Once Upon a Christmas Night...

by Annie Claydon

  ‘Don’t call me baby!’ Her voice was faint, but he could hear the outrage in it and Greg smiled. It sounded as if she was holding it together in there. ‘There’s an air brick over the door. Can you see it?’

  ‘Yes, hold on.’ Greg fetched a set of steps, which leant against the wall, and climbed up, clearing the cobwebs from around the brick. ‘Can you hear me better?’

  ‘Yes. It’s dark in here, Greg, the light’s broken.’ There was a plaintive note to her voice now.

  ‘Just hang on. I’ll send upstairs for the key.’

  ‘The key’s in here, with me, and there isn’t another one. The door slammed shut behind me, and there isn’t a keyhole on this side of the lock.’

  Greg cursed under his breath. ‘Okay. Can you reach the air brick? Don’t try climbing on anything in the dark.’

  There was a short pause, and the tips of her fingers appeared against one of the lower ventilation holes. ‘Just about. But the key’s too big to get it through.’

  ‘That’s all right. I can break a bigger hole out.’ The old brick was crumbling, and it looked as if a well-placed shove would knock it out. ‘Can you get back a bit? Be careful.’ If she fell, and couldn’t reach back up to the brick again, they’d be back where they started.

  ‘Right.’ He heard the sounds of her moving warily across the darkened room and then her voice again, fainter this time. ‘Okay.’

  ‘I’ll be one minute.’ Greg remembered he’d seen a selection of old tools abandoned in the corner of the boiler room. ‘Then, when I give the word, I want you to cover your face.’

  The brick was tougher than it looked. His first blow merely sent chips spinning back in his face, and Greg had to deliver two more before it gave and the chisel punched through to the other side. He called to Jess, and a minute later the key was slid through the hole and into his possession. Then she was in his arms.

  ‘It’s okay.’ She was shaking, but Greg couldn’t tell whether it was from the cold or from shock. His hand found hers. ‘Are you all right? You’re freezing.’

  She nodded against his chest. ‘I’m fine. Just a bit cold.’ She seemed to be trying to burrow into his arms, and Greg held her tight, willing his own body heat to radiate into her.

  ‘How long have you been down here?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Since the beginning of my meal break.’

  ‘That’s almost two hours.’ He rubbed her shoulders and back, trying to warm her, and she smiled up at him.

  ‘That’s better. I’m sorry.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I came down here to get one last pile of documents for scanning. I wedged the door and put the key in my pocket.’ She turned the edges of her mouth down. ‘Fat lot of good that was. The admin staff made us promise to keep the key on us at all times, but neglected to mention that it was no good if we got locked in.’

  Greg glanced down at the door wedge. ‘Someone should have thrown that away years ago. It’s not enough to hold a heavy door. Look, it’s gone straight over the top of it.’

  She didn’t even glance downwards. ‘Thanks. But it was my own stupid fault. I should have looked for myself.’

  He wrapped his arms around her shoulders, settling her against him. That was where she was supposed to be. The place her body seemed to fit exactly. ‘Accidents usually happen when we’re not looking. That’s the thing about them.’ He ran his hand down her back, rubbing in the smooth, circular motion that he knew would calm her. ‘Sure you’re okay?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ She answered the question that he hadn’t dared to ask. ‘The baby’s fine, too. She’s used to the dark.’

  ‘She?’

  ‘Yeah. She told me.’

  He chuckled. ‘Must be right, then.’ This was nice. For the first time in months everything seemed as it should be. The cold dread that had pushed every other worry out of his head had now given way to thankfulness that he’d found her, and it seemed to suffuse his whole body.

  He dipped his head and planted a kiss on her brow. It really was the only thing that a man could do in the circumstances. She tipped her face upwards so he could reach her lips. It was impossible to do anything other than kiss her again.

  She was always soft, always sweet. There was always that touch of fire that made his body react, as if his cells held the memory of her touch, craving it again. There was always more, too, and this time the sheer happiness of something averted curved her lips into a smile against his.

  ‘Thanks, Greg. For coming for me.’

