The Unexpected Holiday Gift

by Sophie Pembroke

  He’d spent the last fifteen years trying to win back his father’s pride and love through the family business. It was time to try something new—and marrying Clara had been one of the few decisions Jacob had made outside business that his dad had ever approved of.

  Besides, Clara owed him. She’d walked out, left him alone on the day after Christmas with barely a word of explanation. Well, there’d been a letter, but it hadn’t made any sense to him.

  All he’d understood was that he’d failed. Failed as a husband, as a partner. Failed at the whole institution of marriage.

  And Fosters did not fail. That one universal truth had been drilled into him from birth and even now it rang through his bones, chastising him every time he thought of Clara.

  Jacob had failed once in his life—just the once that mattered—before he’d met Clara. And after that he’d vowed that it would never happen again.

  This Christmas, fate had given him a chance to keep that vow. To prove to his father that he was still a success.

  He just needed to convince Clara to go along with it.

  Eight hours trapped in a car with him should do it, he reckoned.

  ‘So?’ he asked, breaking up the silent discussion going on before him. ‘What do you think? Drive up with me? You can choose the music.’ Which, given what he knew of Clara’s musical taste, was quite the concession indeed.

  ‘I can’t,’ she said, sounding apologetic even though he knew she wasn’t. ‘I’ve already got a seat booked on the train up with Merry, and we’ll have a few last-minute items to bring up with us...’

  ‘I’m sure she can manage that alone, can’t you, Merry?’ Jacob turned his best smile onto the petite redhead. Merry, flustered, turned to Clara, her hands outspread.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Can I?’

  ‘Well, there’s that...um...extra special thing that needs...transporting,’ Clara said, the words coming out halting and strange.

  Interesting. Given that he was paying for and had ordered everything that needed to go up to Scotland, what exactly was she trying to hide from him?

  Merry knew, it seemed, and caught on instantly. ‘Exactly. I mean, if you’re happy for me to transport...it, then of course I will. I mean, I’m sure we’ll...I’ll...I’m sure it will be fine,’ she finished, obviously unable to say whatever it was she actually wanted to.

  Something else for Jacob to uncover during that eight-hour drive.

  ‘Are you sure? I mean it’s a big...responsibility,’ Clara said, and the concern in her eyes told him that this had nothing to do with his Christmas. Which just made the whole thing even more interesting.

  Merry shook her head. ‘It’ll be fine,’ she said, belying the movement. ‘Honestly. I’ll just meet you up there with...it.’

  ‘Okay. Well.’ Clara turned to Jacob. ‘I guess, if you insist.’

  ‘I do,’ Jacob confirmed. ‘You and I have an awful lot to talk about.’

  Clara actually winced at that. He almost wasn’t sure he blamed her.

  He was going to have a lot of fun on this drive.

  ‘Are you ready to go now?’ he asked, more to fluster her than anything else.

  ‘Now?’ Her eyes grew extra wide and she looked to Merry in panic. ‘No! I mean, I have to do a few things first. And pop home. Um, can we leave a little later?’

  By which point they wouldn’t arrive any earlier than the train. Since his reasoning for insisting she travel with him was sketchy enough to start with, he really didn’t want to put the journey off any longer than necessary.

  ‘I’ll pick you up at nine,’ Jacob said. ‘That gives you over an hour and a half to get everything squared away here. I’m sure, for someone with your efficiency and work ethic, that will be plenty of time.’

  ‘I’m sure it will,’ Clara said. But he was pretty sure she was talking through gritted teeth.

  He’d take it, anyway.

  ‘I’ll see you then,’ Jacob said, turning and leaving the office.

  * * *

  It was a rush but Clara managed to get home, explain to her daughter and childminder that Ivy was going to have a brilliant train adventure with Merry and meet Mummy in Scotland, apologise to Merry again for putting her in this position, explain all of Ivy’s routines and travel quirks, load her friend up with games, colouring books, snacks and other entertainment for the journey, grab her case and get back to Perfect London by nine o’clock.

  Which was why she was still reapplying lipstick and trying to do something with her weather-stricken hair when Jacob arrived again, looking every bit as calm and collected as he had been when he’d demanded that she travel with him.

  She’d loathed him when he’d insisted. Even though she knew the problem was half hers. If she’d been able to explain about Ivy, he’d have understood and probably relented. But she couldn’t—and even Merry was starting to get suspicious.

  At first a one-night stand had seemed like the ideal explanation, when she had realised she was pregnant just weeks after walking out on her husband. The dates were close enough to be believable—even likely, given that Ivy had been born a full two weeks late. But still, it was a little too close for Clara’s comfort.

  She’d been telling the ‘ill-advised one-night stand who didn’t want to know when she told him she was pregnant’ story for so long now, sometimes she almost believed it herself. But then Ivy would do something—look at her a certain way, tilt her head the same way Jacob did, or just open those all too familiar blue eyes wide—and she’d know without a doubt that Ivy was Jacob’s daughter.

  Of course, barring a miracle, she’d have to be. There hadn’t been anyone else for Clara since she’d left. Or before, for that matter.

