Her Christmas Eve Diamond

by Scarlet Wilson

  It was the briefest of contacts before he straightened up, reaching for the cup of tea Claire had made a few minutes earlier and setting it down on the desk in front of her. ‘Drink this.’ He folded his arms and sat down in the chair next to her, perching on the edge. ‘I need to go back to Coronary Care. What are you doing on Sunday? Want to grab some lunch?’

  Cassidy hesitated, her stomach plunging. She had plans on Sunday. Ones she wasn’t sure about including Brad in. After all, he was just a fleeting moment in her life, a ‘passing fancy’, her gran would have said. She wasn’t ready to introduce him to her family yet. Especially in her current circumstances.

  But the hesitation wasn’t lost on Brad. ‘What’s up? Meeting your other boyfriend?’ he quipped.

  Her head shook automatically. ‘No, no.’ Then a smile appeared. ‘What do you mean, my other boyfriend? I wasn’t aware I had a boyfriend right now.’ Why did those words set her heart aflutter? This wasn’t what she wanted. Not with a man from thousands of miles away. Not with someone who would leave in less than a year. So why couldn’t she wipe the smile off her face?

  He could see the smile. Distraction. Was that all that Cass was? What about how’d he had felt a few minutes ago when that drunk had touched her? The guy was lucky there hadn’t been a baseball bat around. Cass was getting under his skin. In more ways than one. And it was time. Time to tell her about Melody.

  It would be fine. He’d tell her on Sunday. She would understand. She would get it. He had other priorities. He wanted to find his daughter, and that could take him anywhere in the world. Cassidy would be fine about it. She didn’t want a serious relationship with an Australian. She obviously didn’t mind the flirtation and distraction. Maybe she wouldn’t even mind a little more. Something more inevitable between them.

  This wasn’t anything serious—she would know that. But he just didn’t want anyone else near her right now.

  Brad stood back up. ‘Well, you do. So there.’ He planted another kiss firmly on her cheek. ‘And whatever you’re doing on Sunday, plan on me doing it with you.’ And with those words he strode down the corridor, whistling.

  7 November

  ‘We seem to be making a habit of this.’ Brad smiled at Cassidy, his mouth half-hidden by the scarf wrapped around his neck, as she turned the key in the lock of the little terraced house in the East End of Glasgow.

  His leather-gloved hand was at her waist and his body huddled against hers. It was freezing cold and the pavements already glistening with frost. Cassidy pushed the door open and stepped inside. ‘I’m afraid it’s not much warmer inside. Gran hasn’t lived here for over a year, and I have the heating on a timer at minimum to stop the pipes from freezing.’

  Brad pushed the door shut behind him, closing out the biting wind. ‘I can’t believe how quickly the temperature’s dropped in the last few days. I’ve had to buy a coat, a hat and a scarf.’

  Cassidy stepped right in front of him, her chestnut curls tickling his nose. ‘And very nice you look, too.’

  He leaned forward and kissed the tip of her nose, before rubbing his gloved hands together. ‘So what happens now?’

  She led him into the main room of the house and pointed at some dark teak furniture. ‘The van should be here any time. It’s taking the chest of drawers and sideboard in here, the wardrobe in Gran’s bedroom and the refrigerator from the kitchen. The furniture goes to someone from the local homeless unit who’s just been rehoused.’

  ‘I take it there’s no chance your gran will ever come home.’

  Cassidy shook her head fiercely, and he could see a sheen cross her eyes. ‘No. She fell and broke her arm last year. It was quite a bad break—she needed a pin inserted. She’s already suffered from Alzheimer’s for the past few years. I’d helped with some adaptations to her home and memory aids, but I guess I didn’t really understand how bad she was.’

  Cassidy lifted her hands. ‘Here, in her own environment, she seemed to be coping, but once she broke her arm and ended up in hospital...’ Her voice trailed off and Brad wrapped his arm around her shoulders.

  ‘So where is she now? Was there no one else to help her? Where are your mum and dad?’