  He’d been too busy to even notice that she had been missing. ‘It was Gerry who told me you were gone.’

  ‘You found me, though.’

  She gave him too much credit. He could tell her so, or he could resolve to do better in future and move on. ‘I’d better give him a call. Let him know that you’re okay.’

  She nodded. ‘There’s no phone reception in here. You have to go outside, into the corridor.’

  He let her go, long enough for her to lock the secure room door again and gather up the pile of documents she’d come for. Greg considered confiscating the key so that she wouldn’t be able to come down here again without him and decided that would be construed as over-protective.

  The corridor outside, leading to the boiler room, was a welcome few degrees warmer and he stopped, leaning against the wall and pulling her against him between his outstretched legs. Pulling out his phone and dialling Gerry, he curled his other arm around her waist.

  ‘Gerry, panic over. I’ve found her.’ He regretted the word ‘panic’ as soon as the tips of her ears started to redden. ‘I’m getting on to Maintenance—that door really isn’t safe. It slammed shut even though Jess wedged it open.’

  She looked up at him, a brief thrill of gratitude in her eyes. Greg imagined that she’d been sitting down here wondering whether she’d get a hard time for allowing herself to get locked in down.

  ‘But she’s okay?’

  Thank you, Gerry. If he wasn’t allowed to fuss, then perhaps he’d leave Gerry to do it for him. ‘She says so.’

  Gerry went for the bait. ‘Well bring her up here. I want to make sure.’

  ‘Right.’ He snapped the phone shut and grinned at Jess. ‘Gerry wants you up in Cardiology.’

  ‘I know. I’ve got things to do.’

  ‘He wants to make sure you’re all right.’

  ‘I’m fine. I said so.’

  ‘Hypothermia?’ He pulled her closer to him.

  ‘Somehow I don’t think so. It wasn’t that cold in there.’

  ‘Shock?’ Greg amended that to cover any possibility of imminent deterioration. ‘Delayed shock. Delayed hypothermia perhaps. You’ve laddered your tights, so I imagine you’ve probably grazed your knee as well if I look a little closer.’

  ‘Are you by any chance fishing for a diagnosis, Doctor? Because I have to tell you that making things up isn’t going to work.’ The glint in her eyes told Greg that she had his number. Fooling her was infinitely more difficult than fooling himself.

  There was only one honest answer. He kissed her. He was going to have to do better, keep a closer eye on her. Unobtrusively, of course, or she’d call him out on it. He’d think of a way, though.

  Jess wasn’t used to being looked after. She wasn’t used to the feeling of wanting to be looked after either. Greg had delivered her up to Cardiology, where Gerry had taken over as guardian-in-chief and had insisted that she sit for a while and relax, while he saw the patients who were waiting for her. Then, at six o’clock, Greg had appeared again, and despite all her protests he’d guided her into a waiting taxi and taken her home.

  ‘Don’t you have something to do tonight?’ He’d hung around until she’d given in and asked him up for a cup of tea.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Liar.’ The quick dip of his gaze had betrayed the truth.

  He shrugged. ‘Okay, you got me. But if you want some company… It won’t do anyone any harm to wait on a decision from me for twenty-four
hours.’

  ‘Let them stew, you mean.’ She grinned at him. Maybe keeping Greg occupied tonight wasn’t such a bad thing. Every time she’d seen him this week he’d been disentangling himself from one set of responsibilities so that he could shoulder another.

  ‘Yeah. I have a life too.’

  ‘Glad to hear it.’ And she needed him here. No, scrap that, she wanted him here. Needing him felt as if she was betraying her unborn child. She’d made a promise that she would look after it and no one, not even Greg, was going to put that into jeopardy by eating away at her independence now.

  He looked around at her sitting room. ‘This is nice. Cosy.’

  ‘Small, you mean?’

  ‘No. If I’d meant small, I would have said small.’ He flopped down on the sofa. ‘It could be bigger, though. Ever thought of expanding?’