  ‘Are you ready?’ Jacob asked, eyebrows raised.

  Clara pushed the lid back onto her lipstick, checked her reflection one last time, then nodded.

  ‘Ready.’

  Part of her wasn’t even sure why she was bothering with make-up, just to sit in a car with Jacob for hours. But another part knew the truth. This was warpaint, a mask, camouflage. All of the above.

  She needed something between her and her ex-husband. Something to stop him seeing through her and discovering the truth she’d been hiding all these years.

  Truths, really. But one of those she wouldn’t admit even to herself. ‘Let’s go,’ she said, striding past him.

  It was just too depressing. Who wanted to admit they were probably still in love with their husband, five years after they’d walked out on him?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  OUTSIDE, PARKED ON the street in a miraculously free parking spot, was the car Clara knew instantly had to be Jacob’s. Top of the range, brand-new, flashy and silver—and only two seats. ‘Why would I need more?’ he’d always said when she’d questioned his penchant for two-seater cars. ‘There’s room for me and you, isn’t there?’

  Jacob, she knew, would never understand the need for space; a boot to fit the shopping in, or even a pram. The joy of a tiny face beaming at you from the back seat the minute you opened the door. The space for toys and spare clothes, cloths and nappies and board books and, well, life. Everything she’d lived since she left her marriage.

  And everything she’d felt was missing while she’d stayed.

  Jacob opened the door for her and she slid in, trying to keep her feet together in their tall black boots, even though her skirt came down to touch her knees. It was all about appearances. Decorum and manners could mask even the most unpleasant of situations.

  Wasn’t that the British way, after all?

  Except Jacob had clearly been living in America too long. The moment he shut the door behind him and started the engine, he dived straight into a conversation she’d been hoping to avoid.

  ‘So, what little extra is Merry bring
ing to Scotland that you don’t want me to know about?’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with your perfect Christmas,’ Clara assured him. ‘Nothing for you to worry about at all, actually.’

  ‘And here was me hoping it might be my Christmas present,’ Jacob said lightly, but the very words made Clara go cold.

  She could almost imagine it. Happy Christmas, Jacob! Here’s your four-year-old daughter! Just what you never wanted!

  No. Not happening. Not to her Ivy.

  ‘Not a present,’ Clara said shortly. ‘Just something I need with me this Christmas.’

  ‘Intriguing.’

  ‘It’s really not.’

  Jacob was silent for long minutes and Clara almost allowed herself to hope that he might let the rest of the journey pass the same way. But then he spoke again.

  ‘Were you planning to see your family this Christmas?’ he asked. ‘Before I made you change your plans, I mean.’

  The question startled her. Her first instinct was to reply that she was spending Christmas with her family, except of course Jacob didn’t mean Ivy. He meant her mother and stepfather, or father and his girlfriend of the week, and all the little half-siblings that had replaced her on both sides.

  ‘No. Why would I?’

  ‘I know things were difficult between you—’ But he didn’t really know, she realised belatedly. She might have hinted that they weren’t close but she’d never gone into detail. Never explained what her childhood had been like. Why? Had it just never come up? After all, they’d eloped to Vegas a month and a half after meeting, and she’d left him the following Christmas. There had been no wedding invitations, no seating plans. And whenever he’d mentioned meeting her relatives she’d put him off—until he’d stopped suggesting it altogether.

  She supposed she hadn’t wanted him to know how unlovable her own family had found her. Not when she was still hoping he really did love and want her.

  And so he’d been left with the impression that her family relationships were ‘difficult’. Understatement of the year. ‘Difficult’ implied differences people could move past. Problems that could be solved.

  Being unwanted, unnecessary—those problems didn’t have easy fixes. Once her mother had remarried and started her new family, after Clara’s dad had walked out, there’d been no place in her mother’s life for the accidental result of a teenage pregnancy and shotgun marriage. Clara was merely a reminder of her mistakes—to her mother, her stepdad and the whole community.

  Far better to let them get on with their lives, while she made her own. The Fosters had been the closest thing Clara had had to a family in years—until Ivy came along. Now she knew exactly what family meant, and Clara wasn’t accepting anything less than a perfect family for her or her daughter.

  ‘I just wondered if things had changed. Since you left, I mean,’ Jacob went on, apparently unaware of quite how much she really didn’t want to have this conversation.

  ‘I can’t imagine any circumstances under which they would,’ Clara said firmly.

  ‘You might be surprised.’ Jacob sounded strangely far away, as if speaking about something he was experiencing right then, only elsewhere.

  ‘My family have never once surprised me.’ The words came out flat—the depressing truth by which Clara had lived her life since the age of seven. Until the day she’d turned eighteen and Clara had taken matters into her own hands instead. In the eight years between her mother’s remarriage and her eighteenth birthday, Clara had learned a most useful truth: never stay where you’re not wanted.

  ‘Wait until you get a phone call from them one day that changes your whole life,’ Jacob told her. ‘Then we’ll talk.’

  He was thinking of his father, Clara realised, almost too late. The way life changed, never mind relationships, when days became sharply numbered.

