He slipped the phone back into his pocket. She hadn’t asked him what he was going to say to Rebecca, but she’d known he was going to pick up the kids, so he presumed she’d guessed he’d be talking to his ex.
The door opened, and Jamie appeared. He waved at Hal and held up his forefinger, mouthing One minute! Hal nodded and got out of the car, leaving it unlocked, and walked slowly up to the house.
It was actually more like five minutes, but eventually Jamie and Brenna came tumbling out, laden down with Christmas toys they wanted to bring with them for the week. Rebecca followed them out. “Sorry,” she said. “They simply refused to leave anything behind.”
Hal picked up one of the boxes and looked at Rebecca. She wore leggings and a gray sweater, and looked thin and pale, her red hair scraped back into a ponytail. He couldn’t help but compare her to Angel, with her curvy figure, her glowing blonde hair, and the light that danced in her eyes. “Can you wait here?” he said to her. “I want to talk to you.”
Without waiting for her to reply, he turned and walked to the car, placed the box in the boot, and gestured for the kids to get in. “I’m just going to speak to Mum,” he said. “I won’t be long. Put your seatbelts on.”
Leaving them to settle in, he walked back up the garden path, jamming his hands in the pockets of his jeans. It was still freezing, and it wouldn’t surprise him if they had more snow soon.
He stood in front of Rebecca, who was breathing fast, her pulse racing in her neck. There was no point in drawing this out.
“Angel told me what you said to her.” He watched his breath frost before his face. “I can’t believe you did that.”
Rebecca lifted her chin and met his gaze, refusing to apologize.
“She’s moving in with me,” he said.
Her jaw dropped, and her expression turned furious. “I meant every word I said,” she snapped. “I’ll take the children away from you.”
Hal walked closer to her, and she must have seen the look in his eyes because she took a step back.
“We’re done,” he said simply. “I loved you once; I don’t anymore. I love someone else now, and I think you do too. I can’t believe you’d punish the kids by taking them away from me. If you do try, I’ll fight you all the way, but it’s only going to make me, you, and the kids miserable. Is that really what you want?”
“I want you,” she whispered.
“No, you don’t. Charles has obviously proved to be less of a pushover than you anticipated, and you’re now realizing that maybe I wasn’t as much of an ass as you thought I was. But the thing is, we’ll never be together again. It was over the moment you slept with someone else. You made your bed, Rebecca, and now it’s your choice whether you continue to lie in it or not.”
He hardened his heart as her bottom lip trembled. “I just wanted to tell you,” he continued, “that if you choose to break up with Charles, you’ll be on your own. I’m not going to come running every time you have a bill you can’t pay. I’m not going to bail you out. And this house will be sold whether you stay with him or not. I should make you pay the credit card bill out of your half of the proceeds, but I won’t—we’ll settle the debts first, then split what’s left. There won’t be much. So you need to think carefully what you’re going to do with it.”
It wasn’t a hundred-percent true. If she did break up with Charles, she would still be looking after the kids half the time, and he wouldn’t be able to look the other way if she was struggling to pay her rent or her bills. But he didn’t tell her that.
A tear ran down her face. “You still have a heart of ice,” she whispered.
He looked away, across the snowy road. I don’t find you cold, Angel had told him. Quite the opposite.
His lips curved up a tiny bit before his gaze came back to Rebecca. He didn’t have to explain what he’d thought—he could see that she’d guessed by the look on his face.
“What’s going on?” Behind her, Charles appeared, frowning.
She turned and bolted past him, disappearing up the stairs to the bedroom.
Charles came outside and glared at Hal. “Fucking hell. What did you say to her?”
Hal clenched his jaw, breathing heavily. The urge to smash the guy’s face in again was overwhelming, but his kids were watching, and he didn’t want to set a bad example.
“Are you two breaking up?” he said.
Charles frowned. “No. What made you say that?”
“Rebecca said you weren’t getting on.”
Charles’s look turned thunderous. “What the fuck? I’ll fucking kill her.”
Despite his misgivings with his kids watching, the words tipped Hal over the edge. He might not love Rebecca anymore, but she would always be the mother of his children.
He put a hand on the other guy’s chest and propelled him back hard against the wall. “You lay a hand on her,” he snapped, “and you’ll be eating your dinner through a straw.”
Charles pushed his hand away impatiently. “It was metaphorical. I’d never hit a woman, for fuck’s sake.”
“What about cheat on one?” Hal refused to back away. He’d wondered for a while whether Charles had been unfaithful to her.
Charles looked startled. “What? I haven’t.”
“Don’t act as if it’s beneath you,” Hal snarled. “You slept with a married woman, remember?”
“That was different. You were the other party.”
They studied each other for a moment, both breathing heavily.
“Why do you hate me so much?” Hal demanded. “What did I ever do to you?”
Charles stared at him. “What do you mean? You know what you did! You took the only woman I ever truly loved. You only wanted Rebecca because I did, and you took her because you could, to spite me. Then when you got bored of her, you iced her out of your heart. She loved you, you fucking idiot. All I did was pick up the pieces and try to stick them together again. She’s only a shadow of the woman she was at university, after what you did to her. But I don’t care. I’m not just going to turn my back on her. I love her.” He yelled the last bit.