  Jess rolled her eyes. ‘In which direction? There are flats above and below me and to either side. Guess I could build out over the pavement, But the planning authority might have something to say about that… ’

  He held his hands up. ‘Okay. But if the people around you ever want to sell up… ’

  ‘They don’t.’

  ‘They might. Depends how much you offer them.’ He had a look of exaggerated innocence on his face.

  ‘Don’t even think about it, Greg. There’s plenty of room here for me.’ She knew exactly what he was driving at. ‘And the baby. For the time being, anyway.’

  He nodded. ‘Yeah. But you don’t need to… What I mean is that you do have a choice, Jess. You can live wherever you want to. You could come and live with me.’

  As invitations to move in went, this one was distinctly underwhelming. ‘You want an answer to that?’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  A meal, a little candlelight and some kind of declaration of love would have been nice. He might just as well have emailed her. Or got the irreplaceable Pat to do it for him. ‘I’ll get us some tea, shall I?’ It looked as if that talk that she’d rehearsed in front of the mirror and then with variations while she’d been trapped in the dark today was just about to be enacted for real.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  SHE PULLED THE coffee table back to give him room to stretch his legs, and put a cup of herbal tea in front of him, sitting down at the far end of the sofa. Honey for sweetness. Biscuits, in case the need for calories threatened to make either of them cranky. Soothing lighting and a couple of candles in the fireplace, just in case Greg decided that their future together was a matter of romance, not business.

  ‘So. You said you’d been thinking.’ His eyes were dark, unreadable in the flickering light.

  ‘I have. You want to hear it?’

  ‘Always, Jess.’

  Promising start. Now the difficult part. The only way that she could do this was to try to divorce herself from the heady feelings of love and the terrifying dread of loss that came with all of her dealings with Greg. ‘This baby… You… ’ She took a deep breath. ‘This is your child. I know that we took precautions… ’

  ‘Precautions fail, Jess. I never doubted for one minute that the child is mine.’

  ‘Not even a minute?’ They’d always used condoms. Sometimes a little hurried, their minds always on other things, but they’d been careful. Jess had thought they were being responsible.

  ‘No. I won’t say that I didn’t think about it, but… ’ he waved away any doubts that he may have had, as if they were nothing ‘… I trust you. There’s no percentage failure rate on that.’

  Warmth swelled in her chest, and Jess found herself smiling. ‘Thank you. That’s a really nice thing to say.’ This was going better than she’d dared hope.

  ‘So what else?’ He leaned back on the sofa, as if he had all the time in the world. So different from usual. The way he might have been all the time if no one had thought to create Shaw Industries, or laptops, or email accounts.

  She was trembling. The only way she knew how to do this was to pitch straight in. ‘You have a right to a relationship with your child and I won’t deny you that.’

  ‘Okay.’ A hint of suspicion crept across his face. ‘Were you thinking about trying?’

  ‘No!’ She’d lost her way already in the maze of possibilities and emotions. ‘Of course not. I didn’t mean that at all. That’s what I want too. I’m just trying to say that I won’t ask anything from you that you don’t want to give.’

  ‘Understood.’ He was obviously suspending judgement until he had the full story.

  ‘And for Rosa and Ted, too. If they want an involvement… I mean, they have a right to a loving relationship with their grandchild. I’ll do all I can to make sure that happens.’ Jess could think about how she was going to accomplish that later.

  He seemed to loosen up a little. ‘Thanks. I think I can speak for them both in saying that they’ll really welcome that. And that they’ll really appreciate the fact that you thought to suggest it.’

  ‘Well, those family recipes are too good to waste.’ She grinned at him, trying to lighten the mood a bit.

  Greg chuckled. ‘Consider that done.’

  ‘That’s great.’ They were getting somewhere.

  ‘And how do you feel about me, then?’

  His face was grave again. He’d picked up on the one thing that Jess couldn’t make sense of, and asked the one question that she couldn’t answer. Her imagination seemed only to stretch to two at a time. She and Greg. She and the baby. Three was a difficult and unmanageable number.

  ‘How do you feel?’

  He turned his dark gaze on her. As soft as silk and as demanding as any woman could ever want. ‘I’ll answer, even if you won’t. This is my child too, and I want to be a proper father. I have the resources to give our child everything.’

