Single Dad in Her Stocking

by Alison Roberts

  She was cutting a shape from the cardboard as Max held Alice with one arm and used his free hand to measure scoops of formula into a bottle the way Maggie had shown him yesterday.

  ‘So this will be a big star,’ Emma told Ben and Tilly. ‘And I’ll make a shape for a small star, as well. You can trace around them on other pieces of cardboard and then I can help you cut them out.’

  ‘I can cut things out all by myself,’ Ben said.

  ‘Me too,’ said Tilly.

  Emma’s nod was apologetic. ‘Of course you can,’ she said. ‘But I can help if you want me to. And when we’ve cut some out, I’ll show you how to cover them with the silver foil. And then we need to make a hole in one of the pointy bits.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So we can tie the stars to the tree. I’m sure we can find some string somewhere.’

  Ben looked up at Max as he shook the bottle to dissolve the formula in the cooled boiled water. ‘Did you bring the tree inside, Uncle Max?’

  ‘Not yet, Ben. But I will, just as soon as I give Alice her dinner.’ He tested the temperature of the milk against his wrist and hoped that how confident he’d just sounded was justified. He still hadn’t managed to get Alice to accept a bottle from him yet. Last night he’d needed Emma to rescue him. Maggie had been on hand this morning and Miriam, along with other staff members, had been only too happy to take over when he’d taken the children into work.

  Max was holding his breath as he took a seat at the far end of the kitchen table, tipped Alice back into the crook of his elbow and offered her the teat of the bottle as her hungry whimpers became more frantic. He saw the startled expression on her face as she looked up at this new person trying to feed her but she had already tasted the milk and hunger seemed to win the battle with any lack of trust. Her lips closed around the teat and her tiny hands came up to help Max hold the bottle as she began to suck.

  He knew he was smiling as he looked up to see if Emma had witnessed this triumph. Max felt absurdly proud of himself. So much so, he actually had a bit of a lump in his throat. He could do this. He was doing it.

  Emma had a rather oddly shaped cardboard star in her hands and she was showing the children how to wrap it in silver foil but she must have been watching Max’s efforts with Alice from the corner of her eye because she caught his gaze as the contented silence of the baby continued and her smile only made him feel even prouder.

  Emma was impressed.

  And then something weird happened.

  It was like one of those photographs where the image had been captured from multiple cameras surrounding the group or one that had been created during that mannequin challenge that had gone viral where everybody froze in the middle of doing something. The effect was that Max was suddenly and acutely aware of so many tiny things, all at once.

  There was the weight and warmth of the baby in his arms and the feather-light touch of those miniature fingers against his own hands. He could smell the combination of the milk she was drinking and the baby smell that was partly shampoo and lotion but something else that was just unique to babies, or maybe to this particular baby. He could also see the older children. Ben was standing beside Emma, leaning on her arm as he watched what she was doing with absolute concentration. Tilly had somehow wriggled onto Emma’s lap to get closer to the action but she wasn’t watching the foil being folded around the points of the cardboard star—she was looking up at Emma.

  And Emma, well, she was looking at Max and, while the scene couldn’t actually be any more different to the drama of the rescue scene this afternoon when Emma was folded inside that wreck of a car and he was assisting her with that life-saving intervention, there was something similar in this connection. They were a team and, in this moment of time, they were succeeding in what they were trying to achieve.

  But there was more to it than that. A whole lot more.

  This... Max had to swallow the lump in his throat that had just become oddly uncomfortable. This was a family moment and it took him back in time. To when he still had his younger brother in his life. And the mother he had adored so much. A time when they might well have been doing something together, in this very kitchen. A time when this house had been such a happy place. A real home...

  Suddenly—shockingly—Max could see right through that barrier he’d started creating as a young boy. The barrier that made him believe that he never really wanted what he’d once had as part of a loving family. That life would be far less painful and much more fun if he just skated across the surface when it came to relationships with other people. If he could turn away from things that were so big they were terrifying and he could simply shut them away in a place he never really needed to visit.

  He became the son who loved his father very much but never strayed into the private, sad space that James Cunningham had retreated to after his beloved wife’s death.

  A big brother who thought he was being kind by telling Andy that Father Christmas didn’t exist and that they needed to grow up and look after themselves so that they didn’t make things worse for their father.

  An uncle who was quite happy to play with the members of a new generation of the Cunningham family but was never tempted by the idea of having children of his own.

  A lover who could recognise the moment a woman was falling in love with him and wanted more and took the first opportunity to end things as kindly, but finally, as possible.

  And, in this rather shocking moment, he could see that behind those barriers was someone who actually, desperately wanted precisely the things he had spent a lifetime protecting himself from. He wanted the kind of committed, loving relationship his parents had had. He wanted to watch his children grow up. To protect and guide them.

  To love them. To have a partner by his side who would also love his children. Who would love him and choose to be with him for the rest of her life.

