Never Kiss a Man in a Christmas Jumper

by Debbie Johnson

  That initial toast had been held over two hours ago, when the bar had been quieter, and the party presumably contained to a function room. Quietly, they’d sat there, occasionally holding hands or talking. Looking outside. Lost in their own thoughts, but together at least. There’d been wine, and food, and comfort.

  Now, as the party whirled around them, and the signs of life being lived to the full arrived in the form of noisy chatter and laughter and drunken couples getting cosy in the corner, Maggie couldn’t think of anything worse than going back to her empty home. Of seeing the remnants of Hurricane Ellen lying around the house. Of seeing Marco’s things, and knowing that soon, they’d be gone too. Of walking past the closed curtains and darkened windows of her dad’s unoccupied flat. Of confronting that bloody inflatable Santa and the drooping boughs of her own Christmas tree.

  Of facing up to the fact that the life she was living was only a half life. That by being free of complications and problems and risk, she was keeping herself hidden in the shadows of what life could truly be.

  She’d seen that on Isabel and Michael’s faces as they exchanged rings – even there, in the hospital, they shared more joy, more vivacity, than she had ever encountered.

  Perhaps, she thought, meeting Marco’s hazel eyes, it was time to finally take a step forward. Take a risk. Take her chance at finding passion in her own life – even if it was just for a few days.

  “I still don’t want to go home,” she said, leaning forward and kissing him. He immediately twined his fingers into her hair, pulling her closer and returning the kiss with the fire and energy she’d been longing for.

  When the kiss ended, he held her face tenderly between his hands, and replied: “Then we don’t.”

  Chapter 23

  “This dress,” said Maggie, unwrapping it from the dry cleaning plastic, “is more than earning its keep this month.”

  “It is a lovely dress,” said Marco, from his prone position on the bed, naked apart from his boxers, muscular arms folded behind his head. “But I kind of have to say, I prefer you in what you’re wearing right now.”

  Maggie glanced down at her matching black pants and bra, still slightly amazed that she felt comfortable walking around like this. That she’d somehow developed enough confidence to not only be naked with Marco, but to parade about in her knickers without giving it a second thought. In the space of four days, she’d turned into a shameless hussy – at least around him.

  “Fair enough,” she replied, abandoning the frock and walking back over to the four-poster. She climbed onto the bed, and then climbed onto the man that was lying there, leaning down to kiss him. “But I don’t think it’s an acceptable Christening outfit, do you?”

  “The Christening,” he said, clamping his arms around her waist so she couldn’t escape, “isn’t for hours yet. We could fit in a lot more practice between now and then. I’m getting better at this one-legged sex thing, but believe me, I can be a lot better.”

  She sighed as his hands slid teasingly over the curve of her back, and she felt the very male reaction she would never quite get used to. Saw the way his hazel eyes clouded with need as she wriggled against him; luxuriated in the touch of his bare chest against her skin. Trembled as his lips started to explore the sensitive hollows of her neck, flooding her entire body with a whirlpool of warmth. A lot better than this, she thought, would be completely beyond her powers of imagination.

  Four days of this delectable torture, and she was still shocked by it all. Shocked by that first night together, in the hotel. Shocked by the way they’d woken up, wrapped in each other’s arms, his good leg thrown possessively over her hips. Shocked by how mind-blowingly good it had been to finally give in to the feelings she’d had for this man since she first saw him – and by how good they were together.

  Shocked mainly, she had to admit, by herself. By the way she had opened up, responded, blossomed under his more experienced touch. Frankly, she didn’t know how it was possible – that there was any connection at all between a drunken fumble in the back of a Datsun Sunny and this glorious, aching harmony she shared with Marco. It had awoken something in her that she never wanted to lose – and so, when yet again he’d asked her to come to Scotland with him, she’d simply said yes.

  Now they were here, in the hotel that the Cavelli clan seemed to have totally taken over, preparing for Luca’s Christmas Eve baptism. Or, she thought, as Marco sneakily unhooked her bra, not preparing…

  “We shouldn’t,” she whispered.

