New Doc in Town / Orphan Under the Christmas Tree

by Meredith Webber

  ‘Over my dead body!’ Lauren said, slamming down the phone and startling the occupational therapist who was walking past the door, and making Tom, who’d come through the door, raise an eyebrow.

  ‘Over your dead body?’

  ‘Some stupid woman talking about making Bobby a ward of the state,’ Lauren told him, so angry she was surprised she couldn’t see wisps of steam rising in the air around her head.

  Tom came further into the room and pulled up a chair to sit across the desk from her.

  ‘He probably will have to be made a ward of the state before we can officially adopt him, and if you think about it, you’ll know that’s right,’ he said, as calmly as if they were carrying on some conversation they’d begun earlier, ‘but it doesn’t have to happen right now and, anyway, it’s only paperwork.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  Lauren spaced out the words so he’d have no trouble hearing them.

  The eyebrow lifted.

  ‘About him being made a ward of the state? It’s only paperwork?’ Tom asked.

  More wisps of steam!

  ‘You know I don’t mean that!’ she growled. ‘I mean the bit about our adopting him. Our adopting him!’

  He grinned at her and although her anger was still simmering nicely, the grin did distract her, sending tremors of a desire she’d never felt before—strong physical desire—through her body.

  ‘I thought about it as I walked over to the hospital earlier. Bobby’s happy with us, and he’s a kid who deserves a break. I think between the two of us, we could do a good job with him. We’d probably have to get married to make the officials feel more comfortable, but I can’t see that being too big a problem—’

  He broke off so the grin could come back—widening into a teasing smile that sent molten spears of longing sizzling down her nerves.

  She had to forget last night and spears of longing and concentrate on practical matters—except she couldn’t find what practical matter she wanted to concentrate on.

  Marriage?

  ‘You don’t want to get married!’ she reminded him. ‘You’ve held forth often enough on your single-and-loving-it philosophy. You’ve never pushed your ideas on other people, but you’ve made it very plain that marriage and children weren’t in your long-term plan for a happy life, while as for love—a destructive force, I think you called it.’

  He was silent for so long she wondered if she should have kept her mouth shut, but the marrying idea had come so out of the blue she could barely think, let alone express her disbelief more rationally.

  And there was another problem with the whole situation—the problem of a little bit of her skittering around in an excited tizzy and bouncing up and down in delight, twittering ‘marriage’ into her befuddled brain.

  ‘I did love someone once,’ Tom finally said, jolting Lauren back to earth, the excited twitter firmly squelched. ‘My sister Jane. And she loved me! It didn’t matter how our parents fought, Jane was there to shield me, and to hug me and tell me things would be all right.’

  He paused, and Lauren waited.

  ‘Bobby hasn’t got a Jane, but he has got us. I know we can’t wipe away what he’s suffered emotionally and possibly physically over the years, but by giving him the best possible life we can offer, surely we can help him forget a lot of it.’

  So the excited bit had got it wrong, Lauren realised, but she also realised that if she hadn’t known she loved this man before this moment, she knew she loved him now. Sitting there, offering his future to a little boy, committing himself to love the child, how could she not love Tom?

  But wouldn’t loving him make what he was asking harder?

  Loving him, could she marry him, knowing he didn’t love her?

  He’d loved his sister once, and Lauren was reasonably sure he was growing fonder and fonder of Bobby—heading towards love—but he didn’t love her.

  And why should he?

  But marriage without love?

  For the sake of a child?

  How confused could one woman get?

  ‘A relative might turn up,’ she said, desperate to shift the conversation to somewhere she might be able to get a grasp on it.

  Tom frowned at her.

  ‘You don’t want to keep him?’

  Lauren thought of the way the little boy’s hand would creep into hers, and the warmth she felt in her body when he did that.

  ‘Of course I want to keep him,’ she muttered at Tom. ‘It’s all this marriage stuff that’s got me stymied.’

  Then a thought occurred to her, and although she knew she’d flush scarlet as she asked, she knew she had to raise the subject.