Hal blinked, shocked. It was only at that moment he understood how much he’d been convinced that Charles had slept with Rebecca to punish him. But the guy really loved her. Jesus Christ. This was fucked up on a monumental scale.
The two men stared at each other.
“Do you want her back?” Charles whispered. And to Hal’s surprise, there was real fear in his eyes.
Hal shook his head, feeling a sudden surge of pity for the guy. “No.”
Charles studied his face as if trying to read whether he was lying, then blew out a long, shaky breath. He watched it curl in the cold air in front of him like a silver ribbon, fighting against his emotion. Then his gaze came back to Hal. “Not that she’d choose you over me,” he pointed out.
Hal smiled wryly. “I’ve met someone else.”
Charles’s eyebrows lifted. “The girl you rescued from the refuge hut?”
“Yes. She’s moving in with me.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah. I know.”
The two men studied each other for a moment, Charles shivering in his shirt sleeves.
“I’ll be handing in my resignation soon,” Hal said. “Just so you know.”
Charles nodded slowly.
Hal backed away a few steps. “Don’t blow it,” he said. “Rebecca’s all yours, good and bad.”
Charles studied his feet. “I’m going to ask her to marry me when her divorce comes through.”
It was Hal’s turn to nod. “I hope she says yes.”
“Yeah, me too.”
For the first time maybe ever, the two men exchange wry smiles.
“Happy New Year,” Hal said. Charles nodded. Then Hal turned and walked away.
He got in the car, plugged in his seatbelt, and looked over his shoulder at his kids. “You two buckled up?”
“Yes, Daddy,” Brenna said.
“Yep,” Jamie said. �
��Why did you push Charles? Was he being a nob?”
Hal laughed and started the engine. “A bit, yeah.”
“They’ve been arguing,” Brenna said.
“All Christmas,” Jamie added.
“I’m sorry,” Hal said, meaning it. “I don’t think they’ll be arguing anymore.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, I have something to tell you. You remember Angel?” They both nodded. “Well... she’s moving in with me.”
“Is she your girlfriend?” Brenna asked.
Hal smiled. “Yes, I guess so.”
“Mum said that you two won’t be married anymore soon,” Jamie said.
“That’s right. The papers will come through over the next week or two, I hope, once the courts are back after Christmas. Then Angel will come back to the island.”
He waited, wondering whether they would say something about Rebecca, or even tell him that they didn’t want him to marry someone other than their mum.
“She has nice hair,” Brenna said.
He smiled and swallowed hard. “Yes, she does.”
“She said she’d teach me how to do jiu jitsu,” Jamie said.
Hal laughed at the thought. Did she do jiu jitsu? It wouldn’t surprise him at all. “I think she should teach all of us.” And smiling, he headed onto the main road, toward Holy Island.
Chapter Thirty
Some weeks later
Angel parked her car in the car park on the mainland, got out, and locked it.
Then she started walking.
Today, she’d timed it perfectly. There hadn’t been so much traffic on the motorways, and she’d left early, so the sun was high in the sky, which was bright blue and cloudless, a welcome relief after the blustery sleet and snow of the past few weeks.
It was about two hours before low tide, and the causeway to Holy Island was all sand and mud flats, with water glistening in the distance. A flock of pale-bellied geese flew over her head, squawking noisily, and a group of common eider ducks waddled away from her, clucking and fussing at the intrusion.
The road was busy-ish for Lindisfarne, and she kept to the edge, following it until she reached the bridge over the South Low. It was here that she’d been stranded back in December, when she’d climbed up into the refuge hut in the dark. It seemed like so long ago, so much had happened.
Shading her eyes with her hand, she spotted the first post in the sand off to her right, and left the road to walk toward it.
This was the Pilgrim’s Way, a line of poles all the way from the mainland to the town across the sand. In 635, King Oswald had given the island to St. Aidan to establish his monastery, and ever since then it had been a place of pilgrimage. Until 1954, when the road had been built, the poles had been the only indicator of a safe route.
In less than ten minutes, the sound of the traffic behind her had faded away, and it was just her and the curlews, the birds pecking at the mud, looking for crabs.
With her hood over her ears, Angel zipped her coat right up to her chin and shoved her gloved hands deep in the pockets. It might not be snowing, but it was still icy cold. Hal had suggested she wear a pair of walking boots that she didn’t mind getting muddy, and she could see why now. The sand sucked at her feet, and in some places water still pooled. It wasn’t the best time of year to do the walk. But it was a symbolic gesture for her, a transition from her old life to her new one, and Hal hadn’t argued when she’d said she was going to do it.
It was the last day of January. As often happens, the court had dragged its feet over the festive season, and Hal’s decree absolute had finally arrived in the post the day before. He’d rung her on FaceTime, and she’d watched him open it, glance over it, then turn it to show her. “I expect to see you tomorrow,” he’d said, lifting an eyebrow at her, brooking no discussion.
She hadn’t argued. Her car was already half packed with her stuff, and first thing in the morning she’d put in her clothes and last-minute bits, and headed off as the sun came up.