  “We should,” he replied, taking one of her now-exposed nipples into his mouth and rendering her incapable of further speech.

  Chapter 24

  The tiny chapel was crowded with Rob and Leah’s friends and family. The couple themselves stood by the font, Leah keeping a tight grip on Luca’s pudgy hand in case he made a break for freedom.

  Marco was acting as Godfather, and a family friend called Morag – the owner of the holiday cottage where Rob and Leah had first met – was Godmother. Morag was, as Leah had described, an absolute dot of a woman.

  As the words of the service were called out, and the priest reached to take Luca’s hand, the kid finally managed to pull free of his mother’s grasp and looked fired up to attempt a mad dash down the aisle. His little body, togged up in a suit, was pumped and ready to roll.

  Rob, clearly used to the chase, pre-empted him and scooped him up into his arms, whispering a few words into his ear that made the little boy settle. He turned a surly face towards the priest, and leaned forward, looking as though he might bite him.

  “I baptise you in the name of the Father,” the priest said, trickling water over Luca’s curly dark head, rivulets running down onto his furious face and rosy cheeks.

  “Bad man!” Luca shouted, pointing at the priest. “Wet!”

  “And in the name of the Son,” the priest said, doing it again and provoking a scream that threatened to shatter the stained glass windows.

  “And the Holy Spirit,” he finished, just about managing to sprinkle the water before Luca did indeed attempt to bite him. He snatched his fingers away just in time, which led Maggie to believe that that wasn’t the first time it had happened.

  She held in her laughter as she watched, not daring to meet anyone else’s eye in case she exploded with it. She noticed Dorothea, Rob and Marco’s mother, tall and elegant with an icy white bob, also biting her own lip, eyes closed against the silent mirth that was rocking her body.

  Marco gave her a wink as they trooped back to their seats at the front, scooting up the aisle on his crutches, and Leah looked like she might be about to pass out as she waddled past. This, thought Maggie, must have seemed like a great idea at the time: a beautiful Christmas Eve ceremony in the place where love had first blossomed; amid the stunning scenery of Scotland in the snow.

  But just then, with a toddler showing every sign of being a natural born Satanist and baby number two itching to make its way into the world, she looked like she’d rather be in bed with a good book. Poor woman.

  The ceremony drew to a close, and the guests made their way back to the nearby hotel for the reception. Some had come in cars, but others, including Maggie, were making the trek on foot, skidding and slipping up the icy country lane, wrapped in coats and scarves that were quickly blanketed in fresh snow.

  By the time Maggie arrived, Leah was already sprawled on an armchair by an open log fire, a mountainous plate of sandwiches on a small table by her side, shoes kicked off and lying at right angles by her feet. Her belly was so big, encased in a red floral dress, that her arms and legs seemed to be poking out of her middle like cocktail sticks. Her blonde hair had started to escape its originally neat bun, and her hands were rhythmically stroking her own tummy as she smiled up at Maggie.

  “Hey you,” she said quietly. “Come sit with me. I’ve completely washed my hands of the demon child for a while, and as I can’t even get drunk, I’m planning to just sit here and stuff my face for the next few hours. I w
ill hate every single person here by the end of the day.”

  “Can’t say that I blame you,” replied Maggie, eyeing the drinks trays that were being offered around by tartan-wearing waiters. “How are you feeling?”

  “Oh, you know,” said Leah, screwing up her eyes as a pain ratcheted up her spine, “big as a whale. Stone cold sober. Sleep deprived. Nervous. But…happy. Yes. Really happy. I know it doesn’t look like it now, but we weren’t always this perfect little family unit. There was a lot of heartache on the way, and moments when I genuinely gave up hope on ever being happy again. I spent the whole of my pregnancy away from Rob, in London, not knowing if my baby would ever even know his own father. I felt like I’d been chopped in two pieces, and that I’d left one half of me behind in Chicago, with him.