  ‘This isn’t some noble gesture on your part after our—we—after we—after last night?’ she finally managed, and he laughed.

  ‘Darling Lauren, if I proposed to every woman I’d slept with I’d have been incarcerated for polygamy long ago.’ He paused then his face grew serious. ‘Though speaking of last night, you’re okay?’

  He reached across the desk and took her hand, which she’d stupidly left lying on some papers in the middle of it.

  ‘No regrets?’ he pressed, squeezing her fingers and looking into her eyes as heat swept through her.

  She shook her head and tried to mumble something about last night not being anything to do with anything, but he laughed again.

  ‘You don’t think so?’ he teased. ‘Don’t you think it’s quite important that a married couple enjoy each other in bed?’

  He’d turned her hand and was tickling her palm with his thumb and she could barely sit still in her chair, so erotic was this simple touch, but the ‘married’ thing was still haunting her. There had to be another way. Tom didn’t really want to be tied down in marriage and she wasn’t going to—couldn’t, she rather thought—marry someone who didn’t love her …

  Could she?

  ‘I’d better get back to work before we do something we shouldn’t do right here on your desk,’ he said, giving her fingers a final squeeze and walking briskly from the room, stopping in the door to add, ‘See you tonight,’ in a voice that sent further shivers down her spine.

  Lauren, deciding it was impossible to even attempt to sort out her feelings about whatever was going on between her and Tom, went off to visit Alyssa, who was feeling much more comfortable and talking about taking Karen back to the US with her and the children.

  ‘My dad’s coming over, you see,’ she explained to Lauren. ‘I’d lost touch with him—well, it was hard because he hated Nat right from the start—but now we can begin again, Dad and me, and Karen’s never travelled and if she’s not at home, Nat can’t take out his anger on her. She was telling me she wants to give her place to the refuge and the woman who’s always worked for her will stay on so someone knows the feeding routine and how the farm-stay business runs.’

  Lauren smiled.

  ‘I see you’ve got it all worked out,’ she said.

  ‘Thanks to you,’ Alyssa told her. ‘You’ve no idea what having clean hair and some moisturiser did for my confidence. I’m sad about the baby but maybe that’s for the best, too. I’ve known for ages I should leave Nat but I didn’t dare. Known I should report him, too, but he kept promising … Anyway, now, with Dad and Karen by my side, I know I can do both and I can make a new life for me and the girls.’

  Lauren bent and kissed Alyssa’s cheek.

  ‘I’m sure you can,’ she whispered. ‘You deserve happiness in life, everyone does, so go after it.’

  Go after it?

  The words echoed in her head as she drove to collect Bobby from school.

  But would marrying Tom be going after happiness, or going after pain?

  Didn’t love need to be returned?

  Bobby was waiting at the school gate, a cardboard box at his feet.

  ‘I got this from my teacher. She was going to throw them out and I know where Mum kept the decorations at home so can we go and get them ‘cos Tom’s got none at his place and next wee
k’s Christmas.’

  Bobby’s rush of words left Lauren nearly as confused as Tom’s marriage conversation had earlier, only less inwardly distracted.

  ‘Decorations, for Christmas,’ Bobby repeated, and Lauren caught on.

  ‘We’ll have to see Mike at the police station. He’s got your mother’s house keys,’ she said.

  ‘I know where the spare one is,’ Bobby offered. ‘Mum left one out for me in case she mightn’t be at home.’

  So! No reprieve of driving to the station and talking to Mike.

  Lauren studied the excited child.

  ‘You’re sure about this?’ she asked, taking a rather grubby hand in both of hers. ‘Sure you’ll be okay going into the house with your mum not there?’

  Bobby looked at her, his blue eyes filling with tears.

  ‘I gotta do stuff like that!’ he muttered angrily. ‘Like the funeral too!’

  ‘Oh, Bobby!’ Lauren whispered, and she pulled him into her arms and cried with him.