She’d felt so different to the moment she’d driven away from him at the beginning of January. Then, she’d had the horrible thought that she’d never see him again, that she’d never find her magical Brigadoon once it faded into the mists. But Hal had called her every night, and often during the day as well. He’d texted her all the time. And not once had he shown any sign of regret at asking her to stay with him.
And now, he was finally free. Charles and Rebecca had stayed together, and had obviously mended a few fences, because Rebecca had agreed to a clean break, meaning that the financial ties between her and Hal were severed, and he’d no longer have to pay maintenance to her. They’d put the family home up for sale, had accepted the second offer that had come in, and had put in an offer on another larger place in Berwick. It wouldn’t be long before Hal would be getting his share of the proceeds. The only responsibilities he’d have would be toward his kids.
It would be a new start for him too. Angel lifted her hand to shade her eyes again, peering across the mudflats toward the island. She could see a figure in the distance, small at the moment, but coming toward her, a darker shape against the pale mud, following the lines of the poles.
Her heart rate began to pick up, but she continued walking at a steady pace, wanting to hang onto this moment, which felt like Christmas Eve all over again. She’d missed him so much. It was hard to believe that today was the first day of the rest of their lives.
She looked away from the figure for a moment, her gaze skimming across the sand. In her mind, she wrote a brief note that she would copy into her journal later.
Dear Santa,
I just wanted to say thank you for giving me this opportunity. For the first time in my life, I feel that I’m in control of my own happiness. I love Hal, and I can’t wait to begin this new phase. So thank you for putting a Viking in my stocking!
Love you,
Angel.
She smiled, thinking of her father, hoping he would be happy for her, and proud of her for picking herself up after her dark days and forging a new path ahead. Her mother and Lesa had been surprisingly supportive, stating that they hadn’t seen her so happy for a long time. So she was here with their blessing, and she hoped she had her father’s—and Santa’s—too.
Turning her gaze back to the lines of poles, she saw that the figure was clearer now. Tall, broad-shouldered, dressed in jeans and a blue wax jacket, with a blue beanie pulled over his ears. He strode purposefully, and she picked up her speed, her heart starting to hammer on her ribs. When they were a hundred yards apart, she was striding and out of breath. By the time they were fifty yards away, she was running full pelt, and so was he.
Hal swept her up into his arms, holding her tightly and spinning her around as she cried into his neck.
“Jesus, I’ve missed you,” he murmured, finally lowering her down and taking her face in his hands.
Angel looked up through a blur of tears, smiling as she saw his thick beard, and then his mouth was on hers, and she melted against him, threading her hands into his hair.
“I love you, I love you, I love you,” she murmured.
He laughed and kissed up her cheeks, over her nose, her eyelids, and back to her mouth. “I love you too.”
He wrapped his arms around her, and they stood there like that for a long time.
Angel drank in the silence, letting the peace of the place calm her racing heart. “I love the thought that I’m treading in the footsteps of thousands of pilgrims who’ve made this journey through the years,” she whispered.
“I know what you mean. I walk it at least once every year.”
She pulled back a little. “I’ve got something to tell you.”
“Oh?”
She’d been saving this, wanting to surprise him. “You know the package we put together for the National Curriculum?”
It had been her first project. She’d drawn up a proposal for a new website that would feature short podcasts on historical topics suitable for teachers to use in the
classroom. It had included a prototype for a kids’ worksheet that included some of Hal’s cartoons, with quizzes that the kids could find the answers to on the website, and then they would input the answers online and be in to win a prize every month.
Hal raised his eyebrows. They’d only submitted it to the Department for Education a few days ago.
“I got an email this morning,” Angel said, so excited she could barely stand still. “They want to meet with us to discuss it further.”
Hal’s face lit up with joy, and he picked her up and spun her around again, both of them laughing.
“That’s amazing,” he said when he finally lowered her down. “Did you arrange a time?”
“I said we’d call back later today and do a conference call. The woman was really nice and said it sounded just like what they were looking for.”
They stared at each other, both unable to believe their luck.
“You really have been my guardian angel.” He tucked a finger under her chin and lifted it so he could kiss her again. “I’m so glad you got stranded in that refuge hut.”
“And I’m so glad you were late that night and stopped to investigate.” She closed her eyes briefly as his mouth moved across hers, butterfly light, but so sensual that it made her ache deep inside. “I want you, Halvar Carlson. I want you today, and tomorrow, and all the days to come. I can’t wait to get back to the cottage and start our new life together.”
“We need to pick up your car,” he murmured.
“Later. I want to complete the pilgrimage first. And then we have some serious sex to catch up on.”
His lips curved up. “The causeway’s not crossable after two-thirty.”
“I can wait for my clothes,” she whispered. “I can’t wait for you.”
“Fair enough.” He took her hand in his, and together they walked toward Holy Island, into the winter sun.
Christmas Wishes
Read in any order!
Book 1: Santa’s Secret
Book 2: White-Hot Christmas
Book 3: His Christmas Present
Book 4: If Kisses Were Snowflakes
If Kisses Were Snowflakes Page 21