  ‘She’s in a nursing home just a few miles away. And it’s the second one. The first?’ She shuddered, ‘Don’t even ask. That’s why I agreed to the secondment. It meant I could spend a bit more time helping her get settled this time. Her mobility is good, but her memory is a different story—some days she doesn’t even know who I am. Other days she thinks I’m my mother. I can’t remember the last time she knew I was Cassidy. And now she’s started to get aggressive sometimes. It’s just not her at all. The only thing that helps is hearing my voice.’

  The tears started to spill down her cheeks. ‘I know I’m a nurse and everything but I just hate it.’ Brad pulled his hand from his glove and wiped away her tears with his fingers.

  He nodded slowly. So that’s what the telephone calls had been about. No wonder she’d wanted some privacy to take them. ‘So where’s your mum and dad? Can’t they help with your gran?’

  Cassidy rolled her eyes. ‘My mum and dad are the total opposite of me. Sometimes I feel as if I’m the parent and they’re the children in this relationship. Last I heard, they were in Malaysia. They’re engineers, dealing with water-pumping stations and pipelines. They basically work all over the world and hardly spend any time back here.’

  His brow furrowed. He was starting to understand Cassidy a little better. Her firm stance about staying in Scotland was obviously tied into feeling responsible for her gran. ‘So you don’t get much support?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’

  Cassidy looked around her. The pain was written all over her face. ‘Everything in this house reminds me of Gran. I packed up her clothes last month and took them to the Age Concern shop.’ She walked over to a cardboard box in the corner of the room, filled with ornaments wrapped in paper, crinkling the tissue paper between her fingers. ‘This all seems so final.’

  The knock at the door was sharp, startling them both. Ten minutes later almost all the heavy furniture had been loaded onto the van by two burly volunteers. ‘The last thing is in here.’ Cassidy led them into the bedroom and pointed at the wardrobe. She stood back as the two men tilted the wardrobe on its side to get it through the narrow door. There was a clunk and a strange sliding noise.

  Brad jumped forward. ‘What was that? You emptied the wardrobe, didn’t you, Cassidy?’

  She nodded. ‘I thought I had.’

  He pulled open the uptilted wardrobe door and lifted up a black plastic-wrapped package that had fallen to the floor. ‘You must have missed this.’

  Cassidy stepped towards him and peered inside the wardrobe. ‘I can’t imagine how. I emptied out all the clothes last month. I was sure I got everything.’ She turned the bulky package over in her hands. ‘I don’t know how I managed to miss this.’ She gave the men a nod, and they continued out the door towards the van.

  Brad thanked the men and walked back through to the bedroom. Cassidy was sitting on the bed, pulling at the plastic wrapper. There was a tiny flash of red and she gave a little gasp.

  ‘Wow! I would never have expected this.’ She shook out the tightly wrapped red wool coat and another little bundle fell to the floor. Cassidy swung the coat in front of the mirror. The coat was 1940s-style, the colour much brighter than she would have expected, with black buttons and a nipped-in waist.

  ‘This coat is gorgeous. But I can’t ever remember Gran wearing it. I don’t even think I’ve seen a picture of her in it. Why on earth would she have it wrapped up at the back of her wardrobe? It looks brand new.’

  Brad knelt on the floor and picked up the other package wrapped in brown paper. ‘This was in there, too. Maybe you should have a look at them?’

/>   Cassidy nodded and then gave a little shiver.

  ‘Let’s go to the coffee shop at the bottom of the road. It’s too cold in here. We’ll take the coat with us,’ he said.

  She headed through to the kitchen and pulled a plastic bag from under the sink, carefully folding the red coat and putting it inside. ‘This coat feels gorgeous.’ She held the edge of it up again, looking in the mirror at the door. ‘And I love the colour.’

  ‘Why don’t you wear it?’ Brad could see her pupils dilate, just for a second, as if she was considering the idea.

  She shook her head. ‘No. No, I can’t. I don’t know anything about it. I don’t even know if it belonged to Gran.’