  “So whenever I feel a bit over-wrought – or over-pregnant – or when my darling son tries to mutilate God’s representative on earth, I just have to remind myself of that. That I got my happy ending, and that it was all worth it. The other thing I do,” she said, reaching for a sandwich, “is eat too much. The cure for all ills. Anyway – how are you? You look…different.”

  “I know,” replied Maggie, blushing slightly at what she suspected was the other woman’s totally correct intuition about why. “It must be because I’m not sitting on a rubber ring any more.”

  “Ha! Somehow I don’t think that’s it,” said Leah, studying Maggie’s flaming face a bit too closely. “I have the sneaking suspicion that you’ve fallen foul of the infamous Cavelli man charm. I blame myself of course – I should never have left you there with that evil predator…”

  Maggie burst out laughing, and Leah joined in, just as the evil predator himself hopped towards them. Declaring himself completely over the shirt-and-tracksuit pants look, Marco had persuaded Maggie to cut his suit trousers off at the knee, hemming them up and leaving the cast on show. Luca had added a festive picture of a Father Christmas that consisted entirely of one red eyeball with a big grey beard.

  “Hey ladies,” he said, leaning down to kiss Leah on the cheek, pausing to rest his hand on her huge belly. “How’s this little fella doing?”

  “She is doing just fine, thank you,” Leah replied, pulling him down to sit next to her. “I keep telling you all that it’s a girl.”

  “I know, but I’m a man – you don’t expect me to listen to you, do you?”

  He glanced across at Maggie, and felt his face crease into the now-familiar smile it always seemed to wear when he saw her. When he was near her. When he thought about her. Which was, he had to admit, pretty much all of the time.

  Since that first night together at the hotel, they’d barely spent a second apart. And they’d barely spent a second with clothes on, apart from while they were driving. It had been four days of absolute bliss, even with a broken leg.

  She smiled back at him, but neither of them spoke. It was like this sometimes. They’d either be bantering, or silent – as though they didn’t always need to talk. Just being together was enough. Marco had never experienced anything like it, and his heart cracked just a tiny bit whenever he thought about leaving her. About going back to Chicago. Going back to what was, allegedly, his real life. Saying goodbye to her pretty little house, and Oxford, and Ellen and Paddy, and mainly, of course, to her. To this quiet, warm, actually incredibly funny woman, who’d welcomed him into her life, into her home, and eventually into her bed. A bed he never wanted to climb out of.

  He’d expected her to be nervous, that first night. Scared, or anxious. But he couldn’t have been more wrong – she’d come alive as soon as he’d touched her. And so, he was starting to suspect, had he.

  “You’re being very quiet,” he finally said, leaning forward so he could lay a hand on her knee, and feeling her cold fingers immediately cover it.

  “I’m trying to be mysterious,” she replied, gazing at him with a sparkle in those green eyes. “It suits me better. I’m not like Leah, or even Ellen – I’m not one of those women who gets noticed. I don’t light up the room. I sneak in under the radar.”

  “Well,” he said, gripping her fingers tighter, “that depends on who else is in the room with you. You light it all up for me, sweetheart…anyway. I gotta go. I’ve heard there’s some kind of snowball warfare being planned outside, and I need to take up a strategic command position. And yes, before you say it, I’ll be careful.”

  He leaned across to give her a quick kiss, then hoisted himself back up and towards the doorway. Maggie glanced outside, and saw a dozen or so figures, big and small, swaddled up in coats, running around on the open snow-covered garden. She watched and smiled as Marco took one step outside, and was immediately bombarded with a hail of snowballs. That, she thought, must have been his first strategic command decision. Snowball obliteration.

  She turned back to Leah, who was studying her with narrowed amber eyes.

  “I was right,” she said triumphantly. “I didn’t need to book separate rooms for you two, did I? That thing he just said, about you lighting up the room? That was one of the most romantic things I’ve ever heard come out of a man’s mouth. Definitely from his mouth. So go on – tell me all. I’m practically family.”

  “Umm…there’s not much to tell, really, Leah. It just kind of snuck up on us, I suppose. Things happened. Things changed. Things…are complicated.”