  That phone call would never come for her—just like she’d never make it. She didn’t even have contact numbers for her parents any more. But that was her decision—made moments after Ivy was born, and Clara had known deep in her bones that this tiny scrap of a baby was all the family she would ever need. She’d vowed silently, lying in her hospital bed, that Ivy would always be loved, wanted and cared for. She didn’t need grandparents who were incapable of doing that.

  But that call had come for Jacob.

  ‘When did you find out?’ she asked. ‘About your dad, I mean.’

  ‘Six months ago. I was in New York on business when he called.’

  ‘And you flew home?’

  ‘Immediately.’

  She smiled. That was further evidence that Jacob was beginning to realise the importance and the power of his family. The Fosters were the sort of family that stuck together through everything, because they were glued together with the sort of love that ought to come with a birth certificate...but sometimes didn’t. She didn’t understand how someone who’d grown up with all of that could be so against the idea of having it for their own family, their own children.

  She’d been jealous of that kind of love, once. Even when they were married, she’d always felt on the outside. Now she could only imagine the kind of words they used to describe her in the Foster family.

  But she’d been right to leave, Clara knew, and right to stay away. Even if she had been wanted in Jacob’s world—and if she’d been sure of that she’d never have felt she had to walk away in the first place—she knew that Ivy wasn’t. She wouldn’t put her daughter through that, not for anything.

  ‘Dad sent me back to the US,’ Jacob went on and Clara turned to him, surprised.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he didn’t want his personal ill health to impact on the health of the business.’ That was a quote from James Foster, Clara could tell, even though she hadn’t seen the man in five years. Success mattered to the Fosters almost as much as family, she’d always thought.

  Now she wondered if, sometimes, it might matter even more.

  Still, she’d always been very fond of James Foster. A self-made millionaire who had made his fortune by inventing a medical instrument Clara didn’t even truly understand the application of, James had all of Jacob’s charm, good looks and determination. But it was his son who had taken the company—Foster Medical—to new heights. It was his business brain that had seen the opportunities in a shrinking market, and the path they needed to take.

  And James had trusted Jacob to do just that. Not many fathers, Clara thought, would have so happily surrendered the reins of their life’s work to their son. She’d always admired James for making that decision.

  Of course, he’d been repaid handsomely since then—in money, prestige and the simple pleasure of watching the company he’d founded go from strength to strength. Watching his son succeed, over and over again.

  ‘How is the business?’ she asked, trying not to sound bitter just speaking the word. She knew for a fact that business success had mattered more than her.

  ‘Booming. As is yours, by all accounts.’

  That knowledge surprised her, although when she thought about it she realised it shouldn’t. He was hiring her company, not just her. Of course he’d look into how well they were doing.

  ‘Merry and I have worked very hard at building up Perfect London,’ she said.

  ‘I could tell.’ Jacob glanced across at her from the driver’s seat. ‘I’m glad everything worked out for you.’

  ‘Really?’ Clara raised her eyebrows. ‘Remember, I was married to you. I’m pretty sure there’s a part of you that wishes I’d failed miserably so that you could have swept in and told me you told me so.’

  ‘I never told you so,’ Jacob said, frowning. ‘I never even realised that you wanted to run your own business. If I had, I’d have helped you. Maybe we could even have worked together.’

  Had she even known herself? All she kne
w for sure was that Jacob had never thought she wanted anything more than he could give her—and that she hadn’t known what she wanted to do with her life.

  Had they really known each other at all? Their whole relationship—from meeting to the moment she’d left—had lasted a year and two days, and it seemed that they’d never talked about the things that really mattered until it was too late. All Jacob had known was the person Clara had shown him—a person so starved for love and attention that she’d done everything she could to be what he wanted.

  She’d escaped her family, found a job and a flat-share with a friend, and thought that was all she needed until she’d met Jacob in a London bar one Christmas Eve. Then, all too quickly, really, she’d found love and friendship and family and marriage and for ever...and suddenly she was twenty-one, a wife, and still had no idea what she wanted for herself beyond that.

  She hadn’t found herself until she’d left him, Clara realised. How sad.

  Now she didn’t need his approval, his attention. Not just because she had Ivy and Merry in her life, but because she knew who she was, what she wanted—and she believed she could achieve it all. Realising how she’d changed over the past five years made her want to weep for the girl she’d been.

  Turning away, Clara stared out of the window at the passing countryside and wondered what else spending twenty-four hours preparing the perfect Foster family Christmas would teach her about her marriage.

  * * *

  Clara hadn’t thought she’d actually be capable of sleeping, not with Jacob in the car next to her, and certainly not the whole way to Scotland. But she’d figured it would at least curb the disturbing conversations if she pretended to be asleep, so she’d kept her head turned away, her breathing even, and hadn’t even stirred when they stopped for petrol fifteen minutes later. But somehow when she next opened her eyes the scenery around her was decidedly more Highland-like in appearance.

  ‘Sorry about the bends,’ Jacob said, his eyes never moving from the road, and Clara realised what had woken her up. ‘The satnav seems certain it’s this way.’