  Someone like... Emma...?

  As if she had sensed that astonishing thought, Emma broke the eye contact with Max.

  ‘It’s your turn now, Ben,’ she said. ‘You can put the silver foil on the star you cut out.’

  Max could have smiled at the wonky star with rather round points that Ben had made but he didn’t. It was partly because he wouldn’t have wanted to hurt Ben’s feelings but it was more to do with the shock of that insight and the idea that he might have got things terribly wrong all those years ago. Thankfully, he could sense those barriers becoming rapidly cloudy again so that he was losing the impression of what he’d seen behind them. He had taught himself well to push those things that were emotionally too big to deal with into the space where they could be locked away.

  He might be being forced to have the family he’d never imagined he’d ever have, but that didn’t mean he had to take the risk of including anyone else in his life. Good grief...he only had to remember Andy’s anguish when his marriage had failed to know that trusting the romantic kind of love was even more of a risk than opening your heart to being a loving father figure. He’d never know whether driving into that tree at high speed had really been accidental but the grief from his brother’s death had been devastating enough anyway. He’d lost half his family now. A bit more than that, perhaps, because his father had never been the same since his mother had died so he’d lost a part of him as well.

  It was too much loss for anyone.

  Max let his breath out in a sigh of relief as Alice finished the last drops of her milk. He set the bottle on the table and moved Alice so that she was upright against his shoulder and he could rub her back to encourage a burp. That barrier was solid again, he realised. He was safe. Maybe it was partly that relief that made him turn his head so that he could press a soft kiss to that silky baby hair. Okay, the barrier had clearly shifted a little and he knew he could make space for these children in his heart. But that was all. His father had never recovered from losing the woman he’d given
his heart to and Max knew that the failure of Andy’s marriage had been the cause of his death, whether it had been deliberate or simply the fact that he’d been so devastated it had been enough to make him do something he’d never have normally done and get behind the wheel of a car when he was drunk. Marriage—or any kind of long-term commitment to a partner—was still well off Max’s radar.

  Emma was as safe as he was from anything more than a professional relationship and/or friendship.

  * * *

  James Cunningham didn’t approve of the Christmas tree in the drawing room.

  Not that he’d said anything, but Emma could sense his shock when he’d walked in when she was helping Ben tie his homemade stars to the branches of the tree that Max had brought inside and set up on one side of the fireplace under Ben’s direction.

  ‘It has to be close to the chimney,’ he’d told them. ‘So that Father Christmas doesn’t have to go looking for it. He doesn’t have time to do that when he’s got so many chimneys he has to go down.’

  When James came into the room, Max was holding Tilly up to put her fairy/angel on the top of the tree and Emma had her arms around Ben, gently guiding his small fingers as he tried to tie a bow in the string that they had threaded through the hole in one point of his star.

  Max’s father had frozen—just for a heartbeat—and, for Emma, it felt as if the world stopped turning for that instant in time as well. She could see what James was seeing. A man with a small girl in his arms, smiling as he watched her stretch out to put the skirt of the angel over the uppermost branch of the tree. A woman almost cradling an older child and a baby asleep in a pram to one side. The fire was crackling softly beside them and it didn’t matter that the small number of homemade silver stars, even with the tin soldiers Ben had chosen and the angel for the top of the tree that had been Tilly’s choice, still left the tree looking virtually devoid of decorations—this was a snapshot of a family Christmas and all it needed now was the grandfather looking on from the comfort of his leather chair, with his cute dog at his feet.

  And Emma could feel something expanding inside her chest. She knew it wasn’t physically possible that her heart could be changing size but that was what it felt like. It was getting rapidly bigger. Too big, because it was starting to crack. And bleed...

  This... This feeling of family and Christmas. Of having different generations coming together to celebrate something special. Of having children dependent on her for as much love and protection that she could offer and having a partner that she could share the journey with...

  She still wanted this. She wanted it so badly it was making her heart ache as much as if it had really split open.

  And, maybe, Max’s father was aware of a similar sense of yearning. Or loss, perhaps. Because, after that single heartbeat of time, he turned on his heel, snapping his fingers for Pirate to follow him out of the room and his spoken words were only for his dog.

  ‘Sorry,’ he muttered. ‘I forgot. It’s time for your walk, boy.’

  Pirate hesitated for a moment, as if he was also contemplating the scene in front of him and would rather stay, but then turned and followed his master out of the room.

  Emma had to take her hands away from where they were touching Ben’s because she knew that he would notice they were shaking. She needed to gulp in a breath of air as well, because it might have only been an instant in time but it felt like she hadn’t taken a breath in quite a while.