  “What? Why complicated? I hate that word! It looks pretty simple to me, Maggie. He’s in love with you. You might as well get a T-shirt printed up that says ‘The One’ on it.”

  “Don’t be silly!” squeaked Maggie, staring at Leah as though she was insane. “Of course he’s not in love with me! It’s just a…fling. A Christmas fling. He’ll go back to his life, I’ll go back to mine, and everything will be normal again.”

  “Right,” replied Leah, frowning as she spoke. “Back to normal. And that’s what you want, is it? You were happy with normal?”

  Maggie ignored her and looked outside again. Saw that Marco had taken up his place sitting on a car bonnet, and was waving his crutches around like fake machine guns, as though he was fighting off a mass invasion. The invasion was coming in the form of Luca and several other children of varying sizes, all of whom were advancing on him, throwing snowballs and squealing with absolute delight every time one of them hit their target. His hat was soaked through and plastered to his head, and he looked every bit as happy as the kids.

  He was so at home there, surrounded by screaming children.

  Children. The one thing she couldn’t give him – and the one thing he deserved.

  She met Leah’s eyes, and put as much feeling into her voice as she could.

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s been fun, but that’s what I want.”

  Leah made some kind of ‘pah’ noise, and put her sandwich back down on the plate. She leaned as far forward as her baby bulk would allow, pinning Maggie down with her gaze.

  “I’m sorry Maggie, but I just don’t believe you,” she said. “I see the way you look at him. The way you look at each other. I saw it that very first day, in the hospital. Marco is a wonderful man. From when I very first met him, he’s been nothing but supportive and kind. He looks like a bruiser – but he’s a big softie inside. I’ve never understood why he’s never met anyone - and believe me, there have been enough women who’ve tried. I suspect it’s to do with Rob. With what happened after his first wife died. I think Marco started living for Rob from that point on – he put his own life on hold while Rob was having his super-long nervous breakdown, and after that – after he met me – it had become habit. You’re the only woman who’s ever broken that habit. Tell me you don’t love him – look me in the eye and tell me that.”

  Maggie stared at her hands, folded on her lap. Glanced up at the roaring fire; the vast pine tree in the corner of the room, dripping with tartan ribbons. Through the window at the snowballing army. Back at her hands. Anywhere, in fact, apart from at Leah. At that pretty face, and those knowing eyes, and a woman who seemed to come eq
uipped with emotional X-ray vision.

  Eventually, when she couldn’t hold in the tears any longer, when her vision became blurred with liquid heartbreak, and when the silence finally became too much to bear, she looked up. She needed, she realised, to tell someone. To talk about it. To take her finger out of the dam, after all these years.

  “I do love him,” she said, quietly. “I can’t look you in the eye and deny that, Leah. But it can’t work. Look at him out there. That’s what he should have, that’s what he deserves – a family like yours. You know how he is with Luca – he’s a natural father. And I can’t give him that. I can’t have any more children. Ellen was my first and only. I…well, I won’t go into the details, but I can’t. And if I let this carry on, I’ll be taking that chance away from him. It wouldn’t be fair. I need to end it, for both our sakes. I just can’t figure out how.”

  Leah’s mouth opened and closed a few times as she processed what Maggie had just told her. Her own eyes misted over, and she reached out, taking Maggie’s trembling hand in hers.

  “I’m sorry,” she said simply. “I’m really sorry. That is a terrible thing to happen to you, and I can understand why you feel like you do. But…Maggie, don’t you think it’s up to Marco to decide what he deserves? What he wants? Have you even talked to him about this?”

  Maggie shook her head, screwing up her eyelids to try and stop more tears sneaking out. She probably already had mascara panda eyes, and a day-long party to get through.

  “No,” she replied. “I haven’t talked to him about it. I haven’t really talked to anyone about it. The only person who knows is my father, because he was there with me on the day it all went wrong. I’ve never told Ellen – I mean, that wouldn’t be fair, would it? To lay that kind of guilt trip on a child. I’ve just…lived with it. And it’s been okay.”

  “Until now,” said Leah.