  ‘Well, I think it would look perfect on you, with your dark hair and brown eyes. Red’s a good colour for you. Did you inherit your colouring from your gran?’

  Cassidy still had her fingers on the coat, touching it with a look of wistfulness in her eyes. ‘I think so. I’ve only ever seen a few photos of her when she was a young girl. She was much more glamorous than me.’

  Brad opened the front door as the biting wind whirled around them. He grabbed her hand. ‘I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t we get a coffee to go and just head back to my flat? It’s freezing.’

  Cassidy nodded as she pulled the door closed behind them and checked it was secure. They hurried over to the car and reached his flat ten minutes later, with coffee and cakes from the shop round the corner from him.

  Although it was only four o’clock, the light had faded quickly and the street was already dark. ‘Look!’ screamed Cass. ‘It’s the first one!’

  Brad dived to rescue the toppling coffee cups from her grasp. ‘What is it?’ His head flicked from side to side. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘There!’ Her eyes were lit up and her smile reached from ear to ear. He followed Cassidy’s outstretched finger pointing to a flat positioned across the street above one of the shops. There, proudly displayed in the window, was a slightly bent, brightly lit-up Christmas tree.

  ‘You have got to be joking. It’s only the seventh of November. Why on earth would someone have their Christmas tree up?’

  He couldn’t believe the expression of absolute glee on her face. She looked like a child that had spotted Santa. ‘Isn’t it gorgeous?’

  And there it was. That horrible twisting feeling inside his stomach. The one he was absolutely determined to avoid this year. That same empty feeling that he felt every year when he spent the whole of the Christmas season thinking about what he’d lost, what had slipped through his fingers.

  He felt the wind biting at his cheek. Almost like a cold slap. Just what he needed. This year was going to be different. He’d done everything he possibly could. It was time to try and get rid of this horrible empty feeling. He’d spent last Christmas in Australia, the one before that in the US, following up some useless leads as to Alison and Melody’s whereabouts.

  This year would be different. That was part of the reason he’d come to Scotland. A country that had no bad memories for him. A chance to think of something new.

  Cassidy’s big brown eyes blinked at him in the orange lamplight. She’d pulled a hat over her curls and it suited her perfectly. ‘I really want to put my tree up,’ she murmured. ‘But it’s just too early.’ She looked down at the bustling street. ‘Only some of the shops have their decorations up. I wish they all had.’

  This was it. This was where it started. ‘Christmas means different things to different people, Cass. Not everyone loves Christmas, you know?’

  He saw her flinch and pull back, confusion in her eyes. There was hesitation in her voice. ‘What do you mean? Is something wrong? Did something happen to you at Christmas?’

  He hesitated. How could he tell her what was currently circulating in his mind? He wasn’t even sure he could put it into coherent words. Melody hadn’t disappeared at Christmas, but everything about the season and the time of year just seemed to amplify the feelings, make them stronger. Most importantly, it made the yearning to see his daughter almost consume him. He blinked. She was standing in the dimmed light, her big brown eyes staring up at him with a whole host of questions.

  He should tell her about Melody, he really should. But now wasn’t the time or the place. A shiver crept down his spine as the cold Scottish winter crept through his clothes. A busy street filled with early festive shoppers wasn’t the place to talk about his missing daughter.

  And no matter how this woman was currently sending electric pulses along his skin, he wasn’t entirely sure what he wanted to share. He wasn’t sure he was ready.

  ‘Brad?’ Her voice cut through his thoughts, jerking him back to the passing traffic and darkened night.

  He bent forward and kissed the tip of her nose, sliding his arm around her shoulders. ‘Don’t be silly, Cass. Nothing happened to me at Christmas.’ He shrugged his shoulders as he pulled her towards him, guiding her down the street towards his flat. ‘I’m just mindful that lots of the people we see in the hospital over Christmas don’t have the happy stories to share that you do.’