  This was exactly what she had feared might happen if she became any more involved with the Cunningham men and these children. That she would be reminded that she still didn’t have what she’d wanted most in life for almost as long as she could remember—to have a family of her own. She’d taught herself to live without it. To be okay with the idea that it might never happen, in fact, because the walls she had built around her heart and her new lifestyle of never being in one place for a long time had been how she’d coped so well for so long. But she was safe, because that wasn’t about to change. Or not yet, anyway. Not when she would be leaving this part of the world in a matter of days. Not for children who belonged to another family or a man who’d never been interested in her.

  Except...that wasn’t quite true, was it?

  He’d been interested enough to kiss her that one time.

  And Emma was almost sure he remembered that kiss as well as she did. She also knew they’d both changed enough for curiosity to be part of a feeling of connection between them and...after the intense way Max had been looking at her over the top of the Christmas tree strapped to his car this afternoon, she had a sense that the increased attraction she was so aware of could very well be mutual.

  She let out the breath she had taken slowly. A sexual attraction was completely different to the minefield of emotions that came with the notions of family and forever. That was something she could cope with, even if it wasn’t something she’d included in her life for a very long time. And she didn’t have to think about it right now because there were more important things to focus on.

  ‘Good job, Ben,’ she said aloud. ‘That’s a beautiful star.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE WALK WITH Pirate seemed to have given James whatever inner strength he needed to get back on track with coping and he helped with getting the children fed, bathed and into bed. He excused himself as he stood up from the kitchen table after dinner, however, to retire to his room instead of sitting by the fire.

  ‘It’s been a long day,’ he said.

  ‘You sure you don’t want a nightcap?’ Max asked. ‘I’m going to have one. Emma? Would you like a glass of wine?’

  ‘I would,’ Emma said. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You deserve a chance to wind down properly,’ Max said as he went to the fridge to collect the bottle he’d opened the night before. ‘You’ve had a pretty big day as well.’

  They had told James about the horrific accident outside the hospital and how they’d worked together at the scene. Emma had wondered if the topic of conversation had been of such interest to James due to professional reasons or because it was a relief to stop talking or even thinking about the three young children under his roof. He was looking so tired now that it was clear he was struggling with the changes in his life as much, if not more than his son and Emma’s heart went out to him. It was no surprise that he needed some time on his own and refused the offer of a drink or further company.

  Max was silent until he’d put a glass of wine into Emma’s hand and then poured himself a small glass of whisky in the drawing room.

  ‘It’s this tree,’ he told her. ‘I can understand why it’s upsetting Dad so much. We haven’t had a Christmas tree in this house since Mum died.’

  ‘It can’t be easy,’ Emma agreed quietly. ‘But it’s important, isn’t it? For the children. And...’ She stepped closer to the sparsely decorated tree to touch one of the crooked stars, looking up at the angel/fairy who was listing badly to one side at the top. ‘And it’s a beautiful tree.’

  Max sounded as if he was suppressing a snort of laughter as he put his glass down and reached up to straighten the angel.

  ‘It’s a bit sad compared to what I remember our Christmas trees being like. Mum was a true fan. She loved fairy lights and candles and had so many boxes of decorations her trees were works of art. It was always a special evening when Andy and I were allowed to help decorate the tree.’

  ‘I think Ben will remember making that star and tying it onto this tree. His first Christmas with the new part of his family.’

  Max was silent for a moment and then cleared his throat as if he was intending to change the subject. ‘The last time I remember seeing you was at Christmas time,’ he said, as if an amusing memory had just surfaced. ‘Must be ten years ago? It was at that party...’

  Oh...help...

  Emma could feel spots of bright colour appear on her cheeks and she couldn’t me
et his glance. He did remember their kiss. For a heartbeat, she couldn’t think of anything else. The distance of time had vanished and it might have been only seconds since he’d lifted his lips from hers. That tingle was back, dancing through her body before settling into a tight, hot knot somewhere deep in her gut. To try and cool it down Emma made herself remember what had happened next. That Max had laughed that kiss off as meaning nothing at all and she had followed his example a heartbeat later.

  Max’s tone was a little more hesitant when he broke the silence again. ‘Do you know why I kissed you that night, Emma?’

  It was her turn to suppress a sound of laughter. She turned away, heading for one end of the couch. ‘You were carrying mistletoe,’ she reminded him. ‘You were kissing every woman at the party.’

  ‘But you were the first. You were the reason I picked up that silly plastic mistletoe so I had an excuse.’ He had picked up his glass again. ‘Have you got any idea why I might have wanted to do that?’

  Emma sat down on the soft leather cushion.

  Did she want to know?

  No. She didn’t want to know that Max might have been as attracted to her as she had been to him. Because that might put a match to any residual attraction that might be there and...and something might happen...

  Which actually meant—if she was really honest with herself—the answer to her silent question was yes. In fact, Emma wanted to know so badly she lifted her gaze when Max remained silent for a long moment, her eyebrows raised to encourage him to tell her.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said.

  ‘I saw you crying.’