  But as it turned out they didn’t have to do ‘stuff like that’ for two of the women who knew Joan from the refuge were at the house, and all Joan’s belongings were already packed.

  ‘The landlord wanted the place emptied,’ one of the women explained to Lauren, ‘so we thought we’d pack it all up and keep it for whenever Bobby might want it. These boxes here are his toys and books.’

  ‘And decorations?’ Bobby demanded, and one of the women produced another box, probably labelled by Joan herself.

  They helped Lauren load Bobby’s boxes and the decorations into the car, promising to find room to store the rest, and Lauren drove home, insisting Bobby keep his seat belt on as he rummaged through the boxes in search of forgotten treasures.

  The house was empty and although Lauren had grave doubts about decorating Tom’s house without his permission, nothing was going to stop Bobby. First he opened the box he’d brought from school, digging through the contents.

  ‘We had a real tree at school. A tree in a pot, but Mrs Stoddart must’a taken it home. We need a tree.’

  ‘Can’t we just put up decorations?’ Lauren asked.

  Bobby sent her a pitying look.

  ‘Where will Santa put the presents if there isn’t a tree?’ he demanded, and a new worry surfaced in Lauren’s head.

  Presents!

  They’d have to get presents for Bobby.

  More than a stocking filled with oddments, for sure!

  What’s more, they’d have to figure out what he might have asked Santa to give him.

  Lauren’s mind was jerking around like a chicken in search of seed, until Bobby’s voice brought her to the present.

  ‘’Cos we don’t have chimneys for Santa to come down here at the Cove, we have to have trees,’ the boy causing most of her confusion—though not all—informed her.

  ‘Right, a tree,’ Lauren said. ‘Does it have to be live or can we go and get one of those green ones from one of the shops in the mall?’

  Bobby considered this for a while.

  ‘I s’pose one of them would do, but it should be real,’ he told her.

  What had he said earlier?

  Mrs Stoddart had a tree in a pot.

  ‘Okay,’ Lauren told him. ‘Let’s go to the nursery and see what we can find. Once we get the tree we’ll know how many decorations we need for it.’

  ‘Could we get some lights for outside while we’re out?’

  Images of tremendously decorated houses—houses that won prizes for their Christmas light displays—flashed through Lauren’s mind.

  ‘Maybe just a few lights,’ she agreed.

  Perhaps because he was used to not getting everything he wanted, Bobby didn’t argue and they set off to buy a tree, Bobby choosing a four-foot-high Norfolk pine, then to the mall where, to Bobby’s credit, it was Lauren who went mad.

  Why not get two small light-outlined reindeer to put out the front? And as for the blow-up Santa, well, he could sit on the veranda, while the strings of lights with smaller strings dripping off them would look fantastic stretched along the eaves.

  They staggered home to find Tom staring at the contents of the boxes they’d half-unpacked.

  ‘Christmas decorations?’ he said, his voice so carefully neutral Lauren had a moment’s panic.

  ‘You don’t like them?’

  Had he heard that panic in her voice that he smiled and touched her gently on the arm?

  ‘How would I know whether I like them or not when I’ve never had them in my own home?’

  Lauren blew out the breath she’d been holding and smiled back at him.

  ‘That’s good because there’s a few more bits and pieces in the car.’

  Four hours later, having stopped only briefly to consume the casserole that had finally been cooked, they finished the decorating.

  ‘Turn the lights on, turn them on!’

  Bobby was bouncing up and down with excitement, but Tom refused to press the switch connected to the various power-boards spread around the house.

  ‘I think you should do it,’ he said, and the blatant adoration in the little boy’s face as he looked at Tom caught at Lauren’s heart.

  He pressed the switch and the lights came on slowly. The strings of blue and red and green changing colour all the time so they looked like water dancing in a coloured fountain. The two little reindeer nodded at each other on the front lawn, one dropping his head lower, perhaps pretending to eat moss. Santa, to everyone’s surprise, not only lit up from inside, but began to ‘Ho, ho, ho’ in fine spirit and the star Tom had somehow affixed above the front entrance flashed its brightness to the town below.

