying to open the bottle before giving it over. A woman who didn’t like accepting help. I respected her spunk, but it was time to bring out stereotypes, get her mind off her car, leg, and arm.
“Consider it my Christmas gift to you. The next arms around you might be the sexiest damn paramedic you’ve ever seen. Followed by firemen whose only purpose in life is to save you from my stupidity.”
A sneaky smile. “Don’t forget the policemen who will avenge me by locking you up for Christmas.”
Sass. A sense of humor without bitchiness.
I liked it. I liked her, and I didn’t usually like anyone at this time of year.
“Sounds good, except I don’t know how I’ll fulfill my Christmas wish locked in a jail cell.”
“And what would that be?” The blue eyes still rimmed with tears but hinted at a twinkle.
“To be drunk enough to forget Christmas. Hi, I’m Noel.” I extended my left hand for her to shake, not wanting to cause any more pain and even a novice like me could see she was favoring the right shoulder.
“Noel, as in—”
“Yep. Consider it my father’s revenge for timing my birth to ruin his Christmas lunch.” At least my name got a snigger—not a full-blown laugh, not yet.
“I’m JoJo.”
“Is that a name or a slogan?”
“Real name Stephanie—or at least that’s the name I’ll be putting on my insurance claim. My family and call me JoJo and you are the first to have ever called me ma’am.”
“Well, JoJo.” Out of the two options, JoJo suited her. Those curls were bubbly and full of life. More JoJo than Steph or Stephanie. “I’m going to hope that we can move past this unfortunate introduction and become friends. Until then, can I call you JoJo or do you want me to call you Stephanie or Steph?”
“JoJo. Otherwise I might think you’re about to bend me over and whack me with a ruler!” Her laugh accompan
ied by the nearing sirens. “Catholic girls school upbringing. The nuns believed in corporal punishment.”
“Well, my dear JoJo, never let it be said that I want to inflict more pain.”
But, if she ever presented that ass to me, I knew I’d want to do more than spank it. Damn.
Now, if only I could find the bar, my new goal would be to drink until I could erase the vision of JoJo from the bottom of each glass.
“Are you sure it can’t be driven?”
“Love, I don’t even have to wait for your insurance company to call it. Your car is a write off. At least you’ll be able to get this year’s model discounted after the first of January.”
The tow-truck driver I’d called had been quick in his prognosis. He hadn’t wanted to walk the twenty metres in the blistering heat to talk to JoJo who was resting uncomfortably in my car, but I encouraged him to see it as customer service.
Minutes later, my previous attempts at chivalry were blown away by the late twenty-something gym junkie trainee paramedic who’d carefully carried JoJo from my car to the ambulance. Not needing my help. Neither of them even acknowledging my existence!
I had no right to be jealous but made a mental note to self to check out if there was a casting call for first responders.
Tristan, according to the name badge but insisted JoJo call him, Tryst, flirted during his examination. I couldn’t tell what part of his banter was his normal routine to calm his patient, and how much was the guy looking for an opportunity. At least I could flash around my credit card to get some female attention. How did normal guys compete with hunks in uniform?
Or rich assholes in Jeeps who meet women by destroying their cars.
Another note to self; shut up. At least JoJo seemed more interested in pain relief than the paramedic.
“Will I live?” JoJo half jokingly asked Tristan-call-me-Tryst.
She’d dismissed the tow-truck driver with a shrug and welling tears before they were vigorously brushed away. She either loved her car or needed to get somewhere. I tried to think back—yes—she said something about getting home for Christmas but at the time, I’d been too worried about getting an ambulance to think clearly. A problem easily solved, I’d give her a lift to her destination and hopefully get a thank you date in the New Year.
Her Surprise Christmas Noel: Four women, one pact: find a date for Christmas (Christmas Kisses Book 2) Page 2