  She bit her lip, cradling the coffee cups and cakes in her arms as she matched his steps along the busy street. ‘I know that. I didn’t just materialise onto the medical unit from a planet far away. I’ve worked there a long time.’

  But her words seemed lost as his steps lengthened and he pushed open the door to the close ahead of them.

  Cassidy took off her bright blue parka and put it on the sofa. She’d seen something in his eyes. Almost as if a shadow had passed over them, and it had made her stomach coil. Was there something he wasn’t telling her?

  She pulled the coffee cups from their holder and opened the bag with the carrot cake inside. This was exactly what she needed right now. The sofa sagged next to her as Brad sat down. He was still rubbing his hands together.

  ‘I can’t believe how cold it is out there.’

  She smiled at him. ‘Get used to it—this is only the start. Last year it was minus twelve on Christmas Day. My next-door neighbour is a gas engineer and his phone was ringing constantly with people’s boilers breaking down.’ She picked up the cup and inhaled deeply. ‘Mmm. Skinny caramel latte. My favourite in the world. I haven’t had one of these in ages.’ She took a tiny sip then reached for the moist carrot cake.

  ‘So I take it the fact you have a skinny caramel latte counteracts the effects of the carrot cake?’

  She winked at him. ‘Exactly.’ She raised her eyes skywards. ‘Finally, a man on my wavelength. They cancel each other out. And it’s a skinny caramel latte with sugar-free syrup. Which means I can enjoy this all the more.’ She licked the frosting from the carrot cake off the tips of her fingers.

  ‘With this...’ she nibbled a bit from the corner. ‘...a girl could think she was in heaven.’

  ‘I can think of lots of other ways to put a girl in heaven,’ the voice next to her mumbled.

  Cassidy froze. Her second sip of coffee was currently stuck in her throat. You couldn’t get much more innuendo than that. Should she respond? Or pretend she hadn’t heard?

  There was no denying the attraction between them. But did she really want to act on it? After a month in his company, what did she really know about Brad Donovan? She could give testimony to his medical skills and his patient care. He was amenable, well mannered and supportive to the staff.

  But what did she really know about him? Only little snippets of information that he’d told her in passing. Stories about home in Australia, living in Perth and his training as a doctor. Passing remarks about childhood friends. He’d told her he had no wife or girlfriend.

  So what else was it? What had made that dark shadow pass in front of his eyes? Why had he hesitated before answering the question? Or had she just imagined it all? Maybe there was nothing wrong, maybe something had caught his
eye at the other side of the road, momentarily distracting him and stopping him from answering the question.

  In the meantime, she could still feel that underlying buzz between them. Whenever he was near, she had visions of that night in his flat, pressed up against the wall in her sci-fi costume, wishing things could go further than they had.

  Every time he touched her at work, even the merest brush of a hand was enough to set off the currents between them. It didn’t matter that her head told her this wasn’t sensible—he came from the other side of the world and would likely return there; her body was telling her something entirely different. Her imagination was telling her a whole host of other things...

  He gave her a nudge, passing her the package he’d wedged under his jacket.

  She stared down at the still-wrapped parcel in her hands, turning the brown paper package over and over.

  ‘Are you going to open it?’

  She picked at the tape in one corner. It was old, the stickiness long vanished, and it literally fell apart in her hands, revealing some white envelopes underneath. She pulled them out. Only they weren’t white, they had yellowed with age, all with US postal stamps.

  Her eyes lifted to meet his. Brad leaned forward, touching the pile of envelopes and spreading them out across the table. ‘There must be at least twenty of them,’ he said quietly. His fingers stopped at something. There, among the envelopes, was something else. A photograph. Brad slid the envelope that was covering it away and Cassidy let out a little gasp.

  She leaned forward and picked up the black-and-white print. ‘It’s my gran!’ she gasped. His head met hers as they stared at the photograph of a beautiful young woman with a smile that spread from ear to ear, wearing a beautiful coat with a nipped-in waist. Her head was turned to the side and her eyes were sparkling as she looked at the man standing next to her in a US army uniform.