  ‘It’s beautiful!’

  Awe filled Bobby’s voice, and Lauren, slipping her arm around his shoulder, had to agree.

  ‘Tomorrow we’ll do inside,’ Bobby announced, and now Lauren glanced at Tom.

  ‘Okay with you?’ she asked.

  He nodded.

  ‘As long as there aren’t too many lights,’ he told them. ‘This is an old house and the power supply’s already under strain.’

  ‘Just on the tree—one string. Mum’s had them for ages,’ Bobby declared, and Tom agreed one more string of lights wouldn’t hurt.

  He’d moved, so he, too, had his arm around Bobby, his hand touching Lauren’s arm, the three of them linked.

  A family?

  That’s what Bobby needed.

  And continuity. His mother’s string of Christmas lights on the tree each year, the new decorations going up. It was about continuity and knowing now what she did about Tom she could understand why he’d felt their marriage would be the answer for Bobby. The little boy would have a real family—one for life—not a series of so-called ‘families’—being moved on for whatever reason.

  But marriage?

  She could see Tom’s point of view that only with their marriage could Bobby have the security he needed, so why was she hesitating?

  Surely not because she, who’d never considered marriage as an option in her future, was suddenly quibbling over a marriage without love?

  They turned out the lights and went inside, falling easily into Bobby’s bedtime routine, Lauren’s turn to read the story.

  Tom was gone when she came out of Bobby’s bedroom, presumably called back to the hospital, and instead of worrying over love and marriage she turned her attention to practical matters, putting Bobby’s dirty clothes into the laundry, emptying his school-bag of books and notes and clutter, wondering how on earth they could find out what he wanted for Christmas, wondering if he’d object if she suggested he take a turn on Santa’s knee at the local mall—surely Santa had some way of passing on requests.

  She was smoothing out the papers from his school-bag, checking each before she tossed them, in case there might be something important there.

  And there was!

  An envelope addressed in an adult hand to Tom and Lauren, and inside another envelope with ‘Santa’ scrawled across it in red felt pen.


  Lauren slit the second envelope open, unfolding the piece of paper inside.

  ‘Dear Santa,

  For Christmas I would like a bike with red weels and red handl bars and red pedls and a nice dress for Mum and for her and Greg to stop yelling.

  Yor frend

  Bobby’

  Lauren smoothed her fingers over the paper again and again, barely aware of the mess her splotches of tears were making on the words. She was still sitting there, still weeping, when Tom came in.

  ‘I’ll marry you,’ she said, sniffing loudly then dashing her wrist across her eyes in the hope of stopping the tears.

  ‘Well, I’m glad I’ve made you so happy,’ Tom teased, but his grey eyes were full of concern as he came towards her, squatting by her side and taking her restless hands in his.

  ‘We must promise never to yell,’ Lauren added, looking at the face of the man she loved. ‘No matter what, no yelling.’

  ‘I can handle that,’ Tom said gently, then he leaned forward and kissed her on the lips.

  ‘And we’ve got to find a red bike for him,’ she added, and Tom, deciding that the only way he’d make sense of what was going on was to read whatever had upset Lauren in the first place, removed the piece of paper she held in trembling fingers and read the letter. Then he stood up, hauled Lauren from the chair, and hugged her tightly.

  ‘You’re a good woman, Lauren Cooper,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘A special woman.’

  He’d have liked to add how special he found her, to have talked of love, but his realisation of love—his about-face acceptance of it as anything other than a destructive force—was too new, too fragile, to be brought out into the open. Besides which, talk of love might totally freak Lauren out, just when she seemed to be agreeing to his marriage idea.

  So he held her, hoping he might be able to tell her without words, wondering if his adoration of her body, something he intended showing her very soon, would make her realise how he felt.

  ‘We need to find a red bike. I can hardly take Bobby shopping with me to look for one. What should we do?’

  Tom eased away and put his hand beneath her chin to tilt her face up towards his.