  What was that feeling of panic doing, quivering in her stomach? Wasn’t that what every mother wanted to hear? ‘I don’t need your money, Greg. I’ve always provided for myself and nothing’s changed. When I said that I’d welcome your involvement, I meant some of your time. Your love.’ Maybe she’d gone a bit too far there. ‘For the baby, I mean.’

  ‘Not for you?’ His eyes dared her to say yes.

  ‘It’s not me we’re talking about here.’

  He let out a sharp laugh of disbelief. ‘What happened to being honest about how we feel, Jess? Are you going to tell me that you’re sleeping with me but that you don’t expect me to care about you? It’s all just for kicks, is it?’

  She couldn’t break that faith. The trust that showed in his eyes and that she felt in her heart when he made love to her. ‘You know it’s more than that, Greg.’ Of course he did. She could see it in his face right now. ‘Although I don’t discount the kicks. They’re pretty good, too.’

  ‘You’ve got a point. Why don’t you come over here?’

  ‘No. We’re supposed to be talking.’

  ‘You can talk from over here.’ He was grinning now. Talking was about the last thing on his mind.

  ‘I’ll lose my thread.’

  He gave a mock sigh. ‘Yeah, me, too.’ A pause, and then he hit her with it. ‘Jess, I think we should think about getting married.’

  ‘What?’ She was already shrinking away from him when she realised that probably wasn’t the thing any man wanted to see when he’d just proposed to a woman. If this could be construed as a proposal. ‘Greg, you don’t have to do that. ‘

  ‘I want to.’

  At this moment he probably did. He wanted to provide for his child. She should have expected this. Greg could be stubbornly honourable at times. But it was all far too risky. She’d known that there was always the possibility that things might not work out between the two of them, that his work schedule might swallow him up again, but she couldn’t take that risk for her child. Marrying him now could just trap them both in a life of waiting for him.

  She took a deep breath. ‘I know you do. And I appreciate it, Greg, more than I can say. But I really don’t think this is the best way forward.
’

  ‘Jess, this isn’t just a business agreement.’

  ‘I know, but my answer’s still the same. It wouldn’t be fair on you or me or our child. Let’s find another way, eh?’ She smiled at him. Tried to jolt him out of the rosecoloured, impractical world that he seemed to have steeped himself in.

  An echo of the man she loved flitted across his features. The man who took what he wanted and gave so much in return. Then it died.

  ‘Okay. We’ll find another way.’ His smile was carefully constructed. Proper in every way. ‘I’ll have to put you on notice that I won’t be letting you turn all my offers down so easily, though. And I expect you to talk to me, Jess. You know that I can afford to give you whatever you want.’

  Fair enough. There was something. ‘I’ll be having my first scan at sixteen weeks.’ She hardly dared ask. Money was so easy for him to give but this might cost him far more.

  ‘I’ll be there. Just tell me when and where.’

  ‘Thanks. I appreciate it.’

  He reached out for her and she slid along the sofa towards him. The contact made her shiver both with warmth and foreboding. ‘Don’t say that. I want to see him just as much as you do.’

  ‘Him?’

  ‘Yeah. You reckon it’s a girl and I think it’s a boy. We could make a wager if you like.’

  The look on his face told her that this was one bet she didn’t want to have to pay up on. ‘What kind of wager?’

  ‘If I’m right then I get to keep you in my bed for a whole weekend. Somewhere nice. Paris maybe.’

  ‘And if I’m right?’ Jess was almost tempted. Who was she trying to kid? The temptation was pretty much unbearable.

  ‘You get to keep me in yours for a whole weekend. Somewhere else nice. Rome perhaps. You’d like the house in Rome.’

  She narrowed her eyes. ‘Couldn’t we just keep it simple? I bet you a fiver it’s a girl.’

  He sighed. ‘I thought you weren’t after my cash. Okay, a fiver it is. Or we could push the boat out and go for a tenner. You’re missing out on a great opportunity, though. You really would love the house in Rome.’